Briefings are an opportunity for you to hear directly from our nations top scholars on the pressing issues facing the world during this difficult time. As we confront the challenges brought on by covid19, conversations like this had never been more important. We hope you enjoy and find value in these discussions which will now begin. As a reminder we will be taking audience questions and encourage you to submit yours and the button located at the bottom of the screen. Look down at the bottom of the screen and type in your question will try to get to a toward the end of the broadcast. Todays briefing is from victor davis, the senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, its focus its classic of military histo history, hes a bestselling author and written or edited 24 books the most recent of which the case for trump, Victor David Hanson has awarded the National Humanities medal and a bradley price, victor youre a better man than nine, by had the metal and have it hanging around my neck 24 7, how are you my friend. Very good, thank you for having me. An interesting question before we get into the policy side of things, a lot of us are watching this from Population Centers around the country and around the globe, cities and suburbs and excerpts where we know the difference that is occurred in the past couple weeks, life is come to a standstill, terribly quiet, you are coming to us from a family farm, your fifth generation for my might and, but right now youre about 15 miles outside of fresno and im curious as to what different you know an Agricultural Community in this kind of situation. I think theres a sense that life can go one and will go on because agricultural by definition the production site is solitary existence so when i looking out here at allmans were looking down at a great vineyard or a plum orchard or ac trucks going but constantly headed toward the coast or the east coast with chickens and eggs and beef, theres a sense that agriculture is really important, people are looking to it to make sure food is delivered to people who are sheltering at home and theres not as great a danger because of population density as a son Fresno County is a big county, has over 1 Million People, one point to million but we really have only 100 cases, to dust, the other Rural Counties i live near, kings county, kern county, their analogous, there are far fewer cases per million residents and far fewer fatalities. So its not the feeling of the bottle that we have at Stanford University before the shutdown. Victor on the year 2020 half of americans have been told to stay at home, this is been told by government who is essential and who is not, people been told to keep their distance from each other and theres no foreseeable into this. Maybe the end of april or the end of may, june, july, who knows when, heres what im curious about, if you go back and look at a virus that struck the United States in 1957, the hong kong flu we can use a politically and collect term called the hong kong flu, the economy did not shut down in 1957 when we went through the straight, if you go back to 1918, president Woodrow Wilson did not hold Daily Press Conferences to talk about the influenza epidemic, congress did not do massive spending bills in response the economy did not come to a halt, why are we doing things different lien 2020 as opposed to 60 years ago than a century ago. One is were much more technologically fist dictated, we do it because we can do it, we have television and the way they were communicating over the internet right now so people are inert to that and they want information from her much more affluent population that we all feel were going to dine early 70s or 80s in her sleep, that was a much more tragic society, there was a case of the spanish flu that were in a world that would kill about 50 Million People, 60 million, the United States would lose about 120,000, almost half to the flu and that was considered part of the tragic existence and people did not have control over their medical, their economic circumstances to the degree that they feel that they do today, it was also more tragic and Therapeutic Society and its been in my family for 145 years and they have a history, i grew up here my grandparents talk about the 1918 and they quarantine themselves here but they were completely selfsufficient, then their own water, own sewage in their own food and they just didnt go very many places, there is not very many places to go and i remember the stories of my aunt who went out to swim once in 1922 at seven, she got polio and got crippled for the rest of her life, she stayed in the house until she died in the 1980s, i remember the 1957 flu was for five years, that was one of my first memories that we have a tent in this house and humidifier and we were all sort of told to read so we wouldnt die, everybody thought penicillin was a miracle drug so we had doc would go on a car and we rolled up her sleeve and he gave us a shot and i dont know whether it help for the virus, i know it didnt help the virus but he felt the penicillin is a maga drug. Victor this is come after one after another, get up in the morning have breakfast and i watched Governor Cuomo give his breathing, i watch gavin newsom give his breathing, i watch President Trump to his breathing, each day seems to be continuation of the past. You looked at societies and youre looking at the question of discipline in a society, is there any model we should be looking out for how long a country is pushing a country that values civil liberty and freedom, how long can a society go on like this. Weve been in similar situations, world war ii, if you remember the japanese internment and the paranoia, that came from judicious and liberal minded leaders like fdr. Later they regretted it at the time there was a panic that ripped the nation and we look back at the productive history of world war ii but that was not a sustainable situation to have that much of your gdp devoted to military production. And i can tell you, if