Coronavirus: COVID-19, Conjectures and Conspiracies

While many people weren't familiar with the term "coronavirus" until a few months or weeks ago, we've all had one of these in the past - this term describes any number of RNA viruses capable of infecting animals and humans alike, from SARS to the common cold. However, a newly emerged, novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 may well be one of the most dangerous coronaviruses the world has ever seen. Tune in as the guys explore the evolution of what some experts believe may become the world's newest pandemic, separating fact from fiction and asking why so many people are convinced there's a coronavirus conspiracy afoot.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome

(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined as
always with our super producer Paul Mission Controlled Decade. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know now. Typically we ease
into the topic of a given episode, but there's a
lot at play in today's show, so we're going to

(00:48):
dive right in. If you have been paying attention to
the news lately, or even just on Twitter, or even
just walked around outside, you have heard of something called
the Corona virus. Like the two thousand and nine H
one and one also known as swine flew and other outbreaks,
the world has watched with increasing concern and outright panic

(01:10):
as experts and politicians alike wonder whether there is a
new pandemic on the horizon, And, just like with swine
Flew back in two thousand and nine, some people also
allege there is more to the story. So today's question
what is going on? To answer that, we have to
first ask ourselves what is the corona virus? So here

(01:33):
are the facts. Now, this is a bit of a
tricky one. It includes some facts that the mainstream media, honestly,
as we have noticed in our research here, needs to
do a better job of covering and understanding before it's
actually written about, edited, than put out into the public um.
The first thing we need to know is that there's
more than one of these things called a coronavirus, and

(01:53):
coronavirus is um also known as c o V. That's
big sea, little oh, big V. They're a pretty big
family or viral infections, viruses that are responsible for everything
from the common cold, too severe acute respiratory syndrome or
stars as you've also heard about in the past in
reporting and just in outbreaks. And here's here's the thing.

(02:13):
All coronaviruses have a couple of things in common. First,
there's zoonotic and this is just a fancy way of
saying that they can be transmitted between animals and people, right,
And this is where you'll hear a lot of stories
about nowadays. For instance, people in areas of China for example,
beating stray dogs to death in the street. That's the

(02:35):
real thing that happens because people are aware that animals
can be a vector or a means of transmission for
these types of viruses, these types of infections. But when
less we're armed with the science, right, and unless we're
paying close attention, most people will hear that they come

(02:55):
from animals somehow, and then once they hear the A word,
their mind will shut off and they'll just think any
and all animals, sort of the same way that rats
were perhaps unfairly blamed for uh the plagues swept through
Europe and Central Asia and Asia as well, when in
fact it was the fleas gastardly fleas. It so, but

(03:18):
it really is, and we're going to talk about it
further in the episode, about which animal can actually get
the disease in the first place and is carrying it
around in a population, and then how that gets translated
in a I'm not exactly sure how you it's not
ping pong, but it goes from animal to maybe another
animal to a human general. Yeah, let's talk about now,
because we do have proof that at least some coronaviruses

(03:43):
are and we're transmitted from animals to humans. Some fairly
thorough investigations revealed that Stars came to humans directly from
civic cats. Civic cats c i v e. T are
are pretty cute. Their name is a misnomer, but they're
pretty cute, furry Pixar esque animals. They've got the little

(04:06):
saber tooth looking things going on a larger canine teeth,
and they played a direct role in the death of
at least seven hundred and seventy four people from two
thousand two to two thousand and three. But were they
unfairly blamed? Well, yeah, it seems so because the cats
weren't the ones that originally had the virus walking around.
It was bats, horseshoe bats. Yes, so we know that

(04:30):
civic cats while they it's like the old Mafia true
crime stories where they say, well, civic cats may have
pulled the trigger, but they weren't the mind behind the operation.
You know. Ultimately we can trace Stars back to these
specific type of bat. And then we have another thing,
Middle East respiratory syndrome or mirrors c o V, and

(04:51):
that was transmitted to humans from animals. Yeah, in this case,
it was a dromedary camel, or not a single dromedary camel,
but dromedary camel's um were to blame in that in
that scenario. Not to mention, if you add to this
um the fact that we know of several coronavirus is
currently circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans.

(05:12):
That adds kind of a layer of mystery, but not
in like a cool Nancy Drew Kunaway right, an ominous
for foreboding way. The infection that we are hearing about
in the news today is a new kind of coronavirus,
a novel strain we haven't seen before. This is what

(05:33):
makes it so dangerous. You've heard it uh. You've heard
it referred to in a couple of different manners, and
that's because the science around this is evolving as we
record this, and odds are as you listen to it now.
It's been called nineteen dash N c o V uh.
Here in the West, is popular to call it COVID
or c o v I D nineteen or the novel

(05:57):
coronavirus UH. And then even were recently severe acute respiratory
syndrome coronavirus two or stars c o V two and
officials believe that, like these other coronaviruses we've been talking about,
this one's COVID nineteen came to humans from some kind
of animals source, and according to the World Health Organization,

(06:19):
it is quote likely that an animal source from a
live animal market in China was responsible for some of
the first reported human infections. And you know, Ben, is
this where we start talking about wet markets really quickly
or just quickly. Wet markets are something uh that exists
in China in places all over the world where varying

(06:41):
animals are are out of market, they are alive, and
people come in and look at these animals and will
purchase them a lot of times for meat, not always
for meat, but most of the time for consumption purposes.
These animals will be slaughtered at the market, generally in
front of a customer, and then customer will will take

(07:01):
the carcass essentially with them. Correct me if I'm wrong.
This is not really a phenomenon that we see in
the States. This type of establishment. They are around in
the States, but though they're not near as common or
mainstreams because there's such a grocery store packaged food industry structure.
Even if you're buying from like a more of an

(07:21):
artistanal kind of butcher situation. You don't typically pick out
the pig and then have them split its throat in
front of you. There's some heavy regulations against doing a
lot of that stuff. So yeah, you're not going to
see that in the US in a lot of places
unless it's underground, which is it's a possibility that you
could have them an underground market for that kind of thing.
There's that joke on the Office where DWIGHTE says to
Robert California, I can sell you all the exotic meats

(07:45):
that you record that you desire whatever, and he's like,
I'll get back to you on that. Like, you know,
it's like an underground an underground thing. The exotic meats
point is, uh is a great way into describing a
wet market. So when we say web market, we don't
mean that you see chickens or other you know, things
will be common livestock in the West slaughter. You will

(08:07):
also see civic cats. You will see exotic animals sold
for their the purported medicinal qualities of things like their bile.
They're pelt powdered forms of different body parts, horn, horn, Yeah, horns,
a huge one. You will also see uh. You will
also see animals that would not typically be eaten in

