Where are the Next Pandemics?

Before the breakout of COVID-19, Ben, Matt and Noel predicted a pandemic was on the way. Fast forward to 2026, and many of the same experts the world earlier ignored are raising new alarms: across the world, multiple infections may break through the old checks and balances of evolution to create new pandemics. Some of these could be far deadlier than COVID... and humanity is thoroughly unprepared for a new disaster. Tune in to learn more.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
They called me Ben and you can too. We're joined
as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes
this the stuff they don't want you to know? And
we are recording on Monday, July sixth. Guys, here in
our episode doc we usually have like some kind of

(00:53):
inspirational pull quote or something apropos, but now we have
a surprise. It is a strange confluence of events that
we would be recording today's episode on July sixth, because
get this, folks, it is World Zoonosis Day.

Speaker 4 (01:15):
Dude, tell what is zonosis? Is this like a utopia?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
I think it is like zoonotics, like not good, not
casered infection that passes from a non human animal to
a human animal. World Zoonosis Day commemorates the very first
rabies vaccine, which was given on July sixth, eighteen eighty
five and is commemorated to serve as a reminder of

(01:43):
the ongoing threat posed by zoonotic diseases. It's a holiday
that a lot of us haven't heard about, including yours.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Truly, well, we are so glad to be here celebrating
with you in this moment from the past. While you're
listening to this episode WASHERR Gosh, speaking of anniversaries, guys,
we should at least mention it here at the top
of the show. The United States recently two days ago
turned two hundred and fifty years. That's uh, it's pretty great, huh.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Freedom to fifty baby, or America two.

Speaker 5 (02:21):
Fifty right, Well, that's the one as intended. Yes, maybe
we walked through that just briefly. With the deal was
that that was a taxpayer funded initiative to do some
festivities for the anniversary of America the two hundred and
fiftieth birthday, and then Trump sort of did a little
bit of a switcherroony on that and target started his
own pack that was called Freedom to fifty that essentially

(02:44):
subsumed the original much more bipartisan initiative and basically made
it where all of the activities and festivities were kind
of enriching him and his Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yes with Sessquininnial. I want to say, is the word
that's probably the best thing to come from that celebration.
Let me make sure I get the word right.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Here, Okay, I would just say the one the one
thing that really stood out to me, And there are a
lot of things that stood out there we go they're
worth mentioning. Just when it comes to that celebration, you
talk about the weather, how you know nature itself didn't
want the festivities to contult it. But just there was

(03:31):
a singer on stage before Greenwood or you know that
guy that sings that one song that he wrote that
one time, I'm proud to be in America. Least we
can sing. Before all that occurred, there's another singer out
there just doing playing the hits, America's hits, and at
one point he yelled to the audience mid song, let

(03:55):
the President hear you, as though it was you know it.
It reminded me a lot of this concept that there's
some ruler behind the scenes that is listening and needs
to hear your adorations or else, what are we doing this?

Speaker 3 (04:10):
For sure?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Does one man needs to be built up so much
because he can't handle not being built up.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
It reminded me very much of the Hunger Games young
adult novels which were later adapted into a film series.
And also Folks, just to beat the emails here, I
was incorrect. Transparency is important. It is not the Sesquis centennial.
It is the semi quin centennial. That's two hundred and

(04:41):
fifty years. So that's the best. That's the best takeaway.
It's yeah, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Now, how
did we go from Let's see, we started talking about
zoonotic disease. We went to July fourth.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
About infectious things, right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, And remember years back before the outbreak of the
COVID nineteen pandemic, we did a lot of research on
things like the rise of the superbug, and all of
the research we looked into indicated pre COVID that a
global pandemic was on the horizon was statistically inevitable. Now,

(05:27):
this prediction was not based on any kind of insider information,
no strange powers of deduction or weird Edgar Casey style prophecies.
We just acknowledged that rising pollution, rising population centers, and
density of populations antibiotic mass dosinge of livestock, bioweapon experiments.

(05:50):
All these factors indicated something was going to go wrong
and soon. So now two hundred and fifty years, in
a few days after the foundation of the United States,
we are called back to this line of inquiry. Folks.
Those same experts are increasingly skittish. The people who tried

(06:10):
to warn the world before COVID are now raising the
same flags, making the same clarion calls because some of
the warning signs that they clocked earlier long ago are
back in play or were never resolved in the first place.
So we're returning to doozy tonight, folks. What are the

(06:32):
next pandemics and what do they mean for the future.
Here are the facts, all right, just a brief thing,
because we know this can be confusing. You have endemic diseases,

(06:53):
you have disease epidemics, and then you have pandemics. So
to understand pandemics, we have to understand and what we
could call their little brother, the epidemic.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
What is an epidemic?

Speaker 5 (07:07):
Indeed, yes, it's wait a minute, so a pandemic.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
It crosses international.

Speaker 5 (07:13):
Borders, right, it's more of a worldwide concern. An epidemic
maybe is just a little more not micro, but it's
a little more contained than that.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah. An epidemic is an outbreak of disease that's generally,
as you said, going to be confined to a single
part of an area, like a single country or maybe
even a single population, and it spreads rapidly within a
short period of time. So an endemic is a disease

(07:43):
that is historically consistently present, but it's linked to a
particular region like malaria is the most famous example of
an endemic disease, right, And epidemic is when a disease
has a rapid increase in infection in that specific area.

(08:03):
And like you were saying, a pandemic is sort of
our final boss. It is a disease with exponential growth.
The difference all comes down to the rate of spread
rather than to the severity of the specific disease. And
so if it goes on a J curve and all
of a sudden, this thing that used to only happen

(08:26):
in a specific part of Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia
or South America, all of a sudden it becomes an
international lethal superstar, and a J curve that's a pandemic.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, it's particularly troubling when one of these begins to
rise in a place that has a lot of transportation,
specifically air and ship like boat transportation, where you've got
folks lots and lots of folks traveling internationally. And then
I mean, that's exactly what happened with the COVID outbreak.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, and epidemics, by the way, you'll hear that phrase
thrown around a lot in popular news. It can take
all kinds of forms an epidemic. It occurs through a
variety of factors. They don't always have to be this
interesting because an epidemic doesn't always have to describe an
infectious disease. That's why you read about stuff like a

(09:22):
heart disease epidemic, right, or an obesity epidemic. All that
means in that usage is that more people than the
historical average are contracting a condition at a faster rate
than expected, and we got to keep an eye on it.
Health experts take epidemics so seriously because it's like, you know,

(09:46):
it's like if you have a problem in your car
and you don't address it, it becomes a bigger problem
down the road. That's why you know. That's why Stephen
King wrote an awesome novel about a news reign of influenza.
That's an that was an epidemic that became a pandemic.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
It's interesting how that word gets thrown around in pop culture,
specifically with comedians. I like, do a quick Google search
for Bill Burr epidemic and just see what you come
up with. It's interesting how that term is used to
describe the quick transmission of something that has nothing to
do with being sick or you know, microbes or viruses.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
And it's never it's actually, maybe we can flip the
script here. Epidemic is is always going to have an
English and negative common connotation. Nobody is like, oh my gosh,
we had an epidemic of fun.

