A Dairy Farmer Near Seattle on Running a Business During the First COVID Lockdowns

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] As the crow flies on the Vance Crowe podcast, Dwayne Faber, welcome back to the podcast.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:00:10] What's up buddy? How are you man?

Vance Crowe [00:00:11] I'm doing great. So for anybody that did not watch maybe the first 10 episodes of the podcast, they might not know that you are a dairy farmer from Washington state, just outside of Seattle. And you and I are pretty good friends. We've traveled around to Canada together, we've come out, visited my house, and you are living right now being a person producing dairy amid the Coronavirus outbreak. So what is it like in the Seattle, Washington area?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:00:40] It's been tough. We were kind of the epicenter or the start of this coronavirus. We had the first, I dunno if it was the first case, but it definitely started here in Seattle. We had a rampage go through a Kirkland old age home that killed off several people. We were the first one I think that had the first death, but we, we've kind of been the epicenter of it. And it's obviously spread wide and far right now, but we've kind of been on the front lines of it. And so tomorrow our governor had ordered a stay in place order and so

Vance Crowe [00:01:10] Oh, you haven't had a stay in place order this whole time?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:01:13] Not that I'm aware. Not to the extent that they're talking now. Now they're saying, oh yeah, it, everybody has to stay home, so

Vance Crowe [00:01:21] Oh wow. Yeah, so we had ours put in, not yesterday, the Sunday night at, at 12:00 AM or I guess Monday morning at 12:00 AM And that was a surreal experience for me because my wife and I had been quarantining ourselves and our house on our own, you know, we had said, Hey, my wife's pregnant, we, we wanna be extra careful. I mean, this is all stuff, you know, 'cause we've been talking about it, but when that order finally came in and it was like, you are now not allowed to leave your house unless you can justify it for work or groceries or some other very minimal things like that, that kind of got surreal for me.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:01:56] Yeah, right. I mean, it's all essential stuff. I actually just got done filling out 20 forms for all my employees if they do get pulled over for cops saying that they're in agriculture and they are an essential part or they've been, they've been categorized as being essential to the economy and still have the freedom to go around. So, so them and the essential oil salesman, they're free to go now and just do whatever they will. So,

Vance Crowe [00:02:19] So what's it like running a dairy? I mean, you have to have labor. You, if you don't, if people don't show up for work, you got cows that must be milked every day.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:02:28] Absolutely. We had a scare here last weekend where one of my employees potentially came down with it, you know, showing all the symptoms and signs and so then right away the fear grips you that what happens if it goes through all my employees and we don't have people to show up to milk cows, feed cows. And it was a surreal moment. It was, it was kind of scary, you know, it's, I'm sitting there helping out milk cows and it's, it's, it's definitely, it's definitely a stressful time. And so as far, but as far as the infrastructure, as far as supplies coming in, that's been good. We haven't had any issue there. The, the milk market, you know, has kind of fallen apart. A lot of that is the uncertainty with exports for dairy products, just because all these other countries, their currencies now have been devalued to the point where they can't afford to buy us dairy products. So that's been a real fear, which is a little bit counter to what we we're seeing out in society with fluid milk and jug milk flying off the shelves and cheese flying off the shelves and

Vance Crowe [00:03:27] Oh yeah, man, we'll see where we got three, three gallons of, of whole milk at in our refrigerator as much as we can. Like to us milk was a very, very important thing to have.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:03:38] Absolutely. Yeah. And we're seeing, we're seeing that out here too. It's, it's flying off the shelves and, you know, historically people consume more dairy products when they go out to eat in restaurants. And so that's the unknown. And the fear too is going out to eat where you're eating, you know, butters, cheeses, sauces, you typically consume more dairy in a restaurant than you would at home. And so, you know, it's gonna be interesting to see where this all goes as far as consumer demand, but it's definitely uncharted territories for us as well.