(08:30):
the West, such as dogs such as cats, fats, rats, tarantula's.
I almost said lines and tigers in my but those
are very expensive. You can still probably get them. This
virus to walk through. This timeline was first identified in Wuhan, China. Wuhan,
China is the capital of a province, Hebei Province in

(08:53):
central China. We don't speak Mandarin, nor Cantonese Nordning dialects,
so please partner pronounced Asian. In December of twenty nineteen,
that's when they first officially identified it, forty one people
seemed to have symptoms of pneumonia, but they didn't have
any of the discernible causes that would lead someone to

(09:17):
have actual pneumonia. And this is where the entire world,
including you listening, owes a tremendous debt to Dr Lee.
When Leong is a Chinese ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital
and he was speaking with some of his colleagues over
an app called we chat a while back, and when

(09:39):
he was talking to them and this is just shop talk, right, Uh.
He warns them that he's worried there's a new coronavirus,
there's some new infection and it's very dangerous. He doesn't
do this to become a whistleblower, right, at least it
appears not initially. Not initially, Uh, he just wants his

(10:02):
colleagues to know. It's understandable. But these reports and his
his warning began circulating outside of that we chat conversation,
and on January three, just last month, the Wuhan Police
summoned Dr Lee to the station and they warned him
about quote making false comments on the Internet. They warned

(10:25):
him that he could be convicted of a crime called rumormongerie,
which is very vaguely defined. And of course this is
a product of living in a country where communications are
monitored and and free speech is largely not entirely kept
on lockdown and then shut out. So this these kinds
of threats are not are neither idle nor uncommon, right, yes, yeah,

(10:50):
But the big deal here is that Lee alerted, whether
he knew it or not, he alerted the world, right, yes,
very much a canary in the coalma as they would
say in Appalachia. And I agree to the that there
is closer monitoring. But I would say the only difference
between the way China monitors communications and the way the

(11:14):
West does is that China is much more comfortable being
open and transparent about it. If you ever log into
an internet cafe in China or you have an Internet connection,
I don't know if it's still the case, but every
so often there used to be these little we talked
about this right in the past, there used to these
little cartoon cops that would show up and let you
know they were keeping you safe, and weirdly enough, they

(11:36):
have blue eyes. That part still confuses me. But it
was just the n s A just hanging out over there.
I mean, that's the whole point that you're making their
ben it's we're the authority figures here are not up
front about them watching everything you're doing, and yet they're
still recording it all in a data center out there
in Utah. Yeah, don't get high and mighty over China.
The only difference is China is more open about it.

(11:58):
And also, uh, people have fewer legal protections, and I
guess the big the big difference than would be what
China does with that information when they do it. But
back to the timeline, so he said December. This is
when Dr Lee warns his colleagues and the word starts
to spread before he gets summoned by the police. Researchers

(12:21):
still in December identify a new virus behind this pneumonia.
People are not being hypochondriacs. They find people are not
getting pneumonia through the normal sources. Something else is in play.
But at this time they did not again have official
evidence that the virus was being easily spread amidst human beings.
There are a lot of infections that a human being

(12:43):
can get, but we can't transmit those to other human beings.
This is an important piece of evidence that they did
not have. Fast forward to the end of the year,
so very much what's happening right now is occurring within China,
when what we're talking about with Dr Lee and the
whistle blowing um, the information is somewhat contained at this point.

(13:03):
Then at the end of the year has been saying.
On December thirty one, uh that's twenty nine, China officially
alerted w h O, the World Health Organization, to several
cases of this unusual pneumonia in Wuhan. This is a
port city of eleven million people in the central Hubei province,
and the virus, they said to the World Health Organization,

(13:24):
was unknown. They did, however, know several of the people
who were infected, and they had already started tracing commonalities.
This is the first thing you do when you want
to figure out the providence of an infection or a disease.
So they said, hey, many of these people work at
the city's Juanan seafood wholesale market and they shut it down,

(13:45):
like by January one, that's shut down. So this is
this could be considered a wet market. Yes, oh very much. So. Yeah,
I just said, you know, it sounds like such a
negative thing the way we've painted it, but it includes
at least parts of it that would be considered a
wet market. Sure, they're selling live animals, whether maritime or terrestrial,

(14:05):
and they're still slaughtered on location on on cation. On
January five, Chinese officials say, okay, we thought this might
have been stars, but whatever this is, it is not
the stars we knew. And then by January seven they're
acting very quickly. Here. By January seven, they say, we

(14:26):
found a new virus, and this novel virus was named
twenty nineteen dash in c o V and they said
it belongs to the coronavirus family, which does include stars
and does include the common cold. I want to point
out one thing here for every hypochondriac in the audience. Again, coronavirus,

(14:46):
like cancer, is umbrella term. This means that if you're
worried about coronavirus in general, it's too late. You have,
at the course of your life already had a coronavirus.
You've just lucked out so far, and you don't have
this one. So when you know, when you see the
news and you follow this, you hear about the coronavirus,
it sounds like it's this magical new thing we've never

(15:07):
seen before. It's fascinating to me that there's a whole history,
and obviously folks that are in this industry and follow
this kind of stuff would be it would have been
aware of this for a very long time. But as
far the public is concerned, Stars was one thing, you know,
the coronavirus is one thing. It's all shades of existing things, right, Yeah,
and the this one is just particularly hard to fight

(15:29):
because it's brand new. I heard an interesting stat on
NPR the other day where apparently one of the biggest
issues right now is understanding, um, how if at all
folks that have the virus but no symptoms are spreading
or not spreading the virus. Incubation, the incubation period is

(15:51):
a big question. And also this idea, which we've heard
of in the past and seems alarms just the term itself,
but super spreaders, the idea of like how quickly people
shed the virus that makes them more or less contagious
and much more likely to be huge vectors for infecting
large numbers of people. Oh, yes, we are on a
train right now when we were headed that way, Mr Brown,

(16:13):
But first we're getting this timeline in. We gotta oh,
we have to meet the first person that right, Why
don't you tell us about the first person that dies?
Do it? On January eleven, State media reported Chinese State
media reported that the first known death from the disease
UM was a sixty one year old man who frequented
these markets at Wuhan Um where the illness is thought

(16:35):
to have originated. And this report came right before the
Lunar New Year, which, if you've been following the story,
you know this is like Christmas. UM Thanksgiving, every American
holiday you could think of that involves travel combined into one.
I think the term that the number I heard thrown
around was billion. You know, people on the road traveling

(16:56):
like it's insane. Yeah, very close, very close to a
billions east hundreds and hundreds of millions, because this is
the biggest holiday in the biggest country in the world,
and he's one of the only times that micro workers
return home to see their families, to see in some
cases they're significant others. Right, because of the way the

(17:18):
you have to have a license to move from into
certain places in China, which imagine that passing in the States. Oh, hopefully,
hopefully that's something that we can not feel terrible about
when we listen to this episode years from now. Right,
So everybody moved where you want to before the licensing
comes in, right, Uh, It's it's true, though, Like you're

