Do By Friday
Episode 177 artwork
Episode 177 · March 12, 2020 · 01:03:41

177. Handjob Princess

This week's challengeThis week’s challenge: Don't die.
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Show notes

This week’s challenge: Don't die.

With very special guests, Dr. Don and Prof. Chapman.

You can hear the after show and support Do By Friday on Patreon!

Edited by Quinn Rose (Who did an amazing job under really trying circumstances. Thank you, Quinn!)

Engineered by Cameron Bopp

Show Notes

Transcript

Tap a timestamp or any sentence to play from there · machine transcribed (mlx:mlx-community/whisper-large-v3-turbo), expect mistakes

MerlinThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Tempe. This week's challenge, don't die.

I'm on Skype. Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey, is everybody, can everybody hear okay?

Speaker BYep. I hear good. I think you mean you hear well. No, I hear good. I hear very good.

MerlinSo I'm hosting, and if everybody could please make sure that they are recording on their end.

Speaker BYes.

MerlinPlease and thank you. I think we should be good. Beep boop. Ah, let's see. Hi. Hi, everybody. Hi, Merlin.

Speaker BHi.

MerlinThis is weird to not have Alex's energy here. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's true. Should we button it up?

MaxYeah.

MerlinYou know what? We had a good run. There's nothing to talk about, really. I mean, everything's fine. Let's see. My uvula is swollen again, so I got a lot going on.

Speaker BOh, that's never fun.

MaxWhat's everyone's current panic level about coronavirus?

MerlinThreat level purple? Threat level midnight.

MaxYou're pretty unconcerned, Merlin? I mean, you guys go.

MerlinWhat the fuck am I going to do? What the fuck am I going to do about literally anything? I'm going to tear myself apart for the rest of my life about everything no, I'm going to drink this water I'm going to wait for my uvula to stop being swollen and hang over the back of my tongue like a tremendous meat loogie and then I'm going to go on with business as usual is what I'm going to do

MaxBAU

Merlindidn't you get a phone soap? yeah I'm using it

MaxI'm using it right now

MerlinI put my Imodium in there and they are so fucking sanitized right now it's fucking lit

Maxuh i'm i'm worried i think it's it cleans your phone don i'm reading uh i'm reading these like tweet threads from from you know doctors in italy oh did you see the the one about triage yeah and it's really it's it's i mean uh what what am what am i worried about like i'm worried

Merlinthat basically it's it took them like it took 35 tweets to say um if you're old you're gonna die That was basically it. If you're old, you're going to die. If you need to be in the ICU, no matter who you are, you're going to die.

Speaker AAnother really important message is if you're sick, stay home. Eh, I don't know. No? You think you should go out? Spread the infection? I don't know. I want to go to Disney, man.

Speaker BI mean, we're all going to die. Everybody's going to die. Yeah, it might not be from this.

MerlinThat's table stakes.

Speaker BYeah, right. Exactly.

MerlinOkay, okay, sorry. Sorry. Okay, this is the show. Talk about, what do you worry about right now, Max? What's going on? What's going on in your neck of the woods? Max left. He's it. He died. That was it. Oh. It's a show. This is the doctor standing by.

MaxI'm back. Hey, buddy. How's it going? Good. I had a pair of shoes delivered. I had a pair of shoes delivered.

MerlinAre you going to put them in like a mudroom? You're going to want to have some time before you interact with those. Eight days, depending on the porousness of the material. Do they come from China?

MaxWell, in case we need to flee, there are some sort of tactical survival shoes. And that's in case I need to flee the city in some sort of Cormac McCarthy type situation. I have a fresh pair of shoes.

MerlinWhereas today my daughter asked if she could order some Kentucky Fried Chicken Crocs, as seen on Mbim Bam. That's not good running away shoes. Do these shoes have zippers? Worse, way worse, way worse, way worse, Professor Ben. These are co-branded Crocs with KFC, and they look like chickens on your feet. Oh, my gosh. It's already Ben-Bam's bit. So you got some shoes. You're going to put them in quarantine, Q-U-A-R.

But, yeah, there are a lot of very concerning things going around from people who seem like they know what they're talking about.

MaxHere's my feeling. I feel like this thing is going to get – things are going to get pretty weird. You know, it frankly may not affect me personally that much because I'm not sort of in the demo that's the most at risk for this thing. But I think people are not maybe worried enough about the impact on the medical system, on supply chains, on our communities. Like, I don't know, like everyone knows someone who's going to be affected by this thing. And I don't know if it's weird. It's freaking me out. It's weird. But it's going to get warm and then the virus is going to go away.

I heard that. Did you see that there was the cruise ship emails that came out this morning?

Speaker ANo.

MaxNo what? Some cruise line has been advertising their cruise. They had these leaked emails. Let me see if I can find it because it will be funnier if I can find the real thing. Leaked cruise ship.

MerlinDon, did you and Ben see the thread we're talking about, about getting intensive on, based on what they're seeing in Italy, that ICUs could be overwhelmed in like a week? Yeah. Did you see that?

Speaker BYeah.

MerlinGot an opinion?

Speaker BI mean, that's what I'm worried about too. I think the risk to me is pretty low. I think the risk to the health care system is pretty high and we should be concerned about that.

MaxAlso, like, like, isn't there like also like if if people are if there's a lot of people sick all at once, like it's going to kind of affect everything. Like think of like food inspections, right? Like those are that's people's job doing. But they have to show up to work to inspect the food. And if they're all sick at the same time, you have disruption to the supply chain of all different kinds of inspected meat. Well, yeah.

Speaker AYeah, well, FDA has said that they're pulling back on international inspections, right? Because they don't want their folks traveling. So yeah, there's knock-on effects.

MaxYeah, I think people maybe aren't... I think that my level of worry and anxiety about this maybe is too high because there's not really anything more I can do, really. But I also feel like the society around me, the level of concern is not nearly high enough.

Speaker Awell but what what is it that we want people to do right i mean that it's because to just be just just to be anxious and not do anything is not helpful right yes so i think people i think to

Maxthe i think to the best of their ability which i understand is a pretty bloated you know situation right there but to the best of their ability people should frankly have already gone out and gotten the things they need to sort of stay in their house for a couple weeks and they should be not going out.

That's my feeling. Even if you live in a place where there's not rampant community transmission of this thing, that's documented, right? Not to turn this into a political

Speaker Apodcast, but Max, there are people that can't afford to do that. They have to go to work to feed their families, right?

MaxWe own the restaurant, right? We have employees at the restaurant who are hourly. I had a meeting with the senior team yesterday and we talked about what do we do about this? Like, I mean, you know, we already have, like, dramatically stepped up, like, hand washing. Like, we have all, you know, we're already doing everything we can inside of the restaurant to stop anything from spreading. But now the question is, like, we're watching the news every day and we're like, do we close? Do we, like, wait until the government tells us to close? And so I was like, you know, one of the things that really worries me about closing is we

have a lot of employees who if they don't show up to, you know, a dishwashing shift or whatever, they don't get paid. Like there's no like, it's not like, oh, they'll just chill out at home for a few days. Like they're, they need that, those hours and that paycheck. There might be, there might be people who have to go to three jobs.

