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E1: US Response to COVID-19 & Impact on Startups, VC & Public Markets with David Friedberg

March 19, 2020 / 01:31:14

This episode discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy, testing strategies, and the role of government in crisis management. Guests include Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya, and David Friedberg.

The hosts share their experiences with the pandemic, including the challenges of remote work and the stock market's volatility. They highlight the importance of accurate testing and the need for a robust response to the crisis.

David Friedberg discusses the asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 and the implications for public health policy. He emphasizes the need for broad-based testing to understand the true dynamics of the virus.

The conversation also touches on the economic ramifications of the pandemic, particularly for small businesses and the workforce. The hosts debate the effectiveness of government interventions and the potential for a recession.

Finally, the episode concludes with thoughts on the future of work and society post-pandemic, including the need for resilience in supply chains and healthcare systems.

TLDR

The episode covers COVID-19's economic impact, testing strategies, and government responses to the crisis.

Episode

1:31:14
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all right everybody welcome to another edition  of the all-in podcast we'll call this episode
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one we did a test and over a hundred thousand  of you listened to the test podcast that we
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knew the audios if you did in a few days Tomas  is already getting addicted to his statistics
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a new podcaster Lima to focus on something going  up yes exactly our portfolios are getting crushed
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but the podcast numbers are going up there with  a meaningless victory to be sure but we got a lot
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of positive feedback and we're all sitting at  home in quarantine as you can see I set up my
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home office I got our microphone here and Shema  tha's in his bedroom and dear Freiburg I think
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is in his wine room or something in his uh in his  compound are you in the safe room is this the safe
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room Dave Freiburg is with us again he got a lot  of great feedback and he's now on the Twitter you
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can follow him at Friedberg I don't know if he  showed his Twitter down because he was getting
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harassed on Twitter welcome to the club are you in  your safe room David yeah it's brutal on Twitter I
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don't know how you guys do it you put something  up and everyone you know just goes after you
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it's hard you out there in the Twitter world the  Twitterverse basically you have to mute and block
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anybody who is under a hundred followers and being  an absolute jerk because it's likely a Russian bot
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you know being run out of like Manila or something  like that they've got all these like sophisticated
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rings of people that they just hire for ten bucks  a day to harass people online I mean I know it
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sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory but it's  actually true this large groups of bots who go
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after people and try to kick create chaos but okay  we're sitting here it's today's Wednesday we did
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our podcast on Saturday the stock market has gone  down another twenty percent since then I guess or
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so and we are looking like this is going to be a  fifty percent correction or something like that
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we're now you know well past a 30 plus percent  and on the good news front it looks like testing
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is actually occurring and that work on a virus  work on treatments is occurring we can call them
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cures but treatments is occurring and quarantine  in place is being taken seriously and I guess
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the biggest thing is that Trump has basically  admitted that this is a crisis and he's taking
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it seriously Friedberg what is your assessment  of where we are today versus when we taped on
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Saturday in terms of the resolution to this we  are we overreacting reacting just enough or not
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reacting enough there's three things to consider  the health the policy and then the markets on the
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health front it seems like we have done a lot in  terms of containment and we're ramping up testing
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we are still not doing broad general general  population testing which is necessary for us to
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truly understand the dynamics of this disease and  also to understand the contagion of this disease
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and we need to fix that problem there's a task  force of a hundred people out of DC being led
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by Jared Kushner and a number of people from  the tech industry that are working on ramping
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up testing and doing broader general population  testing the policy decisions are what get quite
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scary and that is all of the containment shutting  down travel shutting down borders shutting down
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bridges and the economic ramifications of doing  so are frightening I think I mentioned the other
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day that 48 percent roughly of the US workforce  works in small businesses another roughly 10
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percent work in travel another roughly 12 percent  work in energy and you know you kind of add this
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up and you can quickly see why Steve Mucha and  the US Treasury Secretary was saying that we
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should expect 20 to 30% of the workforce to be  unemployed by this summer if we keep this up so
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that is a frustrating and staggering statistic  and something worth debating whether that policy
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decision is appropriate relative to the potential  life and health and and Health System impact you
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know which one is worse and then the market  question is just I don't know how to address
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it but things go ahead afterwards I have eight  things I want to say one more thing and it is I
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think the most important to come out today so the  markets are [ __ ] we're all in trouble or you
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know yadda yadda the most scary thing is Ford and  GM to shut down their plants today and the reason
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they shut down their plants is because out of  fear of coronavirus and Auto Workers and the
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UAW basically forced them to do it the world  lives on a 30 day food supply so if you stop
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food production today there would only be 30 days  of food for the whole world to eat based on our
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calorie consumption per day and especially with  an isolated border and we import a lot of food
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in the United States if that means that we are  then going to shut down other factories the Ford
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GM shut down and we're going to shut down food  production processing and distribution factories
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then we have a food security crisis and this  becomes a real societal problem so the concern
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that I have with the factories being shut down  today is the precedent it sets and the potential
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follow-on from there in the food system and one  thing we can't stop doing is making a distributing
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food to humans in the United States or else we are  going to have problems you're right but before we
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go there the good news is that these directives  don't apply to national critical infrastructure
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and the food supply is covered within that so  unless something cataclysmic happens those folks
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are still going to make sure that food supply  is there I do agree with you that the issue that
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we have to contend with is that you know there  may not be as much and in the you know 30th to
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90th day that becomes a real issue if this thing  becomes a very protracted problem this sort of
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brings us back David without being too alarmist  about how we started and how you started really
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importantly at the beginning which is there is a  small but very credible body of evidence that is
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starting to show and this is what you put out on  Twitter and part of why you got you know attacked
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probably by the pharma Lobby but that shows that  there is a there is potentially an enormous ly
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large asymptomatic spreader dynamic in this  disease so can you describe that and what that
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may mean and why there's a lot of silver lining in  good news that if it's true there are several data
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points that are showing us that there may be an  unexpectedly high number of people that get this
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disease and don't have any symptoms and show it  the historical data that we've gathered to date
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has been largely symptomatic patients and in some  places like in Korea asymptomatic patients that
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had really close contact with symptomatic patients  that were confirmed to be positive and in Korea in
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particular they found a large cohort nearly 40% of  the infected population were people between 20 and
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29 years old that did not exhibit any symptoms or  had very mild symptoms had a runny nose and didn't
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even know that they were sick on the princess  cruise ship it turns out that up to 50 percent
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may have been asymptomatic people were all tested  on that cruise ship because there were so many
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people that were positive and through that data  set that cohort we found a very large asymptomatic
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population 50% roughly the NBA players have  now been tested and out of seven players on
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five teams so out of seven players on those five  teams that have tested positive it seems like none
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of them are having any symptoms there may be  one person who's having a cough but generally
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they seem one of I think it was Donovan Mitchell  said I could go play a seven game series tomorrow
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so this data is really important and it hasn't  been fully accounted for in the models and the
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predictions of the pandemic and the predictions of  the fatality rate we're assuming that let's say 2%
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of people that get this disease end up dying and  by the way that's also based on an age histogram
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that may not be appropriate for our particular  cohort in the United States if you took that
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data and then you just did it based on the fact  that a large percentage of people actually don't
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die but they end up just being asymptomatic it  really changes the denominator and it skews the
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results a paper published showed that in China up  to eighty six percent of people did not realize
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that they were sick or they were unreported they  had mild symptoms if you take that high level
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you take that low level call it somewhere between  twenty-five and eighty per se T six percent maybe
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even as high as eighty six percent of patients are  asymptomatic which means that the actual fatality
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rate is much much lower even in a large cohort  that gets infected here so we should be mindful
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of this new data that's emerging and worse Racing  and acting from a policy basis as if 2 percent of
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people 3 percent of people 4 percent of people  that get this are gonna die and that may not
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actually be true based on what we're saying in  the last week I have a comment in a statement
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the comment is people will say David you can't  extrapolate from an NBA player who may just be
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in peak physical fitness although I think your  answer is going to be it's not clear that the
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that the disease is correlated necessarily with  physical fitness for on physical fitness at all it
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just may be the strain and how your body processes  but then the question is doesn't this mean that we