Speaker 5 (10:40):
Maybe you know it's I don't mind that turn of phrase, though,
I would appreciate that as someone word to trot that out. Guys,
this is an epidemic of fun.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
Reclaim the word, guys, reclaim epidemic script.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
We have an epidemic of red cards being overturned by administration. Yo.

Speaker 4 (11:01):
That's something maybe we reserve for strange news.

Speaker 5 (11:03):
But when does it end, guys in the influence.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
An epidemic of corruption.

Speaker 4 (11:10):
That's what we can say.

Speaker 5 (11:11):
It's not even controversial, not even I'm sorry, it's just
it's a great pandemic now.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, and we also know pandemics. Once you get to
that final boss level, a pandemic is often not going
to be just one big push like the end of
a Dragon Ball Z episode. It's going to be something
that occurs with frequency in ways. Pandemics have a very
nasty habit of spreading. Like all of us who are

(11:41):
live post COVID nineteen lockdown, Congratulations, We're glad you're here,
Thanks for tuning in. You know full well that the
spread of a disease can appear to temporarily EBB, right,
and then it's followed by another period of high infection,
often driven by by people relaxing too much, or by god,

(12:04):
infection mutating and evolving.

Speaker 4 (12:06):
I'm sorry the way you put that then has made
me chuckle. A epidemic of relaxation.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
We had a.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
But Ben, you're still right. I'm just on that thinking
about the mutation of something like a virus, and how
many times through that, you know, from twenty nineteen all
the way up until today when we see all the
different variations, right, the news often talks about a variant.
Sometimes you'll hear subclade as a word that gets thrown around,

(12:36):
just a highly mutated version of the same thing. It's
just now got different parts of it that infect people
more effectively often or are more severe in the symptoms
that they cause. And you, guys, remember earlier this year
we heard a lot on the news about super flu.
Remember this, yes, and just how that was so not

(12:57):
played up. It was still dangerous, right, dangerous because it
was infecting people more quickly and more effectively than other
strains of the same flu with H three and two
one of the flus, but it was talked about. My
point I'm getting to here when we're talking about these
mutations and how dangerous that little thing can be as

(13:17):
it's going from host to host to host and changing
the news often, I would say, plays on people's fear.
And I wonder how much of that is just the
need for clicks, the need to be the first to
the post, the need you know, is it all of that?
Do you think, guys, or are we just are we
relaxed as you're saying, Ben, are we in that that

(13:40):
downturn of just being and feeling relaxed.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Yeah, it's too quiet. Eye of the storm to changes.
We create a strain.

Speaker 4 (13:52):
Accepted.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
I mean it's true, right, the avenue flow, and people
are losing lives, they're losing their jobs when stuff like
this happens. Check out our earlier episode about mirror Life
where we talk about the quick pace of evolution, the
very very tiny things, and that's I do agree with.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
You, Matt.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
I think we can all agree that there is a
lot of fear mongering, especially as legitimate journalism erodes, continues
to decay and be targeted, and the journalism we're left
with often becomes increasingly performative, increasingly bred in circuses. So maybe, yeah,

(14:39):
maybe they do want to be Promethean, be first to
the post. At least we can tell you a little trick.
Always check out the news articles, past the headlines and
look for people who are specifically citing public health experts,
not necessarily political higher right, which is fine, We're not

(15:02):
casting inspersion on them. But if you have problems with
like a government person say warning you about a disease,
go check out the nerds in the ivy leagues. Go
find out what this guy from Harvard is saying. About hauntavirus. Right,
those are the people who should be headlined in the news.

Speaker 5 (15:21):
Well, and this came up in a recent I think
it was Strange News or maybe it was a listener mail,
because we had somebody write in about a particular news
aggregating app and we got into our particular methods for
finding the heart of stories. And at time that's increasingly
kind of muddied by you know, negative rhetoric around the press,
and also the fact there are some real problems with

(15:41):
the press in terms of like trying to be the
quickest to market with a story and and doing so
sort of cutting corners and not having the same level
of journalistic ethics that maybe once apply when things were
more print driven. So you really do just have to
to your point. But I think the thing that you
brought to that conversation was read a study. Even if
you can't get the whole thing, you can get so

(16:02):
much information just by reading the abstract, the little you know,
the before the fold kind of summary of an academic
or scientific study, and those things are out there and
to your point as well, you can even email researchers
and they love to hear from you to get the
full text, but more important now than ever to not
just you know, believe what's what's put in front of you.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
Yeah, triangulate your sources always. This is also folks, This
is part of this approach, is part of how we
ended up befriending the world's foremost expert on underwater explosions.
That is a true story, Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yes, yeah, but a big Spinach.

Speaker 4 (16:42):
Herself dubbed nickname.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yes, yes, Well, it's just such a good point, Ben
talking about the politicization of science and institutions that represent
science that's supposed to be at the cutting edge and
supposed to be on the front lines of protecting people,
like at the Centers for Disease Control, the Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and National Institutes of Health. How

(17:04):
often and a new administration can come in in the
US and put a figurehead of sorts at the at
the top of one of these organizations that is really
more of a liaison between that organization and the administration.
Often not always. Sometimes they're the best at the game
and they're there, they're doing their thing. Sometimes it's both.

(17:24):
Sometimes it's just somebody who's kind of putting you know,
some policies forward and using these organizations to do it.
It's tough to know where you are right in that
in that spectrum of are we actually getting the best
information here or are we being told things that somebody
wants us to hear. It's a scary position to be

(17:45):
in as a passive interpreter of the news, Like we
all are right, we're all just doing that thing, trying
to figure out and triangulate. I would just say, right now,
when we look out as we're going to do as
we're doing right now in this episode, looking out at
the potentials that are coming our way, the viruses, the

(18:07):
iicky things that might get inside our bodies, it is
tough to trust anybody right now.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, because it's tough to verify in a lot of ways,
right I mean, Reagan was not the best actor, not
the best president. But trust but verify is is a
pretty interesting philosophical perspective.

Speaker 5 (18:30):
I think we dropped that all the time, and Matt
dare we say difficult but also unwise.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
To trust anyone?

Speaker 5 (18:38):
And I hate to be that guy or that that's
like sort of our mantra here on the show is
trust no one. But I mean people are there are
some bad actors out there that are trying to, you know,
take control of the narrative. And it's really really important
now more than ever to be wise to that. So
don't go living your life in fear thinking everyone's trying
to do you harm. But just keep your eyes open.

(19:00):
Trust but verify, I think is the way, right.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
And remember, no one thinks they're the bad guy, which.

Speaker 5 (19:05):
Makes it even more dangerous, right because they're doing God's
work right, right, especially.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
The guy that's got the you know, the microphone connected
up to to your thing, going oh what did they say?
What are they saying? Oh God, what did they say?

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Everybody?