MerlinYes. That's the bananas part really is in a gig economy, you're not covered for any of that. It's a, we, it's become cliche to say perfect storm, but we certainly have set up a set, unintentionally set up a set of circumstances that will expose so many of the cracks in our, or the cracks, I guess rips in our safety net.

MaxSo the idea is what we're working on right now is we're trying to understand what would it look like to pay everyone even if we close, right? To give them, to give everyone, you know, whatever, 20 hours a week even if we close just so people still have some income coming in. And then it's like, well, how long do we model that out for? Two weeks, 10 days, four weeks? You know, it's hard. So we're coming up with some different models. But also our restaurants have only been open for four weeks or a little less. That's a hell of a start. So we're open. So we've been open for less than a month. Like our cash on hand, we're like everything like it's going well. People are still coming in. But like, you know, restaurants are a low margin business. So like we don't have cash on hand to like pay everyone without being open for that long. So it's it sucks, man. It's very it's very it really worries me. And you're totally right. Like we're going about we're we're out in front of this. We're thinking ahead. We're making plans of how to pay people. I guarantee you most businesses are not doing that. Most businesses are not thinking of what's going to happen to their employees.

Do not or cannot. I mean, that's...

Speaker BRight. Or don't want to, right? Just be like, it's going to go away.

MerlinWell, and like we're already, everybody's up. There's so much. We had this little conversation in one of our numerous, numerous text channels where I think I was saying something along the lines of like whenever you can't or don't or won't understand why another person's motivations are the way they are. I think there's all kinds of exercises you can do with yourself to try and just not even on like a squishy liberal level, but just on a humane level, try to understand. And there's so, so, there's so, this is straight out of Max's materialist handbook.

But the, there's so much that happens where you, there's, it's sort of coded sometimes, but you don't want to come out and say, you know what, dude, I can't afford that. Like what you're proposing right now, I can't afford to do that. even if everything goes flawlessly, because I have five other things that are about to break money-wise. Like I was already late on my rent when this started. You know what I mean? You're starting out with a stress system. You're starting out with like, anyway, I'm just saying like it's, that's the sucky part is a lot of people can keep it together for a while, you know, like a high functioning alcoholic, but like eventually there's gonna be

a multi-front societal battlefield where you've gotta like fight all these things at the same time with no resources and ding-a-lings at the top.

Speaker AWell, and, you know, one of the things I keep thinking about is Fred Rogers, right? And look for the helpers, right? Sorry, I'm going to get a little verklempt here. So look for the helpers, right? That was his mother's advice when there was scary news, right? Look for the helpers. And, you know, Ben did a webinar to 12,000 people from the National Restaurant Association yesterday, and I've been talking to people in the food industry about what to do. So like people are helping people, right? And Max is talking about the things that he's doing, you know, to be able to keep the restaurant open, to keep paying people.

So, you know, as long as we all keep doing and, you know, we're all sitting here doing this podcast today to try, I think, to try to help people, right? And so, you know, that gives me help. And to self-soothe.

MaxYeah, I'm doing it because I get paid on patreon.com slash Dubai Friday. Yeah, give us your fucking money. $5 a month.

Speaker BYeah.

MerlinYou can also go to giveusourfuckingmoney.com because some people are on the ball. keep going keep going looking for looking for helpers i mean really i feel like though you're we're all kind of walking around this one thing that's sort of in the middle which is what is given today is wednesday march 11th uh the year of our lord 2020 what um what should we be focusing on what should we be doing is there something everybody should be doing is there something that it's extremely important for other people to do or not do what are we looking at right now

Speaker ALike I said before, if you're sick, stay home, right? Let's start with, if you can't, right? So do that. Wash your hands. That's a good idea. You should be doing that anyway. Use hand sanitizer. Very effective against coronavirus. So those are some really easy, again, oh, God, if you can find hand sanitizer, right?

So I'm sorry. It's supposed to be positive. Oh, shit.

MerlinMy advice is, you know, panic as much as you can because you're fucked. hey listen stop by giveusyourfuckingmoney.com

MaxDr. Nunn I've got a question for you so I have a 102 degree fever and I'm coughing and I keep drinking the hand sanitizer and it is not doing anything I think you go to Sterno next

Speaker Bright that's where you need to drink it's that's the next

Maxlogical spot here was the email so some of these are these are leaked emails I use the sprinklers in Rams at Park to make Sun tea here's here's the uh the emails from the cruise that were leaking from the cruise lines uh to some of the recommended responses are blatantly false for instance cruise bookers were instructed to tell potential customers that coronavirus is not a concern in warm caribbean climates quote the coronavirus can only survive in cold temperatures so the caribbean is a fantastic choice for your next cruise one talking point was this sent by a witch doctor

quote scientists and medical professionals have confirmed that the warm weather of the spring will be the end of the coronavirus, reads a second. Another line says that, quote, the coronavirus cannot live in the amazingly warm and tropical temperatures that your cruise will be sailing to.

MerlinWhoa, this is amazing. Scientists and physicians and public health people agree, it's just too shaka brah. They'll never survive in this luxury. Come on down for the all-you-can-eat gravy fountain.

MaxWe'll put a little spritz of this in your hand and you're totally not going to die. I made a real panicky coronavirus Twitter list that I follow that has, you know, I tried to, it is actually limited to like science and medical professionals. And I have like the CDC on there and stuff. But it's a lot of people who sort of like are like tweeting different, you know, sort of public health measures that are being taken. And I saw one yesterday that made me laugh, which was like, breaking MGM to close buffets.

MerlinNo, not like this. Not like this. it's too late to cancel my meat will be so dry and the portions are small and the meat is dry

Speaker Ajust to introduce a little bit of science into this conversation I just put into the links in the doc the effects of air temperature and relative humidity on coronavirus survival on surfaces. And it is true that coronavirus survives better in cold, dry environments, at least with the specific coronaviruses studied in this paper, which are not the COVID-19 causative agent, right? And so it is actually true that warmer temperatures and higher relative humidities

cause faster decline in the populations, in the concentrations. But that doesn't mean that a cruise ship's going to be safe, right? It's not good advertising.

MaxHas anyone seen that graph going around with the... It's a world map, and it has different sort of bands of temperature and different colors, and it shows that all the coronavirus outbreaks are only in this one little yellow band of climate. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? No.

MerlinWait, I think I did see that. And can jet fuel melt steel beams? As long as you're not in the yellow zone, you should be fine. It was going around. Is that on a flat earth or a round earth? It's the same earth, Don. Read a book. Yeah, it's more of a disc.

Speaker AOkay. Turtles all the way down.

MaxIt's part of the Pratchett verse. All right. Man, I'm never going to find this thing during the podcast, but it was interesting. What is the email? Send me the email. That's very good. Where'd you get that? Let's see. The Miami Times has it. I'll put it in the doc. There's a doc? I sent it. it. A million points.