Vance Crowe [00:04:07] So, you know, you are the guy that is always pushing me to think about what's the opportunity, where, where should you be thinking out a few months, a few years. I mean, a lot of times you and I have talked about plans that you have that are five and 10 years out. Are you able to think that far out right now with, with all of this coronavirus?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:04:26] Yeah, we are. It's a, it, you know, right now it feels a little bit like you're just trying to survive. We're just trying to get out of this. And I think Rah Emanuel is the one that said it. He said, never waste a good crisis. You know, and, and for, for a lot of people on the business front, I mean, there's opportunity now to lock in interest rates, I mean, that are at unprecedented low levels, being able to lock in interest rates, that that would probably be a win for us, you know, as far as, yeah, anything else? We have some hedges in place to try and protect the milk price. We've done that before this fell apart. And so that will help going forward. What

Vance Crowe [00:05:01] Does that mean, a hedge in there for milk price?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:05:04] Yeah, so there's a government program, it's a little bit subsidized, but it's this essentially a put or a floor on your milk price. It's called the Dairy Revenue Protection Program. So we've done that. And then also a little bit of forward contracting sales of milk futures and a little bit of option stuff where you sell the call, buy the put, try and protect a margin on, on your milk price. And so we've done a little bit of that and, and left a lot of our inputs open. Corn and soybeans have, have dropped a little bit again, I mean, not, not as much relative to milk or to the general stock market, but they've, they've softened up a little bit too. So inputs have softened alfalfa hay is really dried up. That's an export that goes outta Seattle. The ports are slowing down. And so that, that's an input cost that has been dropping. So there's several factors at play, but you know, we're doing our best to try and try and lock in stuff and, and weather the storm at the moment. So,

Vance Crowe [00:05:58] So speaking of weather in the storm, you know, you and me and a couple of other guys have a pretty tight knit group. You know, we're constantly texting, talking about different preparation and, and things. What have you found during this crisis, either between you or you and your family? Like where have you found your news? Where have you been learning about things going on in the world? How have you decided what is true and what's not true? What's hyperbole and what's, what's real?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:06:27] Yeah, that, that's been tough. I mean, I typically get all my news from online, from, from Twitter, and then just news articles through Twitter. And I have to be a little bit careful that I don't, I don't get sucked too much into it, you know, it's easy for us to be over consumers and, and feed into a lot of the fear and the hype and, and get too worried about it. And, and that's a risk for me too. So several times I just had to say, Hey, we're gonna walk away from it, put it away. But I did go and, and go and buy a couple bags of rice, go and buy, you know, prep, you know, food that'll last and maybe it's overkill, but you know, we'll see where this all goes. I mean, this is something that, you know, makes the doomsday preppers all of a sudden look like the sane, rational and smart people in society, right? And so I, I have continued to, to to log in every morning, kind of see where things are at, and, and it's, it's a little bit tough because what is fact, what is fiction? And, and the narrative has changed a little bit too. I think we've seen it with, I mean, even Mr. Trump, I mean, coming out at first saying it was an entire hoax, this thing is made up, it's not true. And then walking that back and trying to listen to people that are more science-minded and predicting where it's going to go and

Vance Crowe [00:07:41] Yeah, to go from, to go from being, it's a hoax to saying, I am now a wartime president. I mean, that's right.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:07:47] At

Vance Crowe [00:07:48] Its core, one of the biggest fears that I have out of this is in extreme scenarios, the Overton window that they know the, the window of acceptable thought gets kicked open. And people move from being somewhere in the center on how they think about things to moving out to the more extreme of the ideas. And one of the challenges that I think happens is you start wanting to go towards the information that agrees with the thing that you already believe. And then the more times you hear it over and over and over and over again, you start to think everybody else is hearing this too. I'm hearing it so often that it must be true and everyone must already agree with me. And, and I don't know how you stop that, because that's how you get these big groups of people to believe, hey, the obvious answer is X, we need to give money to this group, or we need to cut it off and, and everybody should just go back to work. And I, I, I don't, I'm, I'm worried about that.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:08:45] So who is setting the narrative in your mind?