Speaker 2 (19:23):
But what I'm saying is that the person, the perhaps
like creepiest person in all of this is the one
that's listening and trying to verify, right, Which is scary
because that that ends up being the person that we
have to trust, is the person that is checking on
everybody else because they're terrified of what everybody else might

(19:43):
be doing. It's it's a messed up situation. It feels
very similar to me, guys, when I'm looking out of
the landscape of all of these things, like having a
parental guardian or someone in your family that is supposed
to be looking out for you right as a child
or something, but they've got maybe a medical condition or

(20:06):
I'm imagining bipolar or a substance abuse problem, where you
never know if you're going to get the good version
of dad or mom or like the really really bad version.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
Yeah, the shadow version.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
They look the same, they sound the same. When we're
talking about looking at a news article, right, or something
coming from one of these official organizations. It looks the same,
it sounds the same, but you have no idea if
it's going to be the good or the bad version.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
And we also know that a lot of people didn't
listen to the experts historically. I don't know if it's
specifically a US thing. I think now it's more revalent
across the world. But we know that until COVID nineteen
hit in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, right until COVID nineteen hit,

(20:55):
a lot of people were not listening to the boffins right.
They were to breathless headlines, and they were listening to
what told them their identity and pre existing beliefs were correct.
So in the years that followed, pretty much every aspect
of the outbreak was heavily weaponized, like you were saying earlier, Matt,

(21:17):
for one reason or another, it absolutely made the situation worse.
People were looking for trusted sources, right, but their framework
had been so warped and messed with, so fuxed with
that it was difficult for them to find those sources.
And countries then already were not booed up with each other, China, Russia,

(21:39):
and the US in particular, they went crazy blaming each other.
And even now we're recording again on July sixth, twenty
twenty six, a lot of scientists are still debating the
origin story of COVID, and a lot of the politicians
are expressly not helping solve the mystery because they're trying

(21:59):
to score points with their constituents.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Oh yeah, and as we learned earlier on this show,
the folks at the Nai D sure don't want you
to know they were sponsoring gain of function research in
a little city called Wuhan in China, specifically about coronaviruses.
They do not want you to know that or think
about that, right, But.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
We do check out our multiple episodes on that. So
it's funny because we often when we're doing this as
a peep behind the curtain. I'm looking over here at
our research. We often put in our related episodes from
the past in case we need to refer back to them.
And guys, did you know that we have seven coronavirus episodes?

Speaker 4 (22:40):
Unfortunately a bit of a hot topic.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
It was a bit of a It was a bit
of a time, and we know that we were recording
a lot of those during the height of the COVID lockdowns.
The same first time we did this, right, yeah, crap
the city. Yep, the first time we went into remote recording,
which has normalized for us today. While we were recording
these things, while everybody was dealing with the COVID lockdowns

(23:08):
and all the fallout, those same scientists that have been
telling the world to watch out for something like COVID,
they said, Okay, maybe now you'll take us seriously and
know that we're not the kids who cried wolf. There
is another pandemic or series of pandemics inevitably on the horizon.

(23:30):
Everybody is hoping that we could take the lessons learned
from COVID nineteen and apply them towards monitoring these things.
We will call emergent threats and there are a lot
of them. It was funny. I think a lot of
us saw this. About six months ago, the founder of Microsoft,
Bill Gates, had an in depth interview where he estimated

(23:54):
there's a ten to fifteen percent chance of a natural
pandemic urging within the next four years. A lot of
us are going to say, Bill Gates, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (24:06):
Yeah, well but you know ebstin files.

Speaker 5 (24:08):
But also Bill Gates got to give him maybe a
little credit where credit is due of some of the
billionaire gazillionaires. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done
good work with you know, doing research into infectious diseases.

Speaker 4 (24:20):
In other countries and other parts.

Speaker 5 (24:22):
Of the world. So he definitely was coming at that
information from a place of you know, of research, like
a research place, you know.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Because he doesn't he's not an expert himself.

Speaker 5 (24:34):
No, but he's surrounded by them and they've been doing
this work. I'm not trying to say he's one of
the guys, but I'm just saying it was.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
Accurate the information in this particular discussion.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
I agree with you, Yes, yeah, I agree with you. There.
He hired some of the best and brightest on earth
to fight.

Speaker 5 (24:49):
This, but wasn't there even an argument too that him
coming out with that information in the way he did
also in some ways represented a kind of agenda. I
want to say that we talked about this, that there
was something to do with the way he came out
with that information that in and of itself had some
sort of nefarious undertone.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Well, we'd know why people in general hold a distrust
for somebody like Bill Gates because of the money and
power one person can wield. Right. That doesn't mean Bill
Gates is doing the conspiratorial things that are alleged on
forums that you'll find, but it does mean that, I think, guys,

(25:29):
we can fully understand why people are have a hard
time fully trusting him, or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
or something like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which
is one of the things that Bill and Melinda Gates
and their foundation founded along with the World Economic Forum
in Davos, Switzerland. Because a lot of us associate some

(25:52):
of that stuff with the bigger government thing, right, that
the thing that would be labeled illuminati, right, something that
is done by billionaires, potentially for billionaires, But on the
face of it, it looks like philanthropy or you know,
good works to help humanity.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Right, like a hidden I think that's what you're saying, though,
like a possible hidden financial That's what I'm getting.

Speaker 5 (26:20):
It was something to do with as well. They were
like these events two oh one modeling exercises that sort
of stemmed from some of those talks that there was
some conspiratorial chatter around. But it's a little hazy for me.
But that's the problem, right, Like we're literally saying, Okay,
good on you Bill Gates for you know, predicting this
stuff and for doing this work. But then immediately like

(26:41):
what did I just say? Of course he's doing it
for the wrong.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Reasons, right, And sometimes doing the right things for the
wrong reasons still creates the same effect. Like he has
the Gates Foundation, the Gates Foundation posts the divorce right,
the Gates Foundation has hired again some of the best
and brightest minds in the field of pathology, public health,

(27:06):
all related disciplines. And when he say, when Gates is
saying a ten to fifteen percent chance of an outbreak,
he's really quoting all those people he paid to do
mind breaking research, And yeah, ten to fifteen percent doesn't
sound like much, but we have to remember if another

(27:27):
pandemic occurs, and statistically it will, that small percentage equates
to hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of fatalities. People can't
agree on the specifics, but they all have inside and
outside the Gates Foundation. Pretty much everybody on the planet
who is qualified to look into this returns to one damning,

(27:50):
terrifying consensus. When this thing emerges, whatever it may be,
humanity will be thoroughly unprepared. It reminded me of the
Cohen Brothers film. I think it's Cohen Brothers. Oh brother,
where art thou? Where?

Speaker 5 (28:04):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (28:05):
Ulysses? Everett McGill keeps saying, is you is or.

Speaker 4 (28:08):
Is you ain't? My constituency?

Speaker 3 (28:10):
He keeps saying Ulysses. Everett McGill keeps saying, we're in
a tight spot.