MerlinUm, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um. Dr. Don, Professor Ben, Professor Chapman, if you were John Roddick, would you have gone on that cruise? Well, sorry, if you were fucking anybody, would you have gone on that cruise?

Sorry, sorry, contest. Joko Cruz is underway. So a bunch of dorks got on a boat for seven days, I think on Saturday, leaving from Fort Lauderdale, going to, what was it, Church of Caicos, I think it's called?

Speaker AGoing to Church of Caicos via the Dominican Republic? If my calendar was magically cleared and someone said, hey, you can go be on a cruise with John Roderick, I would be there. Wow. You see, you would do that once. Once, yeah.

MaxYeah, but then... There is not enough money in the world To pay me to go on a cruise ship right now

MerlinYou could make me Come straight For seven days Gravy and come for seven days I just sit in the wind jammer Covered in gravy getting hand jobs

MaxAnd I would still have to Think twice I actually think that's what goes on on that cruise Oh there's so much Oh my god in the showers I'm told that there's Things happening on that cruise

Speaker Bthe shadow cruise you're talking about or is that the shadow cruise boom here we go check this out

Maxtuned into the midnight storm with shadow cruise i'm a genius i can't believe i found this image look at this this is interesting i saw sign i don't know what it means but i saw scientists posting this so do you see how the the the big hot spot of outbreaks are only on this one in the yellow in the yellow band in the band whoa i don't know what that means huh but it certainly wouldn't be coincidental but i i saw it was on my coronavirus twitter list and all the people on that list say that they're a doctor in their bio right right well

Merlinokay pop quiz where did they have a stethoscope wrapped around their neck did they have a comedy uh head mirror and did they have a pretty white jacket with their name and md on it okay only way and the chiron has to also say that they're a doctor let's look at some let's look at some

Speaker Aavi's here yeah oh you know you know there's some fucking neckties in there while you're while you're doing that so let's let's dissect this graph so so first of all there's there's no context and the axes are not labeled but i mean this this this kind of makes sense right like uh if it's well i don't know though well you know we have to you have to control for uh population of people right and so i mean i know i guess so new jersey's in the green zone and we have cases in new jersey But are there really does that mean that there really are no cases in in Mexico?

I mean, you know, these aren't it's not no cases.

MaxIt's it's lower cases. Yeah. It's like certain it's like outbreaks. It's like epicenter outbreaks.

Speaker ABut you have to you have to factor for the quality of the public health and the ability to see the outbreak. I mean, I mean, there might be something to this, but I've got a whole lot more questions about where the data came from and what what the denominators are.

Maxfor all these. Is it possible that the coronavirus cannot survive in the warm Caribbean air? And the exquisite luxury of the...

Speaker AIt survives less well, right? There's a reason why flu outbreaks happen. Join us on the handjob princess. There's a reason. The only thing you need to worry about it for your cruise. What's old is what's new. Norovirus peaks in the winter. Flu peaks in the winter. There's probably no reason for that.

MaxThe handjob princess. The handjob princess.

Merlintitle usually they put a lay on you not here the only lay you're gonna get is me we do things a little bit different handjob princess ambassador to the heat first of her name alright Don I'm muting go I don't know why I get silly when you're on here I'm muting goodbye oh come back Merlin it's fine come back to Jamaica What's old is what's new

We want you to join us War is over If you want it Hi, I'm Jeffrey Handjob Hi, hi I'm Handjob Princess The love boat Alright, pay

MaxHave you guys stockpiled anything? Have you gotten a little extra of anything?

Speaker BNo, I really haven't. This is something that we got asked a couple of weeks ago and did a couple of interviews about this. And I really think the only thing that I would worry about is do I have enough food if I do have to go into self-quarantine for 14 days? And I think we've got like a freezer full of food already that I could get very bored of Hot Pockets and chicken nuggets by the end of it. But I'm really not stockpiling anything. I did go look for hand sanitizer to do some videos, some like outreach and education videos this week, and we couldn't find any.

but yeah I haven't I mean I haven't really stockpiled anything Don have you no we had a

Speaker Awe had a conversation about we should probably go and get a little bit more food in the house but again you know my recommendation is don't buy things that you're not going to eat I mean Max you and I had a a text conversation about this I think uh where where you were saying yeah I went and got a little bit more of stuff or I went and got more of stuff that I know that I'm going to eat anyway like that's sensible advice what you don't need to do is go buy 60 days worth of worth of food. That's probably not practical.

MaxI got, I went to the Jungbu market and I got a 25 pound bag of rice. And that's great because rice literally never goes bad. It can't go bad. Right. As we've seen on Survivor, it can't go bad. Can't go bad. And just don't let Brandon throw it all on the ground.

MerlinThat's just day one shit, you know.

MaxI got some, we got extras of any sort of like medications or anything like that. And the reasoning behind that was like, let's say you know, things continue to deteriorate and you need to you know go refill a prescription or whatever you know pick up some cold medicine or whatever like i super don't want to go to in walgreens right now yeah totally totally i am not looking forward to that and nor do i really want to pay i also have a lot of very complicated emotion you know what's funny is like have you been seeing those um like where did i see

this someone was like i hired a a shopper they thought this was funny and so they posted it but They were like, I hired one of these like shopper, you know, app shoppers. And I like sent them out to find hand sanitizer. And they had all these funny conversations. And they were posting the like chat. And they were like, well, I went to six different grocery stores and I couldn't find the hand sanitizer. Sorry, it's all sold out. And I was like, yeah, this sucks. Like you're sending someone else out to get coronavirus for you. Like, I don't like that.

MerlinYeah, totally.

Speaker AWell, but here's the thing. If that person is getting paid a fair wage for doing that. Are there no prisons? No workhouses? That's not my point. You're twisting my words around.

MerlinYou there, boy. Is it still Christmas? Go get me a goose.

Speaker AI don't like this podcast anymore.

MerlinOh, my God. Charles Dickinson invented the gig economy. Holy shit. He made a little boy go buy him a bird from a window. Okay, I'm muting. It's great. He has a startup as Gooser.

MaxNo E.

MerlinPlease remember to like and subscribe. More? You want more? Well, I guess we'll have to call Instacart. Instacart will bring you gruel. Okay, we'll move away. okay okay so so real honest talk what are we what's going on oh you know what i bought crab

legs from costco had them deliver that i bought some uh frozen vegetables oh good yeah frozen

Speaker Bvegetables they stay in your freezer frozen vegetables did you get did you get a survival

Maxstraw max yeah i have the jim baker food barrels oh just look at those chunks it's a look at those chunks it's a it's a system it's a whole is it an integrative coffee table system i signed up for a um so i if it's been on my to-do list for eight years but i really want to learn how to ride a motorcycle and i signed wow and i signed up for the um i i don't nobody nobody messaged me about this. I'm not necessarily going to exclusively ride a motorcycle.