Vance Crowe [00:08:49] Oh, you know, I think it's an emergent phenomena. I don't, I don't think there's one person sitting there with their finger on the scales. I think it is people that are really persuasive in these situations are the ones that become the demigods, right? The ones that are able to articulate their point of view so that other people can say, Hmm, that's a, that's a good idea. Or Oh yeah, I can see their point. And if they have enough details and enough color and enough emotion there, they're able to, to do logos, ethos, and pathos and really create an argument. They can get a lot of people behind them. I, I mean, I think you and I have talked about comedians oftentimes because of their ability to make jokes like you are, they're able to get people to look at things in a different way. Well, I think in a time of crisis, whoever can harness emotions the most is the one that has the ability to, to drive the narrative. And I often wonder, are they purposefully doing it or is it just something that happens? Is it, it may just be a part of human nature that some people during these situations rise up and become, you know, really persuasive and powerful.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:09:55] Yeah, I, I'm a little bit scared and, and we've talked about it before, but, and the biggest advance against civil liberties will probably be under a Republican, because when there's a Democrat in charge, it's easy for us to see. And, and through this time I'm a little bit worried about how civil liberties are going to be taken away and how in the name of this crisis government is gonna grow like we've never seen before. And a lot of the voices that would normally see it and pointed out are going to be silent because Trump now, in my mind as a wartime president, has carte blanche to keep writing checks and essentially buy the next election. And I think those on the right are going to turn a blind eye as he continues to spend money and grow government and, and take away liberties. So

Vance Crowe [00:10:49] Yeah, and I mean, like the numbers that people are talking about that, that the government wants to just put into the world, right? They're not creating value there. They're just creating, you know, ones and zeros that say there is more money out there. One of the things that I think is kind of a funny way to look at the, let's just say the $2 trillion that they were talking about in stimulus today, what comes after a trillion? You know, do what, you know, what's the difference between 2 trillion and 4 trillion? What's the difference between 4 trillion and 40 trillion? I cannot describe for you the actual difference between those two numbers. I can say one is, you know, 10 times more than the other one, but I have actually no way to describe what a trillion is, let alone, what's the next thing? A quadrillion, right? So it seems like we're talking about imaginary numbers and people a week ago if you had said, Hey, we're gonna float a $2 trillion spending package, they would've said they would've, they would've thought you were, you were making it up, they would've thought that you were a crazy person.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:11:49] Yes. Is is this unjustified? I mean, are we going about this the right way? Are spending all this money and shutting down? I mean, the wheels of capitalism,

Vance Crowe [00:12:00] That's so hard for me. So I've had a, a chance to talk with Jason Bachman, who runs Strange Donuts. You know, he's got 17 employees, and the government in, in effect is saying, you cannot set up your restaurant so that your employees can be working. And and a week ago he was saying, I don't know if they're gonna shut us down or if we're gonna be able to do delivery, or we're gonna be able, but he really cares about his workers, and I've met a lot of 'em. They're good people. They're working hard, they're trying to go to, to make donuts at three in the morning or staying up till 2:00 AM selling them. And the government has just said, you're not allowed to do that. Go home. Well, what are you gonna do? Yeah. If you are using the force of the, of the police to tell people that they have to be in their homes, they cannot work, then can you say that you're not allowed to give them money? I don't know. Like I I think that we can't have those people being, being unable to make money and then just saying, well, you should just stay in your house and starve. But at the same time, once you hand that money out, it's gonna be really, really hard to not make that a, you know, the, we we do universal basic income by default.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:13:07] Right? Well, and and I was, I said that somewhat facetiously two weeks ago. I said, Trump's gonna be reigning cash down on regular citizens outta helicopters over cities, and Andrew Yang is going to be losing his mind. Right? I mean, and once that starts, where does it end? I mean, does that continue on? We, we had a situation here in town where a barber said, well, I'm gonna keep cutting hair. The police came and threatened to throw him in jail if he didn't shut down. Right. And the

Vance Crowe [00:13:35] Yeah, and that's the thing that, that, that's the exact thing that I'm talking about with the, we hear the same line over and over and over again about, Hey, we need to flatten the curve, and the only way to stop these people from spreading it is by forcing them to be in their houses. And I gotta say, I don't know the right answer there. It, my wife and I clearly thought for us, we are gonna, we are gonna be in our houses, we are gonna quarantine well before the government did. But the problem becomes when you start getting everyone to agree that it is their e everyone else's patriotic duty to be locked in their houses to prevent the spread, and you start saying, we are going to make it so we're, we will use force. If you don't do it, then you have this problem of we've just suspended the first amendment, right? Like the, it's the, the right to assemble is now gone. And a week ago, if you had told people you were gonna do that, they would've thought you were crazy. No matter how in detail you described to them, the pandemic, they would've said No way in the United States, you can't do that. And now, right Now, people are celebrating it.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:14:37] Yes. But I don't think that the American public has the ability to stay locked up and stay in their houses. I mean, I think they'll defy that order.