(17:40):
making a fantastic point here, because when imagine how terrible
the timing is here. You have a mystery disease that
is clearly infecting some people, and you want to lock
it down like a few days before most of the
country travels. Yeah, and and if it's not you know,

(18:03):
just traveling away. Like if you imagine in a pandemic,
wherever the infection begins, then people traveling away, that becomes
the big deal, um at least initially. But in this case,
you may have people traveling directly to the areas where
the infection is occurring. So that's exactly and those people
that are traveling in are going to very soon be

(18:24):
traveling back to where they were, and this is how
the infection spreads. I know many of us listening to
the audience today are familiar with the game Pandemic. It's
just about to say you have a board game version.
I've had the app version as well, but my kid
and I really enjoy playing it. It's a neat game
because you're playing on with each other. You're not it's

(18:46):
not like a competitive game. You're playing against the game
to prevent this outbreak, this global pandemic, which is what
happens when a disease like this travels out of beyond
its borders of its origin, and then you have all
these cross can himinations and you know, chain reactions when things.
I mean, it really realized as you're following the story
how similar it is to the way the game Pandemic works. Exactly.

(19:10):
And this is because the game is modeled after real
life events and we see unfortunately, the rules of expansion
still hold today. On January, who reported a case in Thailand,
the first case of coronavirus outside of China. It was
found in a woman who had arrived from where do

(19:33):
you think? Uh? You are correct? I got you all
in check? Right? So it's had to get that out
because I can't stop thinking about that Bust of Rhymes song.
I just want to get that out of my system
now I can move on. Got it? Uh, so I've
got a point out. I when I first heard that song,
I was mystified. I got the lyrics all wrong. Uh

(19:53):
and bust rhymes who HAA. For years as a kid,
I thought they were saying, who ha, I've got you
all in check, c Z E C H. And I
kept thinking, Man, New York slaying is amazing. What does
it mean when you have someone in check? I was
wrong at C C K anyway got you? I got
you all in the Czech Republic, I guess I don't know.

(20:15):
I don't know. Maybe I thought a communism capitalism comments.
I gotta I've gotta ask us runs about that. We'll
probably talk to him later, but jokes aside. Hundreds of
people are dying, thousands of bore could die. Uh, that's
that's the fear. On January sixteenth, Japan's health ministry reported

(20:36):
a confirmed case and a man who had also visited
you guessed it Wuhan. Then on January sevent a second
death was reported in Wuhan. Health authorities in the US
announced at that point that three airports would start screening
passengers arriving from the city, and authorities in the United States, Nepaul, France, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore,

(20:58):
South Korea, Vietnam, and High Wan had confirmed cases over
the following h few days, and Uhan was placed under
effective quarantine on January UM and air and rail um
service was suspended. So we talked about how many people
are in this area eleven million, I believe was the

(21:21):
quote we used before. And Wuhan just becomes completely shut
down under this quarantine on that day, January UM. It's
pretty intense because China also announced two more cities in
the Hubei province Shin Tao in Chibi, c h I
b I Uh that's where you know in those places,

(21:42):
just like in Wuhan, and you've probably been reading stories
or you saw stories at some point about what that
quarantine entails. And that's not including other smaller areas that
were quarantining themselves, like the local areas quarantining themselves to
hopefully keep the stuff out exactly. So, on January, World

(22:04):
Health Organization declares coronavirus a global emergency, not yet a pandemic,
but a global emergency. As the death toll in China jumps,
it goes from one, then two to a hundred and seventy.
There have been seven thousand, seven hundred and eleven cases
reported in the country again officially, and the virus had

(22:26):
already spread to all thirty one provinces. Of course, India
and the Philippines confirmed their first cases of the virus
shortly thereafter. They only have one infected patient in each country.
But that is how it starts. What you are hearing
is correct, folks. All of this happened in the last
two months previous two February. Right, Yes, quick question on

(22:50):
on on the scale of you know, big disease epidemics
like this, where are we like, how how does this
hold up to stars or to say, bird flu impossible?
To answer, I, that's what I kind of thought, And
the reason for that is we're still in the midst
of it. Yeah, And what we're gonna do now is

(23:10):
look at what you brought up before and nol like
exactly how this viral infection spreads and what we know
at least of how it spreads. We're gonna do that
after a quick word from our sponsor, and we've returned

(23:31):
here's what happens, Here's how it spreads. As we, as
we established earlier, officials and scientists the like believe the
virus was transmitted somehow from an animal source at the
seafood market to humans, and then it was able to
jump and transmit from human to human. Human to human
transmission occurs, we we believe currently in a in a

(23:53):
scarily convenient way. If you happen to be a coronavirus yourself,
this is very good news for you. It occurs. It
transmits via respiratory droplets. How many times have you been
speaking with someone and a little errant piece of spit
flies from their mouth that could give you coronavirus? Something

(24:13):
I notice about myself and I try to really like mitigate,
but whenever I notice it I'm always just slightly disgusted
with myself. You gotta you gotta get in front of it.
I always, I'll always just be if I if I'm
doing it, I'm the first person to call it out.
I want people to know that I was the vector there.
I saw that too. But yeah, but not just that.

(24:34):
I mean, how many times have you been talking to
somebody and they go one second and they even if
they're really good, they'll un sneeze. Yeah, or the vampire
as it's known by my son, like putting your like
you've got a cape over your arm and put it up.
You put it up and you cough into it. Um.
But what if that doesn't happen, there's just oh and
just a sneeze occurs and all of that ojection of

(24:57):
those droplets as we're calling them, comes out and it's
just breads in the air coughing as well. And think
about how small a virus is. This is not even
this is not even visible moisture too, you know, and
to other people. Uh. We should also add that a
lot of people don't cover their mouth in any way
when they cough, sneeze or of course very popular in

(25:20):
some parts of the world, just spit. Spit on the street.
Spitting is supposed to be good for your health. In
a lot of Chinese culture, it's a prevalent belief. Now
I'm not I'm not at all. I'm not at all
saying that everybody's walking around spitting on the street all
the time. But that makes it that easy, much easier
to transmit because these respiratory droplets. If someone who is

(25:43):
infected with coronavirus expels them through one method or another
and you are within the range of about six feet
or for literally everyone outside of the United States about
one point eight meters, then that can hit you. You
can also find samples like viral RNA samples and trace
is in stool samples of the infected. So if you

(26:03):
are a person, no judgment, who, for one reason or
another digs through the poop of strangers or even people,
you know, stop, what about your own? Is that? Okay? Uh?
You know? Then it's just a feedback loop. If you
get coronavirus or COVID nineteam from your own poop, you
already had it. Or if you're working in an in
an industry that unfortunately just does deal with feces in

