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March 17, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
06:22
Fumento: Philippines are Basically Quarantined
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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.
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