Vance Crowe [00:14:46] You think so?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:14:47] That that's why I I do, that's why I fear this thing is gonna blow up, because yeah, I just don't think we have the ability to, to sit tight. And I mean, we're Americans, we're gonna go out and do as we will and do what we will and we don't do well with, with orders like that. And I, I don't know. I fear for this. I fear for this spread. I mean, it's gonna spread and, and what the right answer is, I don't know. And I mean, you don't want to come across as cold, but now you go and you take $2 trillion and you divide that over by saying, Hey, we save 500,000 people by shutting down the entire economy, $2 trillion, it divided by 500,000 people is $4 million a person. When we're at war and we make decisions during war time, the dollar value on life is a heck of a lot less than that. And, and we don't like having these conversations, but this is war and we are making decisions based on life and, and the value of life. And I'm not saying I've got the right answer. I don't know what the right answer is. Maybe it's completely justified and we continue to shut the economy down and next month it's another $2 trillion. And, and yeah, you think of the, the mother at 35 who's a breast cancer survivor with five kids. Absolutely. That, that's who we're staying indoors for. You know, you have a 95-year-old man that has lung cancer and, and coronavirus is what puts him out.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:16:25] Yeah. There's, there's a, that's what makes it so difficult is we're having to place values on lives, right?

Vance Crowe [00:16:33] And you get into these weird paradoxes, right? Like in the city of St. Louis, because they had a guy that walked through his quarantine or he, like in the, in the city, there was this problem where a girl came back from Italy and she was sick, and they didn't know whether or not she had coronavirus her dad, whether he was away from her or not. The story that they're telling is that the dad didn't come in contact with the daughter. He was fine. He went to a daddy-daughter dance, and it basically shut the city down because when they found out there was a man that went there that was exposed to somebody with coronavirus, they shut everything down. Well, the consequence of that that was unexpected was first people were outraged. They yelled about it, they were angry. I was so worried about it that I did the podcast on mobs. But then I think that that caused St. Louis to be way more awake to the danger than every other city in the United States. So there's the potential that that guy that kicked off that fear did a great service to this city inadvertently because everybody was way more concerned. But now you have a problem because now you've, you've just suspended 80,000 people, which are working in restaurants, the hospitality industry. You've had them all come home and stay in their places. If no one gets sick or your hospitals aren't overrun, do those people become outraged because nothing happened? Do they, do they, do you then make it so it seems like the boy who cried wolf when the next pandemic comes and there will be another one. Could be 20 years, could be, could be two months, who knows?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:18:00] Yep. Well, and it, to me, it's, it's akin to hurricane barreling down towards Miami. And the experts come out and they say, we have a model where this obliterates Miami and it kills 200,000 people. Everybody get out, everybody leaves. Well then the thing makes a dog leg to the right and it completely misses Florida. And everybody comes out and it says, well, you guys were creating fear, causing fear just trying to get ratings. This is, this is complete bs. We're never gonna listen to you again. And yet their responsibility to the people is to say, this is the potential worst case scenario. And and to me, it's the same situation we're dealing with right now. They have to say, Hey, this is the potential worst case scenario. This is what could go wrong. And and hopefully they are wrong. And, and quite frankly, they hope they're wrong, but we just don't know. And we have to prepare for the worst.

