#1453 - Eric Weinstein

Joe Rogan (0:01)

What's up, brother, how are you?

Eric Weinstein (0:02)

Joe, how are you?

Joe Rogan (0:03)

You're hanging in there?

Eric Weinstein (0:03)

I have not been off of my property more or less in two weeks, so it's crazy to see another human being.

Joe Rogan (0:10)

Yeah, I don't think this is healthy for us.

Eric Weinstein (0:11)

I know.

Joe Rogan (0:12)

This lockdown shit, everybody's so weirded out. You want to run into people walking dogs, like they don't want the dogs to get close to each other, like, hi, everyone's across the street, hi.

Eric Weinstein (0:21)

And I'm a hugger, right? And we're in California, so I'm a hugger in California and all of my instincts are wrong.

Joe Rogan (0:27)

Everything's all messed up, everyone's confused. Here's the big question. How long does it take before we normalize and go back?

Like let's say the end of July, everyone announces we got this thing locked down, we have a viable treatment. It's no different than the flu. It gets you this chloroquine with the Z-Pak or whatever the current treatment is.

Eric Weinstein (0:51)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:52)

When do people start hugging again?

Eric Weinstein (0:53)

What do you mean? It's gonna be crazy. I mean, I think that the idea is we're all so starved for touch.

Joe Rogan (0:58)

Yeah.

Eric Weinstein (0:58)

That we're gonna have a jubilee like you've never seen. People are gonna greet each other with tongues who are almost like just acquaintances.

Joe Rogan (1:05)

I don't think that's a good idea. There's still colds and cooties and all that other shit.

Eric Weinstein (1:09)

I know, but I think everybody's losing their shit. They definitely are.

Joe Rogan (1:13)

I've been talking to a lot of friends that are on the extremely cautious side, let's say that. And they're not going anywhere, and they're wearing gloves and masks when they step outside their house to go do something in the backyard.

And they put the glove and mask down, and they spray it with Lysol, and they come inside and...

Eric Weinstein (1:31)

It's not healthy, and it is also healthy. I mean, the idea that we have not been tested in so long, it's good to remember also that this stuff is live and real, and it has always been live and real. And if it was possible to live without this stuff, that would be one thing. But the 75-year nap that we've been in since 1945 is itself the greatest threat to all of us.

And our preparedness is just a wonderful indicator where you actually get to see, this is the quality of your experts, this is the quality of your leadership, this is what they look like when put under stress.

Joe Rogan (2:08)

That's true, right? That's a good thing. And I'm impressed with the medical community. I'm impressed with the people that are recognizing that this is a huge problem.

Not so impressed with the administration of a lot of these hospitals that haven't prepared in terms of like masks and ventilators and a lot of these other things. Not so impressed with politicians, but also it just seems like everyone, like you said, was in this nap state and hadn't really been tested. And really, globally, no one had been tested since the pandemic of 1918 like this, right?

Eric Weinstein (2:44)

68, which I had, I had the Hong Kong flu, and 57 were sort of the best parallels to this.

Joe Rogan (2:52)

You got the Hong Kong flu in 68?

Eric Weinstein (2:54)

I had the Hong Kong flu and was sick as a dog in San Francisco. I was like three, two, I mean, three, four.

I think it went from 68 to 70

Joe Rogan (3:04)

Do you remember it?

Eric Weinstein (3:06)

Oh yeah, I was in San Francisco. My grandma had to come up from LA to care for me.

It was bad. It was like one of my earliest memories, yeah.

And so 68 and 57, I think, are the best comparables to this before we go back to 1918 And almost nobody remembers these things. Like it's very weird. Many people had never heard of the Hong Kong Flu when I started talking about the fact that I'd had it.

Joe Rogan (3:33)

Yeah, I vaguely remembered it until you just said it. And then I'm like, ooh.

Eric Weinstein (3:36)

I'm slightly older than you, right?

Joe Rogan (3:37)

Yeah, I'm 52

Eric Weinstein (3:38)

I'm 54

Joe Rogan (3:39)

Yeah.

I don't remember the Hong Kong Flu, but I do. You know what I mean? Like I don't remember it personally.

Eric Weinstein (3:45)