this thing continues the way its charted by some of our modelers, the price will not just be economic, it will be in human lives because youre already starting to see, even out here social breakdown, i tell you within my circumference there are people who are opening illegal barbershops out in the barn and theres an illegal Daycare Center down the street, their canteens that are supposed to have takeout food and serving food to people sitting down and i talked to a lot of people from a lot of different varieties of life in their attitude is like the 1950s, life was okay, it was not great but im not going to destroy my childrens livelihood on the basis and im going to try to navigate around it and there are people when you go to the store and a person is told one paper towel, one toilet paper, one hand cleanser and they walk out with two, she is in a dilemma because she says if i dont if i allow them to do a at least let me charge them and i get the money from them. If i say only one the walk i would to in my inner misdemeanor the soccer to be prosecuted, their joys of firing of a society and i think because were such a diverse country and we have the same diversity as europe, south dakota is not louisiana, Central Valley is not san francisco, new york is not north dakota or south dakota, we need to be flexible if not the counties to be a little bit more liberal in a way they adjudicate the perceived danger to their subset population. Victor you mentioned models, the university of washington is then a model on this and revises numbers today, is now suggesting were going to hit a peak mortality number this sunday which is good news, that means youre coming to the hump in this thing, were going to go downhill after that, heres the question, theres one of two ways to look at that, they can look at the Glass Half Full scene we behaved, kept her distance and were keeping this thing under control or conversely people could look at this and say heres another example if you want to use the phrase fake news, lack of institutional confidence, i was told this could happen and it didnt. Which of these two will prevail, the halffull or the halfempty. I hope its a halffull because there is a logic to the shutdown because if you shut down and getting paid some of the population and you feel that this is a sustainable proposition and youre not aware of the effects on other people in the selfemployed because you were closed in and then you think that the numbers have to be ever increasingly more optimistic, you have to get not 2. 5 mortality rate for 1 or half 8 , youre not can go out until its 99. 8, that becomes a logic of its own that drives reality, what im worried about is we have to realize its on between the economy and the coronavirus, its between lives and lives and were gonna lose a lot of lives in suicide substance abuse, anxiety, stress neglected doctors appointment, neglected surgeries if we dont allow flexibility of people to go on, as far as the modeling goes, this is the first step is a story i think of when the modelers had no Accurate Information whatsoever about the denominator, the people who actually have it. That is only based on those who are ill or feel that theyre exposed in to get tested, most people believe, that the model in itself of the case numbers that its very important because that adjudicates the caseload and then people say it started out 1 , now its 2. 5, my gosh. Its bound to go down when we have more data people who have antibodies or in active cases and even the numerator, the number of people who are dying is subject to interpretation because a lot of people with physical issues and challenges are being listed as dying from the virus so there is so much uncertainty and thats reflected in the inability of the modelers to be correct, were not can have 2. 2 Million People die as imperial college, i dont think the washington modelers would want to go back to their initial data, i dont think the modelers who convinced gavin newsom three weeks ago to say by the end of this month, 25 million californians will have a case of covid19 inc. The mortality rate would apply a million, i dont think mike dewine in ohio should of said on march 12 that he thought 100,000 people had an active case when in fact there were about five 100 who tested positive, maybe 500 that mightve had it but he said it was doubling every six days based on his Health Commissioner or Health Directors modeling and that would give us 24 days later, 1. 6 million ohioans and probably 40000 dead in the statistics yesterday they have a little over 100 dead in about 5000 cases. There is a downside to modeling, we have to be careful, when you make a model it is not just a construct, it has consequences and so far im afraid the media is suggested the consequences are always good because the pessimist serve two purposes, the pessimist warns us what can happen and therefore we get a little hysterical and take the necessary measures, he says if i hadnt of done it you would not of taking these measures. And then if he is right then hes a grim person who is accurate, its a lose lose situation, the modeler is exaggerating the data is incomplete and everybody said yeah but it was only because of the pessimistic people change your behavior the major optimistic assessment and fees wrong given life and death, they say would be an optimist, your murder because you said it would not be this many dead and because of you, people were not cautious. You gonna keep in mind the psychological landscape that these models are given. There are consequences when somebody tells western governments the 2. 