Vance Crowe [00:18:55] Yeah, I, I agree. So changing the subject, because I, I think that you have such a unique business mind, where are you looking for ways that your family can come out in a better position than, than if you just sheltered all by yourself? Like, how are you thinking about the future and what, what's something that you think other people should be paying attention to?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:19:18] I mean, I think we need to go back and look at the last recession of oh eight and oh nine, and those that were able to survive and weather the storm had essentially a decade, a decade and a half of, of good, good business returns. And so those that do survive, there's gonna be plenty of opportunity. And, and there will be good margins after this. I've been buying a few cows. Cow braces have continued to plummet and, you know, fall down buying cows cheaper, looking to lock in interest rates and, and just be around so that you're there on the next upswing because times will get good again. The the sun will shine again. We will have an opportunity to, to make good money in every industry, most, mostly because we're going to lose a few people. And it's, it's, it, it's tough. I mean, you think of like a wedding venue industry or business, right? I mean, if if you're, you're gonna get married or you're gonna die, you can't have people come into any of that,

Vance Crowe [00:20:19] Right?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:20:20] And a lot of those businesses, they're not going to get support. They're not going to get a government handout. And, and how, how do they weather that? I don't know. I mean, it's gonna be tough, right? It's gonna take gutting it out for a couple months here. And, and it's gonna be interesting too, to see the anger towards government. And I think government has mishandled this on multiple levels up until now. But this recent bill that Nancy Pelosi put out, there's $300 million of it slotted for a, an art center to, for the art community. And you think, here are these wedding venue people, they'll, they won't get a dime there. There's, there's not a check written for them, but we're seeing government waste at its finest. And, and we're seeing, you know, there are four senators that went out after hearing the, the depths of where this coronavirus could take us. And their first response is to go and sell stocks, which is not illegal. And, and it's creating a further divide and, and chasm between both us and politicians. But I think also between the haves and the haves have nots and where we come out after this is going to be interesting. And I think it could be that we're heading toward, I mean, we're heading towards socialism already, but I think a lot of this is going to only expedite that. What are your thoughts?

Vance Crowe [00:21:46] Well, I, I think you're probably right in a lot of ways, one of the things that has struck me is if you take the city of St. Louis, for example, and you pull all of the people out of there, you know, a lot of people don't live in downtown St. Louis, but there's a homeless population there, there's a population of people that are begging for money. If you remove their access to people that they're begging for money from, where are they gonna go? What are they gonna do? Yeah. Do they, do they get into a situation where they're put up in hotels and, and dorms? What happens if they don't wanna be there? Right. A lot of them have chosen a life that's, that's different. So a lot of these things, I don't know. And I think that the government, it, I mean, I'll tell you, there's one area that I'm a little bit ashamed. There's a couple areas that I, I think have revealed my oversight before this coronavirus happened. One of which was, I have always looked at government to be like, the only people that go in to run for public office are the people that can't go out and find something better to do with their time. And they're just finagling for power. The problem with thinking that way and not paying attention to politics and being like, oh, I'm above all this is then when you have a crisis, the only people that are there are the people that didn't, that, that took it seriously. And, and, and were the ones in charge. So now in the middle of a crisis, even if you think those people are not intelligent or not hardworking or whatever, now they're the ones in charge and they have a lot of power. And I think that one of the biggest oversights was that I did not pay more attention to that.

Vance Crowe [00:23:20] And I'm going to from now on, because I realize day to day I don't want to be involved in day-to-day politics. But I realize now that in the long term, in the big picture, I do want somebody that's able to weather a storm and, and get us prepared better, better than what I'm seeing right now.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:23:37] Absolutely. What in our litigious society, what happens if you have an inmate that gets coronavirus?

Vance Crowe [00:23:47] Oh man, I i, we, we have not heard very much about what's going on with the prisons. I've heard from my coach, my jiujitsu coach is from Brazil, and he was telling us about how in Brazil they were still worried about it getting into the prisons, much like in Iran, that they let prisoners outta prison. Yes. And you think about in the United States, like it is not right for us. We if if you decide that you are going to imprison someone regardless of their crime, they did not commit a crime where we are putting them to death. And, and so if you get that disease inside a prisons and it looks like, you know what, what do we have in prison right now? 2 million people, if it looks like a substantial amount of them are going to die from coronavirus, we have a responsibility to protect them. And what are you gonna do? You're gonna let 'em outta jail. You're gonna let convicted rapists and murderers outta jail. I don't know how we handle that. I'm hoping that we've got coronavirus under control enough, enough social distancing that that doesn't happen. But God help us if it, if it does, get into the prisons,