(26:26):
some wave waste treatment. Yeah, exactly, It's just something to
keep in mind. So what happens when you get it?
This is this is the issue that is one of
the big questions. There's an unknown incubation period, as we
earlier alluded to, get fever, difficulty breathing, impaired liver and
kidney function. Then your kidneys will fail, you will have

(26:47):
a severe cough, you'll have pneumonious symptoms. This leads us
to some scary questions what's next. Just like the game Pandemic,
when there are fears of a real life endemic, nations
across the planet takes steps to mitigate the spread of
this infection. In games, you'll see nations closed down their

(27:10):
borders or they closed down ports that is already happening.
You'll also see people panic because this is real life,
and people are of course are going to be very scared, right,
be frightened. So more and more people are concerned. The
public is not getting the whole story exactly. So the
big question here is whether or not there's some kind

(27:33):
of official conspiracy that is either known or unknown across
the globe occurring. Right now, here's where it gets crazy.
First answer, yes, absolutely, conspiracy um somewhat successful one which
is terrifying, and it existed in the beginning. We can

(27:55):
prove there was stuff they don't want you to know.
The Chinese government, which is not particularly known Lord Priest
for its subtlety, clamped down on the situation immediately, and
we pretty much have proof of this from Dr Lee.
The Wuhan police actually made Dr Lee sign Dr Lee
by the way, this is this gentleman from the beginning

(28:17):
of the show who was chatting with colleagues alerted them
to the potential for this version of the of the
coronavirus um. They made him sign a letter of admonition
promising not to mention the infection ever again. The police
warned him that if he failed to uh take his
lumps from I mean, let's think about that. Letter of

(28:37):
admonition is basically a fancy way of saying I'm sorry,
I did a bad thing and I won't do it again. Right,
it's an apology. Yeah, you're being admonished, you're signing it,
you're admitting to wrongdoing, and you're supposedly going to learn
from this and move on. And they said if he
did not do this, if he did not learn from
his mistakes and continue to violate the law, which was

(28:57):
I believe against rumor moongering. Yes, then he would be prosecuted, right,
and that kind of prosecution could be anything from detainment
to a fine too of course jail time and uh,
you know, he could also just disappear. He could just disappear.
So we want to keep this in. I just want

(29:19):
everybody to know that we paused for a second, Matt
because you had to cough, right, Yeah, Well I didn't call.
It was like a clearing of my throat. I noticed
last time I spoken to the mic. It was like, hey, yeah,
that's what we're doing. We're also kind of in a
bit of an unventilated sweatbox right now. So if you
had something pretty sure, we'd all be sharing that with you.
I have been hanging out with my new pet, pangolin

(29:41):
little boy. Here we go. I told you, man, what,
it's just like, it's a scaly like mammal. It's crazy.
It's like a hard Parker ant eater. Well, you know,
Armadilla's or can carry leprosy, so I guess it's we
had to choose one. Yeah, but that's the you didn't
get the combo did you. Yeah, my penguin. He had

(30:03):
a little sister that he was hanging out with, and
like his sister just happened to be a you know,
it's it's all good, guys, It's fine. The platypus is next.
The platypus is next. If we if we survive, well,
Paul can maybe buy the platypus because he is rocking
his brand new stuff. They don't want you to know
branded has Matt suit. You know, look good man, you
look great. You really do a good illumination. Global really

(30:25):
came through with the striping pattern. You don't expect it
on a has Matt suit. No, And they really always
come through when the chips are down. They know when
they're needed the most. Yeah. Do they engineer situations where
we do need them? Maybe? Maybe, But again, it's just
the warm feeling of knowing they're always there. Can't bite
the six fingered hand that feeds you, you know. But

(30:48):
but you're you're right. I think we are trying to
be a little bit lighter because this is such a
serious situation. After he signs this letter, Dr Lee goes
back to work. He's in this hospital more and more
inexplicable cases of mystery pneumonia and these strange symptoms are
are surfacing or presenting in patients. He contracts the virus

(31:10):
on January seven. On January one, he goes public. He
tells people about his experience at the police station on
social media. His post goes viral. Users across first China
and then the Chinese speaking sphere, the diaspora, and then

(31:32):
later people across the world are saying, whoa why did
the doctors? Lee is the most famous one, He's not
the only one. Why did these doctors who tried to
warn people get immediately silenced by the authorities? To wit?
Why did the Chinese government conspire to just to stop
the spread of the news about this? Unfortunately, Dr Lee

(31:56):
is no longer with us. He passed away this month
on February seventh. The Chinese state media first reported his
death earlier than the seventh, then they deleted the post,
then they reannounced his death with a new date. If
you already don't trust the government, that's not suspicious at all, Right,
then what would you think when you hear that he died?
J K psych but not psych. They must have scheduled

(32:19):
the post. Oh no, it's really it's um no, I'm
not coming like really it feels on the surface really scary.
And I had I had this thought last night when
I was when I was thinking about this. It does
remind me of we've talked about this before on this show.
When a publication will make a you know, will craft

(32:40):
the like for every famous person or you know, someone
who was big in the media at that moment, way
before they ever died. That's different. This guy wasn't famous,
I know, I well, he was in you know, he
was becoming very much well known. He was probably one
of the most well known people there for a couple
of days. Just the viral thing god as viral social media.

(33:04):
L Yeah, yeah, it's not lost on me saying that.
But I don't know, I had that thought. I I
don't want to like say that's what happened, but well,
you know, the I can I can believe that because
you know the famous story about the moon, right the
moon launches, So every time there was an exploratory mission

(33:29):
sent to the Moon that had people on it, there
were two speeches written for the president to deliver. The
President of the United States. One was if people made it.
The second one was if people died yeah, you didn't
talk about the third one. What's the through one? Well,
I mean, come on, if the extra terrestrials, like if
they were going to actually talk about the extra terrestrials

(33:50):
that they encountered, that was like a contingency third plan.
I think you can get that if you have the
presidential Patreon, because apparently everything is for say all now, sweet,
I'm giving all of that, But these allegations though, it
makes sense right for the reasons you just outlined. Did
they schedule it? Was it a contingency? This guy died,

(34:13):
This guy and and and hundreds of other people were
dying at this time, probably more in the order of thousands.
Allegations of a cover up on the side of the
Chinese government continue. Over the weekend. Fellow named s Young,
who was a prominent legal activist in China, went dark.
This was after he accused the leadership of China, especially

(34:36):
She's him Ping, of covering up the extent of the outbreak.
The authorities detained him and then he spent and this
was after he spent about two months in hiding. His girlfriend,
who is also an activist on social media, went missing
later that weekend, and we have a quote from The
New York Times about this situation. The activist is the

