Transcription: Segment 2
Paul Winkler: You are listening to the Investor Coaching Show, Paul Winkler, along with Mr. Evan Barnard and Arlene Brown. Evan, you were talking about several different topics, and the one that caught my attention, the bubonic plague and lessons for the post Coronavirus society. What’s that all about?
Evan Barnard: Yeah. So it was kind of an interesting thing, talking about early on in the bubonic plague, just reading a quick quote, “neither physicians nor medicines were effective.”
There was such a fear that no one seemed to know what to do. According to 14th century Florentine, statesmen, Baldessari. Bonaiuti about the plague rapidly spreading across Europe at that time. And so, I mean, you know, here, ultimately we kind of call it the black death or whatever from back then, and approximately 25% of the world’s population was affected. So in terms of magnitude, it’s a totally different situation today with coronavirus versus black deaths.
Enormous distrust
But here was the interesting thing, because there was this overwhelming sense of, the government is trying everything. The King is trying everything at this time, the Catholic church is trying everything and nothing is working. All of a sudden you have this enormous distrust across this, you know, the, the populace and that population. Yeah. And I can see that because institutions typically, we go through our day to day lives and nothing happens.
Paul: You know, we don’t have huge issues. Everybody has issues, you know, things that happened to them, bad things that happened to them. But for the most part, there are a lot of things that we don’t have to sit here and worry about in America. Exactly. You know, we don’t have to worry about that. We’re getting external attackers coming in and bombers coming in and we have to look up in the sky and see if there’s, you know, some kind of somebody who’s been ready to drop something on our heads or, you know, we’re protected from a lot of things and we give credit to our governments, and rightly so, that we’re pretty well insulated that dramatic as bombs dropping.
I don’t really think about it when I turn on the faucet to get a drink of water. And I was going to use the example of when I go buy something at the grocery store that I go and ingest that thing. I’m not worried it’s going to wipe me out. Yeah. I don’t think that’s the end, the FDA. And you’ve got a lot of protective measures in our society that have developed over the years. So for, in a lot of ways we do protect or we do trust government institutions. And whether that’s right or wrong, that’s a separate debate because in my view, capitalism would solve the same problems so that they sell more loaves of bread.
Evan: They’ll make sure the bread is fresh. They don’t really need the government to intervene. There is actually an economic concept that you’re talking about of self policing, but our perception is okay, OSHA keeps us safe at work. The EPA keeps the air. You know, I mean, there’s this belief that the government is keeping things going smoothly, not capitalism, right? And so here we now have this disease virus.
You know that again, I’m biased, butI don’t think it’s nearly as lethal across society as the government might have us believe, but that’s precisely the point is now there’s a huge body of citizens questioning the ability of government to confront problems, the necessity of if they should even be in the business of confronting some problems and doubting the fact that we’re getting the straight scoop. And during the bubonic plague, all of a sudden we have almost, the foundations are contributed to the foundations of the Protestant reformation.
Paul: I mean, that is an earth shaking, that’s a pretty big transition in Europe at the time. And we could have a similar earth shaking transition, and not necessarily negative by the way. And in this particular case, they didn’t trust the government anymore as well. Not just the church, but the country and the government were very intertwined. So it’s interesting to me that that lesson led to a pretty big sea change. Yes. And I’m imagining because of the time period we’re talking about, and we’re looking at what?
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People became more independent
Evan: 1400s. Okay. So it’s 1408. It’s that far back. I think so. Yeah. Yup. Wow. I’m just thinking, when was the referent? My history was not my strength. Well, the reformation was after that, but that kind of planted the seeds. Okay. Okay. Changing their position.
Here is the parallel, right? The church would keep changing their positions on how to deal with this stuff. Just like, “well, yeah, it’s not really that big of a deal. Don’t wear a mask and then a month later, Oh, that’s really a big deal. You’ve got to wear masks.” And then, you know, two months later, “well you got to wear a mask and you got to shut the, I mean, just, and you’ve got to put a plastic sheet,” all of these changes and then it gives the impression, nobody knows what’s going on.
