We hope you enjoy these discussions which will now began as a reminder we will take audience questions and encourage you to support at the bottom of the screen we will try to get tour to it to the end of the broadcast vector davis hanson the senior fellow here at the Hoover Institution focus on military history the bestselling author related to 24 books both the National Humanities medal if i had that i would have that hanging around my neck 24 7. Thank you for having me. A lot of us are watching this around the globe cities and suburbs are we know the differences the past couple weeks life is come to us in one a standstill you are a fifthgeneration farmer right now 15 miles outside of fresno and in this agricultural community. There is a sense that life can go on and it will go on by definition with a solitary existence so looking down at the great vineyard or trucks going by a constantly or the east coast with chickens or eggs and beef a sense that agriculture is important to make sure food is delivered to people who are sheltered at home and not as much of a danger because of population density. Fresno county is a big county with one. 2 million with one and with a little over 100 cases the other Rural Counties kings county and kern county are analogous with far fewer cases so its not the feeling to be embattled before the shutdown. With the year 2020 half of americans were told to stay at home people have been told to keep their distance and there is no foreseeable and may be june july, who knows when but if you go back and look at a virus in the United States in 1957, the hong kong flu in one politically incorrect but when we went to that strain go back to 1918 president wilson did not hold Daily Press Conferences congress did not do a massive spending bill why are we doing them different in 2020 as opposed to a century ago . We are more technologically sophisticated populations because we can do it television and communicate over the internet right now and to be much more affluent population that was a much more tragic society of the spanish flu which would kill 50 or 60 Million People the United States will lose almost half to the fluid that was considered part of the tragic existence and with those circumstances to the degree that they do today is also more tragic people were used to more of more physical existence is better my family 135 years and i grew up hearing my grandparents talk about the 1918 flu and they quarantine themselves but completely selfsufficient and they just didnt go many places there was never many places to go i remember the stories of my aunt went out to swim in 1922 she got polio and ended up here propelled for the rest of her life and stayed here the rest of her life and died in the eighties i can remember the 1957 flu that was one of my first memories with a humidifier and everybody thought penicillin was the miracle drug so we went out to roll up our sleeves i know it didnt help the virus but there is still love magic drug. It just comes one after the other i had Governor Cuomo given his briefing and watched gavin newsom and President Trump each is a continuation of the past you look at societies and the question of discipline. Is there any model we should look at for a country that values civil liberty and freedo freedom . How long can they go on like this . We have been similar situations. World war ii if you remember the japanese internment, that came from liberal minded leaders like fdr later they regretted that at the time there was a panic in the nation. We look back fondly at the productive history of world war ii but that was not a sustainable situation to have that much gdp devoted to military production. If this continues the way it is charted by the modelers the prices and just economic but you are already starting to see the social breakdown so within my circumference people are opening lv goal barbershops for the illegal Daycare Center theirs was to have takeout food but serving people sitting down. I talked to a lot of people from different varieties of life and the attitude is like the fifties that life is okay but i will not destroy my childrens livelihood on the basis of an edict and ill try to navigate around it and when a person is told one paper towel one toilet paper in one hand cleanser and then walk out with two because if i allow them to do it at least let me charge them and i can get the money if i say only one then they walk out with two so its a misdemeanor the study van prosecuted and because were such a diverse country with the same diversity has europe, south dakota is not louisiana. Simi valley is not San Francisco. New york is not south dakota we need to be flexible to be a little more liberal in the way they adjudicate with that subset population. University of washington has done a model on this. It is suggesting we will hit a peak mortality number this sunday which is good news meaning we go downhill after that. There are two ways to look at that either the glass halfful halffull, we behaved, kept her distance or people could look at this to say here is another example of fake news and lack of institutional confidence which will prevail . I hope its the halffull because there is a logic to the shutdown if you are getting paid at least some of the population is a sustainable proposition and then you think the numbers have to be ever increasingly more optimistic not two. 5 percent mortality or half a percent or 99. Eight because that drives reality. We have to realize its not a dichotomy with the economy and coronavirus but we will lose a lot of lives anxiety, stress and neglected surgeries if we dont allow flexibility for people to go out. So with modeling it is the first epidemic that i can think of as a historian the modelers have no Accurate