美国应对新冠疫情，及对初创企业、风投和公开市场的影响

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Alright, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the all in podcast. We'll call this episode 1. We did a test and over a 100,000 of you listened to the test podcast that we did the audience Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:12): in a Jason Calacanis (00:00:12): few days in a few days. Chamath is already getting addicted to his statistics. a new podcaster. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:00:18): I need to focus on something going up. Jason Calacanis (00:00:21): Yes. Exactly. Our portfolios are getting crushed, but the podcast numbers are going up. They're A meaningless victory to be sure. But we got a lot of positive feedback, and we're all sitting at home in quarantine. As you can see, I had set up my home office. I got a microphone here, and Shamoff is in his bedroom. And Dave Friedberg, I think, is in his wine room or something in his in his compound. Are you in the safe room? Is this the safe room Dave Friedberg is with us again? He got a lot of great feedback, and he's now on the Twitter. You can follow him Friedberg. I don't know if he shut his Twitter down because he was getting harassed on Twitter. Welcome to the club. Are you in your safe room, David? David Friedberg (00:00:59): Yeah. It's brutal on Twitter. I don't know how you guys do it. You put something up, and everyone, you know, just goes after you. harsh out there in the Twitter world, in the Twitter verse? Jason Calacanis (00:01:09): Basically, you have to mute and block anybody who is under a 100 followers and being an absolute jerk because it's likely a Russian bot, you know, being run out of, like, Manila or something like that. They they've got all these, like, sophisticated rings of people that they just hire for ten bucks a day to harass people online. I mean, I know it sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory, but it's actually true. This large groups of bots who go after people and try to create chaos. But Hey. We're sitting here. It's today's Wednesday. We did our podcast on Saturday. The stock market has gone down another 20% since then, I guess, or so. And we are looking like this is gonna be a 50% correction or something like that. We're now, you know, well past 30 plus percent. And on the good news It looks like testing is actually occurring. And that work on a viral work on treatments is occurring. I don't know if we can call them cures, but treatments is occurring, and a quarantine in place is being taken seriously. And I guess the biggest thing is that Trump has basically admitted This is a crisis, and he's taking it seriously. Friedberg, what is your assessment of where we are today versus when we taped on Saturday? in terms of the resolution to this. We are we overreacting, reacting just enough, or not reacting enough? Enough. David Friedberg (00:02:41): There's three things to consider. the health, the policy, and then the markets. On the health front, it seems like we have done a lot in terms of containment, and we're ramping up testing. We are still not doing broad general general population testing, which is necessary for us to truly understand the dynamics of this disease. and also to the understand the contagion of this disease, and we need to fix that problem. There's a task force of a hundred people out of DC being led by Jared Kushner and a number of people from the tech industry that are working on ramping up testing and doing broader general population testing. The policy decisions are what get quite scary, and that is all of the containment, shutting down travel, shutting down shouting down bridges and the economic ramifications of doing so are are frightening. I think I mentioned the other day that 48% roughly of the US workforce works in small businesses, another roughly 10% work in travel, another roughly 12% work in energy, And, you know, you kinda add this up, and you can quickly see why Steve Muchin, the US treasury secretary, was saying that we should expect 20 to 30 percent of the workforce to be unemployed by this summer if we keep this up. So that is a frustrating and staggering statistic and something worth debating whether that policy decision is appropriate relative to the potential life and health and and health system impact, you know, which one is worse. And then the market question is just I I I don't know how to address that, but things go from that Jason Calacanis (00:04:13): -- David Friedberg (00:04:13): I -- -- about to words. Right? Jason Calacanis (00:04:15): Yeah. So let's -- -- things. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:04:17): I have 8 things David Friedberg (00:04:18): that I -- Hold on. Hold on. Hold Jason Calacanis (00:04:20): on. One thing a time here. David Friedberg (00:04:21): Everybody everybody's watching it. I wanna say I wanna say one more thing, and it is I I think the most important data to come out today. So the markets are fucked, so we're all in trouble. We're, you know, Yadayada. The most scary thing is Ford and GM just shut down their plants today. And the reason they shut down their plants is because out of fear, of coronavirus and auto workers, and the UAW basically force him to do it. The the world lives on a 30 day food supply. So if you stop food production today, there would only be 30 days of food for the whole world to eat based on our calorie consumption per day. and especially with an isolated border, and we import a lot of food in the United States. If that means that we are then gonna shut down other factories, the Ford GM shut down, and we're gonna shut down food production processing and distribution factories, then we have a food security crisis. And this becomes a real societal problem. So the concern that I have with the factories being shut down today is the precedent it sets and the potential follow on from there in the food system. And one thing we can't stop doing is making it getting food to humans in the United States or else we are gonna have problems. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:05:25): You're you're right. But before we go there, the the good news is that these directives don't apply to national critical infrastructure, and the food supply is covered within that. So unless something cataclysmic happens, those folks are still going to make sure that food supply is there. I do agree with you that the issue that we have to contend with is that you know, there may not be as much. And in the, you know, 30th to 90th day, that becomes a real issue if this thing becomes a very protracted problem. This sort of brings us back, David, without being too alarmist about how we started and how started really importantly at the beginning, which is there is a small but very credible body of evidence that is starting to show, and this is what you put out on Twitter and part of why you got, you know, attacked probably by the farmer lobby. but that shows that there is a there is potentially an enormously large asymptomatic spreader dynamic in this disease. So can you describe that and what that may mean and why there's a lot of silver lining and good news in that if it's true? David Friedberg (00:06:41): There are several data points that are showing us that there may be an unexpectedly high number of people that get this disease and don't have any symptoms and show it. The historical data that we've gathered to date has been largely symptomatic patients And in some places like in Korea, asymptomatic patients that had really close contact with symptomatic patients that were confirmed to be positive. And in Korea, in particular, they found a large cohort nearly 40% of the infected population were people between twenty and twenty nine years old that did not exhibit any symptoms or had very mild symptoms, had a runny nose and didn't even know that they were sick. On the Princess cruise ship, it turns out that up to 50% may have been asymptomatic. People were all tested on that cruise ship because there were so many people that were positive, and through that data set, that cohort we found a very large asymptomatic population, 50%, roughly. The NBA players have now been tested, and out of 7 players on 5 teams, So out of 7 players on those 5 teams that have tested positive, it seems like none of them are having any symptoms. There may be one person who's having a cough, but generally, they seem one of I think it was Donovan Mitchell said I could go play a 7 game series tomorrow. So this data is really important, and it hasn't been fully accounted for in the models and the of the pandemic and the predictions of the fatality rate. We're assuming that, let's say, 2% of people that get this disease end up dying, And by the way, that's also based on an age histogram that may not be appropriate for our particular cohort in the United States. If you took that data and then you just did it based on the fact that a large percentage of people actually usually don't die, but they end up just being asymptomatic. David Friedberg (00:08:21): It really changes the denominator and it skews the results. A paper published showed that in China, up to 86% of people did not realize that they were sick or they were unreported, they had mild symptoms. If you take that high level, you take that low level, call it somewhere between Jason Calacanis (00:08:36): 25.86%, David Friedberg (00:08:37): maybe even as high as 86% of patients are asymptomatic, which means that the actual fatality rate is much, much lower even in a large cohort that gets infected here. So we should be mindful of this new data that's emerging, and we're still racing and acting from a policy basis as if 2% of people, 3% of people, 4% of people that get this are gonna die, and that may not actually be true based on what we're seeing in the last week. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:09:03): I have a comment and a statement. The comment is people will say, David, you can't extrapolate from an NBA player who may just be in peak physical fitness although I think your answer is gonna be, it's not clear that the that the disease is correlated necessarily with physical fitness or unphysical fitness at all. Just maybe the strain in how your body processes it. But then the question is, doesn't this mean that we need to population. So not just the PCR test that we've heard a lot about, but also these antibody tests so that we know that people have had it. Jason Calacanis (00:09:44): And what's the status of that, David? What's the status of it? David Friedberg (00:09:47): That that's exactly right, Timat. And by the way, on the healthy NBA player point, it's absolutely true. People that are between 20:30, the average age in the NBA is twenty six years old. People that are between twenty and thirty years old generally seem to have no to mild symptoms based on what we saw in Korea. the other datasets need to be taken into account. So so the NBA is an interesting anecdote. Sure. And you could discredit it all you want and say that it's a highly correlated class and so on because everyone's together all the time. But we could look at the data that came out of China in a paper that was published in the journal of Science, and a paper that was published in the journal Nature from Korea that showed very large percentages anywhere from 20 to 50 to 80% or 90% of people being completely asymptomatic across an age spectrum. Certainly, very heavier weighted towards the younger age bracket from you know, children all the way up to thirty or forty years old, you can be completely asymptomatic. And so these are really interesting discoveries that have happened. And so to your point, we need more data, and we need to firm that hypothesis because that's how science works. So we have a hypothesis. Let's go test it. The problem is we're not testing it, and we should be as a priority right now because the policy decisions we're making are based upon a denominator that may be wrong. So the correct action should be to go get those antibody tests go out into the population and start testing the asymptomatic general population and see what percentage of people in these high risk zones like Seattle and LA New York and SF already have the antibodies to this virus, meaning they've been infected with this virus and have not or are not showing any symptoms. And that gives us a better sense of, a, how widespread this infection is, and, b, the true dynamics of the fatality rate and the symptomology of this disease and how it may affect people. Those IgG tests are being made on mass in China today. They are being shipped to countries like Italy where they are, in fact, being used on the front line They involve a blood draw, and then they have this lateral it's they're called a lateral flow assay in terms of how they're kind of tested. The the blood runs across a strip, and you see a value, and you have a pretty good sense at that point. David Friedberg (00:11:47): Those kits cost a couple of pennies to make in China. We could probably get a couple million of them. don't understand why we're not. I don't understand why someone in the federal government isn't begging China and and apologizing and appeasing to them to send us those kits There are a lot of people I know that have bought them on the Internet. I have a bunch of them. People that I know have bought them. They have been shipped in through brokers, and they are not FDA approved. They cannot be used for diagnostic purposes because of FDA guidelines and how the FDA regulates these things. They can be used for research purposes. but they may not be very sensitive and very specific and they don't have great testing on them. So we don't they they estimate the sensitivity and the specificity to be Jason Calacanis (00:12:23): 90%, David Friedberg (00:12:24): roughly 10% false positive, roughly 10% false negative. But for what we're trying to accomplish, that's good enough. We're not trying to give people a diagnosis of disease. We're trying to run an epidemiological study, and we should on the general population to figure out how many people out there are asymptomatic and have been infected. That is an important statistic that's missing. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:12:43): And to your point, if we find out that there is a large population of people that have actually felt this disease passed through them, it's faster that we can sort of get people back to work out in the streets, which is now probably going to be the most important thing we can do to just prevent a complete economic calamity. Jason Calacanis (00:13:04): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:05): Yep. There are there are Jason David Friedberg (00:13:10): And and by the way and sorry. Treatment's Shamab. Sorry to interrupt you, but treatments are the other thing, and I think you're gonna talk about that. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:13:15): Well, treat treatments are interesting. Let's talk about that right now because to me, what's incredible is, again, now what is emerging. And and it's small in scale relative to how amplified it may may should or should not be is you know, remdesivir is very different, it just seems like prophylactically even there's some data that's showing out of France that chloroquine seems to be effective. These are these are solutions that are pennies to make And some of the some of the feedback that I've heard is that part of why the FDA, the CDC, the the federal apparatus is reluctant to embrace these things is in part because of pressure from those lobbies, but that seems to me unfathomable in a moment like this. So why do you think the government hasn't put out the CDC has 0 directive right now on the management and and efficacious management of this disease. Why is that? David Friedberg (00:14:11): Okay. What Foyuci and others have said and doctors around the country echo is that these treatments have not been clinically tested through a blinded controlled study, and that is a very fair assertion, generally speaking, for doing good medicine, but we are in a crisis state. And in a crisis state, you have to triage. And you also have to triage policy and we should be considering triaging policy and changing the way that we do policy under these extenuating circumstances. If doing treatment can reduce fatality rates by up to 4 x as Korean doctors have claimed, it is worth taking the risk or perhaps it is worth letting the FDA say, Remdesivir, Kalettra, Chloroquine, and others are being widely produced, widely distributed, the government is mandate it, and doctors and their patients can decide if and when they wanna use it. And let them take the risk without clinical trials and without data and the typical process of the FDA. Jason Calacanis (00:15:08): What what's the downside of taking these drugs? Are they particularly dangerous? I mean, I I've heard the colloquine. Am I pronouncing correctly? Coloquine. Chloroquine. I've heard that this can be a little bit nasty in terms of side effects. So is there some major downside that I mean, it's kinda like an off use of a drug. Right? Like, this is an off use of a drug as opposed to David Friedberg (00:15:27): It's it's an off use of a drug and some of the antivirals aren't even fully tested in humans. So we don't yet know what the side effects may be. And also, remember, side effects can change based upon your health condition. So someone that's in respiratory distress may have different side effects than someone who's taking it in a healthy controlled clinical trial. So we're not really sure. That's the argument that doctors would make is, you know, our first mandate is to do no harm and so they don't wanna apply medicine that that might do harm. And so that is the standard protocol and practice and process. However, again, in a crisis state China and Korea said, guys, we're trying this thing and it's working and we're adopting it. Let's go for it. And they race forward It could be that this is a good time for the United States to consider an emergency policy action where we make a lot of this stuff make it available and simply let doctors use their best judgment rather than have the FDA be the paternal state that makes a decision for the doctors or makes a recommendation to the doctors. Jason Calacanis (00:16:23): What do we think the fatality rate actually is? Like, David, if you were looking at this and you had to place a bet and put a 100 percent of your net worth on it and be all in and have massive skin in the game. Where do you think the fatality rate here in the United States winds up being overall? because the data that came out of Wuhan has been markedly going down as they get the numbers corrected. Who knows? Chinese numbers, you know, censored by the government and maybe perhaps massaged. It's gonna be hard to tell. what do you think the real fatality rate is? The 1st fatality rate I heard was 5.8% out of China. David Friedberg (00:17:01): China. The women's data the the rule based on the paper that came out in science over the weekend, the Wuhan was estimated to be 1.4%, and Wuhan was the worst data out of China. The, quote unquote, rest of China is still estimated at about point 15 percent or point 16 percent or point 14%, something like that. Jason Calacanis (00:17:18): Where is it versus, like, the flu every year or something or the normal flu? 1.1% David Friedberg (00:17:23): roughly. And so, you know, if you're looking at somewhere between 0.2 and Jason Calacanis (00:17:27): 1.5%, David Friedberg (00:17:29): now in Italy, I think they're at over 7%, We talked about this on the last show, but Italy is a much older population, and their health system is completely overwhelmed. So there there's some confounding data that's confounding variables there that may be making Italy a very unique outlier on a distribution of what's gonna happen here. The United States has a population a little bit older than China, but much younger than Italy. So our health system is and our health system is generally more ICU beds per capita than Italy, so so we should be in a better place. The thing we don't know that does concern me about the health system in the United States and the the population of the United States is it seems that there may be a high correlation with severity of disease and a one c levels. And and as a result, the US has 1 of the highest obesity rates of any country in the world and highest diabetes rates. And so we may have a population that has a very high percentage of people with a high a 1 c that may be at higher risk than say people in other countries. I don't know that for sure, but that is those are Jason Calacanis (00:18:28): 2 David Friedberg (00:18:28): kind of confounding statistics that may kind of make things a little bit worse. If I were to put my money on this, Look. I I'm a betting guy. I I I I would be a little bit nervous at this point, but I'd say it's probably somewhere between point Jason Calacanis (00:18:39): 15 David Friedberg (00:18:40): and and call it Jason Calacanis (00:18:42): 1.8%, David Friedberg (00:18:44): you know, call it that's that's an order of magnitude, I know. So, you know, but you could do the math. That's probably somewhere between one and ten times as bad as the flu. And so that that that, again, leads to the big policy question about are the actions warranted? Is it okay to let the health system crash? Jason Calacanis (00:19:00): So that's a perfect then flip to you, Chomov. You've heard his basically, his line at, you know, point one to ten times the flu, one point eight or something. you know, if we split the difference of those 2, it's point 5, it's point 6, point 7 fatality rate, is the reaction of sheltering in place and the economic turmoil, it's causing worth it? Yes or no? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:19:25): Right now, you guys need to keep talking. I need to jump off for 2 seconds, and I'm gonna Jason Calacanis (00:19:30): be right back. I'll be right back. Okay. No problem. And so what do you what do you think now, if we were to look at your estimate, David, is it actually worth what's happening? Would we if you and I were making the policy or UI and Chamath were, you know, the cabinet members as it were making this decision, is this decision and the economy crashing in a potentiality of 10, 15, 20 percent unemployment, and all the downstream effects, would it be better to do what the UK was originally doing, which is just a, hey. Let's get the herd mentality going, and let's get the herd immunity go. I know this is, like, the most difficult question in the world, but, like, we're here. So let's look. David Friedberg (00:20:06): There there's a there's a spec number of options. It's not binary. Right? It may not be lock everyone up and let everyone out the door. It may be that you have a a more nuanced policy where you say, let's keep people over sixty five years old, give them the strong recommendation to stay home, and make sure that you distribute chloroquine to doctors around the the country so soon as elderly people start having symptoms, they they maybe get some treatment. But, you know, that's kind of an option. You keep sixty five year olds at home. You do random general population antibody testing. And once you hit a certain percentage of the population having been exposed to this thing, it may be that at that point, you say, okay, you know, the over Jason Calacanis (00:20:44): 65 David Friedberg (00:20:46): limit is lifted, or it may be that, you know, you do something Similar to that, different age brackets have different containment recommendations. You also do it with with random Genpop screening. You also do it with medicine being distributed. So there's a nuanced answer to that where the policy should be a little bit more directed. It should be a little bit more involved in terms of treatment, testing, and containment strategy, and it doesn't need to be so binary. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:21:13): Right. Jason Calacanis (00:21:13): It doesn't have to be everybody stay at home. If we get to the point where a population has very few people have had it, then more people should stay home so it doesn't spread? Or and then if more people have it so if 50% of young people in San Francisco have it already, we've got herd immunity, then maybe we can start saying, hey. If you're over 65, you can go out, but just stay out of restaurants or something. Is that what you're saying? David Friedberg (00:21:37): Yeah. Once you hit, like, 50 to 60% of the population having antibodies to a particular virus, you you know, or like a a flu, for example, you'll see that r naught number drop well below 1. And then explain Jason Calacanis (00:21:49): r naught to everybody again just so David Friedberg (00:21:51): It's yeah. It's basically like the viral coefficient. Like, for every one person that's infected, R naught tells you how many other people will get infected after them. And so if it's 2.5, which is what some estimates say it is for coronavirus right now, then for every one person that gets infected, roughly two and a half people get infected, affect it. And that number goes down as more people get infected. because as more people get infected, there's less people to infect, and the rate at which you can then infect other people all drops, so you are not collapses. And so at a certain point, you have this kind of basis for saying, hey, guys. Let's okay. Now I gotta step off. Sorry, guys. Jason Calacanis (00:22:24): Yeah. No problem. Do you think? So Shamak, what David -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:22:27): This is incredible. I mean, what you are seeing in real time as we're doing this is literally like I've I've never seen this before. We we should probably explain what what is going on. So What is going on in the background is the markets are just completely torn. Now why are the markets important. Many people aren't invested at all in the stock market. I get it. But it is where liquidity and capital markets function and derived out of those capital markets is the money that then hits start ups. It hits the banks, which then lend to small businesses It is the functional machine, the undergirding of the US and the World economy. And we are in a moment that I have really not seen since 8 where there are seizures in this market in extremely violent ways. And so when I had to jump off the phone, it was me trying to do my part to kind of help, but also trying to make sure that we maintain full liquidity in times like this. It's incredible. Now, Jason, on the assumption that, you know, Friedberg may or may not come back, I mean, what dramatic podcasting we're dealing with. Jason Calacanis (00:23:53): I know. Well, you know, I mean, people also have their kids at home. So, you know, I might have to jump out and take care of the twins or or the ten year old. So it is definitely having a psychological impact on everybody being home. You've been home for over 2 weeks. I've been home for a week. I went out once to do a podcast my office with just one person there. What I Chamath Palihapitiya (00:24:11): what I wanted to do was start at sort of the ten foot level, and I'd like to build up to the hundred thousand foot level. And I think that'll be a good way of talking about what we teased and talked about a little bit in episode 0, which is sort of these second and third order dynamics. Jason Calacanis (00:24:33): Before before we go to that, let me just I wanna wrap up with Dave with saying about what the change in policy should or could be. So right now, we're having we're having, you know, this basically quarantine. In some cases, it's a hard quarantine. In some cases, a little bit softer. It's a recommendation and you know, people are being told to, you know, stay at home. Should this change? And if under what conditions do we start going back to normalcy? because I think that's what people wanna know is when is this gonna end And under what circumstances? I'm just talking about, you know, staying home. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:25:09): Well, look. If it if it were me, I think what we would do is adopt some of the mitigation strategies of China and Korea and Singapore. All of these countries have kind of showed us a way to deal with it now we have to decide that a short term suspension of typical civil liberties is worth the trade off. Now it's not worth it under the normal course under any any any imaginable way But if we had to trade off some of those civil liberties in the short course so that we could get back to normalcy, I think most of us at this point and definitely all of us after another week or 2 of home isolation will do it. And what I think it would entail is setting up zones that we would understand to be uninfected. And what that means are people that don't have it or people that have antibody bodies and eventually allowing those zones to reopen so that we can actually have some amount of economic activity. And what that will require is massive testing of the entire population. Right. Testing testing, testing. I mean, there should be lines and lines and lines. It should be, you know, how we would and we know, by the way, how to mobilize this, it is no different than when we would go to vote. Jason Calacanis (00:26:31): Right. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:26:32): And, you know, we could all be told based on birth year, Right? Everybody go based on birth year to your local voting facility. There are phlebotomists there. They can run these LFIAs. They can and they can they can allow you to be in a safe zone or not a safe zone. If you're found to be an asymptomatic carrier, then you can self quarantine and socially distance. and we can really, you know, nip this thing in the bud in a, you know, 4, 5, 6 week time frame. Jason Calacanis (00:27:01): And -- Yeah. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:02): because these tests are available at such large scale. And because these tests are so insignificantly cheap, If it if it were up to me, I would mobilize the military in the national guard. I would mobilize or voting infrastructure. Jason Calacanis (00:27:16): I mean, another way to deal with David Friedberg (00:27:18): it would be Jason Calacanis (00:27:18): why don't we just have the National Guard or doctors or whatever? Just go to everybody's mailbox, put in the kits, and then say, you know, we have your kit in here on this date, and we'll go pick up the kits. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:28): the problem with these LFIAs is that the amount of blood that you need, you cannot draw by yourself. It's not a thing -- Oh, Jason Calacanis (00:27:34): what about the swab stuff? I mean, which did the swab testing, and we just said, hey. What's coming by your house? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:27:39): The swab is a PCR test that's looking for RNA. And the problem with that is that it's effective in a window. it's uncomfortable to administer and has to be done right away for those that are in the process of viral shedding. Got it. If you are not in the process of viral shedding, then that PCR test is effectively ineffective. And what I'm advocating for is move past the PCR testing. That should be done in an acute situation if you come into a hospital where you're exhibiting symptoms. The more important thing right now is to find people that don't have it or people who are asymptomatically spreading or those people that are immune. Because if we can rebaseline the denominator, as Friedberg said, we may find some good news in that it's very much like the flu in terms of numerical distribution. In which case, we can make some policy changes and reestablish economic activity. if it turns out that it's not at least we know that too. But right now, we're in the worst place, which is that we are in a situation of isolation and confinement in the absence of data. And this is, I think, what's so what's so infuriating to folks is that we you know, it's like Winston Churchill said, America will do the right thing. It's just that they'll try everything else first. And I think that we are clearly on that path to trying everything until we do the right thing. Everything okay. And I think and I and I think it's political I think it's political poker. as the reason why. Jason Calacanis (00:29:03): Friedberg. Everything okay? David Friedberg (00:29:06): Just market trades. Jason Calacanis (00:29:09): Really? He's, like, literally you're trying to cover stuff and just -- David Friedberg (00:29:13): I'll tell you. It's a great it's a great time to tax law tax harvest losses, man. Yeah. If you've got companies that you're really religious about that you would love to own for a long time and you're underwater on them, it's a great time to sell them, take the loss, harvest it and then buy them back in the next 30 days. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:29:30): So, David, I have a I have a list of 8 things. And what I told Jason is I wanted to start at the ten foot level and end at the hundred thousand foot level. Okay? And so I'm gonna tee up the first question for both of you guys, and I have a view, but I'll I'll save it to the end. So question number 1 of these 8 list of interesting things to talk about, which may be relevant for the folks listening what does this mean for startups? And what should you do if you are a unprofitable well, I mean, by definition, these these companies are default dead. What if what do you do if you're a startup CEO today? Yeah. I think it's Jason Calacanis (00:30:10): a it's a great question. I'm dealing with it. Like, with about a dozen companies a day who are in this very acute situation, you have to figure out how you have to look at the instrument panel and then try to, like a pilot, I use the analogy, understand exactly how much altitude you have, where the nearest airport is, how much fuel you've got on board. So I'd literally told folks, listen. If you can close this money because a lot of people were in the middle of doing deals, close it immediately. So that's number 1. If you're if you got a deal on the table, take the money. number and some people do, but most people don't. And I I'm already seeing people retrading deal terms based and and backing out. So I had one person back out of a deal on the syndicate dot com, an angel investor said because of market conditions I'm backing out, and they had made the commitment they're backing out. So you're gonna see commitments broken. So assume it's gonna that no money is gonna get raised for the next 3 or 6 months at a minimum. And then you have to ask yourself, well, how do I keep this company alive? I have people who are founders taking 80% salary cuts and then giving their staff 50% salary cuts. And then that takes months of runway makes it 9. So that's number 1. You have to just make the cuts. And if you've chosen to be the founder of the company, that that's that's your job is to get everybody to safety. and better to have 4 out of 5 or 3 out of 5 employees lose their job, and the company be alive to come back and maybe get some stimulus later. then to have the company go out of business because you wouldn't make the cuts. So you gotta just take the medicine. And and that's really with first time entrepreneurs. They don't understand that. And if they have a and then, you know, every business is different. We have some companies that are subscription based business or delivery based businesses. Jason Calacanis (00:31:44): They're actually seeing an increase and utilization increase of people trialing their software. So I have one company that's a consumer subscription. They had more trials this week than ever because people have free time. So that company is gonna be fine, but you gotta make the cuts, David. I'm not sure what your advice is or what you're doing in your portfolio. David Friedberg (00:32:03): Yeah. I mean, look, I'm on 12 boards. 4 companies have been or are in the middle of term sheet or closing a deal, so it's been an unfortunate timing for all this stuff. Jason Calacanis (00:32:13): I think I think -- What happens to those 4 companies? 4 companies. Do you differentiate the term sheets? Terms? David Friedberg (00:32:17): Yeah. Yeah. Very different things. I mean, we've got one I hope we close on Friday. We signed on fry last Friday, the the final docs, and money's not in the bank account yet. I've got another one that's had a bunch of offers that got rescinded, but they weren't, like, signed yet. It's just all over the place. And and I think, you know, one thing that's that's worth kind of paying attention to for every company is you've got to ask yourself firstly the hard question of going into this and coming out of this era that we're of now entering that is a very bleak and dark era economically, where's your customer gonna be? And what is your customer gonna be doing? the customer model is changing overnight. If you're a company that that sold, you know, software into restaurants, and restaurants are about to potentially go bankrupt or suffer absolutely loss of revenue and get, you know, debt payments restructured. they're not gonna necessarily be rushing to spend more money each month unless you can help them immediately save money. If you're a company selling to consumers, and you're selling to consumers that are gonna lose their jobs in the next 3 months or lending to consumers that are gonna be losing their jobs in the next 3 months. You've gotta be asking yourself the question, what can I be doing with my business So you gotta start with your strategy question, and you gotta make sure that your cost and you gotta think about where your customer is gonna be and how you can adjust your strategy as a result. 