MerlinWhat would happen if they contact you about this, either by Twitter or email?

MaxWhat would happen? Everyone in my life is already mad at me that I did this, but I signed up. But in Illinois, there's very strict... I'll ban them for you. Thank you. In Illinois, there's very strict licensing requirements to drive a motorcycle. So I've signed up. I have officially enrolled in a 20-hour education course over the course of a long weekend to get my motorcycle certification. so I can ride a motorcycle around.

MerlinIt's probably not bad just to have in your pocket. I mean, it's a little bit like learning to drive stick where even if you don't need it and don't want to need it.

MaxThat's exactly my thought is it seems like a cool skill to have a one-weekend investment and just knowing how to ride it seems pretty cool. And can I show you the one? There's a motorcycle that I really like.

Speaker AWell, and the advantage, Max, is if you ride your motorcycle, that increases your odds of dying from that instead of coronavirus. Oh, it's Threat Matrix

MerlinThat's so smart, I get it You know what, if you gotta pick one The motorcycle's cooler It's just like David Simon says about The Wire Right? We're all gonna die in a motorcycle accident

Speaker BIt's in the game, it's in the game?

MerlinThat's right You come at the Indian motorcycle Sorry, Native American motorcycle You best not miss Funny the three people So, what are you sending? Are you sending this to us?

MaxYeah, here, check this one out All right. Look at that. Monkey. The monkey.

Speaker BOh, the monkey.

MaxI like this Honda. I like these Hondas. You got a Honda monkey. Wow. Do they make these for men? Isn't that a handsome? Oh, please. Isn't that a handsome bicycle? Look at that. And this one is called- It's a handsome bicycle. Start monkeying around. Everybody loves the Honda monkey. Friend of the show, Seth, has been telling me about these for a long time. That's cool. But I super want to ride one of these around town. Have you been ridden around on one to know whether you'll like it? No, I have a friend who has a motorcycle who's going to take me out sometime soon. I would very much start there personally.

Yeah.

Speaker ASeems cool. Aren't you afraid of the guys on Harley's making fun of you?

MaxYes, I'm very afraid of being made fun of by teenagers. What are they going to do?

MerlinThrow their oversized remote control at me? But. Those 70-year-old dipshits. I clean pools for a living.

MaxWell, we lost that demographic from the podcast now. My son's limping gun. Here's the thing is that when the food supply is cut off to major cities and everyone needs to flee and then they die on the highway and there's congestion, I'll be able to zip around. Oh, you can do lane splitting. Exactly. I'll be able to zip around the corpse littered SUVs on the highway to my Honda Super Cub.

Speaker BYou're going to be Daryl. You're going to be walking dead Daryl.

MaxYes. Oh, wow.

MerlinI don't get that reference, but he seems like a cool guy. He's a very cool guy. Norman Reedus. I have a Christmas ornament of him. Because I'm a baller. Other things to think about. Yeah, you know, we talked about this. We recorded, Syracuse Center recorded Rectus last night. We were, of course, talking about this. And I was, I think we were in agreement about this, remarking about how the, well, two things, as always. I mean, there's just the complexity of the like, well, you can't really cancel school because then is mom not going to go to work?

Mom's going to like, you know, stay home. Well, yeah, I get, you know, if we had our druthers, we could all just go, you know, live in a bubble for two weeks and everything would be fine. But also in hearing the guy from Virginia yesterday announcing that he was going to self-quarantine. And they described how, forgive me if you're in the future and hear breakfast. But like talking about how, like he said, basically, you guys know who I'm talking about the congressman. He says, my wife and I were contacted by the Virginia Department of Health to say that we had been in contact with somebody who had been diagnosed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I was in a lift on my way to pick up my kid,

looking at my phone. And that's when it really kind of landed on me of like, okay, something so obvious to everyone else but me is the two-headed hydra of this, which on the one hand is if we minimize our exposure, like an interesting thing happens. First of all, like if we don't have it, we're less likely to get it. And if we do have it, we're less likely to pass it on. But guess what else? Here's the other part. This is the part that really landed heavy on my head was the like, okay, you guys, let's do this.

How about each of us? We'll establish some criteria and you tell me every single person you've met over the last two weeks so we can contact them. Because we need to contact them to find out where you got it from and who you gave it to. So, you know, did you like go to, you know, Aunt Annie's pretzels nine days ago for how long? Who was there? You know what I'm saying? It's just that it really landed on me that like, we're not only keeping this from people getting it, people spreading it, but we're also going to potentially make it for an epidemiologist, make it so much less difficult to be able to trace.

So you say like, okay, where you been? Well, for the last six days, I've just been at home eating crab legs. Awesome. You just saved me so much time. I don't have to go and like ask somebody to pick up the white courtesy phone, you know?

Speaker AYep.

MerlinDoes that make sense? Am I getting that right? I feel like, I feel like that explains a lot of like how, how we're fucking this up so hard already.

Speaker BNo, it absolutely does. And by limiting all these social interactions, we're really trying to make sure that we slow this whole thing down and make it easier for sharing information. I mean, this is, yeah, I mean, I think you nailed exactly the public health response on where it's at right now. It's not about whether you're going to get it. It's what happens in the community. That's the public in public health. Yes.

MaxNow, I've heard a lot from the fake news Democrats about the... I call them dummycrats. The dummycrats about how they're using the coronavirus hoax, just like the impeachment hoax, to impugn... This Russia, Russia, Russia all over again. Exactly. To impugn the name, the good name of President Donald J. Trump. Can you guys, to the best of your ability, could you... I honestly don't really know... I understand that people on Twitter are, I guess, are mad about how the Trump administration

has handled coronavirus, but I do not really know enough to know if they're doing a good job or a bad job, or if there's more that they could be doing. Could you guys comment on that? Well, I'm almost completely off Twitter, so...

Speaker AYou win this lunch after.

Maxyou know i'm just i'm just i'm here i'm just trying to educate people about public health i'm trying to help people they just want to get a motorcycle and be left alone

Speaker Aso i mean i i think that you know people that know about this are at the cdc and they should get funding and they should be allowed to like say allowed to say what the truth is Let Fauci talk.

MerlinGet everyone else off the goddamn dais, because you shouldn't be touching each other anyway.

Speaker ALet Fauci talk. And I saw there was some sort of an infographic going around about top Twitter influencers on coronavirus. And you know who is at the top of the list, and it does not give me hope, right? I mean, so yeah. Who? Who? How about we let the experts talk about— Yeah.

Was it Trump?

Speaker AYeah. Yeah, yeah. How about we let the experts talk about what they're expert about?

MaxYeah. I don't know. But I've heard that a lot of people have said to Trump, how does he know so much about this? He's a genius. He had an uncle at MIT.

Speaker BVery stable. Very stable. Very stable.