2 million americans are likely to die. And that has a lot of ramifications, they didnt do that 1918 1957 im not saying they didnt have the statistical knowledge to make these models or the data abilities but they didnt have confidence that they were all knowing and they didnt have computers and things like that so they were much more humble about their own data in the ramification for public policy. Tuning in on bill whalen and this is the Hoover Institution briefing with victor davis, you mentioned western government, rahm emanuel the former mayor of chicago and before that bill clinton chief of staff said never let a serious crisis go to waste, you been watching government and watching whats going on in congress, you been watching what california is doing statewide and locally, tell us what do you think government has done well in terms of the crisis but also what could learn you in a way of civil liberties. Would you be concerned that maybe a state like rhode island which is just very upset that new yorkers are driving through it on the way to massachusetts, can you see a situation where the state wants to shut down its borders because it wants to keep people who are sick out. How far do you think this will purchase on the civil i think rinne clocks because we reacted as we did after pearl harbor, very rapidly to a very difficult situation in which the Chinese Communist government lied about the nature of the birth of the virus the transmission rate of them virus, the infectiousness of the virus, the spread of the virus, everything about the virus and those untruths were echoed by the World Health Organization, when we had the travel ban of january 31 the World Health Organization said it was unnecessary because you cannot transmit persontoperson as a set a couple weeks earlier. Given all that and given all the acrimony in the cdc test kits did not work, people who are told to wear a mask, not to wear a mask, were getting to a point that were starting to emerge a consensus of what were doing now has reduced the infectiousness, but where were out of quest, this is not a sustainable situation and were gonna have to have reasonable choice that people can modify the protocol or we have to realize if we dont get these antibody test, we have no idea of the degree of immunity. So well just go out and will start the infectious process again and will be able to justify this six or 7 trilliondollar hit in the economy i guess on the rationale where we gave the reading time, and the hospital crowded and we help the medical systems intact, the second or third or fourth way, each time we sheltered in space and we dont get out and then we go out again and again, the only rationale that were buying time were either antidotes or vaccinations, its not a sustainable situation, the cost to the economy eventually in terms of the days rather than months persuade people that we dont have a choice to gradually be careful and wear a mask with proper hygiene and dont go to sports event but otherwise you have to get back to work. Before we go to audience questions, you listen to victor at the fellow institution, if you want to learn more about victors research and research of the hoover fellows, go to our website hoover. Org, w ww. Uber. Org lets take some audience questions, kevin writes to my knowledge after any significant crisis such as one the economy, given the interpretation that were in a war with the same historical role. I think it will. I think winter 1919 or 1946 or even after the war there is a lot of research i did early on in my career that shows all the pessimistic appraisals that happen were not were false and they had a boom after the peloponnesian war, i think the answer is people feel they survive something and they have been starved for social action of travel or restaurant so then the indulgent appetite to grieve and beyond what they did before the crisis. And then economists can argue whether that makes up or not but theres also some criteria that we should examine and we reach a port in the summer we will have a record low fuel prices. So driving in getting the plane very cheap and awaits never been. We have almost 0 interest rates, you can argue were making a vast redistribution of money from holders that if used 2 3, 4 on their money and theyre going to get 0 on the lost revenue is going to be given to people who borrow money by 0 interest but whatever you take of it will be an economic stimulus and we have the government, the logic of the government has been that we lost six or 7 trillion of liquidity to the stock market and lost gdp and that was with money that disappeared and therefore if i can be so crude is the kind of money but they infuse cash into the system and they claim it will not be inflationary because its replacing temporarily lost capital. But the point of all that, the answer is there are going to be stimuli after this crisis that i think will accelerate, what is very important, what was the situation before the crisis, world war ii there was a lot of people listen we had a second recession, depression and 38 and 39 where we had 60 unemployment, we had negative gdp, it will be like that again and they were very worried but in our case we went into this canadian 7 million jobs and we lose 7 million jobs, back to the status in 2016, 17 i had a Strong Economy and that was really important. Labor and variations of the same question, what is the relation going to look like with china moving forward and what will it look like a year or two from now. China success was built on the following assumptions, they were going to outsource road labor, you can outsource road labor to china, they were gonna reduce quality merchandise in a manner that was consistent with world norms and tile and trade protocol. And when they did not do that with dog food or drywall or pharmaceuticals and people said that was an abuse or an adoration but it did not endanger the paradigm, there was the 1 said we can outsource the pharmaceutical to china because the literature becomes its going to become more liberalized, we have 360,000 students in the United States, we have 20000 people flying in per day, they are becoming liberalized and someday shanghai and beijing are going to look like pearson san francisco, thats inevitable, theyll be democratic and liberal minded. That will not happen and the reputation of china is destroyed during this and now i think the general durable perception is, when