(34:58):
latest critic to be caught up in MR. She these
far reaching efforts to limit dissent in China. The crackdown,
which has ensnared scores of activists, lawyers, journalists and intellectuals,
is likely to intensify as the ruling Communist Party comes
under broad attack for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak,
one of its biggest political challenges in years. No, I

(35:20):
just want to point out for context is important. I'm
not defending the I'm not defending the actions of the
government here, but I do want I do think it's
necessary for us to understand where they're coming from. This
is a country, like the FSR, that has been very
concerned and at times rightly concerned with foreign interference in

(35:40):
its affairs because you know, there's this idea that we
must project strength abroad geo politically, and then if we
do not, then this may be seen as an opportunity
to interfere with our other ambitions. So we want to
look like everything's fine domestic pale. Also, China has a

(36:02):
very uh difficult proposition to maintain domestic stability for the
domestic population of China and the current governing structure to
remain stable. The average person in China has to feel
like they are making a good trade off by giving
up certain individual rights for the chance to have greater

(36:22):
economic prosperity. That is, like the pride, one of the
primary domestic concerns of the country and its leadership. But now,
if it looks like the places being racked by an
infection of plague or something, then what's to stop rival
powers from swooping in, especially in very sensitive areas like
the borders or let's say what China calls the South

(36:46):
China see where they're literally building islands, right, what's to
stop that from going south? There's a very real concern there. Uh.
Do you have to agree with why they perpetrated to
cover up, which again they did. It's a conspirat seek
another theory. You don't have to agree with them, but
you can understand why they did it. And Uh, like
most cover ups, this just made the problem bigger. This

(37:09):
cover up just like made things way way worse. Twenty
four countries have diagnosed infections now, and the overall numbers
are just going up from there. Most of the cases
still are in tourists from China or people who had
recently been in China. But increasingly countries are reporting cases

(37:30):
um of secondary spread UM. We talked about those super
spreaders earlier. We're gonna get into that a little bit
as well, that secondary spread being cases where a person
who hadn't actually traveled to China contracted the virus from
someone who had. Some of those secondary cases are spreading
the virus as well. And and like we said I
mentioned at the top of the show, a big problem

(37:52):
now is a lot of even the scientists that are
studying this thing, because of that unknown incubation period or
something that's now that's outside of that even there are
people that have it for and don't are asymptomatic, right,
and so they don't know that they have it unless
they have reason to be tested for it. UM. One
of the most dramatic moments of this story to me,

(38:14):
or at least in terms of like something you could
wrap your head around, is that cruise ship that was
quarantine in Japan, the Diamond Princess UM. I think it
was for something like how how long was it? I
mean it ended up being like, you know, several weeks
of folks not being able to leave their quarters, which,
as we know in cruise ships are pretty tight. Um.

(38:34):
And then the argument becomes, why are you keeping me
on this ship where we know people have this disease
and the quarters are so tight. Get me the hell
out of here. Quarantine me, sure, but quarantine me and
my home. You know, it's an interesting question, right. It
almost seems like these people are like on it. They
were referring to it on interviews I heard with some
of the folks who were still all the ship at

(38:55):
the time as a doomed ship. Um, that's a really
dramatic image to me, just living in that kind of situation. Well,
while while we're here, just really quickly there is there
is a harrowing story you can read about a man
and a woman, a couple. They're a bit elderly. The
husband is I believe, a physician, and he was watching

(39:17):
the quarantine occur. He was in quarantine with his spouse
in their cabin on the Diamond Princess, and he was
observing the quarantine like as it was going out, and
he noticed that the staff members were making rounds. So
like the same the same couple of staff members would
be feeding everybody at once, like going and taking food everywhere,
and that staff member is interacting with every single room.

(39:40):
So if one room had somebody with a coronavirus and
acts someone who was symptomatic, and you know, we said
that one point eight meters, if that occurs, then that
person gets sick, then that person interacts everybody. Uh. It
was just this harrowing thing because his wife actually contracted
it from the day they were supposed to disembark. And
that's one of those moments to where that realization is, oh,

(40:02):
this is bigger than me as a person. They don't
actually care about me. This is about me potentially affecting
the world at large. And then you just become like
a cog. It's sort of like being in the system,
like the prison system or something where you no longer
have rights as it were, and you're basically just okay,
you're at the mercy of the government here, right. But

(40:23):
the argument then on the other side is very it's
very much an argument about the needs of the many
versus the needs of the few. Like if I it's
saying you don't have a right to hold me here,
could be you know, if you just flip the coin.
It's very easy to say, do you have a right
to endanger seven plus billion people? You know? And with you? Yeah?

(40:45):
And the story about Kent and Rebecca Fraser is is tragic, right,
But the the idea of a quarantine itself, as brutal
as it is, is saying, you know, cut off a
piece to save the whole. If you gave most people,
if you gave most people a terrible choice, and you
said you can lose one of your hands and live

(41:09):
where you can die, I'm not gonna put decisions in
anybody's head or words in their mouths, but I'm confident
that quite a few people would decide to live life
as one handed person. Yeah. I certainly get the utilitarian uh,
you know, motivations there. I think the problem is that
they were refused, you know, to disembark in so many

(41:30):
different places where it feels like there could have been
a facility created in a PR move, you know, even Yeah,
I'm just thinking about when Cambodia opened their borders for
the m S Western Dam, another cruise ship that had
people on board you tested positive for the viral, the
viral infection, and uh, I just remember reading about that

(41:50):
as a PR it felt like a pr move. Well,
you know, many residents or passengers on the Diamond Princess
received iPhones courtesy of the Japanese government because it contained
and it wasn't so much a pr thing. These phones
had a specific app that allowed people to check in

(42:12):
with doctors or confidence with them. They were also trapped
on a boat with a disease, so I don't know
if an iPhone makes people feel better about that. It's
good to have the medical um the avenue to seek
medical attention or consultation of some sort. At the same time,

(42:34):
at the same time, as you mentioned very quickly that
I was in Japan uh when it had almost it
almost traveled to China or to the Korean peninsula in
my continuing quest to get into the d p r K. However,

(42:55):
didn't go to China, didn't go to either Korea this
time around, and there there were legitimate fears and parts
of Japan about the spread of virus, since there had
already been some cases of infection there, and since again
we don't know the incubation period, and we don't know
what the supercarriers may or may not be doing. So

(43:18):
you can see at this point now we've already found
one proven conspiracy. It is in the It is on
the part of China's government. But what about the other conspiracies?
There are several, and some of them have some sand
to them. What do we mean. We'll find out after
a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Other conspiracies.