Information whatsoever about the number of people who actually have it and with the effort to go get tested and most people believe that is one tenth of the actual case numbers and then to adjudicate the caseload and then people say it started out 1 percent now it is two two. Five. For those who have antibodies or inactive cases are those who are dying subject to interpretation because of those physical issues and challenges are dying from the virus there so much uncertainty with the inability to be incorrect we will not have two. 2 Million People die i think that washington modelers went to go back to initial data i dont think they convinced gavin newsom to say by the end of the month 25 millions californian will have a case of covid19 ohio should have said on marc march 12 he thought 100,000 people have an active case but there were hundred to tested positive that mightve had it but it was doubling every six days based on the Health Commissioner giving us today 24 days later one. 6 million ohioans in looking at the statistics yesterday they have a little over 100 dead and 5000 cases there is a downside to modeling if you make a model is not just a construct it has consequences im afraid the media suggest is that it is good the pessimist warns us what could happen therefore we get a little hysterical but if i had not have done that he wouldnt have taken the measures and if he is right and the person who is accurate they suffer a situation if the model exaggerates and then they all say its always because it is that because of your optimistic assessment possible then to say to be an optimist you are a murderer because you said they would it be this many dead so because of you people were not cautious. Keep in mind the psychological landscape there are consequences telling western governments two. 2 million americans will di die. They didnt do that in 1918 or 1957 im not saying they didnt have the statistical knowledge or the data but didnt have confidence or computers or things like that so they were much more humble about their data and ramifications. With a virtual policy briefing with Victor Davis Hanson mentioning rahm emanuel former mayor of chicago and bill clinton chief of staff dont let a serious crisis go to waste watching congres congress, government, california statewide, what has government done well but also Civil Liberties . Would you be concerned a state like rhode island could we see a situation how far will this push us . We reacted very rapidly to a very difficult situation in which the Chinese Communist government lied about the nature of the transmission rate the spread of the virus, anything and that untruth echoed by the who. The travel ban said its not necessary you cannot transmit person to person as they said a couple weeks earlier. Given the acrimony and cdc test kits did not work. Wear masks or do not wear masks then starting to emerge a consensus what we are doing now has reduced but where we are at a cracks it is not a sustainable information and we have to either have regional choice people can modify or realize if we dont get the Antibody Test we have no idea of immunity so we will go out to start the infection process again and justify six or seven and trillion dollar hit to the economy on the rationale they gave us breathing time the hospitals were not overcrowded or medical systems intact but each time we shelter in space and then go out again and again to buy time for anecdotes or vaccination is not sustainable the cost of the economy and human lives to persuade people we dont have a choice dont go to a sports event otherwise get back to work. Victor davis hanson senior fellow please go to our website to hear more of his research now we will take some audience questions to my knowledge after any significant presence to see a postwar boom with that interpretation we are in the war does that apply now . Once youre in 1818 or 1946 a lot of research that i did earlier in my career that shows all the pessimistic appraisals was false with the Peloponnesian War and people see it and survive something starved for special action or traveler renaissance what they did before the crisis economist can argue that makes up for the law that also makes it auxiliary criteria to examine there is a point in the summer to have record low fuel prices so that would be have zero Interest Rates make a vast redistribution of money and that lost revenue will be given to people who borrow money by zero interest but it will be an economic stimulus and logic is six or 7 trillion of liquidity from the stock market in gdp is with that was real money that disappeared to be so crude they infused cash into the system because it is temporarily replacing the lost capital but the answer is there will be stimuli after the crisis that i think we will accelerate but what was the situation before the crisis . World were to said second recession with 16 percent unemployment, negative gdp it will be like that again and were very worried. But we created 7 million jobs and back to the status of 2016 or 17 with a Strong Economy was important. What is the relation with china moving forward one year or two from now . Chinas success was built on the following assumptions that they were going to outsource wrote labor to china to produce quality merchandise in a manner that was is consistent with the mercantile and trade protocol and they didnt do that with pharmaceuticals that that was an abuse or aberration but it didnt endanger the paradigms and there was the naivete that we can outsource the pharmaceutical industry to china because the richer it becomes it will become more liberalized we have 20000 people flying in they are becoming liberalized it will look like paris and San Francisco that is inevitable that will not happen