And so I’ve got to fend for myself. I mean, it’s very similar dynamic, right? So it’s a possibility that the result of this is that people become a little bit more independent minded, which is fantastic. Exactly. Oh yeah. And the reality of it is, and I think that what we’re seeing right now is some of these pharmaceutical companies coming out with drugs and testing the new tech.
Arlene Brown: Yeah. It’s, it’s really wonderful because there are, out of 167 candidates. Okay. There is, we have six pharmaceutical companies, but it’s really three companies that are really in phase three. Okay.
Paul: So you’re talking about vaccines in this particular case. Okay.
Arlene: I, a few weeks really gonna be for FDA approval.
Paul: Yeah. See that that’s, that’s fascinating. And then you’ve got that aspect of the vaccine. And then you got on the other side of things, Abbott laboratories came out with this rapid COVID test. And some people will say, I’m not going to get a test. We were talking about that and I’m not going to get a test and I’ll weigh because then I’m on record as having it. And I’m wondering if this thing is going to be something that you can do in privacy, in your own home, just by, based on what I’m reading, they got $750 million deal to buy 150 million rapid COVID-19 tests from Abbott. And it would increase the nation’s capacity for rapid testing.
It’s a $5 rapid test. And in essence gives you results in like 15 minutes. And they liken it to kind of like a pregnancy test from Amazon. You know, the thing is, is that you don’t have to have a record of the result of it. I wouldn’t think.
Arlene: The mere fact that you are testing yourself. No, I’m just, I’m just fighting for a friend.
Paul: Yes. So I am now living in a world where if that becomes commercially available, I would actually go ahead and wear a mask to walk into the store and I would pay cash for it. We’ll see that that’d be good to be viewed on a video camera. I mean, look at that. I wouldn’t use my Kroger plus card and be like, why did you start? Why do you have a mask over your eyes? I’d wear a ski mask to go buy it and pay cash. And frankly, I don’t care if I get it anyway, ski masks got a hole in their mouth if they can identify, but you kind of break the rule about having a mask.
Private companies solving problems
I was just totally rude. I was going to wear Groucho Marx glasses and just hang a piece of Kleenex under the nose. Is that what actually complies with that? Or does it just say you have to cover your nose and mouth. So in essence, I wouldn’t, my point being, you have to have control. We have companies, private companies solving these problems and with private companies solving problems, people start to go, well, wait a minute. Maybe capitalism is a pretty good idea and government control.
Isn’t that such a great idea because the government got it wrong. Capitalism got it right. And your point, right? It is. And interestingly enough, just, I mean, thinking about an earlier conversation, offline is removing the regulation. Getting government out of the way is the only reason we even have three or six finalists in the first place. Right. Normally you have to jump through so many hoops. It is an excellent point.
Arlene: People are asking why $10 billion. That is really $10 billion is being carved out for this. Okay. Well, the answer was really good when he said that.
Paul: Well, you can justify when you can open up on the economy, you can’t open up an economy. If the economy is under siege or something like that. Yeah.
Arlene: Well, the taxpayer will pay for a winner, but the government pays it all. Okay. That’s the whole point you have to, you have to have a budget for all these, so that people where companies are gonna race to get the first vaccine out
Paul: And that’s where capitalism is working. So, here’s the thing. And I look at it and go, we can learn lots of lessons from history and bubonic plague. If it’s, if that’s where we learned the lesson on how it’s just interesting to me how they changed their viewpoint of the ruling class and the ruling organizations, based on the fact that the ruling organizations and class did not have answers to their problems where private industry in this particular case has, and private industry has always been the thing that we we’ve been hearing about it over the past few years has been picked on and picked on capitalism fails, socialism, the way you know, and communism.
But you know, the reality of it is I think people are starting to see that maybe there’s more to the story and more than meets the eye. Go ahead, Evan, last word before we take a break.
Evan: Yeah. You could make the case that without the bubonic plague, the United States would have never been founded by the pilgrims.
Paul: Oh yeah. Interesting case. Interesting case. You’re listening to the Investor Coaching Show. Good points guys. Paul Winkler, along with Evan Barnard and Arlene Brown.
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