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need to have broad-based massive testing not just  of symptomatic populations so not just the PCR
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test that we've heard a lot about but also these  antibody tests so that we've know that people have
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had it and what's the status of that David what's  the status evidence that that's exactly right
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tomorrow and by the way on the healthy NBA player  point it's absolutely true people that are between
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20 and 30 the average age in the NBA is 26 years  old people that are between 20 and 30 years old
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generally seem to have no to mild symptoms based  on what we saw in Korea the other datasets need to
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be taken into account so the NBA is an interesting  anecdote sure and you could discredit it all you
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wanted saying that it's a highly correlated  class and so on because everyone's together
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all the time but we could look at the data that  came out of China in a paper that was published in
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the journal Science and a paper that was published  in the journal Nature from Korea that showed very
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large percentages anywhere from 20 to 50 to 80%  or 90% of people being completely asymptomatic
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across an age spectrum certainly very heavier  weighted towards the younger age bracket from you
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know children all the way up to 30 or 40 years  old you can be completely asymptomatic and so
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these are really interesting discoveries that have  happened and so to your point we need more data we
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need to confirm that hypothesis because that's  how science works so we have a hypothesis let's
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go test it the problem is we're not testing it  and we should be as a priority right now because
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the policy decisions we're making are based upon  a denominator that may be wrong so the correct
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action should be to go get those antibody tests  go out into the population and start testing the
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unscented asymptomatic general population and see  what percentage of people in these high-risk zones
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like Seattle and LA and New York and SF already  have the antibodies to this virus meaning they've
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been infected with this virus and have not or  are not showing any symptoms and that gives us a
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better sense of a how widespread this infection is  and B the true dynamics of the fatality rate and
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the symptomology of this disease and how it may  affect the people those IgG tests are being made
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on mass in China today they're being shipped to  countries like Italy where they are in fact being
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used on the frontline they involve a blood draw  and then they have this lateral it's there called
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a lateral flow assay in terms of how they're kind  of tested the blood runs across a strip and you
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see a value and you have a pretty good sense at  that point those kits cost a couple of pennies
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to make in China we could probably get a couple  million of them I don't understand why we're not
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I don't understand why someone in the federal  government isn't begging China and apologizing
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and appeasing to them to send us those kits there  are a lot of people I know that have bought them
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on the Internet I have a bunch of people that I  know have bought them they have been shipped in
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through brokers and they are not FDA approved they  cannot be used for diagnostic purposes because of
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FDA guidelines that have the FDA regulates these  things they can be used for research purposes but
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they may not be very sensitive and very specific  and they don't have great testing on them so we
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don't estimate the sensitivity and the specificity  to be 90 percent roughly 10 percent false positive
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roughly 10 percent false negative but for what  we're trying to accomplish that's good enough
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we're not trying to give people a diagnosis of  disease we're trying to run an epidemiological
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study and we should on the general population  to figure out how many people out there are
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asymptomatic and have been infected that it's  an important statistic that's missing and to
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your point if we find out that there is a large  population of people that have actually felt this
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disease passed through them it's faster that  we can sort of get people back to work out in
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the streets which is now probably going to be the  most important thing we can do to just prevent a
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complete economic calamity yeah yeah there are  there are Jason and sorry treatments Jim ops
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all right interrupt you but treatments are the  other thing I think you're going to talk about
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that treatments are interesting let's talk about  that right now because to me what's incredible
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is the again now what is emerging and and its  small and scale relative to how amplified it
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may may should or should not be is you know Ren  des vir is very different but it just seems like
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prophylactically even there's some data that's  showing out of France that chloroquine seems to
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be effective these are these are solutions that  are pennies to make and some of the some of the
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feedback that I've heard is that part of why the  FDA the CDC the the federal apparatus is reluctant
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to embrace these things is in part because of  pressure from those lobbies but that seems to me
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unfathomable in a moment like this so why do you  think the government hasn't put out the CDC has
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zero directive right now on the management  and efficacious management of this disease
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why is that okay what say you Qi and others have  said and doctors around the country echo is that
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these treatments have not been clinically tested  through a blinded controlled study and that is a
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very fair assertion generally speaking for doing  good medicine but we are in a crisis state and
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in a crisis state you have to triage and you also  have to triage policy and we should be considering
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creating policy and changing the way that we do  policy under these extenuating circumstances if
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doing treatment can reduce fatality rates by up  to 4x as Korean doctors have claimed it is worth
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taking the risk or perhaps it is worth letting  the FDA say renessa vehicle Etra chloroquine
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and others are being widely produced widely  distributed the government is mandating it
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and doctors and their patients can decide if and  when they want to use it and let them take the
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risk without clinical trials and without data and  the typical process of the FDA what's the downside
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of taking these drugs are they particularly  dangerous I mean I've heard the colloquy
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gnomic perhaps incorrectly Cola quint chloroquine  I've heard that this can be a little bit nasty in
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terms of side-effects so is there some major  downside that I mean it's kind of like an off
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use of a drug right like this is an off use of a  drug as opposed to it's an off use of a drug and
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some of the antivirals aren't even fully tested in  humans so we don't yet know what the side-effects
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may be and also remember side effects can change  based upon your health condition so someone that's
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in respiratory distress may have different side  effects than someone who's taking it in a healthy
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controlled clinical trial so we're not really sure  that's the argument that doctors would make is you
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know our first mandate is to do no harm and so  they don't want to apply a medicine that might
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do harm and so that is the standard protocol and  practice and process however again in a crisis
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state China and Korea said guys we're trying  this thing and it's working and we're adopting it
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let's go for it and they race forward it could be  that this is a good time for the United States to
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consider an emergency policy action where we make  a lot of this stuff make it available and simply
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like doctors use their best judgment rather than  have the FDA be the paternal state that makes a
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decision for the doctors or makes a recommendation  to the doctors well what do we think the fatality
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rate actually is like David if you were looking at  this and you had to place a bat and put a hundred
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percent of your net worth on it and be all in and  have massive skin in the game where do you think
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the fatality rate here in the United States winds  up being overall because the data that came out of
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Wuhan has been markedly going down as they get the  numbers corrected who knows Chinese numbers you
00:16:52
know censored by the government and maybe perhaps  massaged - it's gonna be hard to tell what do you
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think the real fatality rate is the first fatality  rate I heard was 5.8 percent out of China though
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based on the paper that came out in science over  the weekend the wu hand data was estimated to be
00:17:07
1.4 percent and Wu hen was the worst data out of  China the quote-unquote rest of China is still
00:17:13
estimated at about 0.15 percent or 0.1 6% 0.14  percent something like that where's that versus
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like the flu every year or something or the normal  flu 1.1 percent roughly yeah and so you know if
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you're looking at somewhere between 0.2 and 1.5  percent now in Italy I think they're at over 7
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percent we talked about this on the last show  but Italy is a much older population and their
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health system is completely overwhelmed so there's  some confounding data that's confounding variables
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there that may be making Italy a very you outlier  on a distribution of what's gonna happen here the
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United States has a population that's a little  bit older than China but much younger than Italy
00:17:52
so our health system is and our health system is  generally more ICU beds per capita than Italy so
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so we should be in a better place the thing we  don't know that does concern me about the health
00:18:01
system the United States and the population in  the United States is it seems that there may be
00:18:05
a high correlation with severity of disease and  a1c levels and and as a result the US has one of
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the highest obesity rates of any country in the  world and highest diabetes rates and so we may
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have a population that has a very high percentage  of people with a high a1c that may be at higher
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risk than say people in other countries I don't  know that for sure but that is those are two kind
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of confounding statistics that may kind of make  things a little bit worse if I were to put my
00:18:32
money on this look I'm a betting guy I would be a  little bit nervous at this point but I'd say it's
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probably somewhere between 0.15 and then call  it 1.8% you know call it that's that's an order
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of magnitude I know so you know but you could  do the math that's probably somewhere between
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one and ten times as bad as the flu and so that  again leads to the big policy question about are
00:18:57
the actions warranted is it let the health system  crash so that's imperfect then flipped to you Cho
00:19:03
moth you've heard his basically his line at you  know 0.12 ten times the flu one point eight or
00:19:09
something you know if we split the difference  of those two it's 0.5 it's a point six point