MerlinIt's well, you know, there's all kinds of flavors to this. I'll tell you one thing, boys. One thing you learn in life is you, I don't want to say you pick your fights in life. You minimize the number of unnecessarily hostile interactions that you have with people. I believe I believe that I should try to Save my powder, keep my powder dry For the times I really need to use it So if, for example, you were to call A beloved family member just to check in And find out that The good news is they're doing great The awesome news is it's because of their young living Essential oils that they're using

Speaker BOr their silver, silver solutions

MerlinSo you're talking about colloidal silver, Ben? Is that what you're talking about, colloidal silver?

Speaker BAm I ever?

MerlinDon't I make my white face blue?

Speaker AOh, balls deep in cryptocurrencies.

MerlinHi, I'm Robert Ethereum, and I feel great.

Speaker AThe thing about Twitter is like it doesn't, I mean, I try to be helpful, right? Like look for the helpers, right? I try to be helpful. But if somebody is tweeting out that you have to use soap and water and that hand sanitizer is not effective against coronavirus and you know that's wrong, is it really helpful for you to wade into their mentions and try to correct people i'm not so sure that it is right so i yeah i declined to get involved in god i have heard just just socially

Maxor like maybe even like overhearing people's conversations at the restaurant just like not not even on twitter i'm talking about like in real life i have heard people just people do not know what the fuck they're talking about no absolutely i mean i do well yeah but

Merlineveryone else yeah well i was who was i talking to about this i was talking to somebody about oh it must have been syracusa um have you guys run into this yet well first of all everybody i i feel like of the widespread ding-a-ling ism in america one that i actually do encounter on the reg even more than casual racism like even more than lots of things one of the ding-a-ling isms that i run into a lot is vaccine stuff there are a lot of people who are not doing vaccines for their kids And so there's a population of those folks who are doing that for the Jenny McCarthy sort of reasons.

But my favorite, have you guys gotten this yet? The person who sort of sidles up to you and they're like, you know, just so you know, I'm not one of those crazies. Like, yeah, we don't do vaccines, but the reason I'm not doing it is for religious or philosophical reasons. Not for those crazy reasons. No, it doesn't cause autism, but it does make your kid grow horns like Jew, you know, or whatever. Like you come up with, you know what I'm saying though? have you encountered the kind who's like, listen, I'm not that kind of crazy. I'm so crazy. I'm sane. Cause like, I really, I really, I really get this. And that's when you encounter that a lot, what I'm trying to say is whether that's your

beloved elderly mother or whether that's your Lyft driver, there is a funny mishmash of affability. And you really get this when you meet Trump people. You forget that they're just regular Americans in almost every conceivable way. But there's this impossible combination of affability and horror to talking to these

Maxpeople where it's oh max you've talked about this when somebody starts telling the racist jokes in the lift and you're like when you well the one that boggles my mind is i you know i'm not talking about the four of us or really probably anyone in our most of the people in our like first order social circles but if you get out of our little bubble a little bit into like more normie normie sort of america you know occasionally i'll be like at a party and i'll just meet some hanging out with normie people or whatever not not you know the kind of people you would meet at like

at a work at a work picnic yeah just just just regular people and you get into their political talking about politics with them their political belief the constellation of things that are important to them in politics are absolutely contradictory and incoherent they're like well they're like i support tulsi gabbard because well number one you have to know i'm anti-circumcision But number two, I do support tort reform, but I'm against the war in Afghanistan. But I do think that we should do regime change in Iran. And you're like, what in the what are you talking about?

Like where? I thought MGM closed the buffet. And yeah, it's just like it's like, well, I heard one episode of the Joe Rogan podcast and I read this one book and I saw this one article and they've like cobbled together an entire worldview of the sort of grab bag. That's like most Americans.

Speaker ABut do you ever worry that that is also your worldview, but you are so inside it you can't figure it out? I worry about it constantly, constantly. How would you know?

MaxSo I think about it all the time, obviously. How do I know what I know? And also I have a philosophy background, so you're just constantly thinking, well, how do I know that? Is that the right thing to think? But also there is a way to be deliberate

Merlinabout having a political... Just so you know, somebody has deliveries coming, just so you know.

MaxThat's me. That's my shoes. Thank you. Sorry. I know the delivery side.

Speaker BI thought you already got your shoes.

MaxMerlin, I feel like I just shot up a little bit. I just got a little dopamine. I feel like you just live viewed your balls.

MerlinYour dildo is out for delivery. Your dildo case is out for delivery. your dildo lubricant is out for delivery exception your dildo is missing i think you can have i think

Maxyou can have i think it is possible to have a uh a set of coherent political beliefs i just i think i just it is i i don't know it's like uh i think i think there's uh there's there's issues i believe in that i think are like a part that make make sense with like an internally consistent worldview that go to speak to my views of human nature and economics and it all makes sense as a system. And then you could say, okay, well, maybe some of my priors... I mean, this is true for anyone, right?

Maybe the stuff I know about the world is really wrong. And what can I do? I read as much as I can and you update as much as you... Listen, can I give you a really good example of like I was reading... I had really worked myself into a lot of concern about this animal, the Trump changing the pork inspection thing. Right. And I talked to you guys about it, and you gave me new information that I didn't know, and I was like, okay, I'm not going to care too much about this. Good. And you know what? I eat pork, and I haven't gotten sick.

Speaker AWell, yeah. I mean, the problem is that we don't live, and again, it's all about the probabilities with the flu thing. We don't live in a world of absolutes, right? I was having a conversation with a reporter about, well, what if the server is sick with coronavirus and they put their thumb on the plate and then I touch the plate and I'm like, look, here's the thing. If you're in a restaurant and somebody next to you sneezes, that has a higher chance of giving you coronavirus than some transfer from somebody's finger onto a plate.

And I can explain to you why I think that based on the work that we've done on cross-contamination and the limited knowledge I have about how the virus is spread. But yeah, sure, there's risk

Merlineverywhere, but you have to pick your choices. You drive me crazy with this sometimes, Don, but I think it's actually incredibly useful. And there's that phrase that I think was Fauci or somebody, you used the word earlier, denominator. So much stuff, we've got a numerator, and we're like, oh, we're real clear about the numerator as we stand here today, but we have no fucking idea what the denominator is. And I feel like that, I don't want to say that constitutes everything you know, but a lot of what you're saying to people is, well, okay, you know, how much risk, how much risk are you going to give to this today, Dr. Donald Schaffner, distinguished professor?

Seven. Yeah.

Speaker BOkay, thank you.

MerlinWe've been talking to Dr. Donald Schaffner of Rutgers University. He gives the current, his threat assessment of the current state is seven. Thank you, doctor.

That would be so great.