Coronavirus Perspective [00:24:50] Absolutely be, and either you let them go or you don't and you kill off a bunch of 'em. To me, that opens it up for lawsuits. Right. And, and, and speaking of lawsuits, if, if we develop a vaccine that looks promising under a wartime, you make wartime decisions in order to save lives, you have to think on your feet and do things. You know, the, the, the best laid plants all go out the window and the first shot is fired and the first punch is thrown. Do we bypass some laws from the FDA to release a vaccine that looks promising or a treatment plan that looks promising that hasn't gone through the rigorous five year FDA testing before it gets approved?

Vance Crowe [00:25:35] Well, so I was listening to a guy on an interview with Sam Harris where he talked about the challenge of, with vaccines, it's not just the regulatory burden. You actually have to find out is it efficacious? Does it actually work? And so if you fast track the vaccine and say, well, hey, we found this thing, we think it works, let's just assume that it works and you give it to people, and now they think that they're inoculated against the disease and they're not, then you've got a whole nother problem on your hands. Not to mention the fact that vaccines have danger to them, the ones that we have in, in society right now, we've tested and proven that they're not dangerous. But, you know, think about our society and how averse they were to taking vaccines that were well tested, that have been around for 30, 40 years, 50 years now, you're gonna start, start doing one on, on coronavirus. I I I bet there are, I bet there is less than a hundred percent acceptance of that vaccine.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:26:32] Yeah, absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:26:34] Would you take a vaccine that came out like that?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:26:40] I don't know. I I've had a cough for three weeks. I think I've had it already. I think I'm immunized already.

Vance Crowe [00:26:45] You mean from coronavirus?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:26:47] Yeah. I, I don't know if I've had it or not. I mean, I, I called the doctor and there was no testing for it, and I had a fever two weeks ago, and there I couldn't get in and get a test. And so I feel better now. I mean, I think I, I'd like to do the antibodies test to kind of see if I did fight it off and if it was coronavirus, but I don't know if I've had it either. And that, that to me is some of the failure too, is you, we haven't had the testing ability to go out and test for it. The good news is, for me, I can social distance fairly easy by just being an attractor or, you know, trying to stay away from employees. And, but yeah, that's, that's been to me one of the biggest failures is we don't know who has it or if we have it so

Vance Crowe [00:27:33] Well, I think it's gonna do a whole bunch of stuff for our supply chain. You know, one of the things that happened to me is I, I, I have a pregnant wife and I really wanted to make sure that she was able to get beef and chicken, you know, while, while we're in this situation. And so I ended up finding a farm that was selling, selling their own privately made stuff. And that was a really big benefit. I really had underestimated the value of that sort of farm to table process. You know, I had kind of thought like, oh, isn't that cute? Now I don't think it's cute now I think it is necessary to the resilience of our, of our economy to have a lot of those people there. I want that to be a beautiful market that blossoms.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:28:17] Absolutely. And I think that's one of the benefits that comes out of this is we value and, and really we see that it's a national security issue to have locally grown food, food grown in America. In the Joe Rogan podcast, he had an epidemiologist on there, and he was saying that something like 80% of lifesaving medications that people use every day are manufactured in China. Well, if China wanted to, they could go and say, well, we're not making that anymore. And, and we'd be having dead people everywhere. And so this has forced us to think through some of these logistical situ scenarios where we have to say, Hey, what do we need to bring home again? And, and it may lead to, to a rise of nationalism, you know, which is what Trump has been espousing from day one in, in a lot of ways it feeds into his, his agenda. And there there's been, yeah, the, the consequences are so wide ranging that we haven't even begun to, to dig through them yet.