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seven fatality rate is the reaction of sheltering  in place and the economic turmoil it's causing
00:19:21
worth it yes or no right now you guys need to keep  talking I need to jump off for two seconds and I'm
00:19:30
gonna run right back okay no problem and so what  do you what do you think now if we were to look at
00:19:36
your estimate David is it actually worth what's  happening would we if you and I were making the
00:19:42
policy or you I and a Chamath were you know the  cabinet members as it were making this decision
00:19:47
is this decision and the economy crashing and  a potentiality of ten fifteen twenty percent
00:19:53
unemployment and all the downstream effects would  it be better to do what the UK was originally do
00:19:58
which is just a bad let's get the herd mentality  going and let's get the herd immunity immunity go
00:20:02
I know this is like the most difficult question  in the world but like we're here so let's look
00:20:06
it's not binary right it may not lock everyone  up and let everyone out the door it may be that
00:20:14
you have a more nuanced policy where you say let's  keep people over 65 years old give them the strong
00:20:20
recommendation to stay home and make sure that  you distribute chloroquine to doctors around
00:20:25
the country so as soon as elderly people start  having symptoms they maybe get some treatment
00:20:29
but you know that's kind of an option you keep 65  year olds at home you do random general population
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antibody testing and once you hit a certain  percentage of the population having been exposed
00:20:40
to this thing it may be that at that point you  say okay you know the over 65 limit is lifted or
00:20:48
it may be that you know you do something similar  to that at different age brackets have different
00:20:52
containment recommendations you also do it with  with random gen-pop screening you also do it with
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medicine being distributed so there's a nuanced  answer to that where the policy should be a
00:21:02
little bit more directed it should be a little bit  more involved in terms of treatment testing and
00:21:09
containment strategy and it doesn't need to be so  binary right it doesn't have to be everybody stay
00:21:14
at home if we get to the point where a population  has very few people have had it then more people
00:21:21
should stay home so it doesn't spread or and then  if more people have it so if 50 percent of young
00:21:26
people in San Francisco have it already we've got  herd immunity then maybe we can start saying hey
00:21:32
if you're over 65 you can go out but just stay out  of restaurants or something is that what you're
00:21:37
saying yeah once you hit like 50 to 60% of the  population having antibodies to a particular virus
00:21:42
you you know or like a flu for example you'll  see that our not number drop well below one and
00:21:48
then explain or not to everybody again just so  yeah it's basically like the viral coefficient
00:21:52
like for every one person that's infected or not  tells you how many other people will get infected
00:21:58
after them and so if it's 2.5 which is what some  estimates say it is for coronavirus right now
00:22:03
then for every one person that gets infected  roughly two and a half people get infected and
00:22:07
that number goes down as more people get infected  because there's more people get infected there's
00:22:11
less people to infect and the rate at which you  can then infect other people also drop so your
00:22:16
are not collapses and so at a certain point you  have this kind of basis for saying hey guys what
00:22:22
some okay now I got to step off sorry guys yeah no  problem do you think so sure my team is incredible
00:22:28
I mean what you are seeing in real time as we're  doing this is literally like I've never seen this
00:22:35
before we we should probably explain what what is  going on so what is going on in the background is
00:22:44
the markets are just completely torn now why are  the markets important many people aren't invested
00:22:53
at all in the stock market I get it but it is  where liquidity and capital markets function and
00:22:59
derived out of those capital markets is the money  that then kids startups it hits the banks which
00:23:06
then lend to small businesses it is the functional  machine the undergirding of the US and the world
00:23:15
economy and we are in a moment that I have really  not seen since o8 where there are seizures in this
00:23:25
market in extremely violent ways and so when I  had to jump off the phone it was me trying to do
00:23:35
my part to kind of help but also trying to make  sure that you know we maintain full liquidity in
00:23:43
times like this it's incredible now Jason on the  assumption that you know Friedberg mahir may not
00:23:50
come back I mean what dramatic podcasting we're  dealing it I know well you know I mean people
00:23:54
also have their kids at home so you know I might  have to jump out and take care of the twins or are
00:23:59
old so it is definitely having a psychological  impact on everybody being home you've been home
00:24:05
for over two weeks I've been home for a week I  went out once to do a podcast on my office with
00:24:09
just one person there what I said I wanted to  do was start at sort of the ten foot level and
00:24:18
I'd like to build up to the hundred thousand foot  level and I think that'll be a good way of talking
00:24:25
about what we teased and talked about a little bit  in episode zero which is sort of these second and
00:24:32
third-order dynamic befo before we go to that let  me just I want to wrap up with David saying about
00:24:36
what the change in policy should or could be so  right now we haven't we're having you know this
00:24:45
basically quarantined in some cases it's a hard  quarantine some cases a little bit softer it's a
00:24:49
recommendation and you know people are being told  to you know stay at home it should this change and
00:24:56
if under what conditions do we start going back  to normalcy because I think that's what people
00:25:02
want to know is when is this gonna end and under  what circumstances I'm just talking about you
00:25:08
know staying home well look if it were me I think  what we would do is adopt some of the mitigation
00:25:16
strategies of China and Korea and Singapore all  of these countries have kind of showed us a way
00:25:24
to deal with it now we have to decide that a  short-term suspension of typical civil liberties
00:25:31
is worth the trade-off now it's not worth it under  the normal course under any any any imaginable way
00:25:39
but if we had to trade off some of those civil  liberties in the short course so that we could
00:25:44
get back to normalcy I think most of us at this  point and definitely all of us after another week
00:25:49
or two of home isolation will do it and what I  think it would entail is setting up zones that
00:25:57
we would understand to be uninfected and what that  means are people that don't have it or people that
00:26:04
have antibodies and eventually allowing those  zones to reopen so that we can actually have
00:26:10
some amount of economic activity and what that  will require is massive testing of the entire
00:26:17
population testing testing testing I mean there  should be lines and lines and lines it should be
00:26:25
you know how we would have and we know by the way  how to mobilize this it is no different than when
00:26:30
we would go to vote right and you know we could  all be told based on birth year right everybody
00:26:37
go based on birth year your local voting facility  there are phlebotomist there they can run these
00:26:42
lfi A's they can and they can they can allow you  to be in a safe zone or not a safe zone if you're
00:26:48
found to be an asymptomatic carrier then you can  self quarantine and socially distance and we can
00:26:54
really you know nip this thing in the bud in a  you know four or five six week time frame and yeah
00:27:01
because these tests are available at such large  scale and because these tests are so insignificant
00:27:07
ly cheap if it were up to me I would mobilize the  military in the National Guard I would mobilize
00:27:15
or voting infrastructure I mean another way  to do this with me why don't we just have the
00:27:20
National Guard or doctors or whatever just go to  everybody's mailbox put in the kits and then say
00:27:25
you know we have your kit in here on this date  and we'll go pick up the kids the problem with
00:27:29
these lfi A's is that the amount of blood that  you need you cannot draw by yourself it's not a
00:27:33
what about the swab stuff I mean if we just did  the swab testing we just said hey why your house
00:27:38
the swab is a PCR test that's looking for RNA and  the problem with that is that it's effective in a
00:27:44
window it's uncomfortable to administer and less  to be done right away for those that are in the
00:27:50
process of viral shedding god if you are not in  the process of viral shedding then that PCR test
00:27:55
is effectively ineffective and what I'm advocating  for is move past the PCR testing that should be
00:28:01
done in an acute situation if you come into a  hospital where you're exhibiting symptoms the
00:28:06
more important thing right now is to find people  that don't have it or people who are asymptomatic
00:28:10
aliy spreading or those people that are immune  because if we can re baseline the denominator as
00:28:16
Friedberg said we may find some good news in that  it's very much like the flu in terms of numerical
00:28:25
distribution in which case we can make some policy  changes and reestablish economic activity if it
00:28:31
turns out that it's not at least we know that -  hmm but right now we're in the worst place which
00:28:35
is that we are in a situation of isolation and  confinement in the absence of data and this is I
00:28:41
think what's so what's so infuriating to folks is  that we you know it's like Winston Churchill said
00:28:48
America will do the right thing it's just that  they'll try everything else first and I think that
00:28:54
we are clearly on that path to trying everything  until we do the right thing everything okay and I
00:28:59
think it's political I think it's political poker  as the reason one Freiberg everything okay just
00:29:06
market trades really he's like literally you're  trying to cover stuff and just it's a great time
00:29:15
to tax law tax harvest losses man yeah if you've  got companies that you're really religious about
00:29:23
that you would love to own for a long time and  you're underwater on them it's a great time to
00:29:27
sell them take the loss harvest it and then buy  him back in the next 30 days so David I have I
00:29:32
have a list of eight things and what I told Jason  is I wanted to start at the 10 foot level and end
00:29:37
at the hundred thousand foot level okay and so  I'm gonna tee up the first question for both of
00:29:42
you guys and I have a view but all I'll save it  to the end so question number one of these eight
00:29:48
lists of interesting things to talk about which  may be relevant for the folks listening what does
00:29:55
this mean for startups and what should you do if  you are a unprofitable I mean by definition these
00:30:03
these companies are default dead what if what  do you do if you're a startup CEO today yeah I
00:30:09
think it's a great question I'm dealing with it  like with about a dozen companies a day who are
00:30:14
in this very acute situation you have to figure  out how you have to look at the instrument panel
00:30:19
and then try to like a pilot I use the analogy  understand exactly how much altitude you have
00:30:26
where the nearest airport is how much fuel  you've got onboard so I literally told folks
00:30:31
listen if you can close this money because a lot  of people were in the middle of doing deals close
00:30:34
it immediately so that's number one if you're  if you got a deal on the table take the money
00:30:38
number and some people do but most people don't  and I'm already seeing people reach rating deal
00:30:44
terms based and cut and backing out so I had one  person back out of a deal on the syndicate calm an
00:30:49
angel investor said because the market conditions  I'm backing out and they had made the commitment
00:30:53
they're backing on so you can see commitments  broken so assume it's gonna that no money's gonna
00:30:58
get raised for the next three or six months at  a minimum and then you have to ask yourself well
00:31:03
how do I keep this company alive I have people  who are founders taking 80% salary cuts and then
00:31:08
giving their staff 50% salary cuts and then that  takes their six months of runway makes it nine
00:31:12
so that's number one you have to just make the  cuts and if you've chosen to be the founder of
00:31:17
the company that that's that's your job is to  get everybody to safety and better to have four
00:31:21
out of five where three out of five employees  lose their job and the company be alive to come
00:31:26
back and maybe get some stimulus later then to  have the company go out of business because you
00:31:32
wouldn't make the cuts so you got to just take  the medicine and that's really with first-time
00:31:36
entrepreneurs they don't understand that and  if they have an every business is different we
00:31:41
have some companies that are subscription-based  business or delivery based businesses they're
00:31:45
actually seeing an increase in utilization  increase of people trialing their software so
00:31:50
I have one company that's a consumer subscription  they had more trials this week than ever because
00:31:54
people have free time so that company is going  to be fine but you got to make the cuts David
00:31:58
I'm not sure what your advice is or what you're  doing in your portfolio yeah I mean look I'm on
00:32:04
12 boards four companies have been or are in the  middle of term cheat or closing a deal so it's
00:32:09
been an unfortunate timing for all this stuff what  happens to those four companies key difference the
00:32:16
term sheets yeah yeah very different things I mean  we've got one that I hope we close on Friday we
00:32:21
signed on fright last Friday that the final Doc's  and money is not in the bank account yet I've got
00:32:26
another one that's had a bunch of offers that  got rescinded but they weren't like signed yet
00:32:31
it's just all over the place and and I think you  know one thing that's that's worth kind of paying
00:32:38
attention to for every company is you've got to  ask yourself firstly the hard question of going
00:32:44
into this and coming out of this era that we're  kind of now entering that is a very bleak and
00:32:48
dark era economically where's your customer gonna  be and what is your customer gonna be doing the
00:32:55
customer model is changing overnight if you're  a company that that's sold you know software
00:33:03
into restaurants and restaurants are about to  potentially go bankrupt or suffer absolutely
00:33:09
loss of revenue and get you know debt payments  restructured they're not going to necessarily be
00:33:14
rushing to spend more money each month unless you  can help them immediately save money if you're a
00:33:20
company selling to consumers and you're selling  to consumers that are gonna lose their jobs in
00:33:25
the next three months or lending to consumers  they're gonna be losing their jobs in the next
00:33:28
three months you've got to be asking yourself the  question what can I be doing with my business so
00:33:32
you got to start with your strategy question and  you got to make sure that your custom you got to
00:33:36
think about where your customer is going to be  and how you can adjust your strategy as a result