and the reputation of china was destroyed and now the general global perception is the coronavirus number three coming out of wuhan and then to go to San Francisco los angeles or paris they have lost their International Credibility because they lied about every aspect and contaminated the who and lost credibility and i dont think it will be a sustainable proposition for an American Company to produce penicillin only in china it will have connotations nationalistic or patriotic so things will change and thats why the chinese are so worried and engaged in the Propaganda Campaign and helping other countries because their International Reputation is at rock bottom. Has a pandemic changed our relationship with the treaties to other nations or are they changing partners . Obviously people are starting to look at things in a different way we thought lets just not talk about taiwan they endanger the relationship with one. 4 billion person but now we say they played by the rules and were transparent protected the population , allowed people to voice dissension, they are a model of what china should have done so why do we have to feel guilty of our support in taiwan so i see a lot of those countries being far more afraid even before the crisis that is amenable to a closer relationship in terms of europe its a little more problematic between those guidelines is a model almost as if it is a Transnational Organization that runs on Solar Wind Power soft power and has no borders and within that nano second the border is closed in germany and the other countries in the north are not willing to said medical supplies to the south with this anti eu creed people are dying with no money they couldnt get it when they were not dying. If you add that preexisting financial crisis with spain and italy and greece and brexit in the fight that many countries had with us over funding of the alliance, the eu has taken a big hit i dont know who you call other than kissinger the president of the eu speaking for italy or greece or germany . They havent sorted that out there will be a lot of pressure on the eu with the Common Market to stop the trade barriers within european nations that dont have strassburg to tell a person how many inches a banana has to be to be a banana that simple control is discredited. Do you think this will create a generation similar to the golden generation . Talk about the greatest generation we characterize that by two similar experiences going from a depression from 1929 to 1939 then cost 79 Million People without war i dont see this crisis lasting as long as those are taking as much life but i do think it will get the dose of reality to the average american that there is the existential fact of life when you get up in the morning if you live the next day at the food you get, the water you drink, the sewage so right now what is important to you is not Michael Bloomberg financing Chinese Companies to get the western liquidity to be viable and then lecture us china is a consensual society where they dont have the technical skill. That is irrelevant right now it is dangerous given the naivete. What we want people to put stuff on the ground it does take a lot of gray matter and then it dependent somebody and hanford and the trucker from bakersfield so i think there will be a much greater respect and honor for people we felt were the losers of globalization and didnt understand the Global Market if you are on a ventilator or pharmaceutical maybe you didnt think it was that important to the Global Economy and thought it was everything but it turns out whether the eu model or who or chinas role it wasnt too good and what was good is a guy driving all night on the interstate and working on the potato harvester or the kid willing to go into the Grocery Store to be exposed in theory so that would be very positive. Victor davis hanson is written a lot of books published in 2017 and i mentioned that because it ties into the next question, can you draw a comparison of the dark days of world war ii in combat thats with the sacrifices required then and now a better carry on today . I think so the secret to roosevelt success the guilt to pericles so he wakes up and is told mr. Roosevelts is much better than anything we had and by the way they are substandard and have more carriers than we do in the pacific and by the way they are just about ready to take over the european or finance colonies southeast asia, singapore, we cannot save the philippines roosevelt says yes but this is what the United States is capable. We play 2 Million People in a year and a half and landed them in france without losing one in the middle of an epidemic and then produced more munitions than the allies put together. We can do that again this is the beyond use capacity and then to nurse us along this is what we will do he didnt say it was the end but it was the beginning and there are more setbacks the without learning curve and more assets what a strange country were fighting if we can build a tube a carrier like the wasp or the heart of barnett on worn and then we wake up were producing 27 fleet carriers and then we pay for and they say how . Everybody shelters at home and now we work 20 hours a day creating what real wealth and by the way be 2,950,000 new parts and just a different attitude after we get used to the virus to go out and conquer im amazed at all these people that had lost the american spirit experimenting with ventilators and off label drugs and you can get the vaccination first is starting to happen like that and its Pretty Amazing i was talking to a guy it is and how long have you been here . He said now i have eight more i said we get the virus . He said i know they will put up a plastic barrier tomorrow 90 days into it rather than