Speaker 4 (28:15):
Sorry, Oh yeah, I also tight spot. I made it
infinitely quotable that movie.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
I wonder if he kept saying it because he forgot
the lines in the script, because like, there's a run
you guys remember where he just someone's like, oh blah
blah blah, new information for the story dialogue, and he's.

Speaker 5 (28:34):
Like, we're in a tight spots, very funny and also
people for people kind of forget that that was That
was the odyssey is what that movie is sort of
based on.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Very much, very interested to see it.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Man.

Speaker 5 (28:45):
All this kerfuffle about Chris Nolan's honesty, we should talk
about that on Strange News this week too, But.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
I still going to see it.

Speaker 4 (28:51):
I'm with you, I'm with you.

Speaker 3 (28:52):
I will see it for sure.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Bigger vision. Yeah, serious question. Do you think that ten
to fifteen percent, as quoted by the Gates Foundation as
a potential new pandemic? Do you think that is based
on zoo the chances of a new zoanotic form of
a disease we're aware of, or do you think that's
taking into account all of the diseases that are being

(29:16):
manufactured in the GAINO function research in labs, or the
chances of a leak from one of these supposedly secure facilities.
I do wonder that ten fifteen percent chance is just
like the scientific version of hey, one of these might
mutate enough to then jump to humans or attend a
fifteen percent chance that there's another mess up at a lab.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
Right, whether it's based on abstract modeling or whether it's
based on knowledge of current applied by a weaponry research really.

Speaker 5 (29:45):
Quickly, guys, I just found a really fascinating term. I
was trying to figure out what I was thinking about
with this gate stuff and any potential criticisms philanthro capitalism
gonna leave that there just.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
Perfect well or learning so many new words today, I
couldn't be more excited. And that is a question because
as we're going to see that, that's a great question
that ten to fifteen percent, what's the methodology? How is
it derived? The reason that's such a great question is
because there is a lot of stuff they don't want
you to know about gain of function research. Like you've

(30:18):
been saying, Matt, we also know that climate change is
fundamentally altering all the old checks and balances can't recommend
our mirror life episode enough. Geopolitical cooperation, forget about it.
That stuff is plummeting, income inequalities on the rise. Everything

(30:38):
that is bad for humanity is kind of happening to
some degree. And on the flip side, all of those
things that are bad for the human animals are great
for the organisms that create infectious disease, a new pandemic
on the way. We have a question what will cause
this pandemic? Who would our culprit be so more bad news?

(31:01):
Get this, fellow conspiracy realist. There's way more than what.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Oh yeah, there's so many.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
There's so many. It's an embarrassment of riches.

Speaker 4 (31:12):
And definitely an embarrassment we have.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
We have an ad break ahead, and we'll dive into it.
Here's where it gets crazy. It's just like the usual suspect. Sorry,
I'm throwing so many pop culture references, guys, but.

Speaker 4 (31:33):
You never apologize for that.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
I mean, these are the best I know.

Speaker 4 (31:37):
I'm a fan personally.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Yeah, carry on, I mean think of like your favorite
Who Done It? Mystery novels? All right, we have a
straight up rogues gallery of diseases that could potentially go worldwide,
either through human tinkering, environmental factors, socio political factors, or
just plain old force hack of evolution. They're all waiting

(32:03):
for just the right recipe of bad luck to run
wide rife across the planet. Big thanks to Frank Wilharan
for teaching us the word wide.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Rife, not matt rife.

Speaker 4 (32:17):
No, I think he learned that from the Brits, though,
to be focus, he.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
Did learn it from the Big thanks to our British
cousins as well, and good luck to Matt Rife on
purchasing the the museum. I'm trying to remember the name
of the museum, but the Lorraine Ed and Lorden Ed
and Lorraine Warren.

Speaker 4 (32:37):
Oh, right with the doll.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, okay, Ben, do you is there a place people
can go to see a generalized list of some of
the things we're going to talk about. I've found one
on that cep I dot net, the Coalition for Epidemic
Preparedness Innovations. They kind of list them off and you
can dig deep or if you want to, in each

(33:01):
one individually if you're trying to support your own research.
There's so much that we're going to get into here,
it gets it gets quite confusing, Ben and Nol For
me personally, as I'm thinking about some of these different viruses,
because they all do seem to be they seem more
related in my head than they are because they are

(33:22):
occurring across the world in different places, in different pockets.
Right as we're talking about the potential endemics or just
a potential you know, outbreak, a small outbreak in one area,
Especially when we get into things like a bola and chicken.
I don't even know how to say it, chicken gunya.
Some of these things are a little more isolated, but
then some of them really are spreading pretty quickly or

(33:46):
more widely, but not in a pandemic way.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Right, yeah, yeah, that's a great question, Matt. We highly
recommend checking out the World Health Organization aside from, you know,
some of the conspiratory thoughts we've entertained about this outfit
in the past. For years, they have kept a list
of viruses and bacteria with the potential to metastasize into

(34:12):
pandemic level threats. Some of these old beans, right, Some
of these you probably have never heard of unless you're
unlucky enough to be infected, and some have gained new
horrifying relevance in just like the past few years or
even the past few months. Shout out to Marburg. We
got to get to that one. But if we want
to blaze through some real quickly. Nepa virus. I hate

(34:36):
how it sounds like a kawhi right yeah, yeah, Oh,
go to McDonald's and get your happy meal. It comes
with a Nepa virus.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
I genuinely don't know if that's how I've been pronouncing
it too, Ben. I do wonder if it is differently pronounced,
because it is it. I can't remember if it's China based.
I know it's on the Asian continent, but if if
it's like a knee paw or you know, just a
different nipa. Yeah, yeah, it's such a different sound that
you can make. Right.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
If it's total We're just saying nepa virus because it's
a real way to say. That's what it looks like.
It's an iph n iPAH and it is as you
were saying, Matt. It is by far most prevalent in
parts of the Asian continent, and outbreaks of this virus
occur pretty much every year on that continent. They barely

(35:30):
make Western news. It is eunatic. It can be carried
by fruit, bats, cats, dogs, horses, pigs, and any of
them can give it to a human organism. This scary
part is it has a forty to seventy five percent
fatality rate for humans soon.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
It's really scary. That's scary.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
Every year, the almost every year, virtually every year this
is happening, and people are through like, these are not
bad people, these are innocent people. They can track this
virus and they have a forty chance of die in
the best of us.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Well, it's in the same family as measles and mumps,
which if you know you know about those things where
you're actually getting the physical manifestation on your skin of
the thing that's also going to affect you know, the rest.

Speaker 5 (36:25):
Of your body is also vaguely plaguelike in the whole,
and it's been that also means it's been there for
a while, right when you start exhibiting on the skin,
which also you know, the best way to compare it is,
or a good way to compare it is the old
adage about seeing roaches in your house.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
If you see one roach in your house, they've been
around for a hot they've been around. That means they're
a lot more.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Then, think about how scary this is because it can
jump from all of these different species, right, canines, felines, horses,
pigs like anti hue umans, And every time there's that jump,
that's where it gets really scary, right guys. I mean
maybe I'm wrong, but I think that's where it gets
the most scary because a jump to another species means

(37:11):
some new mutations like heavily mutated to be able to
jump to a new species and infect that species.