MaxAll right, I'm working on an idea about that. So how about, what do you think of this? I also think so here's the other thing I've been thinking about and this is this is related also to the idea of like how do you know your political beliefs are you know well informed or so on and so forth. I also think like this is a thing that's like you find in sort of liberal like educated liberal circles is this idea that like all your beliefs are should be like empirically derived and like where's the oh what's your data for believing. You know if you're like yeah I think people should be able to get food stamps or you know kids should be able to afford and they're like well what's your data that this is so and so and so and so.

like I've really been feeling in recent years that like maybe that's not the most important thing to me and that they're that that actually like I've been interested in like simple moral truths and like the idea that like nobody should be hungry and if you have some data that shows that maybe some people should be hungry I'm I'm I'm not that interested I don't know that's a really good way to put it oh my god yes I'm not that interested like it's just I I think that you

MerlinIt's like when people are like, oh, you guys are so funny. Why don't you have a flat earth person on? And I think you would entertain that idea. And I had several levels of reaction to it. One is, ha ha, lol. And the other one was, like, actually, that would, you know, I guess that would be funny. Another one is, like, oh, shit, I might lose an argument to them. It's like arguing with Cory Doctorow. It does not matter whether he is correct or not. He will beat the shit out of you in an argument. And I have a lot of friends like this. Roderick is like this. It doesn't matter whether Roderick, I don't argue with Roderick, because I've had arguments with him. you can't win an argument with Roderick because he will just pound you into the ground until you're sad.

And like there's, you know, there's certain kinds of things where you're like, ah, I guess I just am going to have to just be okay with this little bit of uncertainty or potential hypocrisy. Because I can't address every single one of these things all the time, every day, with everybody. See also the internet.

Speaker ABut also, Merlin, so Ben and I don't have a Patreon, but we do have another podcast. and I do want to mention it here and I want to again publicly thank you Merlin for the idea for Risky or Not.

MerlinWhat is happening right now? Is this a takeover? Is this a prank?

Speaker AIs this an intervention? What's the stuff you're doing Don? What is happening? I'm thanking you. I'm thanking you Merlin.

MerlinIt sounds like you're promoting your show. It doesn't sound like you're thanking me.

Speaker AI am.

MerlinBut I'm thanking you. Oh well thank you. Hey listen you guys I do a podcast with Dan Benjamin called Back to Work. Dr. Don is going to endorse For some reason I'm mentioning it. He's going to endorse Joe Biden

Maxlive on our network.

Merlinright here

Speaker BI hereby I hereby enjoy

Merlinhey hey listen listen Mac listen Mac you get down there on top of that and you're gonna have yourself a pancake fight and I'm not talking about bicycle you come with a side of pickles girls I got hey listen listen Mac you're full of shit okay okay new kind of narking on people okay first of all I was talking to an internet pal this morning how fucking annoying it is when you're talking about something and you're obviously obliquely definitely leaving out I guess you could call it what's the phrase these on Twitter, you're subtweeting, but you specifically

don't need to invoke this celebrity to have this conversation. If I wanted to invoke the celebrity, I would have included the handle. And then some fucking ding-a-ling narc comes along. They're snitch tweeting. Huh? They're snitch tweeting. Okay. Oh, that's good. Alright, yeah, I guess that's a millennial term. I didn't know. But somebody comes along and goes, ow, you know, at warehouse cum face, 35 is going to learn about this. And you're like, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, why did you do that? I feel like there's other kinds of, there's other sorts of narking like that

that goes on right now. And you know what? I'm going to shut up now. I'm going to head. Can I, all right, let me finish up.

MaxDid you guys get the logo? Did the logo arrive?

Speaker BThat's very funny. Love the logo.

MaxI have my theory about, let me finish up my theory here about this. Like, sometimes you just go with your gut thing of like, you know, one of those for me also is like healthcare of like, I just have decided to believe that all people should have free healthcare. and I'm sure there's some data out there that people who think that only some people should have healthcare are using, you know, they have some numbers that supports their position and I just don't care what their numbers say. That's just my, I've just decided what I believe about it. I think there, is there something to the idea of like, of something like when you're reading about

like a public health risk of something like coronavirus and you're getting lots of mixed messages and confusion from the media and government officials and stuff like that, where at a certain point, if you get concerned, you should just sort of trust your gut.

Speaker ACan you give me a specific example?

MaxYeah, like don't go out if you're worried about coronavirus.

MerlinOh, could it also, I mean, you're talking also about the realm of potentially like home remedies or like something where you feel like there's an on the bubble question of,

Maxwell, no, like a sort of a Dr. Don type of thing. Home remedies more stray into medical advice, which most people don't know. I guess what I'm saying is like, Like every message I'm receiving from the media and the government is like, everything is fine. You go out, go about your life normally. But my gut says I probably should be staying in as much as possible.

MerlinSo mostly stay at home as against I will not even open the door. I'm sealing all the windows. Like if you look at a continuum. I'm like going out. I'm going to work and stuff. But no, you know, see what I'm saying? They're like, but like an amount of like, what is this? What is he saying? if we do an actual risk assessment and look at orders of magnitude or however you guys phrase it these days, you look at the amount of actual risk, which I think is a very important Don and Ben thing that I love to hear about. Because it is often a turns out thing that's very interesting and surprising. But on the one hand, no, you probably do not want to go lick a railing

on the handjob princess, which is a great Kenny Rogers song. But on the other hand, you don't need to duct tape your windows shut and not even use the phone. You don't want to get into a Howard Hughes type situation. And that's going to be unwholesome in its own way, right?

Speaker BYeah, I think there are some of these gut feeling absolutes that are out there. And Don and I, we've talked a little bit about this in the past. One of them, I think, is around sprouts. So this food safety issue where we've had like multiple outbreaks with raw sprouted seed foods, from a gut standpoint, it's a food that I avoid based on my history of reading about all this stuff. And really, at this point, it doesn't matter what kind of data you can show me. It's going to be something that I avoid.

There are mechanisms to reduce the risk of eating that type of food. But that's an absolute for me. That sounds like what you're getting at, Max. And I think Dawn's got a different take. We're looking at the same sources of information. But I don't think you have that same kind of absolute that I do.

Speaker AWell, and what I would say with respect to the staying home, figure out a way to phrase it that tells the people why you're doing it. Like, we know that you can get coronavirus from other people. So the more that you're not around other people is good. So if you can, stay home, right? But obviously, you can't.

MerlinBut don't guess why I'm suggesting this. Let me tell you why. Let me tell you why. We don't want to XY this. I want you to understand why washing your hands works in this instance, right?

Speaker ARight. Right. And again, the conversation with the reporter about the waitress or the waiter person putting their thumb on the plate, it's like, well, let me tell you that, yes, this is my answer, but let me tell you why. And let me tell you about as I think about probabilities of transfer, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker BWell, and I had a conversation with a reporter about similar things, about going to a grocery store and, you know, recommendation that I hadn't been making about grocery stores and hot bars and buffets changing out their utensils every 15 minutes or every 20 minutes, whatever, depending on how many people are going through. And the reporter was like, yeah, but what about the apples? And it totally like floored me. I was like, I don't understand the question. What do you mean, what about the apples? It's like, well, people are going to walk into a grocery store and you do this.

