Joe Rogan Reacts to LA Shutdown, Latest Coronavirus News

Do you have a hot take on this, Andy? What's your hot take? I get text messages from people saying, you know, give me the inside scoop as to what's happening and what I should do. Yeah. And I don't have a good answer. I have the same information sources that everybody else does. My concern is not that we shouldn't protect people that are sick and people that are old. My concern is that these decisions are being done by politicians and that they want to do this so that they can be elected come reelection. They don't want people to be upset at them for not acting. And so they're making these decisions and they're not showing us exactly how they're going to get out of this. Like when you're shutting down Los Angeles for a month, just the staggering amount of people that are going to be in debt. And there was some number that we looked it up recently of the amount of people that live check to check. It's crazy. It's like half of America. The average American, the stat I saw was that they cannot absorb an expense outside of the normal over $400. Right. That's gone. That's already gone. So already most Americans are fucked now just with this dip. And then they're talking about extending this to April 19th. I just don't know if they have a plan. I don't know how they're going to buy their way out of this. Like what do you do? How do you help those folks? I mean, I'm the wrong person to ask about that, but I would hope at least that the politicians, I'm sure there's an aspect always, if you are a politician in the back of your mind, I have to conduct myself in a way where I can get reelected. Like everything is probably viewed through that, but I would hope at least that they're viewing it through the humanity perspective. And as far as the decisions they're making, I don't think anybody knows what to do. Yeah, I don't think anybody knows what to do either. They feel like they have to do something. So they're doing something. We all need to look at Idris Elba because that guy looks fucking great. He does. He's still, he's got it. He's got it. And there's, I mean, he seems fine. Tom Hanks, he says he's just kind of tired. It's I can't make heads or tails of it because if you go, the longer you spend on your phone, I think the more, or your computer, I think the more confused you'll actually become because I don't know, to be honest, who's telling the truth and who is not. There's stories of people saying, hey, I tested positive for this. I don't have any symptoms. Hey, I live in Italy. Three people are dead in my hallway and I got sick and I don't feel that good. And then you watch people walking around in zombie apocalypse suits with, you know, mop level four gear on, not listening to, you know, how we were walking on the beach yesterday and you know, there's people, there's huge social bubbles. They don't want to be near each other. And from what I can tell, or from what I'm reading, and again, it's so heads or tails, you know, you basically have to be coughed on or sneezed on or touched a surface that one of these infected people have touched or close proximity and there's people on the beach walking around in hazmat suits. It's a wild time. It's a wild time because of that, because there's no clear information and because you're seeing some people that look really healthy and then you're seeing the stories that come out of Italy. One thing to take into consideration with Italy is Italy has one of the oldest populations. They have a lot of old people and a shit ton of smokers. Those two factors are huge here because this is a respiratory disease. Well, don't they also have in comparison to the rest of the world, more generations living in a single household? Yes. I would imagine is going to be, you know, as those generations move on, you're going to have higher risk people living with people who are low risk but might be transmitting it. Yes. That's the real concern. The real concern is you're going to transmit it to your grandma or someone who's sick. There was a guy, it's weird how the news gives you these stories because there's a guy that was 34 years old that died and they said he just got back from Disneyland. He's like, fuck, I thought you lived forever once you go to Disneyland. This is crazy. He just got back from Disneyland. The fact that he just got back from Disneyland, it's all heart string pulling stuff. But then if you go deep into the story, this young man just got over testicular cancer. He had bronchitis and he had asthma. So there's a lot going on there. He had the deck stacked against him for sure. He had the deck stacked against him. He's immune compromised for sure because of coming off of the testicular cancer and then on top of that with asthma and bronchitis and then he gets a respiratory disease. Those are the people that really have to worry. I really wish there was a clear way to help them other than shutting down everything for a month. I was talking to Evan Hafer this morning. He called out of the blue and we were having a conversation about this and he brought something up that just about the narrative. To me, what's happening right now is it's interesting from a couple of perspectives. For one, I've traveled the world enough and seen people living in a variety of different living conditions that right now, in my opinion at least, people are getting a glimpse into what it is like to live in the non-first world where maybe you don't even have a grocery store, but if you go there, you can't get everything that you want and you can't travel when you always want to and you don't have the freedom of movement that you want. A lot of people live their life, take the virus out of the equation. A lot of people live their life day to day in situations just like this or much worse. I think it should be eye-opening hopefully for people that there's a thin margin between the excess and luxury that we have in the