Speaker 5 (37:18):
Absolutely, it always seems actly a real indicator that things
are about to go pear shaped.

Speaker 2 (37:23):
Well when you're talking about the age of it, right
in showing those symptoms and then being able to jump
to that many species. That's why that one is I'm
assuming guys, that's one of the reasons's at the top
of our list because all it takes is a few
more changes in that thing, and now it affects you
as a human in a different way, and it's way
worse than forty to seventy five percent.

Speaker 3 (37:44):
Rtality, and it can evolve more approach vectors as well, right,
so then it maybe one day evolution says, uh, we're
a little NEPA virus. You tired of hopping around with
cats and dogs, You should get into birds, and then
you know, then there's a whole nerds, what fly? Birds

(38:05):
what fly? And birds which cast away?

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Genuinely, guys, doesn't that make it one of the most
terrifying ones on here, because that means nepavirus is probably
target number one, if not one, through three of gain
of function research to come up with vaccines to fight
against it.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
Yeah, it's very fatile. Yeah, And that's that's a great point, Matt,
because there are some what we call monoclonal antibiotic or
antibody treatments, but as of yet, as we're recording, there
is no known vaccine for this infection at all. So
if you if you snag an infection of the cutes

(38:46):
named nepavirus, and we don't want to make too much
light of it, because a ton of people have died
from this. If you snag it an infection, this is real, Jesus,
take the wheel stuff. You are going to become religious quickly.
And the best way to combat it, since there's not
a vaccine, is to try to avoid all those transmission

(39:07):
vectors we named like stay away from bats. Not to
sound anti bat, uh. You can't eat fruit that fruit
bats may have nibbled on. You have to be careful
drinking broad juice in case an infected bat fed upon
that fruit before it became part of your juice. And also,
remember how washing groceries was kind of propagandistic panic during COVID.

(39:33):
You have to do that with NEPA. You have to
wash the fruit, you should probably peel it. Actually, maybe
just go light on the fruit.

Speaker 5 (39:42):
This is not medical advice, no, but I mean fruit
is Ultimately it's a lot of sugar.

Speaker 4 (39:47):
You gotta be careful. Don't don't overdo it.

Speaker 6 (39:49):
Don't over pine Apple is amazing distances vegetable, the only
edible from meliad.

Speaker 4 (40:00):
Yeah, that's fair. That is fascinating. But I don't know
how it's good for your gun. But yeah, I hear you. No,
you're right, you're right, You're right.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
And there's some other benefits to pineapple.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
Oh, I've heard some some, Yeah, ok.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Some potentially.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Pineapple is one of the best things ever created.

Speaker 4 (40:16):
It's so good.

Speaker 5 (40:17):
I know. That really makes you look like you like
you're you're very successful in posh carry around a pineapple,
you know.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
Oh my gosh. Yeah, we have a whole episode on
ridiculous history.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
Pineapple rentals.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
Yes about pineapple rentals. Do check it out. Do check
it out. Wash your hands, wash your fruit, and watch
out for this is an interesting name, the crimean congo
hemorrhagic fever.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Oh, I don't like the sound of that.

Speaker 5 (40:43):
Nothing kawai about that one, guys, not at all hemorrhagic.
I assume that means it causes one to hemorrhage.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Oh yes, yeah, and this this spreads from another insidious
fector from uh, one of the great assholes of nature,
a tick, or in a livestock that's been infected by
again one of the great a assholes of nature.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
The tick worse second only to the mosquito.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Second to the mosquito. Yeah, but I bet they hang out,
I know.

Speaker 5 (41:15):
But the tick is the silent killer though. You know,
you catch a tick in some tall grass, you don't
even know it's there. Mosquito buzzes around and bites you.
You kind of know what happened at the very least.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
Yeah, that's a good point. Also, we should do an
episode on lime disease.

Speaker 5 (41:29):
I was about to say, these days, at least in
the States, you're a lot less likely to contract malaria
from a mosquito bite than you are a lime disease
from a secret tick hangaround.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
Yeah, that's another I would call that a silent epidemic
in the States right now, totally. Oh, we know that
to get creman congo you have to come in close
contact with blood or other bodily fluids from a person
who was infected earlier. So as ever, again not medical advice.
These are just your pals on stuff they don't want

(41:59):
you to know. Giving you an adage as ever, don't
put your hands in other people's wounds if you could
help it, and do your best not to let somebody
spit in your mouth.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
Okay, rules to live by pretty good.

Speaker 3 (42:14):
Not to yock anybody's album, but that's basic day one stuff, right.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, But these kinds of diseases are terrifying because if
you're if you have a loved one, let's say, a child,
a spouse, you know someone in your immediate family that
has contracted something like this, especially when you're not aware
that they've contracted this yet, you are going to be
around these people doing things if it's your spouse. My god,

(42:40):
we humans do weird things to each other that involve
all kinds of things and mouths and other parts of
our bodies. And if you don't know, you're you know
someone is infected yet. That's why this kind of stuff
can spread, right, And we also we learned about funerary
rites in a couple of places where we were talking
about a bull while back. Just the absolutely innocent ways

(43:04):
that human beings end up spreading disease like this, just
because of close personal relationships.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah, and also because of socio religious requirements, there's stuff
that you can't not do and some funereal rights. And
I love that point, Matt. We also know that Crimean
Congo has a ten to forty percent fatality rate. That's
a wide variation and a lot of it is due

(43:30):
to lack of public health institutions and support. So this
could be a solvable problem. It's endemic, like we said,
it occurs regularly throughout parts of Africa, the Balkans, Middle
East Asia. You don't hear a ton about it in
Western news just yet. It's gross though. It does serious

(43:52):
damage to your organs, your cardiovascular system, and it includes
a lot of heavy bleeding. And this is a little conspiratorial. Well,
I have spent too much time on it, but I
love your take. Guys. There is technically a vaccine for
this infection. However, that vaccine only exists in Bulgaria. It's

(44:15):
the only place that exists. There's no peer reviewed research
on it that we could find, and it is not
legal to be used anywhere else but Bulgaria. What do
you guys think about that?

Speaker 4 (44:31):
Is it faith?

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Is it propaganda?

Speaker 2 (44:34):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
I mean, how could you make something like that and
not give it to the world.

Speaker 5 (44:40):
So I've been watching I think I mentioned off air
the West Wing a lot as sort of a remedy
to some of the craziness going on in.

Speaker 4 (44:46):
Our political atmosphere.

Speaker 5 (44:49):
And there's an episode that just happened where there was
discussions with the President of Kenya, I believe, about the
AIDS epidemic that was going on there at the time,
at the table with all these pharmaceutical CEOs and this
whole you know, discussion around how why are we not
providing affordable AIDS medication to you know, this country whose

(45:14):
citizens are literally dying. I believe the number was something
around thirty five to forty percent of citizens of the
country were infected with HIV. And it just that that
reminds me of what you're talking about here, and just
the whole like business of pandemics, the business of infection,
and how there could be things that could save people's lives.