00:33:40
the second thing I'd say is and I sent out a note  to my CEOs and I was like guys you gotta you know
00:33:48
cut your burn and then you got to cut your burn  and you got to cut your burn if you've got burned
00:33:52
you got to do everything you can to give yourself  the greatest chance of survival and I think on the
00:33:56
last all-in podcast Jason you mentioned having a  you know 36 months of cash that's ideal but if you
00:34:01
can get your cash back your cash to get you to an  18 month runway 18 I average Jim you should be you
00:34:09
should be doing everything you can to number one  kind of give yourself that breathing room even if
00:34:14
that means creating milestones trading features  creating revenue goals trading all the things
00:34:18
that you're expecting to do survival matters more  than growth right now David Sinclair who wrote
00:34:25
the book lifespan and as a Harvard biochemists  has highlighted that there's basically a gene
00:34:30
the circuit genes as about seven of them in  humans and the circuit genes get turned on or
00:34:35
off and it turns out every biological organism  on planet Earth has a circuit the circuit gene
00:34:40
tells the organism or tells the cell to either  grow or heal and this is a time for everyone to
00:34:46
activate their circuit genes and stop focusing on  growth and focus on healing it's really important
00:34:52
to optimize your unit economics to make sure you  know where your customer is to really reduce the
00:34:56
burn to reduce the spend to reduce the push for  growth and expansion and just make sure you've
00:35:01
got a core business that you have a customer that  you can make money from that customer that you've
00:35:05
really got unit economics right and reduce your  burn and give yourself that runway and extend your
00:35:09
life so that's my that's my kind of well I think  we got question one out of the way let me let me
00:35:17
give you my my advice which is building on the  the back of both of what you said but I'm gonna
00:35:24
take it from a different perspective so let's  look inside of a VC firm VC firms have limited
00:35:32
partners and those limited partners are the most  sophisticated financial institutions in the world
00:35:37
family offices of well renowned individuals  foundations university endowments nonprofits
00:35:45
you name it and all of them are allowed to invest  in this asset class because they themselves can
00:35:53
prove that they're sophisticated and one way in  which they do it is they they have what's called
00:35:58
portfolio allocation theory they construct a  portfolio of every hundred dollars they have
00:36:03
and they say well I'd like to have you know 70%  of that in liquid instruments and that I'm gonna
00:36:10
have 60% in bonds and you know 40% in equities  and then that 30% they'll take and they'll say
00:36:17
you know I want to have a mixture of all kinds of  different stuff some real estate some hedge funds
00:36:23
some private equity and eventually when all of  those allocations are done there's an allocation
00:36:29
to venture now in the last few years what happened  is all of these folks you know move the dial they
00:36:35
push the risk meter so that the allocation into  venture was upwards of seven eight nine percent
00:36:42
of their overall portfolio now just to remind  you guys you know basic theory monetary theory
00:36:48
would tell you when you put money in into an  illiquid instrument remember venture doesn't
00:36:54
return money until thirteen years after it's  done and you can't get it out it's not like a
00:36:57
bond where you can go and instantaneously sell it  in a second you have to get returns that are much
00:37:04
better than the market because you need to be  rewarded paid back for that illiquidity now in
00:37:12
the last month what you've seen our portfolios  get completely turned upside down if your bonds
00:37:19
and equities before were worth $60 or $70 of that  hundred it's now worth $56 it could be worth $40
00:37:31
what that means is that that other $30 needs to  be worth much much less otherwise your portfolio
00:37:39
model is completely upside-down and all of these  limited partners become forced sellers as well so
00:37:46
that can't happen so what is the my understanding  is the last time this happened in 2008 LPS kind of
00:37:56
winked to the GPS and said listen it would be  good if there wasn't a capital call right now
00:38:00
and then GPS not wanting to piss off their LPS the  VC firms not wanting to piss off the endowments as
00:38:07
an example said okay we're just gonna not make any  capital calls right now while the market recovers
00:38:13
so that your equities go up and the percentage of  venture goes back down is that is that the likely
00:38:18
scenario is LPS it's worse than that it's worse  than that because right now these foundations and
00:38:25
sovereign wealth funds are trying to just stay  above water and as we get to the ten thousand a
00:38:31
hundred thousand foot view I'll give you the  picture of what's happening in their offices
00:38:35
and again it's important because it is what make  sure we come out of this reasonably well which is
00:38:41
a properly functioning capital market and right  now it is the most precarious that I have seen
00:38:48
in 20 years so basically these LPS are gonna have  to portfolio rebalance and they're gonna have to
00:38:54
force venture capitalists to mark down their books  so these are just gonna make that decision to say
00:39:03
hey my investment in Airbnb slack or uber is worth  X now I mean when they were private companies so
00:39:08
not slack and not uber cuz they're public no but  previously private yeah but but Airbnb can it be
00:39:15
marked at thirty or forty billion dollars the  auditors will probably say no the LPS will say
00:39:21
that it's not the GPS will want to because it'll  allow them to maintain their IRR as their rates
00:39:27
of return and so what you're gonna have is when  these when these markdowns are forced to happen
00:39:32
which will take another six months venture  capitalists returns will look terrible and
00:39:39
so their propensity to be able to add bad dollars  after good quote unquote you know to defend every
00:39:46
company is going to go to zero right and and  as you said Jason there's gonna be a pall on on
00:39:52
activity so I don't think 18 months is sufficient  I think you need at least 36 months w need to have
00:40:01
three years of capital in the bank the worst thing  that'll happen if you have 36 months is you think
00:40:09
to yourself wow I was really conservative the best  thing that happens with 36 months is you survive
00:40:15
the distribution of outcomes would tell you there  is zero point in taking the risk if you don't have
00:40:22
to and this is why unfortunately it's going to be  a very difficult process of recalibrating all of
00:40:28
this stuff so for folks that are in these startups  we're gonna have to go through an unfortunate
00:40:35
period of pain and you know as as Buffett said you  know rule number one of our business is to not go
00:40:42
out of business rule number two is not to forget  rule number one yeah all right I think it's well
00:40:48
said and is there any chance well we're sort of at  this you know street level on the front lines is
00:40:57
there any chance that we contain this very quickly  let's say under 60 days and that it looks like
00:41:05
this virus mitigation through the various drugs  we talked about actually starts to work if that
00:41:13
happens in the next six days what what will happen  to the markets it's gonna come there's a chance it
00:41:21
could come roaring back what are the chances of  a roar back it cannot come roaring back so let
00:41:26
me explain to you what's happening right now in  the capital markets so let's take a step back and
00:41:31
first look at what what the Fed has announced over  the last couple of days so and and here's why the
00:41:37
Federal Reserve is important so the Fed basically  acts as a market making and liquidity function in
00:41:44
what's called the overnight repo market now that's  an obscure market for the average individual on
00:41:49
Main Street but let me roughly explain why it's  and and at the end of it you're probably gonna
00:41:55
have the same reaction as me which is what the  [ __ ] [ __ ] what the [ __ ] [ __ ] okay but
00:42:02
I'll explain it in English first you're an LP a  limited partner and you give a hedge fund $1 and
00:42:10
very much like last episode how I explained why  hedge fund run levered the hedge-fund says well
00:42:17
if I take this dollar you know the bank will give  me some some amount of leverage on it but it would
00:42:24
be much better if I if I was able to basically  you know give them a an instrument like a bond
00:42:29
or some sort of short-term commercial paper and  then they'll give me more because they'll believe
00:42:33
in the quality of the instrument okay so they  go in the repo market and they basically do a
00:42:38
transaction overnight where they basically you  know buy some short-term commercial paper they
00:42:43
use it as collateral and then they lever it  up and then they go put it in the market that
00:42:48
entire dynamic works as long as the repo function  works every day every night you kind of go and you
00:42:54
clean up your balance sheet you look at how much  leverage you have you look at your leverage ratio
00:42:58
you make sure that you have enough money and  you go and you refinance your short term paper
00:43:03
that keeps you know JPMorgan Goldman Sachs Morgan  Stanley lending to you but if that market ceases
00:43:10
when the repo market ceases and there's no way for  you to either buy or sell commercial paper buy or
00:43:15
sell short term money market instruments and on  the other side the markets are whipsawing up and
00:43:23
down and so you're being margin called not being  margin called being margin called not being margin
00:43:28
called the markets start to really seize and  capitulate and everybody is just losing enormous
00:43:35
amounts of money and what I mean by everybody it's  everybody it's hedge funds it's sovereign wealth
00:43:40
funds its foundations its central banks everybody  is losing money and if we don't figure out how to
00:43:48
bring some calm into the financial markets it will  leave all of these limited partners and all these
00:43:55
other people with not just a lack of liquidity  and a lot less money than they had before but
00:44:06
this psychological pain of remembering what they  just went through and that'll prolong what we
00:44:14
have to deal with to get out of it right so you  know this is why I think it's really important to
00:44:19
understand that if we can nip the you know stage  zero of this which is the disease itself in the
00:44:30
bud and I don't mean by curing it and I don't mean  with a vaccine I mean by testing and data yeah if
00:44:36
we can understand and bound it then everybody's  psychology can move to fixing the capital markets
00:44:41
and right now how close we need it to be fixed  how close do you think we are to having that mass
00:44:46
testing done and then I think we all think we're  gonna have a low mortality rate and then go back
00:44:53
to normalcy is that something that's happening  in 10 days 30 days or 60 days if you had to pick
00:44:58
a number the the march back to normality David  I don't see any action to get the testing done
00:45:07
that needs to get done right now my mom got  tested yesterday it seems like there are more
00:45:12
tests out there this week than oh yeah Stanford  Oh clean up the testing there's definitely PCR
00:45:16
testing available now and you can probably get  your results in three to four days on average
00:45:20
although some labs are super backed up yeah my mom  said she's gonna take three days or four days yeah
00:45:25
but the the stuff that we're talking about which  is the general population testing I'll keep saying
00:45:31
it it's so critical that we do this to figure  out how many people have already been infected
00:45:35
and didn't know it we don't have that data that  we don't even have a plan for and it's not on the
00:45:39
radar the task force in DC is focused right now  on increasing the throughput and the availability
00:45:45
of PCR or just in time you know PCR test blood  testing that's yeah yeah it's all blood testing
00:45:52
it's just a matter of like like let me explain  the the PCR test involved the RT PCR test involves
00:45:58
taking blood and then there's basically six steps  that you have to go through with it in a lab and
00:46:03
it's done on like three different machines and  the actual cycle takes 30 to 60 minutes at 30 to
00:46:10
45 minutes so by the time you have that backlog  and you can multiplex it but meaning you can do
00:46:15
multiple at the same time and you can kind of do  different things but generally these machines are
00:46:19
not highly automated there are new machines that  are allowing us to automate more of these steps
00:46:23
and making them go a little bit faster and do more  multiplexing but it is still a multi step cycle to
00:46:28
take the blood and turn it into a test result once  you've and and try to measure it's available it's
00:46:35
a it's content and so this takes this takes some  time and so it's a chemistry lab it's doing this
00:46:41
work so until we have a point-of-care solution  which is like a test strip or something else
00:46:46
and and these are technically possible it's just  that they're not FDA approved and so they're not
00:46:51
getting made and distributed here whereas China  and Korea and Italy are using them out and they're
00:46:56
made in factories in China even though they're not  tested and approved in the normal way these in the
00:47:01
plan though to have these untested tests online  this week it's not what they're saying yeah but
00:47:05
you people are buying them yeah but so I guess  the question is when do you think we will have
00:47:13
these you know the general population taking tests  and we get like a large-scale testing like South
00:47:19
Korea did I think I'll agree that's the part of  the solution when does that happen unfortunately
00:47:25
we're not parallel passing it we've put all of  our resources into increasing the availability and
00:47:29
throughput of the rt-pcr tests for acute infection  cases and as a result we have everyone focused on
00:47:36
this there was some lab work and some research  departments I won't name them that we're working
00:47:41
on doing this general population testing but they  got yanked into the be getting the rt-pcr scaled
00:47:46
up because oh my god were behind the curve we got  to fix this thing so we got to get over this first
00:47:49
hump I think once we get over this first hump then  you're gonna see people distribute and work on
00:47:53
this and I think getting over the first hump is  happening in the next call at seven to ten days
00:47:57
and so then it's probably another 30 to 45 days  before we get these tests for general population
00:48:03
testing more broadly distributed so call it 45  days out why don't we do this at the same time
00:48:09
I mean why can't we parallel this this makes no  sense to me we're there with similar tests and
00:48:14
so many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley that  are banging their head on the wall asking this
00:48:17
question I've done so many phone calls over the  last few days of people being like what can we
00:48:21
do how can we get these things made where can we  go and everyone's just like flustered it's really
00:48:26
frustrating anyway we've got a lot of individuals  that we're trying to kind of collect together to
00:48:32