first world and how fast that can be removed. We can start stepping down that staircase. It shows to me, I try to view the videos that you see online of people fist fighting for toilet paper. I think those are the anomaly and I try not to let the anomaly paint the norm. I don't think most people are doing that, but there are people that are doing that and there are people who are going in and they're hoarding and buying. I don't think, the toilet paper is a good example. I can give you 15 different ways to wipe your ass without toilet paper. You're going to be okay. Do you have a garden hose? I mean, we can start there. I'm not saying it's the most sanitary tub. I think I've wiped my ass with a handful of gravel one time because that's all that I had. I'm not recommending it, but I'm just ... Did you really? Oh, for sure. Gravel? It was what was in close ... Yeah, why not? I mean, I have had many ... Did it make it cleaner? I didn't really check. I didn't have too much time, but I've had many days where I started with two socks and ended with one. I've had t-shirts that became tank tops. There's options that you have. None of these I'm recommending for anybody, but what I'm saying is the toilet paper is not going to make the difference between life or death. It's a weird one to hoard. It's a weird one that people are freaking out about. Oh, because they're scared. What's the thing about food? Well, but they're scared. I find that when people get scared, like we were talking about right before we went on, when people get drunk, a couple of the layers of their protective ... Like, this is who I want to portray myself. It starts to strip away. What I see are people who are super concerned about me and far less concerned about we. The conversation I was having with Evan was, it'd be great if we were talking about the people who are going to get crushed, and I'm not an economic expert by any stretch, but are the ones you already talked about, are living paycheck to paycheck. How about the elderly who are in the high-risk category that are on social security, fixed income, and they can't even go out right now because they don't feel comfortable getting groceries? People are going to get destroyed. I would love to have a conversation about a social construct or relationship that we have where we start talking about, what are we going to do to get food and aid to these people? What are we going to do to come together and help everybody out instead of assholes and target hoarding toilet paper? To me, a lot of that is driven by fear, and a lot of it is driven by panic. Believe me, I'm not an expert at all, probably on anything in my life, but one thing that I have some experience in is surviving and thriving in high-risk situations that are high stress, which is kind of what's going on right now. It's a different type of stress. The most dangerous thing you can do is lose control of your emotions or let your emotions take over your decision-making cycle, which is what I see people doing, and it's so dangerous. I think we need to start finding ways to back away from that and start talking about the we greater than me. I don't think there's a toilet paper shortage. There's a shortage of people with common sense who are buying too much toilet paper, which is freaking other people out, so they're buying too much stuff, which they don't actually need, which is freaking up. You know what I mean? It's just this cascading effect. Yeah, it's a fear cascade. It's not good. It's not good. It's also, this is the first time we've, as a nation, have been tested like this with a crisis where the country had to shut down. We don't have any experience in it, so we don't know what to expect. What I hope is it gives me a little bit of flashes as the right after 9-11, because we have had times where the country shut down, but it was very, very brief. But I remember the solidarity after 9-11, it was all about we and not about me. I hope that it trends that direction, because who knows when this is going to end? My kids are out of school, I think for the year. Yeah, I think mine as well. What if you're a single parent and you have to work? What if your kids are getting two of their three meals per day at school? The school system in Montana where I live is already, they're actually doing a really good job. Come to these locations, you can get free meals, but that's assuming the kid has a way to get there. Well, Montana is scalable, right? There's a million people in the entire state. The state's fucking massive. It's not out of control. California has 40 million fucking people in this one spot. It's so preposterous. And there's so much poverty. There's so many people that are barely hanging on as it is, and now they're off the cliff and they don't know what to do. There's no real protection set in place now to keep them from being evicted. I don't believe. Unscrupulous landlords, people that have been looking for a reason to get rid of these people in the first place. Fuck man, who knows? Who knows what's going to go on? It's real confusing. It's real confusing. And have you seen the stats? Like the, here, I'm going to show this to you, Jamie. Maybe we could put this up on the screen because it's really kind of crazy that this is the choice that they've made to shut everything down. Here, I'm sending this to you right now. Well, you know, it's funny, right? They made that choice last night. So we got here Thursday. So a day before they made that decision and the decision was made last night and went into effect, and exactly the same amount of people are still out. Yeah, exactly the same amount. I mean, there's no real law. I mean, it's more of a recommendation than anything, but they do have to close businesses. Well, I think they're hoping that people do buy into a social contract. Like maybe we can care about the we over me, but I just, you see people not doing that when they're pressed. And that gets rough.