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, cut your burn, and then you gotta cut your burn, and then you gotta cut your burn if you've got burn. You gotta do everything you can to give yourself the greatest chance of survival. And I think on the last all in podcast, Jason. You mentioned having a, you know, 36 months of cash. That's ideal. But if you can get your cash back your cash to get you to an 18 month runway, Yeah. David Friedberg (00:34:05): AT and Jason Calacanis (00:34:06): T is my average shift. AT and T is my yeah. David Friedberg (00:34:08): You should be you should be doing everything you can to number 1, kind of give yourself that breathing room. even if that means trading milestones, trading features, trading revenue goals, trading all the things that you're expecting to do, survival matters more than growth right now. David Sinclair, who wrote the book lifespan and is a Harvard Biochemist, has highlighted that there's basically a gene, the Serkey gene, so there's about 7 of them in humans, and the Serty genes get turned on or off. And it turns out every biological organism on planet earth has a Serty gene. The Serty gene tells the organism or tells the cell to either grow or heal. And this is a time for everyone to activate their Certain chains and stop focusing on growth and focus on healing. it's really important to optimize your unit economics to make sure you know where your customer is, to really reduce the burn, to reduce the spend, to reduce the push for growth and expansion and just make sure you've got a core business that you have a customer that you can make money from that customer, that you've really got Unit Economics right, and reduce your burn and give yourself that runway and and extend your life. So that's my that's my kind of -- Alright. Jason Calacanis (00:35:13): Well, I think we got question 1 out of the way. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:35:16): Let me let me give you my my advice, which is building on the the back of both of what you said, but I'm gonna take it from a different perspective. So let's look inside of a VC firm. VC firms have limited partners, and those limited partners are the most sophisticated financial institutions in the world. family offices of well renowned individuals, foundations, university endowments, nonprofits, you name it. And all of them are allowed to invest they're sophisticated. And one way in which they do it is they they have what's called portfolio allocation theory. They construct a portfolio of every $100 they have they say, well, I'd like to have, you know, 70% of that in liquid instruments, and that I'm gonna have 60% in bonds and, you know, 40% in equities. And then that 30% they'll take, and they'll say, you know, I wanna have a mixture of all kinds of different stuff. Some real estate, some hedge funds, some private equity. And eventually, when all of those allocations are done, there's an allocation to venture. Now in the last few years, what happened is all of these folks, you know, move the dial. They pushed the risk meter so that the allocation intervention was upwards of 7, 8, 9% of their overall portfolio. Now just to remind you guys, you know, basic theory, monetary theory would tell you. When you put money in into a eliquid instrument. Remember, Venture doesn't return money until 13 years after it's done, and you can't get it out. It's not like a bond where you can go and instantaneously sell it in a second. you have to get returns that are much better than the market because you need to be rewarded, paid back for that illiquidity. Now in the last month, what you've seen our portfolios get completely turned upside down. If your bonds and equities before were worth Jason Calacanis (00:37:22): $60 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:24): or $70 of that 100. It's now worth Jason Calacanis (00:37:27): $56. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:29): It could be worth Jason Calacanis (00:37:30): $40. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:37:32): What that means is that that other $30 needs to be worth much, much less. Otherwise, your portfolio model is completely upside down, and all of these limited partners become forced sellers as well. So that can't happen. Jason Calacanis (00:37:48): So what is the my understanding is the last time this happened to 2008 LPs kinda winked to the GPs and said, listen. It would be good if there wasn't a capital call right now. And then GP's not wanting to piss off their LPs, the VC firm's not wanting to piss off the endowments as an example, said, okay. We're just gonna not make any capital calls right now. while the market recovers so that your equities go up and the percentage of venture goes back down. Is that is that the likely scenario? Is LPs Chamath Palihapitiya (00:38:20): It's worse than that. It's worse than that. Because right now, these foundations in Sovereign Wealth Funds are trying to just stay above water, and As we get to the 10000,001,000 foot view, I'll give you the picture of what's happening in their offices. And, again, it's important because it is what make sure we come out of this reasonably well, which is a properly functioning capital market. And right now, it is the most precarious that I have seen in 20 years. So, basically, these LPs are gonna have to portfolio rebalance, and they're gonna have to force venture capitalists to mark down their books. And -- So wait. Jason Calacanis (00:38:59): VCs are just gonna make that to decision to say, hey. My investment in Airbnb Slack or Uber is worth x now. I mean, when they were private companies. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:08): So -- Not Slack and not Uber because they're public. Jason Calacanis (00:39:11): Right. No. But previously private. Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:13): But but Airbnb, can it be marked at 30 or Jason Calacanis (00:39:16): $40,000,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:39:18): the auditors will probably say no. The LPs will say that it's not. The GPs will want to because it'll allow them to maintain their IRRs, their rates of return. And so what you're gonna have is when these when these markdowns are forced to happen, which will take another 6 months. Venture capitalists' returns will look terrible. And so their propensity to be able to add bad dollars after good, quote unquote, you know, to defend every company is going to go to 0. Right. And and as you said, Jason, there's gonna be a poll on on activity. So I don't think 18 months is sufficient. I think you need at least 36 months. Jason Calacanis (00:40:00): Double. You need to have 3 years of capital in the bank. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:40:04): The worst thing that'll happen if you have 36 months is you think to yourself, wow, I was really conservative. The best thing that happens with 36 months is you survive. The distribution of outcomes would tell you there is zero point in taking the risk if you don't have to. And this is why, unfortunately, it's gonna be a very difficult process of recalibrating all of this stuff. So for folks that are in these startups, we're gonna have to go through an unfortunate period of pain And, you know, as as Buffett said, you know, rule number 1 of our business is to not go out of business. Rule number 2 is not to forget rule number Jason Calacanis (00:40:45): 1. Yeah. Alright. I think it's well said and is there any chance while we're sort of at this you know, street level on the front lines. Is there any chance that we contain this very quickly, let's say, under 60 days? and that it looks like this virus mitigation through the various drugs we talked about actually starts to work. if that happens in the next 60 days, what what will happen to the markets? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:17): They rebound. It's not what we're dealing with. But Trump says it's gonna Jason Calacanis (00:41:20): come there's a chance it could come roaring back. What are the chances of a roar back? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:41:24): It cannot come roaring back. So let me explain to you what's happening right now in the capital markets. So let's take a step back and first look at what what the Fed has announced over the last couple of days. So and and here's why the Federal Reserve is important. So the fed basically acts as a market making and liquidity function in what's called the overnight repo market. Now that's an skewer market for the average individual on Main Street, but let me roughly explain why it why it exists. And and at the end of it, you're probably gonna have the same reaction as me, which what the fuck fucking what the fucking fuck. Okay? But I'll explain it in English first. You're an LP a limited partner, and you give a hedge fund a dollar, and very much like last episode how I explained why hedge funds run levered. The hedge fund says, well, if I take this dollar, you know, the bank will give me some some amount of leverage on it. But it would be much better if I if I was able to basically, you know, give them an instrument like a bond or some sort of short term commercial paper And then they'll give me more because they'll believe in the quality of the instrument. Okay. So they go in the repo market, and they basically do a transaction overnight where they basically, you know, buy some short term commercial paper. They use it as collateral, and then they lever it up, and then they go put it in the market. That entire dynamic works as long as the repo function works every day. Every night, you kind of go and you clean up your balance sheet, you look at how much leverage you have, you look your leverage ratio, you make sure that you have enough money, and you go and you refinance your short term paper that keeps you know, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley lending to you. But if that market ceases when the repo market ceases and there's no way for you to either buy or sell commercial paper, buy or sell short term money market instruments. And on the other side, the markets are whipsawing up and down. And so you're being margin called, not being margin called, being margin called, not being margin called, the markets start to really cease and capitulate, and everybody is just losing enormous amounts of money. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:43:36): And what I mean by everybody, it's everybody. It's hedge funds. It's Sovereign Wealth Funds. It's Foundations. It's central banks. Everybody is losing money. And if we don't figure out how to bring some calm into the financial markets, it will leave all of these limited partners and all these other people with not just a lack of liquidity and a lot less money than they had before, but this psychological pain of remembering what they just went through. And that'll prolong what we have to deal with to get out of it. Right? So, you know, this is why I think it's really important to understand that if we can nip the, you know, stage 0 of this problem, which is the disease itself in the bud. And I don't mean by hearing it, and I don't mean with the vaccine, I mean by testing and data. Jason Calacanis (00:44:35): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:36): If we can understand and bound it then everybody's psychology can move to fixing the capital markets. And right Jason Calacanis (00:44:42): now, how close are we to that, Dave? -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:44:43): need it to be fixed. Jason Calacanis (00:44:44): How how close do you think we are to having that mass testing done? And then I think we all think we're gonna have a low mortality rate and then go back to normalcy. Is that something that's happening in 10 days? 30 days or 60 days if you had to pick a number. The the the march back to normality. David. David? David Friedberg (00:45:04): I I don't see any action to get the testing done that needs to get done right now. Jason Calacanis (00:45:09): My mom got tested yesterday, seems like there are more tests out there this week than -- Oh, yeah. Definitely. -- Stafford opened up the testing. David Friedberg (00:45:15): There's definitely PCR testing available now, and you can probably get your results in Jason Calacanis (00:45:19): 3 David Friedberg (00:45:19): to 4 days on average. although some labs are super backed up. Jason Calacanis (00:45:22): Yeah. My mom said she's gonna take 3 days before the weekend. David Friedberg (00:45:25): Yeah. But the the stuff that we're about, which is the general population testing, I'll I'll keep saying it. It's so critical that we do this to figure out how many people have already been infected 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 radar. The task force in DC is focused right now on increasing the throughput and the availability of PCR or just in time, you know, PCR testing. Jason Calacanis (00:45:48): -- blood testing. That's a good one. David Friedberg (00:45:51): Yeah. It's all blood testing. just a matter of, like like, the let me explain the the the PCR test involved the the RT PCR test involves taking blood. And then there's basically 6 steps that you have to go through with it in a lab. And it's done on, like, 3 different machines, and the actual cycle takes 30 to 60 minutes or 30 to 45 minutes. So by the time you have that backlog, and you can multiplex it. But meaning you can do multiple at the same time, and you can kinda do different things. But Generally, these machines are not highly automated. There are new machines that are allowing us to automate more of these steps and making them go a little bit faster and do more multiplexing. but it is still a multistep cycle to take the blood and turn it into a test result once you've