(43:49):
Long time listeners, you'll recognize if you if you follow
the structure, the folklore of conspiracy theories and the tropes,
you'll recognize some, um, some old favorites. Turning these are
common from any other pandemic, uh, any other widespread infection
or fear of a epidemic, plague, et cetera. The first

(44:10):
one is what if this is a manufactured disease? Directly,
what if the Chinese government purposefully spread this infection for
one reason or another. Sounds like a fringe tinfoil hattery?
Uh not. Two members of the US Congress. Yeah, Tom
Cotton is a Republican senator from Arkansas. UM actually suggested

(44:32):
quite recently that the virus had originated in the Wuhan
P four lab, which is a high security biochemical laboratory
in Wuhan. UM Specifically to this, he said, quote, we
don't have evidence of this disease originated there. But because
of China's duplicity and this honesty from the beginning, we
need to at least ask the question to see what

(44:53):
the evidence says. In China right now is not giving
evidence on that question at all. This is really fat standing.
It points to a couple of things. I mean, there's
obviously we're in a very adversarial relationship with China right now,
but we also kind of have to play nice with
them because of the you know that the back and
forth on trade and all of that stuff. We're so

(45:14):
inextricably connected and extric stricably connected, but like you know,
our president has has made some inroads into being a
little more bullish with you know, trying to quote unquote
you know, keep China on lying with all these tariffs
and all that. And so there's a there's sort of
a distrust more so than maybe in past with with

(45:34):
the Chinese government. And this is a pretty good example
of uh, kind of stirring the pot there a little bit.
You know, obviously this is complete conjecture and saying I
wouldn't put it past them, but he's just saying it's
worth exploring, and we don't have any evidence to this
at all. I don't believe that was definitely what I
gathered from the several interviews he's done where he's brought

(45:56):
this up. Um, we should say that he did later.
And this is so weird because it's only days. We're
talking about days in between these things happening. But he
did after the statements kind of walk back what he
had said previously, this side this idea that it was
some kind of weapon that escaped from this other lab.
And I just really quickly want to say I did

(46:17):
a quick um check on Google Maps just to see
like the distance between the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which
is the you know, supposed place where it could have
escaped from, as well as the Wuhan, South China seafood
wholesale market, the wet market where it supposedly began that specifically,
the P four lab. The yeah, the P four lab

(46:39):
at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and it is across
the Yanks River, so you'd have to go across the
bridge there to get there, and it's also about thirteen
and a half kilometers away in the quickest route that
takes about thirty thirty two minutes to drive, so one
thing that is fascinating about Cotton statement. I find this

(47:03):
stuff cowardly when you're an elected official to hide behind
the idea of I'm just saying, I'm just I'm just saying,
do you have any proof, Senator, do you have any evidence? Well,
I'm just saying you can't trust them, which was essentially
what that argument was. So it was right and was
correct to, as they say in the political sphere, walk

(47:25):
that back. But it's too late. You can't screw the
lid back on Pandora's jar. This story was already an
other international media outlets. The Daily Mail, famous UK tabloid
covered it. The Washington Times covered it, both suggesting the
virus was being developed as part of China's biowarfare program,

(47:45):
which they definitely have. Just I'm just gonna go on
record there and say that outside of the EU, most
countries that can afford to develop some sort of BioWeb
and research are going to do it. Your country is
not special, Your country is not especially evil nor especially good.

(48:06):
If it does so, the money just got too good
in the place building. But I I this, I'm honestly
wondering why you would exclude the EU there because I
I think it's probably happening there at least two you know,
in some ways sure, but not under EU auspice individual
countries in the EU maybe. But also you know, this
stuff happens under the guise of we're learning to protect ourselves.

(48:29):
We never hurt anybody. That's why we call it the
Department of Defense. Huh now we're welling in is that anyway?
Experts generally dismissed the idea that this was man made,
that uh c o V nineteen was man made. The
scientists you study it's say it does resemble stars and

(48:49):
other viruses that come from bats. It's contagious, But so
far it appears to have a demographic by which we
mean people are more likely to die from the infection
older people with pre existing chronic health issues. Why is
that important? Uh, well, elderly people are with chronic health

(49:10):
issues already have a tough life. But this also means
that if you were making a bioweapon and you wanted
to kill people, you would want to kill people who
can reproduce. You would want to kill people who are
young and in the prime of life and fighting age basically,
and a fighting age exactly. So this doesn't make sense.

(49:30):
It's it's similar to when people would say people would
argue that HIV was purposely manufactured. It takes forever to
kill people. It's just if if it was manufactured, then
the person manufacturing it should have been fired because they
did a terrible job. There you go, well, and the

(49:50):
other thing here to bring up is why would you
release a scary bioweapon into your own borders in order
to start an outbreak their hold on just a second.
That's an excellent question. But hold on just a second,
because we have to we have to bring in one
of my one of my favorite reporting outfits here bonus point.

(50:11):
Alternate version in the manufactured conspiracy theory is what if
the virus was manufactured not by China, not by the PRC,
but by Western powers. This concept is popular in Russian media,
which blames the US. There's a there's a national TV
network called Channel one First of Creativity. They've even started

(50:31):
a recurring slot dedicated to coronavirus conspiracy theories on their
main uh their primetime news program, which is Rima or
it's it's um Russian time, part of my pronunciation. So
the reporting is interesting because it's again it's that cowardly.
I'm just saying kind of stuff. They'll have people come

(50:52):
on and ostensibly debunk a theory about us involvement in
coronavirus and then leave a little little to ease a
little just twisted the knife there and saying, well, you know,
maybe maybe um kind of sounds like this show, but
not really. Well, we try to we try to prove
stuff and be honest when we can't do it. But

(51:13):
here's here's one of the things, just for an example
where their thought processes, they talk a lot about the
name of the virus and how that somehow implicates the
current president. Oh yeah, because of the word um corona
actually or or in Latin means crown. Right. This is
the concept that somehow like it's a it's very much

(51:36):
connecting dots like conspiracy board stuff. At least this one
is I feel like it's very much reaching. But you know,
teach their own what what what's going on? How how
does the name of this connect? Well, just the just
the concept that because corona means crown in in both Latin,
uh in Latin and in Russian uh, that Donald Trump

(51:58):
is somehow involved because he used to do this little
thing I don't always remember it. Uh, what do they do?
It's where all of the contestants parade around scantily clad
and then they get they win something. Um, you're thinking
of the Apprentice, You're maybe you're right, I was thinking

(52:18):
of Beauty Paget's. The one was that Miss America? Or
is the universe bigger than Miss Americas? Always confused by
those I like the regional ones. Give me miss Southwest
North region of Ohio or miss uh Miss Combine, Harvard,
John Deer Combine, Harvester any my favorite too much? The

(52:39):
talent section this universe too much? My favorite Partners where
they have to answer impossible questions in thirty seconds. Whether
they're like people are starving, how do you feed them all?
Where it's like people should have right to self determination
but also shouldn't hurt others? How do we solve that
philosophical quandary? Like thirty seconds? Go? Yeah, well, I don't