(45:36):
Because of politics and you know, trade agreements, et cetera,
they might not be made available or it might not
be you know, tenable to literally save human lives.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
I like that sort of phrase. Noal and terrifying the
business of disease, the business of infections.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Yeah, I was gonna say, because as we learned, the
vaccines are a major they could they could be very
low for organizations as we saw, especially when a government
is buying them, or governments across the globe start buying
their developing their own. This thing that we're talking about, Ben,
this is a I'm not going to say it, right
philo philo viruses like the hemorrhagic fever ones like ubola.

(46:17):
This is in that same like range, Rightah, exactly, And
there there is a huge vaccine library for various strains
and forms of these types of fevers, hemorrhagic fevers that
exist out there. It is strange that this one would
have a singular country that is developed one and they're

(46:40):
holding it close. I do. I do wonder if it's
just is it too early? Is this one of those
that is pretty recently created. I guess that's the big question.
Because it's recently created, then these other countries have to
get a hold of vaccine, you know, test it enough
to then get it approved by whatever bodies are out there.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
Yeah, hopefully that is the case. And it's it's strange
that it's always a question we'd love to hear your
thoughts on that as well. Folks. We'll run through a
couple quick ones maybe before we get to the big
Daddy's loss of fever. Nothing to do with mango LASSI

(47:21):
carried via rats primarily a couple of Yeah, it's another
one endemic to parts of West Africa, so it keeps.
Recurring fatality rate is comparatively low, still terrible, one to
fifteen percent, especially deadly for pregnant people and fetuses in
the third trimester. If you get infected or your parent

(47:45):
gets infected while they're carrying you. If neither of you die,
you as the child still run a very high risk
of becoming death for the rest of your life.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Oh lord, Yeah, that's crazy that it would affect you
that way, like specifically.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
Target specifically the hearing right. Yeah, it shows us that
we have more to learn. Because rats harry the virus.
We know that it spreads when you accidentally touch rat
poop right or contaminated food. If you have direct being

(48:23):
diplomatic about this, direct interactions with the bodily fluids of
another person who has infected you will also contract it.
There is no vaccine. The good news is that the
primary transmission vector right now in its current form is
that specific type of rat, which means that the disease

(48:47):
in its current state is limited to areas where that
particular rat already lives. So careful at the pet store.

Speaker 4 (48:55):
I think I might have a rat in the walls
in my garage. Guys, I smelt it. I mean it's
I think it's dead. But that's how it goes. You
can't really find the dead thing, and hopefully the smell
will subside, and a few.

Speaker 7 (49:07):
And a few I hate it for you, man that
he it's the thing. That's what happened. That's exactly what happened.
And I noticed that it wasn't just the run of
the mill basement smell. Hopefully it didn't have any kind
of infectious disease.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Quick reminder, as we've been just kind of saying, just reminder,
interacting with rat feces, mice feces, other rodent feces like
that can be enough to get you infected. Remember pretty
recently we talked about the andes virus or hantavirus. And
notice that that's not on this list, and I don't

(49:42):
think it is in this list at all, by the way,
I don't think.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
Good news about hantavirus.

Speaker 5 (49:49):
I don't have any kind of vermin problem. This is
not something it's just you know, when it gets.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
Hot, it only takes one baby.

Speaker 4 (49:55):
That's what I'm saying though.

Speaker 5 (49:56):
So just don't think that you're safe because you think
don't have any kind of any kind of rat or
mouse problem.

Speaker 4 (50:03):
They can find their way in, especially when it gets
really really hot. That's crazy weather they had.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
The fecal contamination of the contamination may.

Speaker 4 (50:11):
Not be visible to you can be in there.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
You don't want to sound like fun police saying don't
play with poop, But don't play with poop.

Speaker 5 (50:18):
Better get some slime, Yeah, get some gat Nickelodeon, Oh Japan,
We've come so far in the slime game Cloud Slime,
all kinds of fun slime opportunities.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
It's very popular with kids these days.

Speaker 4 (50:33):
Apparently you can make it yourself.

Speaker 5 (50:34):
All you need is Elmer's glue contact solution and some
sort of scent or coloring.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Oh and we have to shaving cream, sorry, shaving crease. Okay, yeah,
let's do some science experiments, guys. We also have to
mention h Like you said, Matt, mosquitoes are probably even
bigger jerks than ticks when it comes to the spread
of a lot of these infections, thinking specifically DJ Khaled

(51:02):
voice another one, Rift Valley fever and zica. Remember when
everybody was very worried about zica and then sort of
forgot about it.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
That's kind of how these things go.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
Man, It's still it's still happening. Rift Valley has a
fatality rate of less than one percent, but unfortunately eight
to ten percent of people who get it, if they're infected,
they don't die. They still get eye lesions, encephalitis, morrhagic fever,

(51:32):
and there is a vaccine, but there's still a lot
of testing to be done. And zica is not often fatal,
but it deserves a mention here because it can cause
some just truly unclean things miscarriages, still birth, heartbreaking birth

(51:53):
defects like micro cephally. It's yeah, it's there's no no
efficacious treatment, there's no vaccine. The only bright side is
that zeka, like LASA, is limited to areas where those
infected mosquitoes already live.

Speaker 4 (52:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Yeah, it's really scary just to add the list simply
because it's non in here and is one you can
look up is that chic and Gunya disease is another
one of these mosquito born or uh what is it?
What do we say? Biting flies? Like any insect that
bites and potentially so yeah, get into your blood. Uh,

(52:34):
it's just another really dangerous one. And it's one of
it's Some of these just have such it's weird to me.
Some of these, like the one we're mentioning Zeca, has
such a low morbidity rate, But then some of them
have crazy high morbidity rates but also don't seem to
be spreading as much and don't seem to be as
much of a problem. But every time one of these
things gets on a list like this, it just raises

(52:56):
the chances that there's some pharmaceutical company that wants to
do that gaino function research. I'm sorry to keep doing
the same thing as beating the dead horse here. It's
the money wants to get in there and test these
things and see how deadly they can make them so
they can save the world one day when it's time
to give out the vaccines, or at least convince you

(53:16):
that you have to get around of like six vaccines.

Speaker 3 (53:19):
And our producer has also convinced us we got to
take one more ad break. We're going a little long
on this one, but we promise it's worth your time.

Speaker 4 (53:27):
Folks.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
We're about to introduce you to some of the big dogs.

Speaker 4 (53:35):
We're back.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
The list goes on and on. Marburg and Ebola are
of particular interest when it comes to the next potential pandemics.
These are probably the names you have heard most recently.
Marburg and Ebola are kissing cousins. They're both very nasty
customers get this. Marburg, which is named after where it

(53:59):
was discovered. Officially, it can kill nine out of ten
of the people it infects. Ebola is not much easier
to deal with. Marboard technically has an estimated eighty eight
percent mortality rate, which means this thing could well be
a death sentence. It spreads through all sorts of animals.