do this work some folks are calling China today  we're trying to see if we can get big bulk
00:48:35
orders out of China we're just going to pay for it  ourselves and then try and get some research labs
00:48:39
to run that you know research universities around  the country to run the experiments for us using
00:48:43
these untested unproven you know not have you run  one of these on yourself yet one of these unproven
00:48:48
tests yet I haven't I actually a friend of ours  I did one with video on with him this morning
00:48:54
and so yes a mutual friend of ours a mutual friend  of ours yeah and so and then I know lots of people
00:49:00
that have them and have used them and I've seen  them and I've gone through like you know I bought
00:49:04
a bunch of them they arrived tomorrow and so I  see you know we see we know how these things work
00:49:09
they're actually from a reliable source you know  these are not we know no one's actually done the
00:49:15
testing to prove the specificity and sensitivity  we're relying on a third party you know tested we
00:49:19
don't really know but comfortable I keep hearing  they're uncomfortable what's uncomfortable then
00:49:24
they stick it very far up your nose is that they  what people are or your you're referring to the
00:49:28
rt-pcr test so what you're trying to do they're  you're trying to get a sample of living virus
00:49:32
on a swab and the best place to get that living  virus for this particular virus is in your nose
00:49:36
or in your backyard throat so they're taking  a long q-tip and they're sticking it up your
00:49:40
nose and they're sticking the back your throat  then they put it in a little solution that will
00:49:43
keep the viral RNA alive and then that's what  they're shipping to the lab and that's what then
00:49:47
gets so it's uncomfortable to have it that far  up your nose is what they're saying that's why
00:49:51
I keep saying it's uncomfortable I've had more  uncomfortable things up my nose I'm sure it's
00:49:55
fine you know it's a q-tip in your nose yeah yeah  it's a q-tip way up in your nose so we actually
00:50:04
think that math testing is a thirty to sixty day  I think it math testing if in the worst case is
00:50:12
30 is 30 to 60 days of what I'm imploring anybody  with any influence is we need to get this starting
00:50:19
to happen in the next two to three weeks it needs  to start happening in the next two to three weeks
00:50:26
and you know this is this is where I would say  there are a lot of other people other than David
00:50:31
myself you Jason the people on our group chat  buying tests for the mass population you know
00:50:38
I just I just want to say something here which is  it is incredible to see guys like Jack Ma step up
00:50:44
and you know do what he can to send stuff here  but I would say that thus far there's largely
00:50:49
been an inverse correlation of contribution and  wealth during all of this and folks that are in
00:50:57
a position to help I think need to be more vocal  you know we all can't just participate when the
00:51:03
times are good take advantage of the bully pulpit  when the times are good and then when times are
00:51:09
complicated disappear and become anonymous its  part in why I think you and I decided to just do
00:51:14
these as often as we can yeah because at least  we can think through the problems so that at
00:51:18
least people can hear our voices and understand  that we are thinking through as much as possible
00:51:23
what to do I am literally calling folks in Wall  Street all the time because what little I can do
00:51:30
to assure them or be a market participant right  now to maintain liquidity I need to do because
00:51:36
in the absence of that participation we're gonna  just create more and more havoc and I think it's
00:51:41
important for other people who are in a position  either monetarily or through influence or both to
00:51:49
be out there right now doing something you know  just called Friedberg right now they should give
00:51:54
Freiburg a hundred billion dollars we'll go to  China we'll get the test and we can do our own
00:51:59
broad-based population study right now I would  jump on that right now looking at the statistics
00:52:06
as of today we obviously the total cases in  China hit 80,000 with 3237 deaths they had
00:52:15
only 11 new deaths yesterday and Italy 35,000  total cases 4,200 new cases and they added four
00:52:26
hundred seventy five deaths yesterday with a total  death count of two thousand nine hundred seventy
00:52:32
eight so that is just stunning what's happening in  Italy and it seems I don't know if the trendline
00:52:37
is it's getting worse or not but it's it's a it's  a horrific and awful situation they're completely
00:52:47
out of beds their their triaging elderly people  and letting them die in the hall so that younger
00:52:52
people who have a higher chance of surviving can  actually get oxygen it's just awful and they're
00:52:56
having 3,500 new cases or they're at 3,500 yeah  there are over 3,000 cases but added yesterday
00:53:06
so there's really it's it is flattening but who  knows if that's because they're just overwhelmed
00:53:11
and they can't do the testing but the debts are  something that seems to come down the last three
00:53:18
days we're looking at different time series the  number of people that died yesterday are in fact
00:53:22
the number of people that died yesterday the  number of people that tested positive yesterday
00:53:26
doesn't tell you as much because the test results  may be four days delayed and they may be ten days
00:53:32
into their symptoms by the time they get tested  and so on and so forth so the testing data
00:53:36
significantly lags the infected population  count likely and may not represent much of
00:53:42
anything right so there it's very and it's also  hard to know what the average fatality timeline
00:53:47
looks like there are published reports now out  of China and Korea that start to try and specify
00:53:51
this a little bit but we are looking at different  time series when we try and compare these things
00:53:55
and so everyone be cognizant of that as you  look at these numbers it's not simple apples
00:53:59
and apples let's let's move to a slightly second  and third-order Jason I think if we say sure that
00:54:06
disease is just gonna be a [ __ ] mental quagmire  we're gonna jump out the window yeah okay let's
00:54:12
let's talk about something that Mark Cuban said  which I really agree with which is that if we're
00:54:16
gonna do bailouts they can't come where we also  do things like you know allowing these companies
00:54:22
to do buybacks where a CEO pay isn't curtailed you  know it turns out that the airline industry which
00:54:27
looks like is gonna be first in line for a bailout  spent ninety six cents of every single dollar free
00:54:32
cash flow they had on buying back stock which is  only used to drive up earnings per share which is
00:54:39
only relevant for CEO pay so they have you know  they don't have the cash buffer they don't have
00:54:46
the thirty six months of operating you know window  that you know everybody should have their anomaly
00:54:53
on trying to hit they blew it on trying to have  their earnings per share go up by reducing the
00:54:57
number of shares in existence errors exactly  just so people understand if you can't if you
00:55:01
can't earnings per share you know do you take  earnings you divide it by the number of shares
00:55:05
so if earnings can't go up just divided by the  number of shares and earnings per share goes up
00:55:10
lowering the number of shares yeah if you had a  million dollars from earnings a million shares
00:55:14
it was $1.00 per you get rid of half the shares  it now goes up and and so now you know you have
00:55:19
CEO P go through the roof but these companies  are not any more resilient than they were before
00:55:26
and so now they're in line for a bailout and  I think the a large caucus of people across
00:55:33
files are very clear that these things need to be  wipeouts of the equity versus bailouts where you
00:55:38
know folks who took advantage of the financial  system here continue to get rewarded what do
00:55:43
you guys think about that totally to me if you  wipe out the equity though just pausing for a
00:55:50
second and taking the other side of the argument  I'm not saying this is the site I would take if
00:55:54
you wipe out the equity would not some of the  people who would hit that pain are shareholders
00:55:59
from a retirement home or a retirement plan like  CalPERS maybe own tension funds yeah pension funds
00:56:06
etc so you know it does seem like if you wipe  out the equity you could have some unintended
00:56:10
consequences was eques holders but I think what  the other side of the argument is we're gonna
00:56:15
have to have there be repercussions for people  running companies so close and recklessly to the
00:56:20
cliff and there has to be some pain not reward for  doing that and a bailout is a reward for operating
00:56:29
your responsibly is that what you're saying Jamaa  yeah I I think that actually you have to wipe out
00:56:35
the equity and I think the reason why wiping out  the equity is important is that it overwhelmingly
00:56:41
does not punish the you know retiree in their who  owns you know Boeing stock in their 401k Boeing
00:56:50
has not been held by retirees in their full  run case for years as a cohort of impactful
00:56:57
investors massive large institutional pools of  money on these companies these are the balance
00:57:05
sheets of governments these are the balance sheets  of foundations these are the balance sheets of a
00:57:09
very few very very wealthy people and the reality  is that for the broad-based population for the
00:57:16
350 odd million Americans in the United States  how many of them do you think are really active
00:57:24
market participants meaning for every dollar  of value creation or destruction how much do
00:57:30
they actually see I would guess it's less than  10 percent meaning 90 cents of every dollar are
00:57:35
nameless faceless organizations in a financial  infrastructure I think the lesson we have to we
00:57:41
have to we have to tell and the place we have to  move to is one of compassion of capitalism which
00:57:48
is that we have been so hell-bent on the use of  leverage on the use of these financial gimmicks
00:57:54
on the use of accounting tricks to enrich a  few at the sake of the many and this is the
00:58:00
right time where you should nationalize some  of these businesses and when they eventually
00:58:04
do get taken back out and floated publicly all of  those proceeds should go back to the United States
00:58:11
Treasury who should then use it to reinforce  Social Security and Medicare and everything
00:58:16
else because we are going to run a Multi multi  trillion dollar budget deficit to get out of this
00:58:23
and to just give people some context here that  the u.s. national debt is at 23 trillion dollars
00:58:28
which is seventy two thousand dollars per citizen  and one hundred eighty nine thousand dollars for
00:58:33
each citizen who pays taxes and we've run our  spending our D budget deficit is ability is a
00:58:43
trillion dollars a year we're gonna talk about  here I think a two to three trillion dollar
00:58:47
stimulus package which will increase the national  debt load by only ten percent so it does seem like
00:58:54
we can manage that but boy was this a strategic  mistake for us to run up a day during good times
00:59:01
was it not it's it's it's even simpler than this  like and and I hate to say this so bluntly but
00:59:07
this eurozone is gonna collapse okay Japan is  finished so there are two economies that matter
00:59:14
there's China and the United States as of today  and the great thing about that is in a set of two
00:59:22
there's only one instrument of safety which is the  United States dollar thank God in that world the
00:59:30
United States has exceptional leverage exceptional  exceptional leverage it is and it has always been
00:59:38
you know the beacon the light on the hill etc now  in a moment like this the United States has the
00:59:44
most ability to reset how we think about things it  could run five trillion dollar deficits tomorrow
00:59:51
it could run ten trillion dollar deficits because  it is still the backstop I'm not advocating for
00:59:57
that but this is where I think you need bold  decisive action and not piecemeal strategies I
01:00:02
don't think a trillion dollars is enough I really  think that if you think about what the eurozone
01:00:07
will have to do and what's gonna happen to the  US dollar we should be basically saying right
01:00:12
off the bat at a minimum anyone who makes less  than you know pick your number a million dollars
01:00:17
a year every man woman and child every or every  eighteen-year-old American man and woman should
01:00:23
immediately get five thousand dollars forget one  thousand two thousand five thousand and next month
01:00:28
if we're still out of business five thousand and  all of that does is just it's a trillion dollars
01:00:34
it's two trillion dollars over two months and  then you add another trillion dollars in all
01:00:38
this you know small business loans and all the  other things that's three trillion dollars that
01:00:41
you can deal with because we're the United  States and I think it's really important to
01:00:45
keep it in mind I know that sounds crazy well I  mean um people don't think oh you know blah blah
01:00:50
blah you know budgets and deficits but it's not  because everybody else is just as [ __ ] if not
01:00:56
more [ __ ] well let me give you it let me give  you an another perspective the GDP of the United
01:01:03
States is twenty trillion dollars roughly every  MutS assume the whole economy shuts down every
01:01:08
month that were shut down costs us 1.5 trillion  dollars so if we're gonna have the country shut
01:01:15
down for say three months we're losing four and  a half trillion dollars right there the problem
01:01:20
is economic growth of the economy is actually a  first-order function right so the the movement
01:01:27
of cash drives the the future economy and so  if we were just needing to fill that hole you
01:01:34
would need to come up with a couple of trillion  dollars and you would have the government going
01:01:39
out and buying ice cream cones and paying Hair  Salons and paying for dog walkers and you know
01:01:43
paying for construction workers and paying for oil  rig workers and basically basically employing and
01:01:48
buying all of those goods and services for that  functional equivalent of a twenty trillion dollar
01:01:54
GDP that's what it would take to just fill the  hole well that's if you're assuming no economic
01:01:59
activity I mean we we don't think there's gonna  there's going to be no economic continue with
01:02:03
maybe let's say it's a third less act economic  education in the shoe guys the shoe that hasn't
01:02:09
dropped is this idea that everybody is at home  working nobody's at home working that's a joke
01:02:15
that's a lie okay because as David said companies  are not you know self-contained units very few
01:02:24
are many of them and most of them operate in a  very interconnected socially dependent way with
01:02:29
other companies they're your customers you are  their customers nobody is doing anything right
01:02:34
now there's nobody there's nobody evaluating the  next great SAS tool guys come on and the other
01:02:41
issue is just it's just leverage Jason right  so we've also got to remember that a big chunk
01:02:46
of the economy is levered meaning that there's  debt and debt payments that need to be paid and
01:02:51
so those income streams are now gonna be absent  and so there's there's a there's a multiplier