(52:59):
have time to answer that question. Now. It will be
my life's work to take this question and find an answer. Dude,
that's the best answer I've ever heard of that can
they say that that's great, that's great, but so okay
they call it coronavirus because Donald Trump used to preside
over beauty pageants and oh yeah, and what would he
do at the end of those? He would give the

(53:20):
winner a crown or a corona. Uh, I'm kiddy, wasn't
that cool? I didn't give me a corona? The beer?
So they'll also this Russian channel Channel one will also
interview experts who claimed the virus was created by either
the US government, pharmaceutical companies, or both cooperating together. Now,
I would say if it if it is a manufactured disease,

(53:43):
it makes more logical rational sense to me that it
would be some kind of enemy creating it and releasing
it in into the wild, unless it was an out
and out accident, right, And that's where we go to
this this other uh, this other idea. What if it
was not purposely propagated, but people made the best of

(54:03):
some bad lemonade and said, okay, this is an opportunity
to take care of some problems that we already had.
For instance, like the majority of us listening today are
not actually in China, right, We're not in Hong Kong.
When is the last time since since December? Think carefully,
when's the last time you heard news about the Hong
Kong protest. When's the last time you heard about those

(54:26):
weaker detainment camps, which are still very much around, very
much a real thing. It's been a while for people
who think the government may not have created the virus.
There's this argument they jumped on the event to shift
the news away from those two huge stories. And we
have to just to remind you, incredibly violent, dangerous protests
in Hong Kong and the weaker population there in Western

(54:51):
China is still being detained in camps where their organs
may be harvested, while women in the community who are
not detained in those camps are forced to share their
homes with members of the ethnic Han majority. That is happening.
Both of those events carry conspiracies of their own, but
those two things are still very much happening. And we've
seen how this actually has had an effect on clamping

(55:14):
down on free I was going to say free speech,
but on people speaking out even about this event that's
occurring with the with the outbreak. So it does seem like, well,
if something terrible like this is happening, you could control
the communications even further exactly, and you know there are

(55:35):
other people who are arguing this point, there's this is
an interesting character. Uh, this is a person of which
I was not with which I was not terribly familiar.
But it's my favorite way to describe someone episode. How
cool would it be to be described this way? Fugitive
Chinese billionaire while long We claims that he predicted China

(55:57):
would somehow manufacturer crisis if not the virus. Fugitive billionaires.
That makes me think of your character, the astronaut with
a secret. Yes, Max powers up with the secret, thank you.
I'm just thinking about Hodgeman. Oh yeah, deranged billionaire. Oh yeah,
I forgot John was on the show. Yeah he said

(56:19):
right there in Uh yeah, and I've I've never washed
that pair of that pair of pants that I wore
the day after that. Since I don't wear them, I
framed them. Oh yeah, it's called them my Hodgman pants.
Yeah it's cool. You know you're gonna have some framed,
framed fame pants on your walls. People know you're legit
lovely two thousand nineteen, Hodgeman Hodgman Vintage. So what it

(56:44):
was me sniffing the pants they're up on the wall,
and yeah, just sniff of the frame Anyway, Yes, what
did this dude say? He said, And he said, I
said a year ago that the Chinese Communist Party might
create a massive humanitarian crisis or natural disaster or a
pandemic before it dies. And he adds. On a wall

(57:04):
at the entrance to the Wuhan P four lab that's
inside the institute Matt you mentioned earlier, there's a slogan
and it says, when you step into this building, you
enter into Pandora's box. I don't think a fugitive billionaire
is the best source for things, but I mean, if
you're a fugitive billionaire, you can get into a P
four lab if you really want to. So, I mean

(57:27):
that's the biggest thing, you know, at that level of wealth,
the biggest thing you get is access to other people.
But he is a fugitive, which means he's probably not
getting in on the other side, you know what I mean.
The two Well, a fugire, his tender profile is complex
really uh So, also we have to we have to

(57:50):
say that he clearly is not the most unbiased source.
He probably has some some skin in the game and
some ulterior motives, some Vendetta's, some grudges, some ambitions, But
so do we all? Right now, the current Chinese quarantine
is the largest in human history, full stop, no caveats, no, no,
like Little Asteris and fine print. It's the biggest quarantine

(58:13):
that has ever happened. It really is, and it's um
it's terrifying. I can I can only imagine how terrifying
it is to be within that quarantine because you know,
we are feeling relatively safe here in Atlanta right with
the c d C very near us, thinking, oh, we're
gonna be okay, they'll fight this thing, everything's gonna be fine.

(58:36):
In the game pandemic, Atlanta is actually home base where
you get your first free research station because of the
c d C. Well, I'm just saying that when you
think about and try and put yourself in that position,
or if you read some of the personal stories that
are you know, coming out of people who are actually
in Wuhan's with the eleven million people that are there,

(58:56):
it just really makes you makes you realize, how, I
guess I don't mean to put this on myself or
on ourselves, but how lucky we are that we are
not currently dealing with what they are having to deal with. Yeah,
the US has its own things to deal with that
are not as uh as nakedly life threatening. Yet, so

(59:17):
we brought up this number eleven million people, and you're
probably saying to yourself, Wow, the largest quarantine in human
history is eleven million people. That sounds smaller. I guess
things aren't as bad. Well, guess what. It's not just
eleven million people, because it's not Wuhan. It's an estimated
fifty six million people. They're locked in this city, they're
locked in others. They have no transport in or out.

(59:39):
Schools are shuttered as our many public services and businesses.
People have curfews. Some people have been inside apartment buildings
as the doors are welded shut. And this makes us ask,
given that the government has a mechanism that can control information,
what if there's something happening behind in those quarantine lines.

(01:00:01):
What if there's ethnic cleansing, like what's happening with the
weaker population. What if this is just a convenient time
to route out some dissidents. You know, they went to
the hospital, they disappeared. Oh they have a blog. Didn't
know that anyway? Dropping the bucket. As cold as that sounds,
and maybe as maybe as um conspiratorial as it sounds,

(01:00:24):
it would be an opportunity to get rid of elements
that were unwanted. Perfect time, it would be the perfect time.
There's not proof, but it would be the perfect time.
And this leads us to the conclusion, at least for
our episode, but not for this story. It's not yet
a pandemic, and because the majority of cases have still

(01:00:45):
occurred in China. But as we said earlier on January,
who declared this a public health emergency. This declaration was
mainly due to concern that, you know, like we have
mentioned earlier, that the virus gets spread to countries that
have weaker health systems, and one I wish we have
more time today, but there's a there's a fascinating and

(01:01:08):
terrifying story of the secret coronavirus crisis occurring in DPRK,
North Korea. Because it has um you know, it's primary
contact with the rest of the world is is illegal
operations on the border of China and North Korea. It
has no real health care system to speak of. Uh,