(54:22):
It's zoonotic as well Happy zuenosis day. It spreads rapidly,
but the symptoms don't show up for a while. It's
if you go to the vaccine Alliance well you'll see
as symptoms include high fever, chills, muscle ache, vomiting. You
get sick after when the incubation period ends, things go

(54:44):
south quickly. You will have a few days of increasingly
terrifying sickness, and then in some cases, you will begin
bleeding from every orifice of your body, including needle marks.
So like if you're in a hospital and they've been
sticking you with metain and or some kind of treatment
and you hit the bleed phase, you're going to bleed
out of that puncture wound as well.

Speaker 8 (55:05):
No, thank you, craky nightmare fuel, right, I mean, it's
we know that outbreaks still occur, Like to the earlier
point about I keep going back to this, why do
we not hear more about these things?

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Right? Because they don't directly affect the West, Yet in two.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
Hours too busy thinking about monkey Pock's beIN obviously right.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Right right, they're weaponizing smallpox right out out west right
in Angola in two thousand and four, there was an
outbreak that affected two hundred and fifty people ninety percent
fatality rate. It takes, yeah, it takes anywhere from two
to twenty six days. So here us well, folks anywhere

(55:49):
from forty eight hours to almost a month to incubate,
which means the entire time you could be asymptomatic, you
could be a world traveler spreading marb around, feeling dapper
as a daisy, which is the phrase we made up.
I hope it works.

Speaker 4 (56:05):
I think it works quite well. I feel that way
on a good day.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
You're dapper is a daisy makes me adapt for you.
And the thing is, when it kicks in, things go
south so so very quickly. People will die eight to
nine days later, and it's usually because or often because
of an extreme loss of blood. It also hides out.

(56:29):
It just keeps getting worse. Marburg and abulla can persist
in the bodies of infected patients who survive, Like you
beat the odds, right, you survive Marbur. God is great
and evolution is hiding the Marburg virus in your eyes,

(56:50):
your testes, your placenta, your amniotic fluid, your breast milk,
if you're nursing, you could believe you survive the pandemic.
And then a month later, this incubation, this new incubation
period ends and another wave of outbreaks occur.

Speaker 2 (57:08):
That's just well, does that mean you're Does that mean
you're infectious to others? When you're carrying it around after
you think you're you've finished the whole.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
Thing, hold in one just so Jesus, you're released from
the hospital, you go to a crowded church to pray.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Well, this is a tangent, but it's related, and we've
talked about it on Strange News a little bit. Another one,
it's not on our list today, but one that I think,
I mean, we're at least keeping our eyes on, is
the chronic wasting disease. It's not the same as one
of these infectious things. It currently does not infect humans.
There's never been a chronic wasting disease human case yet,

(57:47):
but researchers are paying attention to it because it's another
one of these things that if it's in your body
and you're infected with the prions as a deer servant
right now, you may not show any kind of signs
for years, months or years, but you're still just by
going around as a deer, in peeing and pooping and

(58:10):
having sex with other deer, you are infecting everybody else
in your herd and in the surrounding area, and not
just your species, other species too. And we know that
like something like that is so so terrifying for its
pandemic potential, because like you'd have to develop very specific

(58:30):
ways to find out if it's in, if it's in
people like this one, right, Ben, because you'd have to
test the blood and get tested all the time to
make sure there's nothing currently cooking in your body that
has been in there and you're not a serious threat
a danger to everybody around you.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Yeah. Yeah, your epidemic of deer finn could like destroy
a species, honestly.

Speaker 4 (58:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
And it sounds like this with Marbourg, right, I mean
it sounds similar.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
So we have to consider that this is Most of
the outbreaks are occurring in places that historically have problems
with public health, the DRC, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo Angola, as we mentioned South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania,
and Equatorial Guinea. There have also been outbreaks in the

(59:23):
European theater and in the United States. The fact that
it can hide out should keep you up at night.
Hope nobody was planning to sleep after this. There is
an ebola outbreak happening right now as we record more
than thirteen hundred confirmed cases three hundred and seventy five

(59:44):
confirmed deaths in the DRC. The infection has already spread
to the adjacent Uganda. This evaded detection to your point, Matt,
not just because clinicians or public health health experts failed
to recognize the hemorrhagic fever was viral in nature, but

(01:00:06):
also because a lot of the tools that these experts
have are designed for different outbreaks. It's mirror life all
over again, right, and so we're getting false positives, we're
getting false negatives. We don't know what is true. Well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
And there's also that issue that we've discussed before on
the show where there are outsiders coming into your area
and they put you know, if you're someone one of
your family members is infected, they take your family member away,
they do all this weird craft to them, put them
in this place that you don't understand. You don't get
to see them, and then they're dead. You don't know
exactly what happened to them. You just hear from those

(01:00:42):
same people that took your family member way that they died, right.
You could just imagine what the distrust that that can foster,
right exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
Yeah, and then that compounds and disascerbates the problem of
the health the health experts on the right, because now
the population is not going to trust you. It's kind
of like how vaccination is never going to recover from
that CIA op to find Osama bin Lutt, you know
what I mean, it's just the Pakistan's not going to

(01:01:14):
trust vaccines for a while.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Dude. I think humanity has a problem with vaccines now.
And I know we went through the craziness when it
you know, comes to I don't want to shout any names,
but linking something like autism as well as other things
directly to vaccinations didn't do a lot to help anybody

(01:01:38):
when it comes to being scientifically literate and or you know,
having a better understanding of what an actual vaccination is
and what's in a vaccination. We also know there's problems
with vaccines, right we also, I mean there's so it
becomes so complicated because it gives vaccines such a bad rap.

Speaker 5 (01:01:57):
But at the same time, by their very nature, I mean,
you want to roll them out as quickly as possible.
And I think especially with the pandemic, with the COVID stuff,
they you know, understandably passed some things that allowed them
to do that much quicker, some little exactly, but then
all of a sudden, down the stream you start to
see all these little issues perhaps that were not you know,

(01:02:19):
understood upfront, and that is the nature I think of
that distrust. It's under the best of circumstances, there's.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
A lot of that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
You know, the ticking time bomb scenario is real in
that case. I love that you're pointing that out in
the Ale because it turned it turned the world almost
Soviet level in its approach to a large systemic problem. Right.
The Soviet Union was famous for a long long time
for having a surplus of bodies and no compunction about

(01:02:50):
throwing bodies at a problem. So you could argue, and
a lot of vaccine skeptics will argue that in some
cases world governments and the multinational pharma firms, we're doing
the same thing. We don't know what their calculus was.
We don't know what meetings they had about acceptable rates
of side effects or indeed fatalities or lifelong chronic conditions.

(01:03:15):
We do know that ebola comes in different forms, right,
just like hauntavirus, Just like so many other of the
culprits or usual suspects on our list here. Some forms
of ebola do have approved vaccines. Marburg, when we've been
harping on, has no vaccines that we know of. Both

(01:03:36):
viruses are popping up in the same region quite recently,
and we're wondering if that could be a double whammy
pandemic of good news. Unlike COVID nineteen, they are not
highly contagious respiratory viruses. They're very dangerous if you get them,
but this is not like something you could catch because

(01:03:58):
you walk by an infected person who happens to be
breathing the same air as you. Right, So that's kind
of good news.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Agreed, Yeah, I agreed.

Speaker 3 (01:04:07):
I mean we can hit one more good news thing
too as we're wrapping up.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
Oh, I forgot one before we hit the bigger one man. Yeah,
I just learned about something called canine coronavirus or CCoV
Good news is, guys, probably not gonna affect us. But
it is crazy to think about dog coronavirus, canine coronavirus
being a thing that's kind of it's under the radar
because it's not infecting humans quite yet.

Speaker 5 (01:04:34):
Well, so, how does the zoonotic nature of it all
affect something like that forming it would Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
To be zeronautic, it would have to mutate so such
that it could go from the canid to the human.

Speaker 4 (01:04:47):
Yeah, but it jumped to the canid in the first place.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Ye oh wait, I'm wrong, guys, I'm so sorry. According
to the University of Florida, there have been a few
documented canine coronavirus infections and humans. It's very rare, okay,
but it links to pneumonia hospitalizations, which is ultimately, right,
one of the scariest things with any of these, especially
the viruses that affect your respiration, it's developing pneumonia because

(01:05:14):
that's when you end up on a ventilator in a hospital.

Speaker 5 (01:05:16):
And of course that's why you often see that the
people that are most affected as older folks.

Speaker 4 (01:05:20):
Who have weakened immune systems already and coborbidities exactly. Right, Yeah,
then you have good news.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
We do have good news. We we've been telling folks,
as you know, as a gang, we've been we've been
aiming for like nihlistic optimism and good news. Piece of yeah, yeah,
a little a little bit of candy after the medicine. Right. So,
in our weekly Strange News segment a while back, we

(01:05:51):
were covering outbreak of something called haunt, a virus, specifically
the Andy strain of it. There was a very unlucky
cruise ship called Envy haundius. On that ship, three passengers
died of haunt of virus. At least four other people
were infected. Hauntavirus is spread by rudents. It causes hemorrhagic fever,

(01:06:13):
It causes some nasty pulmonary syndromes. The people caught the
one strain of haunt of virus that we know can
infect humans, or the one that can spread from person
to person. So more than one haunt of virus is zoonotic,
but the Hodi strain and De strain, if you prefer,

(01:06:34):
spreads from person to person. Everybody was worried, right, We
were worried in full transparency when we're talking about this
on strange news, that it could become the next pandemic. Luckily,
we went past the headlines. We went to the sources.
We went to the public health experts, and we found
folks like Bill Henige or Bill hanegi Ha n a

(01:06:57):
ge from Harvard THH. Chan In School of Public Health,
and he said it's probably not. Hauntavirus is probably not
pandemic level threat. It doesn't spread easily in humans, and
people begin exhibiting visible symptoms pretty quickly. So in the

(01:07:17):
handias could have been much worse. If people on the
ship were infected with Marbourg could have been game over.
But because it was hauntavirus and not that easily transmissible,
a significant amount of people spent an extended amount of
time in extremely close quarters and very few folks actually
got infected. So the Again, this leads the boffins to say,

(01:07:43):
it is not the case fatality rate that matters for
pandemic potential. It's the ability to transmit between humans. Transmission
happens enough, efficiently enough before people become seriously ill, just
like in that game Pandemic. They're very very few constraints
on virulence. So this is overall that this is good news.

(01:08:05):
Hauntavirus is not the threat that maybe popular news portrayed
it as not too long ago. But we still have
a lot to worry about, you know what I mean
A lot. I want to wash my hands so bad.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
I can't stop thinking about chronic wasting disease, you guys.
They folks are harping so much about how much research
is being done on this, the zombie dear disease, and
just how worried folks are. Imagine if a small population

(01:08:43):
of humans got infected by a disease like that, where
they can carry it around for years and be infectious
and infect everybody they're interacting with, and nobody notices for
years until they start, you know, not worrying about anything.
They're not thinking about anything. They're just walking around, drinking

(01:09:04):
water and urinating everywhere, and you know, don't have thoughts anymore.
They are literally zombies. But imagine it took a year
or two years for them to even show those signs,
but they've already infected everyone. Like what if we just realized, oh,
there's a huge population in Oregon and everybody there is

(01:09:26):
infected with human wasting disease and there's nothing we can
do about it. They've got about six months to a
year before they start showing symptoms. At least at that point,
you could potentially develop some kind of treatment for it,
if you had a runway, right, and enough human beings
to you know, get samples from to test.

Speaker 5 (01:09:47):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
I can't stop thinking about.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
It, you guys, I'm with you there, man. I also
can't stop thinking about something we probably won't have time
to get to today. Maybe it's a future episode, but
what if the worst happens? I'd love to hear the
gamed oubt scenarios. Maybe it's a thought experiment for us.
In the future, the next pandemic will emerge, humanity will
depend upon a few key factors that humans aren't super

(01:10:12):
great at learning lessons from the past, like COVID international cooperation.
That's another swing in amiss historically, and as much as
we despise government overreach, it's inarguable that practices like contact
tracing saved lives during the pandemic response time will be crucial.
Another thing humanity is not super great at. The US

(01:10:36):
in particular, as we know, is not going to be
anywhere near as prepared as it could have been due
to the massive budget cuts at places like the Center
for Disease Control the CDC here in Atlanta. Here you
have it, folks, So far as we know, another little
piece of good news at present July sixth, twenty twenty six,

(01:10:58):
none of these diseases we have mentioned have birthed a
new pandemic just yet. So hug your loved ones, wash
your hands. We wish you the best. Let us know
what's going on in your neck of the global woods.
We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in.
You can find us on the lines, You can call
us on a phone, and you can always send us
an email.

Speaker 4 (01:11:18):
Yeah, you can do all those things.

Speaker 5 (01:11:19):
And if you want to find us on the lines,
do so by reaching out to the handle Conspiracy Stuff
or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on what social media platform
you use.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Do you have a way to make phone calls? Call
one eight three three std WYTK. That's us. It's a
voicemail system. Give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
one of our listener mail episodes that appear in the
audio feed, which is separate from this here Netflix feed.
If you happen to be watching us right now, if

(01:11:49):
you want to send us an email, you can do that.

Speaker 4 (01:11:51):
We are the entities the read each.

Speaker 3 (01:11:54):
Piece of correspondence we receive. Be well aware, yet I'm
afraid sometimes the void writes back. This is one of
the best ways to get sources that we use in
our episodes or our weekly segment. This is also the
best way to give us a random fact or get
one in return. I'm going to blow up the spot
here for everybody tuning in on Netflix. This is one

(01:12:17):
of the best books ever written. The at list of
remote islands, So when your next pandemic hits, find an
island in this book, do your best to get there
before the flight's closed down. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Com Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a

(01:12:51):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.