amplified the viral RNA and and and tried to measure. It's avail it's it's content. And so this this takes this takes some time, and so it's a chemistry lab that's doing this work. So until we have a point of care solution, which is like a test strip or something else, and and these are technically possible. It's just that they're not FDA approved, and so they're not getting made and distributed here, whereas China and Korea and Italy are using them out of and they're made in what in factories in China, even though they're not tested and approved in the normal way, Jason Calacanis (00:47:00): in the plan though to have these untested tests online this week? Isn't that what they're saying? David Friedberg (00:47:05): Yeah. A bunch of people are buying them. Jason Calacanis (00:47:07): Yeah. But it it so I guess the question is when do you think we will have these you know, the general population taking tests, and we get, like, a large scale testing like South Korea did. I do all agree that's the part of the solution. When does that happen? David Friedberg (00:47:24): Unfortunately, we're not parallel pathing it. We're we've put all of our resources into increasing the availability and throughput of the RT PCR test for acute infection cases. And as a result, we have everyone focused on this. There was some lab work and some research departments. I won't name them. that were working on doing this general population testing, but they got yanked into the the getting the RT PCR scaled up because, oh my god, we're behind the curve. We gotta fix this So we gotta get over this first hump. I think once we get over this first hump, then you're gonna see people distribute and work on this. And I think getting over the first hump is happening in the next call at 7 to 10 days. so then it's probably another 30 to 45 days before we get these tests for general population testing more broadly distributed. So call it 45 days out, Jason Calacanis (00:48:06): and then hopefully Why can't we do this at the same time? I mean, why can't we parallel this? This makes no sense to me where they're coming country. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:48:12): We have David Friedberg (00:48:13): we have so many scientists and so many entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley that in their head on the wall, asking this question, I've done so many phone calls over the last few days of people being like, what can we do? How can we get these things made? Where can we go? And everyone's just like, flustered. It's really frustrating. Anyway, we we've got a lot of individuals that we're trying to kinda collect together to do this work. Some folks are calling China today. We're trying to see if we can get big bulk orders out of China. We're just gonna pay for it ourselves and then try and get some research labs to run the, you know, research universities around the country to run the experiments for using these untested, unproven, you know, not FDA -- Have you run one Jason Calacanis (00:48:46): of these on yourself yet, one of these unproven tests yet? David Friedberg (00:48:49): I haven't. I actually a friend of ours I did one with video on with him this morning. And so, you know A mutual friend of ours. A mutual a mutual friend of ours. Yeah. And so and then I know lots of people that have them and have used them, and I've seen them, and I've gone through like, you know, I bought a bunch of them. They arrive tomorrow. And so I see you know, we see we we know how these things work. They're actually from a reliable source, you know, these are not -- Yeah. We no no one's actually done the testing to prove the specificity and sensitivity. We're relying on a third party, you know, test it. We don't really know, Jason Calacanis (00:49:20): but I keep hearing they're uncomfortable. I keep hearing they're uncomfortable. What's uncomfortable? Do they stick it very far up your nose? Is that the what people are referring to? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:49:27): Or Jason Calacanis (00:49:27): -- David Friedberg (00:49:27): You're you're referring to the RTPC test. So what you're trying to do there is you're trying to get a sample of living virus on a swab. And the best place to get that living virus for this particular virus is in your nose or in your the back of your throat. So they're taking a long q tip and they're sticking it up your nose and they're sticking it back to your throat, then they put it in a little solution that will keep the viral RNA alive And then that's what they're shipping to the lab, and that's what then gets Jason Calacanis (00:49:48): -- So it's uncomfortable to have it that far up your nose is what they're saying. That's what people keep saying. It's uncomfortable. David Friedberg (00:49:53): I've had more uncomfortable things up my nose. I'm sure it's fine. You know? Jason Calacanis (00:49:56): Yeah. You David Friedberg (00:49:57): know, it's a it's a cute it's a cute dip in your nose. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:50:00): Yeah. It's a q tip way up in. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:02): You know? David Friedberg (00:50:02): So -- Way up in your notes. Jason Calacanis (00:50:03): So we actually think that mass testing is a 30 to 60 day -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:08): No. No. I think it mass testing, if if in the worst cases is Jason Calacanis (00:50:12): 30 Chamath Palihapitiya (00:50:13): to 60 days, what what I'm imploring anybody with any influence is we need to get this starting to happen in the next 2 to 3 weeks. It needs to start happening in the next 2 to 3 And, you know, this is this is where I would say there are a lot of other people other than David, myself, you, Jason, the people on our group chat buying tests for the mass population. You know? I just I just wanna say something here, which is it is incredible to see guys like Jack Ma, step up and, you know, do what he can to send stuff here. But I would say that thus far, there's largely been an inverse correlation of contribution and wealth during all of this. And folks that are in a position to help, I think, need to be more vocal You know, we all can't just participate when the times are good. Take advantage of the bully pulpit when the times are good. And then when times are complicated, disappear, and become anonymous. It's part in why I think you and I decided to just do these as often as we can Jason Calacanis (00:51:15): -- Yeah. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (00:51:16): because at least we can think through the problems so that at least people can hear our voices and understand that we are thinking through as much as possible what to do. I am literally calling folks in Wall Street all the time because what little I can do to assure them or be a market participant right now to maintain liquidity I need to do because in the absence of that participation, we're gonna just create more and more havoc. And I think it's important for other people who are in a position either monetarily or through influence or both to be out there right now doing something. You know? They should call Friedberg right now. They should give Friedberg a $100,000,000. We'll go to China. We'll get the test, and we can do our brombaud based population study right now. Jason Calacanis (00:52:01): Yeah. I would David Friedberg (00:52:02): I would jump on that. Jason Calacanis (00:52:04): Right now, looking at the statistics as of today, we obviously, the total cases in China hit 80,000 with 3237 deaths. They had only 11 new deaths yesterday. And Italy 35,000 total cases, 42100 new cases, and they added 475 deaths yesterday. with a total death count of 2978. So that is just stunning what's happening in Italy, and it seems I don't know if the trend line is. It's getting worse or not. But, yeah, Kelly, it takes just a David Friedberg (00:52:42): slight -- It's it's it's a it's a horrific and awful situation. The they're a complete out of beds. They're they're triaging elderly people and letting them die in the hall so that younger people who have a higher chance of surviving can actually get oxygen. It's just awful. Jason Calacanis (00:52:56): And they're having 35100 new cases or they're at 35100. Yeah. They're they're over 3000 cases, but added yesterday. So there's really it's it is flattening, but who knows if that's because they're just overwhelmed and they can't do the testing? But the deaths are something that seems to David Friedberg (00:53:16): have gone down for the Jason Calacanis (00:53:17): last 3 days. David Friedberg (00:53:18): We're looking at different time series. The number of people that died yesterday are in fact the number of people that died yesterday. The number of people that tested positive yesterday doesn't tell you as much because the test results may be 4 days delayed, and they may be 10 days into their symptoms by the time they get tested and so on and so forth. So the testing data significantly lags the infected population count likely and may may not represent much of anything. Right? So there it's very and it's also hard to know what the average fatality timeline looks like. There are published reports now out of China and Korea that start to try and specify this a little bit, but we are looking at different time series when we try and compare these things. And so everyone be cognizant of that as you look at these numbers. It's not simple apples and apples. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:00): Let's let's move to a slightly second and third order, Jason. I think if we stay in the diseases just gonna be a fucking mental quagmire, we're gonna jump up the window. Yeah. Okay. Let's let's talk about something that Mark Cuban said, which I really agree with, which is that if we're gonna do bailouts, they can't come where we also do things like, you know, allowing these companies to do buybacks where CEO pay isn't curtailed. You know, it turns out that the airline industry, which looks like it's gonna be 1st in line for bailout, spent 96¢ of every single dollar of free cash flow they had on buying back stock, which is only used to drive up earnings per share which is only relevant for CEO pay. So they have you know, they don't have the cash buffer They don't have the 36 months of operating, you know, window that, you know, everybody should have. They're not Jason Calacanis (00:54:52): very -- -- on trying to hit they blew it on trying to have their earnings per share go up by reducing the number of shares in existence. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:54:59): Shares. Exactly. Jason Calacanis (00:54:59): Just so people understand. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:01): If you can't if you can't earnings per share. You know? If you take earnings, you divide it by the number of shares. So if earnings can't go up, just divide by the number of shares. and earnings per share goes up. Jason Calacanis (00:55:10): Lower the number of shares. Yeah. If you had a $1,000,000 in earnings, a 1,000,000 shares, it was a dollar per. You get rid of half the shares. It now goes up. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:55:18): And and so now, you know, you have CEO pay go through the roof, but these companies are not any more resilient than they were before. And so now they're in line for a bailout and I think the a large caucus of people across bothiles are very clear that these things need to be wiped out of the equity versus bailouts where, you know, folks who took advantage of the financial system here continue to get rewarded. What do you guys think about that? Jason Calacanis (00:55:46): Totally agree. If you wipe out the equity, though, just pausing for a second and taking the other side of the argument, I'm not saying this is the side I would take. if you wipe out the equity, would not some of the people who would hit that pane are shareholders from a retirement home or a retirement plan. like Calpers made the own -- -- David Friedberg (00:56:04): pension funds. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:56:05): Pension funds, etcetera. So, you know, it it it does seem like if you wipe out the equity, you could have some unintended consequences with equity holders. But I think what the other side of the argument is we're gonna have to have there be repercussions for people running companies so close and recklessly to the cliff. and there has to be some pain, not reward for doing that. And a bailout is a reward for operating irresponsibly. Is that what you're saying, Shamal? Chamath Palihapitiya (00:56:32): Yeah. I I I think that, actually, you have to wipe out the equity. And I think the reason why wiping out the equity is important is that it overwhelmingly does not punish the, you know, retiree in their who owns, you know, Boeing stock in their 401k. Boeing has not been held by retirees in their full run case for years as a cohort of impactful investors. massive large institutional pools of money owned these companies. These are the balance sheets of governments These are the balance sheets of foundations. These are the balance sheets of a very few, very, very wealthy people. And The reality is that for the broad based population, for the 350 odd 1000000 Americans in the United States, how many of them do you think are really active market participants, meaning for every dollar of value creation or destruction How much do they actually see? I would guess it's less than 10%, meaning 90¢ of every dollar are nameless faceless organizations in a financial infrastructure. I think the lesson we have to we have to we have to tell and the place we have to move to is one of compassionate capitalism. which is that we have been so hell bent on the use of leverage, on the use of these financial gimmicks, on the use of accounting tricks to enrich a few at the sake of the many. And this is the right time where you should nationalize some of these businesses. And when they eventually do get taken back out and floated publicly. All of those proceeds should go back to the United States treasury who should then use it to reinforce Social Security and Medicare and everything else because we are going to run a multi, multi,000,000,000 dollar budget deficit to get out of this. Jason Calacanis (00:58:23): And to just give people some context here, the the US National Debt is at $23,000,000,000,000, which is $72,000 per citizen and a $189,000 for each citizen who pays taxes. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:36): And we Jason Calacanis (00:58:36): run our our our spending or the budget deficit is a is a bill is a $1,000,000,000,000 a year. We're gonna talk about here, I think, a 2 to $3,000,000,000,000 stimulus package which will increase the national debt load by only 10%, so it does seem like we can manage that. But boy, was this a strategic mistake for us to run up a debt. Chamath Palihapitiya (00:58:59): I mean, no. No. Jason Calacanis (00:59:00): During good times, was it not? It's Chamath Palihapitiya (00:59:02): it's it's it's even simpler than this. Like and and and I hate to say this so bluntly, but this eurozone is gonna collapse. Okay? Japan is finished. So there are 2 economies that matter. There's China and the United States as of today. And the great thing about that is in a set of 2, there's only one instrument of safety, which is the United States dollar. Thank god. In that world, the United States has exceptional leverage. exceptional, exceptional leverage. It is and it has always been, you know, the beacon, the light on the hill, etcetera. now in a moment like this, the United States has the most ability to reset how we think about things. it could run $5,000,000,000,000 deficits tomorrow. It could run $10,000,000,000,000 deficits because it is still the backstop. I'm not advocating for that, but is where I think you need bold decisive action and not piecemeal strategies. I don't think a $1,000,000,000,000 is enough. I really think that if you think about what the eurozone will have to do and what's gonna happen to the US dollar, we should be basically saying, right off the bat at a minimum, anyone who makes less than, you know, Pick your number a $1,000,000 a year. Every man woman and child, every or every eighteen year old American man and woman should immediately get Jason Calacanis (01:00:24): $5000. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:25): Forget it, Jason Calacanis (01:00:26): 100, 2500. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:28): And next month, if we're still out of business, 5000. And all of that does is just it it's a $1,000,000,000,000. It's $2,000,000,000,000 over 2 months. And then you add another $1,000,000,000,000 in all this, you know, small business loans and all the other things that's $3,000,000,000,000,000,000 that you can deal with because we're the United States. And I think it's really important to keep it in mind. I know that sounds crazy. Well, I mean Jason Calacanis (01:00:47): -- -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:00:47): some people don't think, oh, you know, blah blah blah. you know, budgets and deficits, but it's not because everybody else is just as fucked if not more fucked. David Friedberg (01:00:57): Well, let me give you let me give you an an another perspective, the GDP of the United States is Jason Calacanis (01:01:03): $20,000,000,000,000 David Friedberg (01:01:05): roughly. Every let's assume the whole economy shut down. Every month that were shut down costs us Jason Calacanis (01:01:11): $1,500,000,000,000. David Friedberg (01:01:14): So if we're gonna have the country shut down for, say, 3 months, we're losing 4 and a half $1,000,000,000,000 right there. The problem is economic growth in the economy is actually a a first order function. Right? So the the the the the movement of cash drives the the the the future economy. And so if we were just needing to fill that hole, you would need to come come up with a couple of $1,000,000,000,000, and you would have the government going out and buying ice cream cones and paying hair salons and paying for dog walkers and you know, paying for construction workers and paying for oil rig workers and basically basically employing and buying all of those goods and services for that functional equivalent of a $20,000,000,000,000 GDP. That's what it would take to just fill the hole. Jason Calacanis (01:01:57): Well, that's if you're assuming no economic activity. I mean, we we don't think there's gonna there's gonna be no economic activity. Maybe, let's say, it's a third less economic activity. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:02:07): in the shoe, guys, the shoe that hasn't dropped is this idea that everybody is at home working. Nobody's at home working. That's a joke. That's a lie. Okay? Because as David said, companies are not, you know, self contained units, very few are. many of them and most of them operate in a very interconnected socially dependent way with other companies. They're your customers. You are their customers. Nobody is doing anything right now. There's nobody there's nobody evaluating the next great SaaS tool, guys. Come on. David Friedberg (01:02:41): And the other issue is just it's just leverage, Jason. Right? So -- Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:02:44): -- David Friedberg (01:02:44): we we've also gotta remember that a big chunk of the economy is levered, meaning that there's debt and debt payments that need to be paid. And so those income streams are now gonna be absent. And so there's there's a there's a multiplier effect. When revenue goes down, the economic impact is actually multiplied. And so you can't just fill the hole. So and and so it becomes a very complicated, nonlinear kind of system. you have to try and fill the holes, and you gotta find the places where cash is missing and it's not moving the fastest, and that's where you gotta throw the money in the first like these repo markets and so on. Jason Calacanis (01:03:14): Well and there's no doubt that the we all agree bottom up is the way to do this. So if we have 330,000,000 Americans, if you just have the bottom half get a $1000 a month, that's call it a $160,000,000,000 a month. That's only over the year $2,000,000,000,000. So if we just did that, it gave everybody a $1000 a month. That's $12,000,000 for the bottom they're not saving that money. They're gonna use it just they're gonna spend it in the market. Correct? They're gonna pay their rent. They're gonna go get dinner. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:37): I don't think so. You you think that Jason Calacanis (01:03:39): -- Poor people are gonna who are laid off right now are gonna save the money? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:03:43): Well, if you gave me a $1000 or, you know, somebody a $1000 when they're in their house on the 6th week of their home confinement, What what you think there Jason Calacanis (01:03:52): is, like, tough. -- that we're in week 10, and we're we're not in self confinement anymore. We agreed in the first third of the program that we're gonna get there in whatever it is 60 days, 90 days. You know what I've realized? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:04:04): You know what I've realized after wearing the same pair of jeans 4 days in a row. I have too many jeans. That's what I've realized. And you know what? I've also realized that this the cotton shirts that I buy from H And M are fucking perfect, and I've complicated my life with all kinds of bullshit that I've been buying because I thought it meant something. And right now, it means absolutely jack shit. Jason Calacanis (01:04:28): Yeah. David Friedberg (01:04:28): Yeah. I agree I agree with that perspective. I Jason Calacanis (01:04:31): that's what's really interesting. When you see your entire portfolio collapse, when you see this belt tightening. It's happening even amongst. And we have you know, listen, all three of us are lucky enough to be at the you know, in the top of our careers and top of our income at this point in our lives, but we all came from humble beginnings as well. And if if the people at the top are bell tightening and saying, you know what? I don't need to buy a $60 t shirt. I'm gonna buy a $16 t shirt. Boy, does that have ramifications across the entire economy? And this reminds me very much of the recession. They said luxury goods would never rebound. And sure enough, the last 10 years, luxury rebound luxury has rebounded massively. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:08): because it was not a psychological broad based impact to people's philosophy and framing of how they viewed the world. Jason Calacanis (01:05:16): think so? I thought after the economic crisis last time, people did say there would never be people specifically said there would never be luxury goods again, and that thing was the end of people buying. That kind of shit. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:05:26): I'm not talking about some prognosticating analysts. You know? The analyst is only as, you know, good as their own biases. What I'm saying is the average person didn't really have to internalize a broad based impact to their way in which they view what's important in their life. This touches everybody And I think that there is an opportunity for us to really recalibrate what's important I think conspicuous consumption is unimportant. You know, helping each other is important. taking, you know, unnecessary vacations because it drives your Instagram follower feed is fucking stupid. making sure that we can contribute the incremental dollar we have so that other people could get tested and get back to work, that seems like a better use of your money and time. Jason Calacanis (01:06:18): Yeah. So -- No. Go ahead, David. Get in there. David Friedberg (01:06:23): I think that there yeah. There's just great perspective setting that that's that's happening that and it's gonna happen broadly across the economy. We've been fat and happy for a long time. And at least a sub segment of the population has been, but we also have it really, really well, a really, really good here in the United States. There's a website. I just recommend everyone check out and spend some time on. It's called Dollar Street. and you can go to gapminder.org/dollardashstreet and check out the the website. It is unbelievable, and it is probably my favorite website on the Internet. And Dollar Street is a project of Ola Roslinck's wife, Ola's the son of Hans Rosling, the the the great visual economist who told people stories with visuals on, like, the world in income and population and growth and so on. and she went around and she photographed families all over the world and showed how much money they make each month. And then showed all these common household activities and goods brushing your teeth, the oven, how do you what kind of clothes you have, what do your closet look like, what do you sleep on. And it's pretty striking that half of the people don't have a toothbrush a quarter of people use mud off the floor to brush their teeth. Most people don't have a bed on planet Earth. Right? Only the top 1% have a kitchen Right? I mean, there there's, like, these amazing statistics with photos that really help kind of illustrate this point. And I think that I'm not saying that the extreme demonstration of humanity and the distribution of wealth, income, and prosperity, and humanity is as relevant here. But in all these photos, everyone's very happy, and they live a happy life. And there's a great reset happen that's that's happening that's underway. Happiness eventually finds itself when the delta goes from being negative to being positive again. When the delta is flat or the delta is negative, people are go getting into a worse condition, things are bad. So we're gonna bottom out here And then we're gonna you know, no matter what state we find ourselves in, we'll very quickly find ourselves back in a state of happiness, and we'll all reset with respect to Chemov's point on hey. Maybe I don't need all these jeans. Maybe I don't need all this and this and this, but there's certainly, like, critical, you know, needs that people have, and it's gonna be pretty apparent pretty quickly. David Friedberg (01:08:30): you know, how the economy and people are gonna adjust to this this new world. But there's gonna be an adjustment. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:08:37): the the part of this that I think is actually constructive is I do think that we're gonna swing the pendulum back towards nationalized economies. and and away from global Economies because I think this is a way that politicians all around the world They'll characterize it in different political language. You know? Some people will call it, you know, sort of like American Exceptionalism if you're on the right. If you're on the left, you'll describe it in much more social terms, but they all lead to the same outcome, which is that what we have seen is that in the push to globalization, we have created too much brittle infrastructure that doesn't work and that we are not resilient enough. men, we are hyper efficient and we are just in time and all of that is great and everything is super cheap. But when we really need infrastructure to work, whether it's tests or whether it's the government or what have you, it just doesn't. And I think resiliency will force us to be more nationally attuned. And I think it'll be the right thing. It'll cause all governments to think about their own food supply differently. to think about their own supply chains differently. It'll demand companies to be less profitable if it means that they can withstand these kinds of shocks. And it's one thing to say that we could never have modeled, you know, sort of like this 2 or 3 Sigma event we're dealing with. But after the fact, it's no longer a 2 or 3 Sigma event. And governments have to now internalize this, and companies have to internalize it. We are not going to act the same. Webbers will be different. Jason Calacanis (01:10:10): Look. Think about the iPhone and, obviously, medicine and respirators. We've been talking about these things over the last, you know, couple of weeks as this happens. We if if we do have a breakdown in relations with China, if we let's say we stopped importing stuff. What would happen to Apple the most powerful and valuable company? How would they ever be able to make Iphones again in the United States? they capable of making them? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:10:35): No. It depends it depends on who you're answering it for. On behalf of the US customer, Apple should probably be forced to bring a lot of their production capacity back into the United States. They should find the diversified global supply chain so that you have multiple suppliers in many countries in the world. but they should rely more on America. It will be less profitable, but it'll be okay, and it's the right thing David Friedberg (01:10:57): to do. Jason Calacanis (01:10:57): Yeah. It's a $100. My what I read in the estimates was an iPhone request 100 or a 100 and change more to make in the United States. But if they did, they wouldn't -- By the way. -- have the supply chain issue. They make $5, $600 per iPhone anyway. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:11:10): Well, by the way, the the the real outcome is that, you know and we were gonna do this anyways after this, which is I don't think people are lining up to buy, you know, kind of irrelevant products anymore in a way where we're just slavish to things. I mean, I think it's important to ask ourselves, like, this is probably the most socially impactful world event that Globe has had to deal with since World War Two. And it's probably really important to talk to somebody you know. And if you don't know, you can document and you can easily find the documents of people who survive the holocaust or live through the bombings in London, etcetera, their mentality was different as a result of it changed their behavior in very positive ways. Right? It was like the great advances in humanity happened after that? Jason Calacanis (01:12:00): Oh, it's been refocused. Yeah. You're you're less focused on things that are not core or critically important. And, Friedberg, what what do you think about the what this is showing in the health care system and the holes in the health care system? The fact that we couldn't mobilize to deal with this after we did scenario planning about this after SARS. We've done scenario planning. We've had You know, I I I sent to our group list the link of Bill Gates talking about this 4 or 5 years ago and how this would be an issue. I sent a couple of links to people writing about closing the wet markets in China after the SARS outbreak. I'm curious, David, what you think the holes in the health care system are that need to be fixed and what we can learn from this because I think we're now coming into the you know, as we as we got through the virus, we got through the economic second order effects. Let let's talk about positively what we're gonna learn because I think that's what Shamont's getting at is that there's a personal recalibrating of what matters, maybe morality ethics, focus in our lives. David, what can we learn from this on a health perspective? What should we do when this ends? David Friedberg (01:13:13): There's no easy answer to that right. Nationalized healthcare systems in some countries, you could say they're gray brother my family lives in London. I was talking to my brother yesterday, and, you know, they they tried to go down and get tested for a a a tooth infection yesterday. And, like, it's just brutal dealing with NHS in the UK. You know, people aren't telling great stories about NHS, and they're not saying, oh my god. It's the best health system. I love it. health care is hard. People want personalized care. They want a lot of attention. There's only so many doctors. There's only so much beds. When you start giving people good care costs a lot, solving this stuff and and the r and d dollars required to enter markets is so, you know, so extraordinarily high. You end up charging a lot for products and services on the back end. It's a very complicated system, and there's no simple answer. I do think that we're learning and realizing pretty quickly that the US and we're gonna we're gonna do some post mortems on this. obviously, as a world, as a as a society. One thing that's clear is the Chinese response in part was driven by a lack of bureaucratic red tape and an ability to manifest action and an ability to produce and distribute drugs and produce and distribute tests without needing approvals. I think that's something that's gonna change in the United States. It has to. The regulatory burden on health care companies, on pharmaceutical Companies, on testing and diagnostics companies, is is extraordinarily high, but the objective in the United States has been do no harm, which means don't let anyone die through the action. but it may be that many people are dying through the inaction. And I think we're gonna maybe see a big shift in policy and allow right to try laws that are gonna be federalized So, you know, states can make decisions about right to try laws, and doctors and patients can try drugs on their own discretion without having a a federal oversight body Perhaps the same will happen with diagnostics and testing. And, you know, the the with respect to what the what services the government provides and doesn't provide, You know, I'm not sure. There's a lot of data on either side here that nationalized health care systems do and don't work. David Friedberg (01:15:14): So it's it's very hard to say what the right solution is is here. You know? And and I don't think that you wanna try and take r and d and put it in the government. that's a terrible idea. I think that there's a financial and a capitalistic motivation to find discover get them tested and prove that they have a positive effect in human health. And we need to move this towards personalized medicine, which actually changes the construct and probably increases the cost of doing this about 10 x. We're already seeing this with stem cell therapies and CRISPR based gene therapies. Is there so much more expensive In order to get that stuff moving faster, we need to remove the regulatory burden and allow companies the ability to move quickly and make this stuff more affordable. The more we the the more barriers we put in front of companies, the the harder it's gonna be. And if we try to do this with a top down approach with the government deciding what to do r and d on and what not to do r and d on, we're gonna be in a in a fucking mess. So I those are some of my points. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:06): Yeah. I would say as well, I think that there has to be after the great financial crisis, we we smartened up about what the banks were allowed to do. Unfortunately, we didn't really smarten up about what other financial participants were allowed to do, and a lot of what we're seeing here is our excesses around leverage and credit, and I think we need to fix those. We need to tell companies that, you know, you can't put out certain amounts of debt. We need to be a little draconian actually to reset this properly. We need to tell, you know, market participants that you can't run 10 or 13 times levered. You can't take a Jason Calacanis (01:16:47): $100,000,000,000 Chamath Palihapitiya (01:16:49): and make it act like 1,300,000,000,000 and then blow a 50% hole in it. You just you're just not allowed to do that. I'm just sorry, but nobody should be allowed to do that. Jason Calacanis (01:16:59): Okay. So if we look now onto politics which is the least fun to talk about in many ways. But just on international relations, I think it's worth discussing There's been a bit of a debate about what we call this virus and the relationship between the United States and China. China went on a little bit of a propaganda campaign the last couple of days saying the u that the US created the virus. Trump has now been trolling them actively talking about the Chinese virus. I used the other day, the Wuhan virus. I I didn't realize that that people consider that racist to say Wuhan virus. because we called it the Spanish flu, and we called it the German measles. But I guess people are particularly sensitive to this topic now. And I think there's a critical issue here that I don't understand why we're not talking about this, but wet market specifically trade in exotic animals the these viruses are contained in certain animals like bats, which are, you know, together in flocks of, like, 1000 and the viruses. And then these animals in wet markets, people don't know what that is. You can you can Google it if you've got if if you're not squeamish. But Essentially, in Chinese culture, as I've read it in The Wall Street Journal and in the World Health Organization's advisements to cancel and to shut down wet markets, Then there's unanimous agreement on this on from the health officials that these have to be shut down. The Chinese culture says we don't want to see meat in a package because we believe it's counterfeited, and it's been frozen, and it won't be as tasty. and it won't have the same nutritional properties. So you must slaughter the animal in front of us, at least for some significant percentage of the population. There it's a tradition, and this is where these viruses have uniformly been generated from. And now we have the president and China going at each other And we have to have this very delicate conversation, I think, David, and I'm curious to see your position on this because it's now hitting, like, a racial and you know, and a and a bias against a a certain culture is how this is being framed by the left, which is just maddening because it's actually a culture it is a cultural issue that has to end just like our cultural tradition of shaking ends, obviously, needs to ends or be deprecated in some severe way. So, David, maybe you could talk a little bit about what you think the outcome here is on a political basis in relation to those wet markets and China and US relationships. David Friedberg (01:19:29): Look. I think China suffered heavily. I'm sure they're good. I've heard they're gonna shut down the wet markets, but all I know is what I've read on the Internet. So you know, that they're I think they're fucking awful and stupid. They should be shut down, cultural, you know, dependence aside. There's another issue in China generally, there's a huge amount of the impoverished communities in China are encouraged to actually grow and harvest rats. I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but there's a bamboo rat business. where you grow these rats inside of bamboo, and then you kill them and you sell them. And so the the poorest people in China make money growing and selling rats rat meat. And the the Chinese government just in the last week has told them to stop, which actually is a huge effect on many millions of families who are growing these rats. So there's an economic effect, but it it's obvious that it's a terrible health effect. But I'm not sure that getting rid of the wet markets truly eliminates a indicates the risk of a new viral outbreak. Right? Like, I I I think I mentioned to you guys on our on our text stream the other day, you know, 40% of the Eacteria in the oceans are killed every day by viruses. This is a great stat that Jennifer Dowdna uses in her book about on the discovery of CRISPR. and there's 10 to the 28th bacteria in the oceans. So half of them, they all get killed every other day every 2 days by viruses. There are viruses everywhere. They are gonna emerge. They are gonna hit us. The issue isn't necessarily where the source of the virus is coming from. It's just that we have to have better and diagnostics and preparedness and treatment plans and and ability to motivate and and and mobilize ourselves to address pandemics like this in the future. With respect to the relationship with China, I'm not an economist. I'm not a a trade guy. David Friedberg (01:21:04): I don't really know the the the nature of the relationships, so I'll leave that to Tom. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:21:09): My my no. My thought my thought on this is that this is not a question of you know, wet markets or no wet markets. I think this is a question of if you are a an anchor participant of globalization in the global economy, Is there an expectation to have a common set of behaviors, the lowest common denominator set of behaviors and hygiene, that everybody signs up for to be a, you know, fully fledged global market participant. Now the the pros of that is that maybe everybody decides to be a participant and to have lax borders and, you know, free trade agreements that there can be no wet markets and a whole host of other things. We all agree on you know, whether we are okay with shaking hands or maybe it's Namaste from now on or maybe it's bowing The problem with that on the other side is that all of a sudden you create a monoculture that strips away the individuality and the richness of every country. And, you know, I I I kind of think, like like, you know, we we could have attacked wet markets when HIV started to spread because it was you know, as we understand it. It was the emergence of the, you know, bush meat and raw bush meat and the killing of monkeys that had this virus that was then passed to humans, etcetera, etcetera, that that that started the HIV epidemic. So these things have happened before, and it's not as if we shut down you know, all of those markets in Africa. They still exist in some form or fashion. And as David said, there are huge economic ramifications to to having these cultural edicts. And it's very difficult, I think, for an American to demand China to do it when we're not willing to step up just like in other ways, You know, countries can demand us to lower our carbon emissions, and we say we're not gonna do it. So there are implications and very difficult issues all over the place. But I do think in general that if we move towards a more nationalistic economic dependency, interdependency, I think that it's probably the right thing to allow more resilience to exist and for cultural diversity to continue to compound. Because the world of just in time efficiency, I think we're learning now was the wrong optimization for the world. We need to optimize for resiliency, and that means some amount of inefficiency. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:23:44): It means more mom and pop shops, I think that that's a good thing. It doesn't mean everything is Amazon Prime Now And Walmart. I think that's okay. It means that the iPhone is a little bit more expensive, which means you upgrade every other year. That's okay. It means that companies like Google and Facebook others are less profitable in the short term. That's also okay. All of these things are okay. We just need to decide, and now we need to move forward. Jason Calacanis (01:24:14): When do we what's our best estimate of when people will be allowed to go to a restaurant? I think it's you know, again, getting back to what the people listening to this podcast probably care about most as we wrap up here in the in the second hour. And thank you for tuning into the all in podcast. David Friedberg is with us from what's the name of your incubator again? Your incubator, David? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:24:34): The production board. Jason Calacanis (01:24:36): the production board, previously metronomicclimate.com. And Shamalapali, happy to have social capital partnership. When do we suspect people will be allowed to go back to work in the Bay Area in New York? When will people be able to go and have a meal in a restaurant? Do you think this is May, June, or July, or August? When will we be out of quarantine? I'm going crazy. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:00): I'll give you my optimistic, and I'll and then we can give the final word to David. Here's my optimistic view. Jason Calacanis (01:25:08): Please. I'm dying. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:09): that the I think that the emerging evidence will soon be hard to ignore that we have a denominator problem, which means that we're not testing enough and that these IgG and IgM tests will come online at scale in the next 2 weeks and that we will establish demard zones within cities and towns, green zones, if you will, where people who are either negative or who have already gotten it and have tested positive for the antibodies will be allowed to interact. So I am telling you that it's within 6 weeks Jason Calacanis (01:25:44): 6 weeks from now, we'll be in restaurants, and we may have to show our papers to somebody to get in or have our foreheads tested. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:25:54): No. You just have to show your test result and have your passport or driver's license. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (01:25:58): I mean, I I know this sounds crazy. I would much rather go to a restaurant in the next 6 weeks where I had to show my papers, a little bit Triconi, and sounds a little dystopian, I would much rather go back to Taisho have my goddamn ramen. It'd show my papers and know everybody else did, and then have everybody go through the, you know, very simple temperature test on their forehead like I give to my kids when they're sick. David, you taking the over where the under at 6 weeks for when we'll all be at Taishoke and Avian Raman. David Friedberg (01:26:28): I'm I'm taking the under. I'm taking April 7th or 8th. Jason Calacanis (01:26:32): April 7th or 8th, and we're recording this, I think, on 17th or 8 18th, I think. And so you're you're you're same. We're just gonna be whatever 20 days out. 20 days out. I too am taking the under, but, apparently, I think it's I think we're 4 or 5 weeks. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:26:44): David David explained the under case just so and we can end on that. but what's the under case? Because that's a great note dandong. David Friedberg (01:26:50): Yeah. Yeah. So as we see the number if you look at the UW virology website, and I've shared this with people on my Twitter account, which I started doing yesterday Jason Calacanis (01:26:59): -- Which is App Friedberg. -- Freedberg. Pat Friedberg. David Friedberg (01:27:03): I'm not sure. I'm gonna stick with it. I don't know if I have the stomach for it like you guys do. But, basically, they're showing, you know, steady caseloads of positives per day, which, again, is delayed. And if you look at the ICU availability, the emergency room wait time data, which I think are better leading indicators of where we are in the cycle, New York is about 2 weeks behind us. New York is gonna be fucked for a little while, but I do think that the West Coast and with some travel restrictions is gonna be able to reopen for business probably around April 7th or 8th because we're gonna see a dramatic decline at that point, and we're gonna see a lower fatality rate than everyone's predicting, and we're gonna start to have measures around washing your hands and masks because you can't stay shut down for that long without literally never being able to open again. So I'm kind of balancing the economic need against what I think the data is starting to show that, hopefully, we we are seeing the second derivative turning negative now. And so we start to see a slowdown in new cases, and then we see a slow a reduction in cases. And I think that, you know, There's a huge distribution on what that model can tell you, but I feel really good about, kinda, like, April 7th or 8th us getting enough confidence there. Okay. It's safe to go outside again. And by the way, if we don't open up for fucking business, everyone's done forever. Alright. Yeah. So that that that's where that's where I get the number. Jason Calacanis (01:28:18): And most importantly, when do we feel comfortable playing cards again in person? because I'm I'm starting to think that I want I know this sounds crazy. But at this point, if the three of us were positive and we'd gotten through it already, I would like to know that. I think the entire poker group needs to get tested, and the best possible scenario is that we're all inoculated. We're not carriers anymore with blockers in the system, and we can get back to playing cards because I am and I'm being a little facetious here. But the chances are we might all have it. Right? I mean, it's it's a possibility. I am going bonkers being at home. I am not designed for social isolation. I'm going crazy. David Friedberg (01:28:56): Jamath, do you like it? Chamath Palihapitiya (01:28:59): Yeah. I mean, I'm a I'm a pretty isolated person as a matter, of course, anyway. So other than work and you know, my doing this or TV, I'm always at home. Yeah. And but the the one thing that I cannot live without is Monday, Poker. And and I'll really tell you why it's like, in a moment like this, here's here's what I've realized. I've realized just how much extraneous stuff I have in my life, how much I don't need it, how much I've occupied my time with things that are just not important, and it's really allowed me to clarify, like, you know, working on the next deal, not important. thinking about my status in society, not important. Thinking about what other people think of me, not important. my health important, my family and their health important. And my friends, I love my friends. Jason Calacanis (01:29:52): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:52): And -- We're Jason Calacanis (01:29:53): very blessed. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:29:54): I I mean, I I love the both of you. Mhmm. That group saved me in some really tough moments in my life. Jason Calacanis (01:30:01): Yeah. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:02): And I hate not seeing you guys and being able to, you know, just touch and feel you on on once a week. It's That to me is brutal. And Jason Calacanis (01:30:11): just to be clear, this is a poker group. When we when we define touching and feeling, we're talking about poker chips. -- Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:18): love. It's fine. We make men Jason Calacanis (01:30:19): They make man love over the poker table, and that's how men commune is by just shifting large amounts of money across the table. I miss you guys too. I'm going crazy. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:28): I I'm not gonna be I I don't think, like, you're gonna see me after this said and done. I can't take seriously buying things. I just think it's like, what the fuck is the point? Yeah. I really take seriously that we need to fix the social infrastructure of the United States and in part do our do what we can to help as many people as possible. Jason Calacanis (01:30:47): Alright. They have the folks. Chamath Friedberg 2024. Hey, Dave Friedberg. Chamath Palihapitiya (01:30:52): I'll be both. Jason Calacanis (01:30:53): Thanks a lot for doing this. Shamath, thanks a lot for doing at Shamoff, follow at Friedberg. If you wanna help out the podcast, well, there's no ads to click on because Chamath wants me to go broke on this. No ads but I will say if you write us a 5 star review on iTunes, I guess that means we'll get indexed. And follow Friedberg, follow at Shamalff, follow at Jason. We'll see you all next time. Bye bye.