(01:01:29):
there's rampant poverty, malnutrition. What I'm saying is people already
have weakened immune systems. This this thing could well be
going through the country like a biblical level plague. We
know there's a little bit of evidence of how terrible
it is because it did not, for the first time

(01:01:50):
in history since the formation of this country, it did
not stage the parade in central Pyongyang, uh during the
seventy second anniversary of the found you know, the country's
armed forces. They missed one of their biggest celebrations. I've
always wondered. Then there's there seems to be a culture
in China of wearing those protective masks in general. Just

(01:02:13):
more so is why is that is that is there
just is a sense of just being cautious. Is it
like they think they're more prone to these types of
beaus just a large country, or like I wonder where
that culture comes from, because people don't really do it here,
for example, at all, right, at least not yet. Yeah,
in some cases you'll hear being explained, at least throughout

(01:02:34):
that area of the world. You'll hear people say, well,
I'm under the weather, so I wear a face mask
that I don't transmit a disease. And then other people say, well,
I wear a face mask of course because I don't
want to contract one. But also we have to remember,
this area of the world has more recent experience with
dangerous outbreaks, so it's much more in the zeitgeist. That

(01:02:56):
makes sense. I'm sure those masks were around after the
so called Spanish flu swept through here. People would be
wearing mask you know. Yeah, there was a story I
heard about how you know, there were all those terrible
fires in in Australia and a lot of masks were
being sent to Australia by a Chinese company that you know,

(01:03:16):
specializes in making these, and they had to stop doing that.
They had to divert them for their own country because
there was such a massive demand for them they could
no longer send them to Australia, and even then it
was way below what the demand was for a country
the size of China, where everybody really wants one of these. Now, well,
hey guys, I'm gonna I think then this is just

(01:03:38):
my suggestion here. I think we should cover this again
and give it some time and then just do an
update at some point, because what I'd like to do,
if possible, is just say, like tell everyone what the
numbers kind of are for today as we're recording this
um and then maybe like some projections of what it

(01:04:00):
what may happen, and then come back and cover and
see where we are in like a month from now.
And it goes back to my question at the top
of the show, which, to Ben's point, it's a very
hard to answer. Where does this stack up in terms of,
you know, some of the other types of diseases that
we've seen in this part of the country. So where
are we right now in terms of the infection rate
and where do we see it going? Well, let's let

(01:04:23):
me give us numbers to address. I think both of
your blier statements there and that I agree we should
have an update. So Gabriel Young, who is the Chair
of Public Health Medicine at Hong Kong University, paints maybe
the most uh terrifying picture of the spread. He says,
if we can't stop this new coronavirus, this novel coronavirus,

(01:04:45):
it could infect a minimum of six of the world's population,
killing one and one hundred of those infected. That's a
death toll around fifty million people. Before you grab your
go bag and head for the hills, it's important to
understand that there's you know, like you said, and there's
a lot we do not know. About this virus. We
don't know if it's spreading at a more rapid pace
than coronavirus is of the past. All the experts don't agree.

(01:05:07):
You got named. Paul Hunter at the University of East Anglia,
UK thinks the coronavirus will kill fewer people than say,
the two thousand and nine UH swine flu, and he says,
you know, we might be wrong, though he's still hedging
his bets. There may be a vaccine on the way.
This may be the first time that we're able to
make a really effective vaccine while the outbreak is still spreading.

(01:05:30):
But when it goes to comparing this to other infections,
don't forget the regular flu. We know that there have
been cases of US citizens being you know, contracting the
coronavirus that we're talking about today, But these numbers pale
in comparison to the regular old influenza. Just way less

(01:05:52):
of a sexy headline, but as far as we know,
way more dangerous. There at least nineteen million illnesses, a
hundred and eighty thousand hospitalizations, and ten thousand deaths from
the flu so far this flu season. The death rate
for COVID nineteen appears to be higher than flu at
about two percent, which is pretty small, right, But again

(01:06:14):
that's what we know so far. You know, what do
you what do you think you think there's a To me,
it feels like that original conspiracy to repress what was
happening just led to the situation where now I don't
think you need an evil manufacturer. It reminds me of
Chernobyl and the way that was handled, or at least
the way it was traumatized in the in the HBO

(01:06:36):
mini series, which which was based on reality. They did
not acknowledge that there was a problem, and by not
acknowledging there was a problem, it spread and became a
global problem because this cloud of radio activity, you know,
could be carried outside of of the of the borders
of Russia, and that's the same with this, so you
you know, and it's hard to hold a foreign government

(01:06:58):
accountable or to take the task, specially one as massive
as China. But I don't know how you do that,
but it's it's it's it's pretty problematic when there suppression
and their tactics of like sitting on information like this,
uh and being such iron fisted arbiters of like information
that really affects the rest of the world. How do

(01:07:19):
you scold them for that? Like, how you know it's
it's it's tough also in a neighborhood of glass houses.
That's right. I just have to say, I think it
makes a load of sense that been what you're saying
about how important it is that the Communist Party in
China like keeps up the not the appearance necessarily necessarily,

(01:07:40):
but that the overall population is okay with the situation
that they're in. And if you have another pr hit
like this, oh gosh, another you know, viral outbreak is happening,
and maybe coming could have there could have been a
calculation there of well, perhaps this isn't a full break.
This is just a small thing that's being reported by

(01:08:03):
this you know, small group of doctors in this one area.
We don't need to alert everyone about this yet because
we don't want anyone to be scared. Um. That's if
you completely go Devil's advocate side and just say that
I know it is I'm just saying like I can
imagine that at least being part of the motivation early on,

(01:08:23):
and then it changing pretty quickly after that. And I
think that's well said. We're going to end it for today,
but we want the conversation to continue. What do you
think about the coronavirus c O v I D DASH nineteen.
Do you think that it was something purposely cooked up
in a lab? If so, was it accidentally released? Or

(01:08:48):
is this another another infection, another virus that spread the
way viruses have since time immemorial. Let us know. You
can find us on Facebook, you can find us on Instagram,
you can find us on Twitter. You especially like to
recommend our Facebook group. Here's where it gets crazy. If
you want to give us a call, you can call
our number. We are one eight three three std w

(01:09:11):
y t K. Big shout out to everybody who has
been calling in and writing in and suggesting, suggesting we
make an episode on this. And one of you out
there called and left a message, and I called you
back and we talked about this for a while. So
thank you for learning me, uh personally and us to
some of the parts of the story we talked about today. Alright, Uh,

(01:09:32):
what else, guys? If you if you have any information
specifically about being affected by a quarantine somewhere, are you
know one's who you know someone who has been affected
by the coronavirus. We would love to hear from you,
just to know exactly how it's going. How you know,
a personal anecdote from what it's like to experiencing to

(01:09:53):
be experiencing that. Please write to us call us um.
If you don't want to contact us on social media
or the phone, you could always write us a good
old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com.

(01:10:23):
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