Vance Crowe [00:29:18] Yeah. And I think that the, the concept of nationalism and, and any one president's agenda, it's why I'm actually really reluctant to refer to it as a wartime president because I, you know, we, we are not at war, war is when there is an enemy that you can go attack with guns and you can, you can fight with force. This is some kind of president, this is something different than what Obama faced or, or Reagan or Bush or any of those people. But it's not war because it's something different than war and to, you know, wartime rights and wartime privileges for the president. Those are real things, right? It allows them to shut down our borders and, and attack other people like it. It gives them rights that I am very, very reluctant to hand out, particularly in this time where it seems like government, whatever power they want, they're voting for themselves and they're, and they're taking it. And granted, I need, we all need some sort of authority to help us organize. But once that authority gets to a certain size, like what, what happens when there's a difference of opinion between the government, what the government thinks is safe for people to come out, and when people think it's safe to come out, what are we gonna do then

Coronavirus Perspective [00:30:32] That's when, that's when the chaos hits. Right? And, and I think it's only a matter of time that is going to come.

Vance Crowe [00:30:40] So I wanna I wanna ask you two final questions and then we're gonna wrap up. I would talk with you all day clearly, and we can do this again. I'm sure there's gonna be things that are gonna happen that the milk industry and some of your insights will be good for, but the two questions I have, the, the first one is, what do you think the world looks like in two weeks?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:31:01] I, I think what we just touched on, two, in two weeks, there's going to be this bitter fight of can you keep people contained or not? And you're going to have a government that says, we have to stay contained, and you're going to have a populace that says, I'm, I'm gonna go out and do what I want. I'm going stir crazy and I can't handle being indoors anymore. And so, I mean, if, if things get better and the virus dies down, we get warming, you know, and the sunshine's coming out and the, the, the sun is killing the virus and reduces the spread and we start getting back to normal. I mean, I think some of the positives are for the first time, we'll appreciate people probably, you know, we'll appreciate being in a group of people,

Vance Crowe [00:31:47] Appreciate a handshake and hopefully a handshake will means something. Well,

Coronavirus Perspective [00:31:50] Yeah, that's right. Exactly. It's not a, a, a blood oath anymore, right? We're, yeah, that, that connection with people I think will appreciate that a lot more. So that's, that's the optimism, that's the, that's the best case scenario. And, and obviously I'm, I'm hoping and praying that things turn around quickly and that, that it does resolve quickly. And so yeah, none of these harder decisions or kind of apocalypse type scenarios play out.

Vance Crowe [00:32:18] And then finally, I, 'cause I gotta ask, and anybody that stayed for the whole podcast, and if you are just listening to this, you should watch it on YouTube because over Dwayne's right shoulder, he has a picture of all lions with what looks like blood all over its face. What's that picture all about? Where, where'd that come from? Why do you have that so prominent in your office?

Coronavirus Perspective [00:32:38] Yeah, it's, it's a picture I saw online a while back and it's a picture of a lioness in Africa and she's just eaten the kill for the day. And for me, it's somewhat inspirational. My, my wife went and found it and bought it for me, and, but it's, it's reminiscent of life in general. Life, life is difficult. Life is cutthroat out in the real world. Animals are, are ripping, you know, bellies out of each other to survive. And, and it's a tough world out there and, and life is fragile. And to me that picture shows the fragility of life. And it, yeah, so it's deep, but it, it does touch me and it's something that keeps me grounded and, and keeps me in the right direction.

Vance Crowe [00:33:26] Well Dwayne, I want to thank you for all of your time today. If there's one thing that I can say that everyone should learn from you is that every time you're on a phone call, if we're on with a couple of our friends, you are always asking me and everybody else, Hey, what do you think about this? Hey, hey, I, I had this question and I'm wondering how you're perceiving what's going on there? And I know for me, one that's gratifying to have somebody ask you what they think, but two, there's something that builds a bond there. And I think that you have done a lot for our group of friends in the fact that you're curious about what everybody else thinks. So if there's one lesson that everybody can learn from you, there's probably a lot. But one I would say is be curious about other people. 'cause if you are, like, there's nobody that I, I mean, you're the first guy I write, you know, you're the guy that I want to be connected to during this whole crisis. So thank you Duane, so much for coming on.

Coronavirus Perspective [00:34:16] Appreciate it. I love surrounding myself with smart people and, and you are one of them too. So I appreciate all your insights.

Vance Crowe [00:34:22] All right, man. Thanks.