damning everybody he looks forward to it so a lot of people still have that spirit. I live in california considering the homelessness why is it not ended up like new yor york. Is this possible . Its a good question and here at stanford a number of epidemiologist and statisticians are trying to figure it out because it does not make sense half of the nations homeless 15,180,000 homeless one third of public assistance one out of three californians admitted has diabetes which is a risk facto factor, the lowest number of doctors, lowest number of hospital beds per thousand in the nation. Poverty level 27 percent if you put all of that to gather people say its not in a situation to resist the epidemic and more importantly, lax, sand and one san diego have 7000 per day 23 direct flights in this. To and from wuhan people thought it will be terrible three weeks ago he said 25 million will have the virus we are a little bit halfway over his predictions now they are 17000 known cases everybody wants to know what happened the south is warmer this time of year and they are suffering that why we would have twice the population and one tenth the death toll over one 30th of the caseload . Look at this a different way. Maybe that flew in November December january or february we were exposed we didnt get herd immunity bad a lot of people ten or 15 percent got that flew the cdc said was not influenza a peer told we had 16 outbreaks of influenza even though they did not test very many we were just told those who did maybe it was be so im getting at with an explanation to say we have shelter in place but the governor enacted that then new york did it. Its helpful that doesnt explain the california paradigm we dont know the answer so the Antibody Testing from the stanford doctors will know very quickly. What effect will the crisis have on the november election . How does trump calibrate the message but also joe biden they have to offer agendas of their own how does this affect the election. If we like it or not this virus has been weaponize every decision modulated in the media against trump for the hard left in a manner increasingly that impeachment did not to show the world the economy will crash and then when. This was the existential threat but not killed 1161857 or event 2017 we can handle that and get back quicker and they will recover in time for the election that is the arithmetic of death. That colors almost everything the person says. I never thought we would get to that level of politicalization when the antimalarial drug seems to work the cdc takes this seriously and then at the comes either trump was inspired and save lives for hes a quack and will kill people and thats a level of discourse and joe biden i think it seemed logical and then did well against Bernie Sanders and that joe will go back to his home and rest of the 77 and then do the fdr fireside chat in antithesis of the day against trump then he started you teleprompter name go ad hoc he did not to do that in an insurance and anecdotes but more importantly he started with a false premise that trump rejected all the medical advice just like he doesnt believe in Global Warming be he has accepted almost all recommendations from science that puts biden in the untenable situation to disagree with trump and then disagree with science. So he issues a travel ban against all of the community and who and his own advisors like anthony felt she and then biden said i have to be against it but then all of a sudden it works and then has been against africa ten days later connecting flights and mumbles you cant have that either now in a dilemma how do i explained what i criticized he said chinese virus thats what i meant. But he didnt. I would have had been a done it earlier what does that mean cracks President Biden said i dont want to be racist so i will stop all Chinese People coming . It gets into the fantastical and the surreal suggest look at trump and then follows advice and says i would do the same thing and in the long run pavlov the end with his attack on every single thing that trump does. And with that train of thought and sentence structure sometimes is very clear. And then to be empirical. Im reading your book. And then to write out the war. How do we convince americans to rely on government handouts . A good point we are creating a culture we did not intend and with that cause and effect relationship you go out and work and creates capital and money in the not creating goods and services you in the country at large are impoverishing you cant just print money. When you have a culture of complacency and you get a fear of the virus as soon as we get the Antibody Testing we will see it doesnt kill three out of every 100 but one or two of every thousand. So thats what we will do. So with this cheap gas will go back out and get into it. Every the longer we get into the attitude the more complacent we become and the more timid and frightened when i start to see certain areas even though the rates of death people are becoming more are pessimistic because the media focuses on the young man 22 years old that died in three days rather than the person that was much more typical 86 with congestive Heart Failure and diabetes that is the rare exception is sensationalized in the caseload is not. So we have to like counties and states adapt that will create confidence and optimism. And the bold county board say we will be hygienic, social distancing and others will follow suit with a chain reaction. We have been here before 57, 2009, 2018, they tell us coronavirus is different to be much more infectious but were not the same people love 2017 we are better connected, better information. There is a world nobel prize to find the anecdote we should be confident about that to get better