01:02:57
effect when revenue goes down the economic impact  is actually multiplied and so you can't just fill
01:03:03
the hole so and so it becomes a very complicated  nonlinear kind of system that you have to try and
01:03:08
fill the holes and you got to find the places  where cash is missing and it's not moving the
01:03:11
fastest and that's where you got to throw the  money in the first like these repo markets and
01:03:14
so on well and there's no doubt that the we all  agree bottom-up is the way to do this so if we
01:03:19
have three hundred thirty million Americans if you  just have the bottom half get a thousand dollars a
01:03:22
month that's call it a hundred sixty billion  dollars a month it's only over the year two
01:03:27
trillion dollars so if we just did that it gave  everybody a thousand dollars a month that's twelve
01:03:31
thousand dollars for the bottom half they're not  saving that money they're gonna use it to still
01:03:34
go to spend it in the market correct they're gonna  pay their rat they're gonna go get dinner I don't
01:03:37
think so where people are gonna who are laid off  right now are gonna save the money well if you
01:03:44
gave me $1,000 or you know somebody $1,000 when  they're in their house on the sixth week of their
01:03:49
home confinement what what you think they're I'm  assuming that we're in week ten and we're we're
01:03:56
not in stuff confinement anymore we agreed in the  first third of the program that we're gonna get
01:04:00
there in whatever it is 60 days 90 days yeah you  know what I realized after wearing the same pair
01:04:06
of jeans four days in a row I have too many jeans  that's what I've realized and you know what I've
01:04:12
also realized that the cotton shirts that I buy  from H&M are [ __ ] perfect and I've complicated
01:04:20
in my life with all kinds of [ __ ] that I've  been buying because I thought it meant something
01:04:24
and right now it means absolutely jack [ __ ]  yeah I'd agree I'd agree with that perspective
01:04:30
that's what's really interesting when you see your  entire portfolio collapse when you see this belt
01:04:36
tightening it's happening even amongst and we have  you know what all three of us are lucky enough to
01:04:41
be at the you know in the top of our careers on  top of our income at this point in our lives but
01:04:46
we all came from humble beginnings as well and  if if the people at the top are belt-tightening
01:04:51
and saying you know what I don't need to buy  a $60 t-shirt I'm gonna buy a sixteen dollar
01:04:55
t-shirt boy does that have ramifications across  the entire economy and this reminds me very much
01:05:01
of the recession they say as luxury goods would  never rebound and sure enough the last ten years
01:05:06
luxury rebound luxury has rebounded massively  because it was not a psychological broad-based
01:05:12
impact to people's philosophy and framing of how  they viewed the world you think so I thought after
01:05:17
the economic crisis last time people did say  there would never be people specifically said
01:05:21
there would never be luxury goods again and that  these young people buying a condition I'm not
01:05:26
talking about some prognosticating analysts you  know the analyst is only is you know good as their
01:05:32
own biases what I'm saying is the average person  didn't really have to internalize a broad-based
01:05:39
impact to their way in which they view what's  important in their life this touches everybody
01:05:45
and I think that there is an opportunity for us  to really recalibrate what's important I think
01:05:53
conspicuous consumption is unimportant you know  helping each other is important taking you know
01:06:03
unnecessary vacations because it drives your  Instagram follower feed is [ __ ] stupid making
01:06:11
sure that we can contribute the incremental dollar  we have so that other people could get tested and
01:06:15
get back to work that seems like a better use of  your money in time yeah so no go ahead David good
01:06:22
enough I think that there yeah there's just great  perspective setting that that's that's happening
01:06:29
that and is gonna happen broadly across the  economy we've been fat and happy for a long
01:06:33
time and at least a sub-segment of the population  has been but we also have it really really well
01:06:41
really good here in the United States there's a  website I just recommend everyone check out and
01:06:46
spend some time on it's called Dollar Street and  you can go to gapminder.org slash dollar - Street
01:06:53
and check out the the website it is unbelievable  and it is probably my favorite website on the
01:06:59
internet and Dollar Street is a project of Ola  Rose Ling's wife all as the son of Hans Rosling
01:07:04
that the great visual economist who told people's  stories with visuals unlike the world and income
01:07:09
and population and growth and so on and she went  around and she photographed families all over the
01:07:14
world and showed how much money they make each  month and then showed all these common household
01:07:19
activities and goods brushing your teeth the oven  how do you what kind of clothes you have what in
01:07:24
your closet look like what do you sleep on and  it's pretty striking that half of the people don't
01:07:29
have a toothbrush a quarter of people use mud off  the floor to brush their teeth most people don't
01:07:34
have a bed on planet earth right only the top 1%  have a kitchen right I mean there's like these
01:07:39
amazing statistics with photos that really help  kind of illustrate this point and I think that
01:07:44
I'm not saying that the extreme demonstration of  humanity and the distribution of wealth income and
01:07:51
prosperity and humanity is as relevant here but  in all these photos everyone's very happy and they
01:07:55
live a happy life and there's a great reset happen  that that's happening that's underway happiness
01:08:01
eventually finds itself when the Delta goes from  being negative to being positive again when the
01:08:06
Delta is flat or the Delta is negative people are  getting into a worse condition things are bad so
01:08:10
we're gonna bottom out here and then we're gonna  you know no matter what state we find ourselves in
01:08:15
we'll very quickly find ourselves back in a state  of happiness and we'll all reset with respect to
01:08:19
Jamal's point on hey maybe I don't need all  these genes maybe I don't need all this and
01:08:23
this and this but there's certainly like critical  you know needs that people have and it's gonna be
01:08:28
pretty apparent pretty quickly you know how the  economy and people are gonna adjust to this this
01:08:33
new world but there's gonna be a judgement the  part of this that I think is actually constructive
01:08:40
is I do think that we're gonna swing the pendulum  back towards nationalized economies and and away
01:08:47
from global economies because I think this is a  way that politicians all around the world they'll
01:08:53
characterize it in different political language  you know some people will call it you know sort
01:08:59
of like American exceptionalism if here on the  right if you're on the Left you'll describe it
01:09:04
in much more social terms but they all lead to the  same outcome which is that what we have seen is
01:09:09
that in the push to globalization we have created  too much brittle infrastructure that doesn't work
01:09:17
and that we are not resilient enough men we are  hyper efficient and we are just in time and all
01:09:24
of that is great and everything is super cheap  but when we really need infrastructure to work
01:09:30
whether it's tests or whether it's the government  or what-have-you it just doesn't and I think
01:09:36
resiliency will force us to be more nationally  attuned and I think it'll be the right thing it'll
01:09:42
cause all governments to think about their own  food supply differently to think about their own
01:09:46
supply chains differently it'll demand companies  to be less profitable if it means that they can
01:09:50
withstand these kinds of shocks and it's one thing  to say that we could never have modeled you know
01:09:56
sort of like this two or three sigma event we're  dealing with but after the fact it's no longer a
01:10:00
two or three sigma event and governments have  to now internalize this and companies have to
01:10:05
internalize it we are not going to act the same  well just will be different look think about the
01:10:11
iPhone and obviously medicine and respirators  we've been talking about these things over the
01:10:18
last you know couple of weeks as this happens  we if if we do have a breakdown in relations
01:10:23
with China if we let's say we stop importing stuff  what would happen to Apple the most powerful and
01:10:30
valuable company how would they ever be able to  make iPhones again in the United States are they
01:10:34
capable of making them now it depends it depends  on who you're answering it for on behalf of the
01:10:39
u.s. customer Apple should probably be forced to  bring a lot of their production capacity back into
01:10:44
the United States they should find a diversified  global supply chain so that you have multiple
01:10:49
suppliers in many countries in the world but  they should rely more on America it will be less
01:10:55
profitable but it'll be okay and it's the right  thing yeah it's a hundred dollars what I read in
01:10:59
the estimates was an iPhone would cost a hundred  or a hundred and change more to make in the United
01:11:04
States but if they did they wouldn't away have  this imagination they make 5 600 oz per my phone
01:11:09
anyway well by the way the real outcome is that  you know and we were gonna do this anyways after
01:11:13
this which is I don't think people are lining  up to buy you know kind of irrelevant products
01:11:19
anymore in a way where we are just slavish to  things I mean I think it's important to ask
01:11:25
ourselves like this is probably the most socially  impactful world event the globe has had to deal
01:11:33
with since World War two and it's probably really  important to talk to somebody you know and if you
01:11:39
don't know you can document and you can easily  find the documents of people who survived the
01:11:44
Holocaust or lived through the bombings in London  etc their mentality was different as a result of
01:11:51
it it changed their behavior in very positive  ways right it was like the great advances in
01:11:57
humanity happened after that would get refocused  yeah you're less focused on things that are not
01:12:04
core or critically important and Freiberg what do  you think about that what this is showing in the
01:12:13
healthcare system and the holes in the healthcare  system the fact that we couldn't mobilize to deal
01:12:19
with this after we did scenario planning about  this after SARS we've done scenario planning
01:12:25
we've had you know I sent to our group list the  link of Bill Gates talking about this four or
01:12:34
five years ago and how this would be an issue I  sent a couple of links to people writing about
01:12:38
closing the wet markets in China after the SARS  outbreak I'm curious David what you'd think the
01:12:43
holes in the healthcare system are that need to  be fixed and what we can learn from this because
01:12:49
I think we're now coming into the you know as  we as we got through the virus we got through
01:12:53
the economic second-order effects let's talk  about positively what we're gonna learn because
01:12:57
I think that's what's getting at is that there's  a personal recalibrating of what matters maybe
01:13:02
morality ethics focus in our lives David what  can we learn from this on a health perspective
01:13:08
what should we do when this ends there's no easy  answer to that right nationalized health care
01:13:16
systems in some countries you could say they're  great my brother my family lives in London I was
01:13:20
my brother yesterday and you know they tried to  go down and get tested for a a tooth infection
01:13:27
yesterday and like it's just brutal dealing with  NHS in the UK you know people aren't telling great
01:13:34
stories about NHS and they're not saying oh my god  it's the best health system I love it health care
01:13:38
is hard people want personalized care they want  a lot of attention there's only so many doctors
01:13:43
there's only so much beds when you start giving  people good care costs a lot solving this stuff
01:13:47
and and the R&D dollars required to enter markets  is so you know so extraordinarily high you end up
01:13:53
charging a lot for products and services on  the back end it's a very complicated system
01:13:58
and there's no simple answer I do think that we're  learning and realizing pretty quickly that the US
01:14:03
and we're gonna we're gonna do some post-mortems  on this obviously as a world as a society one
01:14:09
thing that's clear is the Chinese response in part  was driven by a lack of bureaucratic red tape and
01:14:16
an ability to manifest action and an ability  to produce and distribute drugs and produce
01:14:21
and distribute tests without needing approvals I  think that's something that's gonna change in the
01:14:25
United States it has to be regulatory burden  on health care companies and pharmaceutical
01:14:30
companies on testing and Diagnostics companies  is extraordinarily high but the objective in the
01:14:35
United States has been do no harm which means  don't let anyone die through the action but it
01:14:40
may be that many people are dying through the  inaction and I think we're gonna maybe see a
01:14:45
big shift in policy and allow right to try laws  that are gonna be federalized so you know States
01:14:50
can make decisions about right to try laws and  doctors and patients can try drugs on their own
01:14:54
discretion without having a federal oversight body  perhaps the same will happen with Diagnostics and
01:15:00
testing and you know that with respect to what  the what services the government provides and
01:15:06
doesn't provide you know I I'm not sure there's a  lot of data on either side here that nationalized
01:15:11
health care systems do and don't work so it's  it's very hard to say what the right solution is
01:15:17
is here you know and I don't think that you want  to try and take R&D and put it in the government I
01:15:22
think that's a terrible idea I think that there's  a financial and a capitalistic motivation to find
01:15:28
discover molecules get them tested and proved that  they have a positive effect in human health and
01:15:33
we need to move this toward personalized medicine  which actually changes the construct and probably
01:15:37
increases the cost of doing this about 10x we're  already seeing this with stem cell therapies and
01:15:41
CRISPR based gene therapies is they're so much  more expensive in order to get that stuff moving
01:15:46
faster we need to remove the regulatory burden  and allow companies the ability to move quickly
01:15:50
and make this stuff more affordable the more we  the more barriers we put in front of companies
01:15:55
the harder is going to be and if we try to do  this with a top-down approach with the government
01:15:59
deciding what did you are and beyond and what not  to do R&D on we're gonna be in a [ __ ] mess so it
01:16:05
knows that some of my points yeah I would say as  well I think that there has to be you know after
01:16:11
the great financial crisis we we smartened  up about what the banks were allowed to do
01:16:16
unfortunately we didn't really smarten up about  what other financial participants were allowed
01:16:23
to do and a lot of what we're seeing here is our  excesses around leverage and credit and I think we
01:16:32
need to fix those we need to tell companies that  you know you can't put out certain amounts of debt