You walk through and you grab three or four apples. And what if you've got coronavirus? And then all of a sudden, all those apples in the apple section are contaminated with coronavirus. And now it's an apple outbreak. And I was like, well, it doesn't really work like that. The very transaction of the buffet is every time someone scoops it out, they have to use that utensil. Not everybody is going to touch every apple. And, yeah, there might be one person that touches 16 apples. The likelihood of that person being a carrier shedding the virus, that's got to factor into it.

And the fact that it doesn't then end up in my stomach, there's a lot of – it really is a denominator question. And not all these things are analogous.

MaxSo don't eat apples is what I'm taking away from this.

Speaker BRight. What about the apples?

MerlinWell, I mean, just out of an abundance of caution, I would say avoid any kind of fruit, red things, roundish things.

MaxWhat about when you guys, you know how you go to the grocery store and you go to the olive bar, you pop a few olives, maybe you'll pop off a few grapes?

MerlinI mean, I think they're encouraging you. They want you to try a couple.

MaxYeah, it's built into their model. It's a write-off. It's priced in. I think it's a write-off.

MerlinIt's a lost leader.

Speaker AKramer, do you know what a write-off is? Here's the thing. Because we can't rule out the possibility of coronavirus being transmitted by food, we should just all stop eating food until the outbreak is over.

MerlinOkay, now you're speaking my language. I like this. I like this. Finally, I have a medical reason to go to a doctor and say, could you put me to sleep for one year, please and thank you. Just one contiguous year of sleep. Just put me somewhere mostly safe. Put me in Syracuse's attic in the original box. Let me just go there. One year.

Maxnobody fucking bothers me for one year I think if you could pick any year in your life where if you had been put to sleep for a period of 365 days and you woke up what would be the most confusing period of history to have slept through 2016 is certainly a contender you go to sleep during the Obama administration you wake up fucking Donald Trump is president and there's Nazis in the streets and you're just like what the fuck happened Mitt Romney's the reasonable one Yeah, Post Malone is making number one singles.

Democrats have a higher opinion of Mitt Romney and George W. Bush than Republicans do. Oh, and also, you know, you got Sonic the Hedgehog with those crazy teeth. I think my hunch is that if you were to go to sleep right now for one year and you woke up in March 11th, 2021, you would be very confused. I mean, who knows what the hell that's going to look like, but I just feel like this is a very, you know, it's going to be a weird year.

Merlinum there was somebody who is it uh oh it might have been jenny odell was saying like i feel so bad for these you know college seniors that like are going to be denied probably their school play like if they're in theater you know there's all these different kinds of things but they're talking in particular in particular at ucsb and uh uc santa barbara and like what that this particular class has been through in those four years right because they've been through fires twice they've been through coronavirus they've been through like there's just so much shit from the very time that

they arrived i i would have slept through college if i could sleepy adams yeah i think i did sleep

Speaker Athrough most of college i i i wasn't sleeping but i was um otherwise occupied oh oh you're a handjob

Merlinprincess what because here's the thing when you go to the wind jammer there's always a lady or a dude standing there with and like, so you don't get the norovirus. You guys deal with that. There's always somebody there squirting on your hands. Now, here's what I always think about, as you know, Don, and as you know, Max, as you probably know, Ben, is I think about like who watches The Watchmen. So I'm thinking about where's that thing been? Like, how do I know if that sanitizer has been in some German's butt,

let alone your hands? Like, you think about that and the way stuff gets passed around. Think about those filthy faucets, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker BYeah, or if that sanitizer came from some kids in Missouri who were selling it, $3 a bottle just on the side of the road.

MerlinOr a prisoner making 65 cents an hour who's not allowed to use hand sanitizer. Oh, God, I'm ready to go to sleep now.

MaxYou guys want to see what I just got?

MerlinYes. Look at this shit.

MaxThis is not the one we got. We got this from Ecolab, which is like our... Do you know them? Did you get an autoclave? Autoclave? Did you get an autoclave?

Speaker AYou know we can't actually see you, Max.

MaxNo, I know. I'm sending it in the chat.

Speaker AOkay.

MaxDo you guys know Ecolab?

Speaker AYes.

MaxYes. They sell the chemical cleaner setup in our restaurant, right? I was at a meeting with them this week. They're a very good company. They also catch all the rats in our construction site.

Speaker AOh, you have them at your restaurant. Yes, of course.

MaxYeah. When we were under construction, we at Ecolab was just catching rats left and right. It was great. All right. Anyway. So where do you put this? So what we're looking at here is that Max has sent us. So Ecolab is furnishing us with some sinks like this, some portable sinks. Yeah. Nice. And we're going to put them in the entrance of the restaurant and request that everyone wash their hands before they come in.

Speaker ALove it. That's nice. I like it. Yes.

MerlinDo they get to play Spotify or pick their own hand washing song? Like in a Lyft? That's not a bad idea.

MaxDo you guys support this? Yeah. So here's my... You know what? Sure. The way that we, I hope it's not bad to say this on the podcast, but we had a conversation about it. And we had a meeting, like a high level, like we got all the heads of all the departments of the restaurant together. And we had our big coronavirus sort of meeting of like, what are we doing and all that. And we kind of divided the meeting into two sections, which is section number one, what are the actual things that we are going to do to maintain food safety and guest safety all the time.

but then there's the second thing of what are we going to do so that people feel safe yeah you need to do restaurant theater it's a little bit exactly we literally talked about it's like going through tsa there's some things that actually make the airplane safe and there's something that makes the travelers the bucket of explosive water and sorry you have more than

Merlinthree ounces you have more than three ounces we need to put it in this bucket with the other

Maxpotential explosives i i don't know i'm curious you know dr ben and professor or dr don and Professor Ben, Professor Chapman, what you guys think if this is, I would put this more in the category of it will make people feel a little safer coming in if they know that everyone else has washed their hands. But I'm curious what you think in terms of actual, you know, risk reduction.

Speaker AWell, I think if you really wanted to reduce risk, Max, you should be taking people's temperatures and then not let them come in if they're running a fever, right? Are we legally allowed to do that? Well, that's a good question. I think there might be some Fourth Amendment issues.

MerlinYeah.

Speaker ABut as a feel-good thing, it's fine. I mean, I like this. I also like places that give me opportunity to use hand sanitizer when I walk in, right? And especially now. But even before— I think the ship has sailed on that. Well, I'm just saying. Someday, when we're allowed to have sanitizer again. But no, this is—there's probably some risk reduction. It's not huge. Better to keep the sick people out of your restaurant. But, you know, it can't hurt, Max. It can't hurt.

Speaker BYeah, and I think that there's some restaurant theater here that actually leads to people being a little more mindful about things. Like maybe they weren't going to wash their hands when they came in.

MerlinOh, absolutely. I mean, everybody's saying they're noticing for the first time in their lives, noticing dudes actually not only washing their hands, but potentially waiting in line to wash their hands. Because there's so much. Like, for example, the obvious one. You don't want to be the person who goes.

Right? So there's social pressure not to be that guy, maybe just slightly less social pressure. You do not want to be the guy who shits all over his hand and then goes back to watching the movie. You need to be in there demonstrating good public health, right?

