E25: Biden's vaccine mandate, "equity" in distribution, NFT speculation, impact of inflation & more

Jason Calacanis (0:00)

Does anybody have any thoughts on this?

Chamath Palihapitiya (0:03)

I mean, I think it's incredible. So does Friedberg's dog.

Jason Calacanis (0:27)

Hey everybody. Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All-In Podcast. It's been a week. It's been a minute with us today. Of course, the Queen of Kin Wands, David Friedberg and the Rain Man himself calling in from a nondescript mansion in one of 17 cities.

The Rain Man himself, David Sacks, and cackling like a dictator who got his two Billy back, and he's back in the game, Chamath Palihapitiya, for those of you.

David Sacks (0:58)

He's re-billionized.

Jason Calacanis (0:59)

He re-billionized? Is he going to get a car with doors that go like this?

Chamath Palihapitiya (1:03)

Doors that go like this. Doors that go like this.

Jason Calacanis (1:07)

Let's talk a little bit about the vaccine. Biden says everybody who's an adult is qualified by May 1st. He's instructed the states to do that. We are now hitting 2.x million a day. We had a 3 million shot day, I believe, Friedberg.

And obviously the $1.9 billion COVID slash everybody gets a big slice. Bill got passed. $1.9 trillion with a T. Sorry, that's what I said. $1.9 trillion. Somebody put $1.9 billion in the notes. Yes, $1.9 trillion.

$1.9 billion is what the COVID.

The COVID NFT went for $1.9 trillion. As Sacks has said in the past, a trillion here, a trillion there. Soon enough, it's real money.

David Sacks (1:48)

Well, Biden's speech really begged the question of why we still need this $2 trillion bill if COVID is going to be over in May. But putting that aside, I think Biden's speech was very welcome in that he called for states to drop all of these crazy eligibility requirements that are actually preventing people from getting vaccinated at this point. He says that every adult American should be able to get a dose by May 1st.

And he's right. And, you know, there's a sharp contrast with Gavin Newsom in California, who keeps playing political games with the administration of these doses. So in California yesterday, just yesterday, we added 250,000 more doses of unused inventory. So we the amount grew to 4.5 million unused doses sitting on a shelf. Only 215,000 people got vaccinated.

So we're actually building inventory faster than we're building the population of people getting vaccinated. And it's because of all these crazy rules and requirements. You have to go make an appointment, you know, and that really actually it's kind of productive because it discriminates against people who are less computer savvy, don't know how to navigate the website, or, you know, communities who don't want to enter their name in a government database, which, you know, there's a lot of people in California don't want to, you know, put their names in a government database. And so it works against those communities getting vaccinated. At this point, we should just drop all the requirements, drop the website, let anyone who wants a vaccine just get in line and get vaccinated, it'll go much faster.

Chamath Palihapitiya (3:17)

The problem is that we throw around this word equity, and that we need to do something with equity. And in fact, I think that people who use that word are stupid. I think what they're trying to say actually is we don't want inequity. And the most inequitable thing is to actually take the most impoverished and fragile of the population and prevent them from actually getting the vaccine because they're the ones that actually need to be working and can't afford to actually not work or can't afford to be sick or can't afford to find solutions to childcare.

It's this weird word that the extreme left uses now to describe policies that are just frankly poorly thought out and even more poorly executed.

Jason Calacanis (4:01)

It might even be more pernicious than that, correct, Friedberg, in that anybody who gets a shot is helping everybody else because they are now a blocker in the system. I know this is incredibly simplistic, but I'm a simplistic guy and it just seems to me that... Well, it's a different way of thinking about the benefit of vaccination. And I've said it in the past, but the benefit of vaccination is to get enough people vaccinated that the virus generally stops spreading and then the pandemic ends. And that's the objective. It's not about creating equitable protection for individuals. And as Americans, it's interesting. We think about it in terms of an individual benefit. It's like, how much do I get? What do I get from this vaccine? I want to get protected. The other guy's getting protected before me. Who gets to go first? Yada, yada, and it becomes this kind of competitive frothing for a vaccination. And the reality is if we get enough people vaccinated fast enough, the pandemic ends.