01:16:37
we need to be a little draconian actually to reset  this properly we need to tell you know market
01:16:42
participants that you can't run 10 or 13 times  levered you can't take a hundred billion dollars
01:16:48
and make it act like 1.3 trillion and then blow  a 50% hole in it you just you're just not allowed
01:16:56
to do that I'm just sorry but nobody should be  allowed to do that okay so if we look now on to
01:17:03
politics which is the least fun to talk about in  many ways but just on international relations I
01:17:09
think it's worth discussing there's been a bit  of a debate about what we call this virus and
01:17:15
the relationship between the United States and  China China went on a little bit of a propaganda
01:17:22
campaign in the last couple days saying the u.s.  that the u.s. created the virus Trump has now been
01:17:27
trolling them actively talking about the Chinese  virus I used the other day the one hand virus I
01:17:33
didn't realize that that people consider that  racist to say woman virus because we called it
01:17:38
the Spanish flu we called it the German measles  but I guess people are particularly sensitive
01:17:41
to this topic now and I think there's a critical  issue here that I don't understand why we're not
01:17:47
talking about this but wet markets specifically  trade in exotic animals the these viruses are
01:17:54
contained in certain animals like bats which are  you know together in flocks of like thousands and
01:18:03
the viruses and then these animals in wet markets  people don't know what that is you can you can
01:18:08
google it if you've got if you're not squeamish  but essentially in Chinese culture as I've read
01:18:13
it in the Wall Street Journal and in the World  Health Organization's advisements to cancel and
01:18:18
to shut down wet markets and there's you nana team  United Miss agreement on this and from the health
01:18:24
officials that these have to be shut down the  Chinese culture says we don't want to see meat in
01:18:31
a package because we believe it's counterfeit and  it's been frozen and then won't be as tasty and it
01:18:37
won't have the same nutritional properties so you  must slaughter the animal in front of us at least
01:18:42
for some significant percentage of the population  there it's a tradition and this is where these
01:18:47
viruses have uniformly been generated from and  now we have the President and China going at each
01:18:54
other and we have to have this very delicate  conversation I think David and I'm curious as
01:18:59
to your position on this because it's now hitting  like a ratio and you know in a and a bias against
01:19:05
a certain culture is how this is being framed  by the left which is just maddening because it's
01:19:10
actually a culture it is a cultural issue that has  to end just like our cultural tradition of shaking
01:19:14
hands obviously needs to end or be deprecated in  some severe way so David maybe you could talk a
01:19:20
little bit about what you think the outcome here  is on a political basis in relation to those wet
01:19:24
markets and China and us relationships look I  think China suffered heavily I'm sure they're
01:19:32
good I've heard they're gonna shut down the wet  markets but all I know is what I've read on the
01:19:35
internet so you know I think they're [ __ ] awful  and stupid and they should be shut down cultural
01:19:41
you know dependence aside there's another issue  in China apparently there's a huge amount of the
01:19:46
impoverished communities in China are encouraged  to actually grow and harvest rats I don't know if
01:19:51
you guys are aware of this but there's a bamboo  rat business when you grow these rats inside of
01:19:56
bamboo and then you kill them and you sell them  and so the the poorest people in China make money
01:20:00
growing and selling rats rat meat and the Chinese  government just in the last week have told them
01:20:05
to stop which actually is a huge effect on many  millions of families who are growing these rats
01:20:09
so there's an economic effect but it's obvious  that it's a terrible health effect but I'm not
01:20:15
sure that getting rid of the wet markets truly  eliminates or Radek AIT's the risk of a new viral
01:20:19
outbreak right like I think I mentioned to you  guys on our text stream the other day you know
01:20:24
40% of the bacteria in the oceans are killed every  day by viruses this is a great stat that Jennifer
01:20:29
Doudna uses in her book that on the discovery  of CRISPR and there's 10 to the 28 bacteria in
01:20:37
the oceans so half of them they all get killed  every other day every two days by viruses there
01:20:43
are viruses everywhere they are going to emerge  they're gonna hit us the issue isn't necessarily
01:20:48
where the source of the virus is coming from  it's just that we have to have better testing and
01:20:51
diagnostics and preparedness and treatment plans  and an ability to motivate and mobilize ourselves
01:20:56
to address pandemics like this in the future with  respect to the relationship with China I'm not an
01:21:01
economist I'm not a trade guy I don't really know  the nature of the relationships though I'll leave
01:21:08
that my might know my thought my thought on this  is that this is not a question of you know what
01:21:13
markets are no wet markets I think this is a  question of if you are a an anchor participant
01:21:20
of globalization in a global economy is there an  expectation to have a common set of behaviors the
01:21:28
lowest common denominator set of behaviors and  high genes that everybody signs up for to be a
01:21:35
you know fully fledged global market participant  now the the pros of that is that maybe everybody
01:21:43
decides to be a participant and to have lacks  borders and you know free trade agreements that
01:21:48
there can be no wet markets and a whole host of  other things we all agree on you know whether
01:21:52
we are ok with shaking hands or maybe it's  namaste from now on or maybe it's bowing the
01:22:00
problem with that on the other side is that all  of a sudden you create a monoculture that strips
01:22:05
away the individuality and the richness of every  country and you know I I kind of think like like
01:22:12
you know we could have attacked wet markets when  HIV started to spread because it was you know as
01:22:17
we understand it it was the emergence of the you  know bush meat and raw bush meat and the killing
01:22:22
of monkeys that had this virus that was then  passed to humans etc etc that started the HIV
01:22:28
epidemic so these things have happened before and  it's not as if we shut down you know all of those
01:22:34
markets in Africa they still exist in some form or  fashion and as David said there are huge economic
01:22:40
ramifications to to having these cultural edicts  and it's very difficult I think for an American
01:22:46
to demand China to do it when we're not willing to  step up just like in other ways you know countries
01:22:52
can demand us to lower our carbon emissions  and we say we're not going to do it so there
01:22:56
are implications and very difficult issues all  over the place but I do think in general that if
01:23:04
we move towards a more nationalistic economic  dependency interdependency I think that it's
01:23:16
probably the right thing to allow more resilience  to exist and for cultural diversity to continue to
01:23:26
compound because the world of just-in-time  efficiency I think we're learning now was
01:23:35
the wrong optimization for the world we need to  optimize for resiliency and that means some amount
01:23:43
of inefficiency it means more mom-and-pop shops  I think that that's a good thing it doesn't mean
01:23:49
everything is Amazon Prime now and Walmart I think  that's ok it means that the iPhone is a little bit
01:23:55
more expensive which means you upgrade every other  year that's ok it means that companies like Google
01:24:02
and Facebook and others are less profitable in the  short term that's also ok all of these things are
01:24:09
ok we just need to decide and now we need to  move forward mm-hmm when do we what's our best
01:24:15
estimate of when people will be allowed to go to  a restaurant I think it's you know again getting
01:24:20
back to what the people listening to this podcast  probably care about most as we wrap up here in the
01:24:25
in the second hour and thank you for tuning into  the all in pod Freiburg is with us from what's the
01:24:32
name of your incubator again David that production  board the production board previously met Romano
01:24:38
climate dot-com and shabbath property of social  capital partnership when do we suspect people
01:24:46
will be allowed to go back to work in the Bay  Area in New York when will people be able to go
01:24:51
and have a meal in a restaurant do you think this  is May June or July or August when will maybe at
01:24:57
equality of you I'm going crazy I'll give you my  optimistic you know and then we can give the final
01:25:03
word to David here's my optimistic view please I  think that the emerging evidence will soon be hard
01:25:15
to ignore that we have a denominator problem which  means that we're not testing enough and that these
01:25:21
IgG and IgM tests will come online at scale in the  next two weeks and that we will establish DMARDs
01:25:30
zones within cities and towns green zones if you  will where people who are either negative or who
01:25:36
have already gotten it have tested positive for  the antibodies will be allowed to interact so I
01:25:41
am telling you that it's within six weeks from now  six weeks from now we'll be in restaurants and we
01:25:48
may have to show our papers to somebody to get in  or have our foreheads tested no no your Jews have
01:25:55
to show your test result and have your passport  or driver's license yeah I mean I know this sounds
01:25:59
crazy I would much rather go to a restaurant in  the next six weeks where I had to show my papers
01:26:05
a little bit draconian sounds a little dystopian I  would much rather go back to taisho couldn't have
01:26:11
my goddamn ramen would show my papers and know  everybody else did and then have everybody go
01:26:15
through the you know a very simple temperature  test on their forehead like I give to my kids
01:26:20
when they're sick David you taking me over where  the under at six weeks for when we'll all be at
01:26:26
taisho can have me ramen I'm taking the under I'm  taking April 7th or 8th April 7th or 8th and we're
01:26:34
recording this I think on the 17th or the 18th  I think and so you're saying we're just gonna
01:26:39
be whatever 20 days out I - I'm taking the under  but apparently I think it's uh neighbor four or
01:26:44
five weeks David explained the under case just so  and we can end on that but what's the under case
01:26:49
because that's a great note den done yes so as  we see the number if you look at the UW virology
01:26:55
website and I've shared this with people on my  Twitter account which I started doing yesterday
01:26:58
which is at freezing have Friedberg I'm not sure  I'm gonna stick with it I don't know if I have the
01:27:05
stomach for it like you guys do but basically  they're showing you know steady case loads of
01:27:10
positives per day which again is delayed and if  you look at the ICU availability in the emergency
01:27:15
room wait time data which I think are better  leading indicators of where we are in the cycle
01:27:19
New York is about two weeks behind us New York  is gonna be [ __ ] for a little while but I do
01:27:24
think that the West Coast and with some travel  restrictions is going to be able to reopen for
01:27:29
business probably around April 7th or 8th because  we're gonna see a dramatic decline at that point
01:27:34
and we're gonna see a lower fatality rate than  everyone's predicting and we're gonna start to
01:27:37
have measures around washing your hands and masks  because you can't keep station shut down for that
01:27:42
long without literally never being able to open  again so I'm kind of balancing the economic need
01:27:48
against what I think the data is starting to show  that hopefully we are seeing the second derivative
01:27:54
turning negative now and so we start to see a  slowdown in new cases and then we see a reduction
01:28:00
in cases and I think that you know there's a  huge distribution and what that model can tell
01:28:06
you but I feel really good about Ghana April 7th  or 8th I was getting enough confidence there ok
01:28:11
it's safe to go outside again and by the way if we  don't open up for [ __ ] business everyone's done
01:28:15
forever alright that's what that's where I get  the number and most importantly when do we feel
01:28:20
comfortable playing cards again in person because  I'm I'm starting to think that I want any other
01:28:26
sounds crazy but at this point if the three of us  were positive and we'd gotten through it already I
01:28:32
would like to know that I think the entire poker  group needs to get tested and the best possible
01:28:37
scenario is that we're all inoculated we're not  carriers anymore what blockers in the system and
01:28:42
we can get back to playing cards because I am  and I'm being a little facetious here but the
01:28:46
chances are we might all have it right I mean it's  it's a possibility it I am going bonkers being at
01:28:52
home I am not designed for social isolation I'm  going crazy Tomas do you like it yeah I mean I'm
01:28:59
a pretty isolated person as a matter of course  anyway so other than work and you know my doing
01:29:06
this or TV I'm always at home yeah and but the  one thing that I cannot live without is Monday
01:29:14
pokers and I'll really tell you why it's like  in a moment like this here's here's what I've
01:29:19
realized I've realized just how much extraneous  stuff I have in my life how much I don't need
01:29:25
it how much I paid my time with things that are  just not important and it's really allowed me
01:29:32
to clarify like you know working on the next deal  not important thinking about my status in society
01:29:39
not important thinking about what other people  think of me not important my health important
01:29:46
my family and their health important and my  friends I love my friends yeah and we're very
01:29:53
blessed I I mean I I love the both of you that  group saved me in some really tough moments in
01:30:01
my life yeah and I hate not seeing you guys and  being able to you know just touch and feel you
01:30:07
on once a week it's that to me is brutal just to  be clear this is a group when we define touching
01:30:15
and feeling it we're talking about Kovach's love  it's fine we make man love and make man love over
01:30:20
the poker table and that's how men commune is  by just shifting large amounts of money across
01:30:26
the table I miss you guys too I'm going crazy  I'm not gonna be high I don't think like you're
01:30:30
gonna see me after this said and done I can't  take seriously buying things I just think it's
01:30:36
like what the [ __ ] is the point yeah I really  take seriously that we need to fix the social
01:30:42
infrastructure of the United States and in part  do or do what we can to help as many people as
01:30:47
possible right they had folks Jamaa Friedberg 2024  hey Dave free Bob you both thanks a lot for doing
01:30:54
this Jamar thanks a lot for doing this follow at  your mouth follow at Freiberg if you want to help
01:30:57
out the podcast well there's no ads to click on  because Tamar wants me to go broke on this no ads
01:31:03
but I will say if you write us a five-star review  on iTunes I guess that means we'll get indexed
01:31:08
and follow Friedberg follow our mouths follow  out Jason we'll see you all next time bye bye