Speaker BYeah, there's some peer pressure.

Speaker AAnd as you said before, Merlin, it's public health. We're working to make everybody more healthy or keep everybody safe.

MerlinYes.

MaxI have a hand-washing question. I am washing my hands so much throughout the day now, and especially when I'm at the restaurant, that my hands are irritated. Right. Do you guys have products that you recommend? That's chappy.

Speaker AYeah.

MaxYeah, they're getting chapped, right?

Speaker AYeah, you're probably washing your hands too much, if that's a thing. I know you might not agree.

MaxEspecially if I'm at the restaurant. So you want to take a picture with me or they want to shake my hand and I just wash my hands afterwards. I don't want to touch food. I don't want to touch other people.

Speaker AWell, I would say in those instances, Max, surely you have some sanitizer stockpiled. You should do that.

MaxI don't actually. I don't have hand sanitizer.

Speaker AI do not use hand sanitizer. After you bought all of that? Anyway, so find a – this was, again, advice given in a recent newspaper interview or magazine interview. If you find a moisturizer that you like and then use that, right? Find one that feels good on your hands, that smells good, that you know that you'll use, and then just use that to keep your hands healthy.

MerlinOh, oh, oh.

Speaker ABut I don't have a specific brand I recommend.

MerlinCan I ask a question? And then we should get to the after show soon. I have a question. I saw, I feel like I saw a thing about, so everybody knows, ah, you got to get an N95, you got to glove up, scrub in, got to do all the things. I saw a thing about like a lot of people have enough training to know to wear this equipment. They don't have enough training to know how to take it off without contaminating themselves. Is that a thing?

MaxTurns out Is that true?

MerlinThat like when you take off If you take off a mask If you take off a mask Like fucking Meredith Grey And just chuck it across the room Into like a plastic Well you're emotional You're very emotional You're very emotional And like And eventually You're gonna have intercourse With everyone on the show Including Derek's sister Everybody's just gonna be Having sex with each other Chock-a-block Until you die In a car accident I remember you So is it true That if you take off Your stuff wrong You can make yourself Another sick? Have you ever heard of that?

Speaker AI, I'll, I'll let Ben talk in a minute. I have, I have not seen the, the, the mask story you're talking about, but I know we did some research a number of years ago with gloves. And what we found is that gloves are not perfect and we, and we don't know exactly why we didn't, I mean, obviously they can have holes in them, but a lot of it is how you put on and take off those gloves. So, so for sure, um, there's ways of doing it wrong. I would, I would definitely agree with

Merlinthat. What's like, if you think of it this way, if you think about like, okay, so the nice way to phrase is, and I'll let you talk after this, Ben, but the nice way to put this is if you ever worked on a car or anything or like, you know, fixed a lawnmower or like something, you know, that feeling of like your hands literally being covered in grease, right? We're like, so like, imagine how you would like, oh shit, I need to really piss. I need to go to the bathroom. What am I going to do? Like, think about if your hands were covered with grease or let's put it a different way. Let's say your hands were literally covered with shit. For whatever reason, something went, uh-oh, whoopsie-dipsie. And now my hands are covered in something. Imagine how you would,

before we even get to how you would open the door, let's get to how you would wash your hands. Like think plaque tablet level, right? Like if your hands were literally covered in grease and you didn't want to screw up your beautiful house, you'd have to wash your hands so well. And even if you wore gloves, you'd have to take the gloves off. Are you following me on this? Like if the thing is, because you can't see microbes and shit, you assume, well, I'm a good boy. I rub my thumb in soapy water and now I'm clean. You need the scissors to open the scissors.

This literally happened this week. I got a new Japanese package opening knife, and I couldn't open it. You know what? You guys love public health. You guys are so gay bones for public health. Make it so that all of these terrible clamshell things, they should be banned as well. It could be all part of an omnibus.

Speaker AThey have an emergency room code for someone who injures themselves opening one of those. It's an actual literal code when you walk into an emergency room.

MerlinYou're kidding. No. Like Amber or Pink or Code Blue, Crash Cart, that kind of thing? No, like this is just like a number.

Speaker AOh, you have a package.

MerlinOh, he's a bad clamshell boy.

Speaker AYeah. Yeah.

MerlinOkay. So anyway, that was my thought. Ben, fix us up here.

Speaker BI wish I could, but I don't. So I do a lot of research in training. I do a lot of research in behavior. And even though we can train people up, they don't always know exactly what it means. And the training that we create for people might actually not be effective and it might not even meet them where they need to learn stuff. And I think that's all part of it, right? Like we can come up with like 30 or 40 different ways to do this. It's a human behavior issue. And, you know, just like falling asleep through most of college, I can put someone through training and maybe they get the first four minutes about how to put it on correctly.

but they get kind of bored by the end and say, eh, whatever, I'll figure it out. And I'll just pull it off. I got the gist. Yeah.

MerlinHeart surgery, smart surgery.

Speaker BWhatever. So I just need to open them up. I'll figure out how to close them up later. And that's the PPE training issue. And it's the same with hand washing. It's the same with using a thermometer.

MerlinDid you say PPE training? PPE. Personal protective equipment. Oh, that's an entirely different matter.

Speaker BYeah, yeah, yeah. It's on the cruise. It's something you do with a dog. That's from the cruise ship. Oh. Yeah.

MerlinI mean, I don't know. I feel bad for cruises.

Speaker BBut yeah, I don't know. I think the one thing, if we step back from this, learning stuff from this outbreak, I think we'll probably have increased hand washing for a while. And then people will just go back to sleep and act like they normally did. All of a sudden, when it's not a headline. That's my cynical look.

Speaker AAnd next year, it'll be flu season, and nobody will be doing any of the great stuff that we did this year. You know, with all this nonsense that we're doing—

MerlinIt's going to warm up a lot, though.

Speaker AIt's going to get hot soon. It'll get cold again next year. But I really wonder, like, with all of this that we're doing to prevent coronavirus, we should see a significant impact on flu, right? That would be really interesting to look at. That is what they say.

MaxDr. Don, they have in—so in, I think it's—is it South Korea, China, countries where they've, like, you know that thing everyone's talking about, flatten the curve or whatever?

MerlinThey've also seen that with flu season, like, just dramatic reduction in flu.

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinWell, this was like a 50% year for the vaccine, right? They got about 50% right with the vaccine? I think it was better than last year. But still, it was better than last year, but imperfect, but that it would at least ameliorate the side effects.

MaxYou really want to work on that PP training.

Speaker BPPP training.

MaxDo you guys know? I want to get to our challenge, which was the autoclave. What? The autoclave. Oh. The thing that we bought. Is this still the show?

MerlinWe still got to do an after show.

MaxOh, shit. Well, I have a couple of quick questions. The thing is, you peter off and usually dip when the show starts. Hey, everybody, don't scratch your asshole. Do you guys know anything about vaccines? Jesus Christ. Let me die.

177. Handjob Princess 0:00 / 01:03:41