|
Michael Femento, are you still in the Philippines?
|
|
Yes, Dennis, and I have to say that the people here are relatively sane, but the politicians have just absolutely gone bonkers.
|
|
We're basically in quarantine here.
|
|
I'm allowed out of my house, but they make it such that there's really nothing to do with this, so you might as well stay in your house.
|
|
I feel like I've been boarded up.
|
|
Yeah, well, that's what's happening here.
|
|
Worldwide.
|
|
Yeah.
|
|
Yeah.
|
|
So, I'm shocked.
|
|
I thought the Philippines, with its hot climate, was fairly impervious to this.
|
|
You hit on something right there, Dennis.
|
|
There is no correlation between the epidemic and the hysteria.
|
|
None.
|
|
I live on the second most populated island in the Philippines.
|
|
Five million people on this island.
|
|
We haven't had a single case.
|
|
It doesn't matter.
|
|
The stores are closed.
|
|
The bars are closed.
|
|
The gyms are closed.
|
|
Everything's closed, closed, closed by order of.
|
|
And we just have to, you know, unfortunately, you know, Filipinos, after 350 years of Spanish rule, that's what I say, they become very sheep-like.
|
|
They simply accept it.
|
|
Oh, sheep-like?
|
|
They're not more sheep-like than Europeans or many Americans.
|
|
There is a...
|
|
Individualism is dead.
|
|
The notion that the state knows best is universal now.
|
|
I love the Filipinos, but I'm not defending their reaction.
|
|
I find this amazing.
|
|
You are on an island of 5 million people.
|
|
Not one person has been found to have coronavirus or even hospitalized for symptoms, and it's in lockdown.
|
|
Yeah, they are looking.
|
|
They're looking?
|
|
I'm sorry go on.
|
|
They're looking at, I mean, everywhere you go they have these temperature readers.
|
|
They look like something out of Star Trek.
|
|
And they aim it at your forehead to see if you have an elevated temperature.
|
|
Mind an elevated temperature, your temperature could be elevated for all sorts of things.
|
|
Of course.
|
|
But I don't know what they do to you if your temperature is elevated.
|
|
How many people in all of Philippines have been tested positive?
|
|
Um...
|
|
I think it's about 100, maybe a couple hundred now, and I think about 60. No, I'm sorry.
|
|
It's probably about 60 to 80 right now.
|
|
But that's out of 105 million people.
|
|
This is, you know, this is one of the largest population countries in the whole world.
|
|
But something dampening the virus here that we discussed on earlier shows.
|
|
What clearly is applying to coronavirus already is that coronavirus, like most respiratory viruses, cold, flu, sirens, doesn't like heat and humidity.
|
|
And as we all know, the Philippines is hot and the Philippines is humid.
|
|
So it's never going to spread very much here.
|
|
Really, I am truly amazed.
|
|
I am amazed to hear that about the Philippines.
|
|
So I'll put you on the spot here.
|
|
Do you continue to be as negative on the response and characterize it as hysteria as you were in the beginning?
|
|
Yes, it's all the more interesting because I'm pretty much all alone on this.
|
|
I do have a third article coming out in a publication called Issues and Insights, and it's tomorrow out of Los Angeles.
|
|
But I'm almost alone, not completely.
|
|
A few other people have put in writing that this is hysteria that the media has not to be trusted.
|
|
It's such madness.
|
|
Let me give you an example.
|
|
Both the Washington Post and CNN reported They're digging burial pits in Iran.
|
|
If you know history, what does a burial pit make you think of?
|
|
It makes you think of the Black Death.
|
|
Bring out your dead.
|
|
A third of all Europeans swept away and all that.
|
|
And they emphasize this in the headlines.
|
|
These burial pits can be spotted from outer space.
|
|
Well, guess what?
|
|
Google Maps.
|
|
I should hope that, you know, every individual grave can be seen from out of state.
|
|
That tells you right there, this is media hype.
|
|
But another thing is that on average, 12,000 Iranians die each and every day.
|
|
Through the course of the epidemic, over a month long now in Iran, 30 people or 60 people have died.
|
|
So why would they be digging burial pits for an additional three or so people a day, when on average 12,000 a day are dying?
|
|
It's just nonsense.
|
|
It's made up of these article publications.
|
|
Didn't I just say CNN and the Washington Post?
|
|
It's maddening.
|
|
Okay, we'll be back in a moment.
|
|
Thank you.
|
|
You have no idea how much information I hear.
|
|
Of course you have.
|
|
You hear it too.
|
|
But I get it personally because I have relatives in medicine.
|
|
We'll be back in a moment.
|
|
The Dennis Prager Show.
|