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Episode Highlights

  • Market Concerns
    The stock market has seen significant declines, raising fears of a major correction.
    “The markets are [ __ ] we're all in trouble.”
    @ 04m 25s
    March 19, 2020
  • Testing and Treatments
    The need for widespread testing and potential treatments is emphasized.
    “We need to confirm that hypothesis because that's how science works.”
    @ 10m 43s
    March 19, 2020
  • Market Turmoil
    The markets are completely torn, reminiscent of the 2008 financial crisis.
    “We are in a moment that I have really not seen since '08.”
    @ 23m 15s
    March 19, 2020
  • Survival Strategies for Startups
    Founders must make tough decisions to ensure their companies survive the crisis.
    “Better to have four out of five where three out of five employees lose their job.”
    @ 31m 21s
    March 19, 2020
  • Urgent Call for Testing
    The need for widespread testing is critical to manage the crisis effectively.
    “We need to get this starting to happen in the next two to three weeks.”
    @ 50m 19s
    March 19, 2020
  • Economic Predictions
    The speaker predicts significant economic shifts and the potential collapse of the eurozone.
    “The eurozone is gonna collapse.”
    @ 59m 07s
    March 19, 2020
  • Bold Action Needed
    A call for decisive financial measures to stabilize the economy during the crisis.
    “This is where I think you need bold decisive action.”
    @ 59m 51s
    March 19, 2020
  • The Shift in Consumption
    As luxury goods rebound, a recalibration of what's important emerges.
    “Conspicuous consumption is unimportant; helping each other is important.”
    @ 01h 05m 53s
    March 19, 2020
  • Dollar Street Project
    A website that visually illustrates global wealth disparities through family photos.
    “It's probably my favorite website on the internet.”
    @ 01h 06m 41s
    March 19, 2020
  • Healthcare System Reflection
    The pandemic exposes critical holes in the healthcare system that need addressing.
    “What are the holes in the healthcare system that need to be fixed?”
    @ 01h 12m 43s
    March 19, 2020
  • Cultural Traditions and Health
    The debate around wet markets highlights cultural practices and their health implications.
    “These viruses have uniformly been generated from wet markets.”
    @ 01h 18m 47s
    March 19, 2020
  • Economic Reopening Predictions
    Predictions for business reopening around April 7th or 8th due to declining cases.
    “I feel really good about Ghana April 7th or 8th.”
    @ 01h 28m 06s
    March 19, 2020

Episode Quotes

  • There is a credible body of evidence showing asymptomatic spreaders.
    E1: US Response to COVID-19 & Impact on Startups, VC & Public Markets with David Friedberg
  • It's incredible now, Jason, on the assumption that you know Friedberg may not come back.
    E1: US Response to COVID-19 & Impact on Startups, VC & Public Markets with David Friedberg
  • It's like Winston Churchill said, America will do the right thing...
    E1: US Response to COVID-19 & Impact on Startups, VC & Public Markets with David Friedberg
  • It's incredible to see guys like Jack Ma step up.
    E1: US Response to COVID-19 & Impact on Startups, VC & Public Markets with David Friedberg
  • Happiness eventually finds itself when the Delta goes from being negative to positive.
    E1: US Response to COVID-19 & Impact on Startups, VC & Public Markets with David Friedberg
  • We need to optimize for resiliency, not just-in-time efficiency.
    E1: US Response to COVID-19 & Impact on Startups, VC & Public Markets with David Friedberg

Key Moments

  • Twitter Challenges01:05
  • Testing Strategies26:10
  • Economic Impact32:44
  • Market Seizure43:28
  • Economic Collapse59:07
  • Call for Action59:51
  • Cultural Practices Discussion1:18:47
  • Social Isolation1:28:52

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown