Dr. Lyron Chu and the episode examine claims that China’s lab research—including the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s proximity to the Huanan market (12 km)—may have triggered COVID-19, with a 2020 study by Xiao and Lei citing 89–96% bat virus similarity. Taiwan’s exclusion from WHO forced it to act independently: tracking Wuhan-bound travelers via health data by January 21, 2020, and deploying rapid 15-minute tests by March 8. With just five deaths, its universal mask-wearing (130M/day production) and early quarantines outperformed Canada’s inaction, despite Taiwan’s offers to share expertise—highlighting geopolitical and public health failures. [Automatically generated summary]
I have something for you today that I promise you you've seen and heard nowhere else.
I go through two important things.
A Chinese propaganda video from a couple years back about bats and viruses in Wuhan.
I know you haven't seen this before.
And then I go through a study published by a Wuhan to Wuhan professors in February about where did the virus come from.
Oh, I know you haven't seen those before.
Boy, this is an important show, if I may say so myself.
Please consider getting the video version of it because this Chinese propaganda video of this virus hunter is so incredible and beautifully done, by the way.
I show it to you.
I'll describe it to you.
I'll describe it to you.
But would you please get the video version and do that by becoming a subscriber to Rebel News Plus?
Just go to rebelnews.com and you can sign up right on the page.
It's eight bucks a month.
No big deal.
I tell you, today's show is, it's a keeper.
Okay, here it is.
Tonight, did the Chinese government actually cause the coronavirus pandemic?
Let me show you what two Chinese government professors say.
It's April 1st, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have is in the government.
But why publish them?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
I've told you before about the Chinese government's high-security virus research lab in Wuhan.
Of all the cities in China, and there are very many, what are the odds that a virus outbreak just happens to be in the same city as their virus research lab?
Chinese Virus Lab Claims00:15:33
That's a heck of a coincidence.
But coincidences do happen.
It's just a bit hard to believe in chance or coincidence when you're dealing with a communist dictatorship.
Communist dictatorships lie and cover up to protect their reputation all the time.
The Chernobyl explosion and cover-up is the classic case of this.
It's essential that dictatorships never admit failure or defeat because that could empower critics or dissidents.
The whole point of a strong man is that he's strong.
He's infallible.
So China has that dictatorship culture and add onto that the Chinese cultural tradition of saving face.
And then add to that how devastating this failure has been to the Chinese people, how many it has killed, surely far beyond what they have publicly admitted to.
If it ever got out that this virus was actually caused by the Chinese government, well, let me quote Mikhail Gorbachev, the last dictator of the Soviet Union.
This is from a speech he gave in 2006.
The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the main cause of the Soviet Union's collapse five years later.
Indeed, the Chernobyl catastrophe was a historic turning point.
There was the era before the disaster, and there is the very different era that has followed, unquote.
Not just the massive cost of Chernobyl, but the fact that the dictatorship was to blame for the accident and for what came later that wasn't accidental, the cover-up, the denial.
And so you see, it is likely that we will never know the full truth about the Wuhan virus until after the Communist Party of China falls, like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fell.
We know the Wuhan virus lab is involved in intrigues, and bizarrely, Canada is a part of that.
As I've shown you before, Justin Trudeau approved the transfer of the Ebola virus from Canada's virus lab to the Wuhan facility.
Why on earth did Trudeau do that?
And this case of a Chinese national working in Canada's top security virus lab being frog marched out of the lab by police.
The story says she went back and forth to China, the clear implication being that she was a spy.
Now, the obvious point is doctors don't spy on doctors.
Researchers working on public health don't spy on each other.
If she were spying something so serious that she was marched out of there by cops, then she really wasn't working on public interest public health stuff, was she?
She was taking it for other purposes, obviously, illegal purposes, obviously, if the police were involved.
I don't know what the facts are.
The RCMB has never said what.
But biological warfare is an obvious possibility.
Not a lot of countries do that sort of thing.
Russia, China, probably America.
That's about it.
So that's the background on the Wuhan virus lab.
There's actually a couple of labs in town, but that's all just circumstantial evidence, right?
The more traditional explanation was that the virus leaped from animals to people at Wuhan's wet market, which is a way of describing markets where live animals, particularly wild animals, are sold for food in the heart of the city.
Years ago, I went to the wet market in Shanghai, China, and it was a shocking experience for someone used to Canadian norms of hygiene and food preparation and shopping.
The air was thick with the dander and dung and breath of every imaginable creature, some dead, some alive, some being killed right there, all destined to be eaten in whatever manner, some right there at the store.
I remember I could barely breathe as I walked through the market and I tried to hold my breath just till I was out of it.
It was so gross to me.
So yeah, if they were harvesting and selling and eating bats, including bat soup, it's very believable, at least to a layman like me, that the virus came that way.
Absolutely.
Again, I have no idea what actually happened, but it sounds plausible.
The Chinese government certainly suggested that, and in a big show, they shut down that wet market in Wuhan.
But I note that they have since reopened wet markets across China, so there's that.
That's odd.
Then again, did you know that there were four nuclear reactors at Chernobyl?
One of them exploded, but the Soviets continued operating the other three reactors the whole time.
Can you believe it?
One exploded.
It was a nuclear meltdown, but they never turned off the other three.
They just needed the power too badly, and they really didn't care.
It's sort of similar, isn't it?
In some ways, it doesn't matter where the Chinese virus came from.
It came from somewhere.
Now what do we do about it?
Let's focus on that.
Like with Chernobyl, it exploded because of a design flaw and because the staff that night who were operating it didn't know what they were doing during an emergency test and they broke their own rules, etc.
Whoever was to blame was secondary.
The fire had to be put out.
The radiation had to be stopped.
Recriminations could come later.
Same here.
The virus is here.
Now what?
Let's fix that.
Well, that's where we know for a fact we can blame the Chinese communists.
Here's the English language translation of a story published by the communist propaganda outlet called Xinhua, showing that Wuhan police actually rounded up and arrested eight doctors, medical doctors, who were trying to solve the problem, fight the virus, raise alarm about it.
For weeks, police threatened anyone who even talked about it.
They destroyed samples of the virus.
They kept it secret from the world for weeks.
So we know that the cover-up made things worse.
It showed malice, of course, but more than that, practically, it kept people of good faith, including foreign countries, from protecting themselves.
So that's the state of what we know for sure.
And that's the state of what I personally knew until yesterday when I saw this clip from Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
Here's what the paper says.
First, the scientists confirm what scientists around the world have said they believe.
The virus most likely came from an animal known as the intermediate horseshoe bat.
Here's the striking thing.
There are no known colonies of this bat within 900 kilometers of Wuhan, nor is there any evidence that they were sold in the Wuhan wet market, despite many claims in the American media to the contrary, including on this show, by the way.
Last night we did a segment on wet markets, the one in Wuhan included, and suggested that this bat was sold there.
But let's be clear, the only actual analysis of that question that we're aware of is in this paper.
These scientists interviewed almost 60 people, 59 of them, who frequented the Wuhan wet market.
They confirmed there were no horseshoe bats for sale there, period.
Really?
Wow.
So the bat in question that had the virus wasn't a bat found in Wuhan's wet market.
It didn't come from the Wuhan wet market because it couldn't come from the Wuhan wet market.
That's quite a story.
He cited a research paper published by a Chinese government university.
It's very interesting, but there's so much disinformation out there.
I was careful.
I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist.
This Wuhan virus story is so insane as it is, there is no need for fiction.
We're living the most bizarre science fiction horror story right now.
No need to make it worse.
But I was curious.
I wanted to see this study for myself and maybe put it through like a Google translate from Chinese to English.
But I found it in English.
Here, it's a report.
It's just a couple of pages long, actually, published by two Chinese researchers, Bo Tao Xiao and Lei Xiao.
The possible origins of the 2019 novel coronavirus.
That's what this study is called.
And this document I'm looking at here is a PDF that's saved from a website called ResearchGate, which is a huge website with scholarly publications from around the world.
You can see that Bo Tao Xiao has published 26 papers and has been cited 265 times.
So he's a real scholar.
And as you can see at the very bottom of the page, the footer on this PDF says, all content following this page was uploaded by Bo Tao Xiao on the 6th of February, 2020.
So that was about a week after Trump restricted flights from China to America, but before the rest of the world had really woken up to the threat.
By the way, here's Bo Tao Xiao's homepage on the South China University of Technology website.
So he's a real guy.
He seems like a very smart guy.
You can see he has two degrees from Chongqing University, but then he got his PhD at Northwestern University, which is an outstanding university in Chicago, one of the leading American universities.
But like I say, the document I got was just a PDF.
That is, someone saved it.
But when I clicked the website link at the very top, the paper wasn't there.
So I was skeptical.
I thought, well, was the paper ever there?
Is this some sort of forgery or hoax?
Is this disinformation?
And I got nervous because if I couldn't find this paper on the actual ResearchGate site, maybe it wasn't real.
But maybe whoever deleted it from ResearchGate forgot to delete it from archives.org.
That is a website I use occasionally for research.
It's also called the Wayback Machine.
It's sort of neat.
It's a website that literally takes little snapshots of the entire internet page by page every few days and just keeps it an archive.
It's like a backup of the whole internet.
I went to a snapshot of that very ResearchGate page back in February, and indeed the study was there.
It was archived.
I guess what I'm saying is it's real.
And it was deleted by someone since then for some reason, but it was real.
It was there.
I'm going to take you through the study in a moment.
It's only a couple of pages.
It's in English.
It's pretty easy to understand.
But first I want to show you a propaganda video that I discovered on the internet today while poking around on this subject.
I found it on a Chinese language website, .cn, so it's actually a Chinese website itself, sort of like a YouTube page.
It's an official Chinese propaganda video, very well done, very exciting, beautifully produced, and obviously published before the pandemic.
And it's about a brave young virus researcher from Wuhan's virus labs who goes out into caves all around China and collects bats, including bat blood and bat urine, and just as important little ticks and other bugs that live on bats that can spread the virus from bats to other things, including people.
Remember, this video was produced before the pandemic.
The video was designed to show how awesome China's virus program was, and this young man was a hero.
There's a moment in this video, you'll see it in a second, where they brag about how many viruses China has discovered.
China has discovered approximately as many viruses as the entire rest of the world has combined.
They're obsessed with viruses in Wuhan.
I'm going to play for you now an excerpt from my noon live stream that I recorded today.
I don't know if you know, but every day at 12 noon Eastern Time, I do a one-hour live show where I take questions from the audience too.
And usually I just look at videos and talk off the cuff.
And I had only discovered this video right before I went on the show today, so I went through it for the first time on the air with my viewers.
I'll show you that because I don't think I can do a much better job the second time through.
So watch me as we go through the short propaganda video about this Wuhan virus lab and how they harvest bat viruses on purpose so bravely and in great danger.
I believe that.
So this is me earlier today just riffing.
Okay, watch the clip and I'll see you in 10 minutes.
a look.
So this is obviously can you can they hear my voice over top?
Yeah.
So this is obviously a professionally produced documentary.
Obviously it's government propaganda.
You saw the name of the agency, China Science Communication, Youth in the Wild.
That's a cave, obviously.
Did you see the bat there?
When we are confronted with an invisible enemy, we can find threats hidden deep.
Only when we hide ourselves.
It sounds like a haiku.
Youth in the Wild, the Invisible Defender.
So this is calling these virus scientists invisible defenders.
So he's got his protective key.
I am not a doctor, but I work to cure and save people.
I work in virus sample collection and classification.
Those are some ominous images.
Viruses have been the leading cause of human death.
They have been highly elusive and caught people off guard.
Invisible to the naked eye infect people through vectors over the course of evolution.
Vectors have coexisted with the viruses.
Vector is the host of the virus, I think.
This is our mission.
Wuhan Centers for Disease Prevention and Control.
There you go.
Did you see that?
That's their top.
Okay, keep rolling.
That's their top virus lab in the whole country.
It just happens to be in Wuhan.
So this guy's out there catching creepy crawlies.
It's very pretty background.
This is very professionally done.
The caves are my workbench.
Oh, can you go back 10 seconds?
What did he say there about the caves?
Mountains and planes service my office.
Is that so pretty?
Yeah, keep going.
The caves are my workbench.
One female and one male.
We are so lucky.
Caves of Caution00:05:24
So he's catching bats.
He's going into caves and catching bats.
Hubei province.
It's a treasure trove for vectors.
This tick can kill people.
We caught one now.
Harsh for humankind.
This is a hell of a video.
This is not some amateur production.
Among all known creatures, the bats are rich in various viruses inside.
Can find most viruses responsible for human diseases like rabies virus, SARS, and Ebola.
Accordingly, the caves frequented by bats become our main battlefields.
He's going into the cave of bats.
Wet.
Dark.
And lonely.
Yeah, that's right.
Bats usually lives in caves humans can hardly reach.
Only in these places can we find the most ideal virus vector samples.
Watch out.
Most bats living here are horseshoe bats.
Oh, can you go back for one second?
See, the horseshoe bats, that's such an important point.
And horseshoe bats.
Yeah, hope.
And Pipistrellis abramis.
I'm going to Google that for a second.
Pipistrellis abramus.
That's also called a Japanese house bat.
Okay, I just Googled that.
Remember that word horseshoe bat.
Okay, I'm going to come back to that later.
I'll just tell you why now.
Horseshoe bats are not for sale in the Wuhan wet market, and I'll give you my proof point for that later.
So horseshoe bats and Pipistrellis abramis, that's also called a Japanese bat.
Keep going.
If we keep our skin bare, we can easily get contact with the feces of bats, which contaminate everything.
So it's highly risky here.
It usually takes several days living in the bats' caves to analyze the symbiotic relations between bat bobulaces and viruses.
No cell phone signals, no supplies.
I can feel the fear.
Fear of infections.
Fear of getting lost.
With this fear, I take every step extremely cautiously.
The more I feel the fear, the more I take cautions in doing the details, because when you find the viruses, you're also most easily exposed to the viruses.
This is a true battle only without the smoke of gunpowder.
Look at those bats, look at those teeth.
You've got to spread the net open just like this.
Make sure the cave is fully sealed.
There's one bat.
The only mammals can fly.
Make sure it will not rip the net open.
Let's do the sample collection and analyze the viruses they take.
Okay, we've got a tick.
Oh, go back for a second.
Go back.
They named the tick.
Ixodes vespertilionis.
I'm just going to Google that.
Ixodes vespertilionis.
That's just a tick.
That's just a tick.
It's a bat tick.
Okay, thanks.
I just wanted to, I didn't know what that word was.
That's.
Let's keep going.
Very special type of tick.
You cannot find it anywhere else.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The road never traveled.
Just like the caves frequented by the bats.
It's so deep.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.
That's what Freud.
If anything, looks into you too.
There's something other people can never do for you once I find myself in this situation.
I've learned to examine myself.
That's his son.
And overcome my fears.
I need the support of my family.
Got used to this.
It's kind of interesting.
The road is bumpy, but we must learn to stick to our initial choice when we feel confused and lost.
Yeah, I'd holler like that if I got out of that cave of doom.
In the past 10 plus years, we have visited every corner of Hubei province.
We explored dozens of undeveloped caves.
Lucilia Sericata.
Lucilia Sericata.
Lucilia.
I'm guessing Lucilia is from the Latin for light.
I'm guessing it's a firefly.
Sericata.
Let's see.
Common green bottle fly.
Okay.
I should stop pretending that I know Latin.
Keep going.
Viruses in Wuhan Laboratories00:09:02
There are 300 types of virus vectors, but I do hope these virus preserve for—oh, go back, go back, go back. I was looking at the— I was looking at the names instead of reading the words.
But I do hope these virus samples will only be preserved for scientific research.
Keep going.
And will never be used in real life.
Well, you know what?
That's what we call foreshadowing people.
That's what we call foreshadowing.
That's a dramatic moment.
I hope these viruses will never be used in real life.
Because humans need not only the vaccines, but also the protection from the nature.
Pause.
Nearly 2,000 types of viruses have been discovered by Chinese CDC authorities over the last 12 years.
Only 2,284 types of viruses had been discovered worldwide over the 200 years prior to China's discovery.
They're very proud.
They're a virus superpower.
Keep going.
China has taken the lead in the world in the field of basic research of virus.
That's pretty crazy, isn't it?
In light of what has since happened in Wuhan, now let me read to you from the study done by the two Chinese professors.
Let's take a look.
This is going to blow your mind, especially since you saw that propaganda video.
Again, it's called The Possible Origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao.
And you can see their names have those tiny little footnotes, and those footnotes describe their credentials.
Here are their credentials.
Joint International Research Laboratory of Synthetic Biology and Medicine, School of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, China.
School of Physics, Huazong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
And Tianyu Hospital, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
So these are Chinese professors, universities, university hospital in Wuhan.
I'm going to read pretty much all of this study because it matters.
It's not that long, so bear with me.
The 2019 coronavirus has caused an epidemic of 28,000 laboratory confirmed infections in humans, including 564 deaths in China by February 6th, 2020.
So you can see the numbers are far worse in the two months since.
I'm reading this verbatim.
Their English wasn't perfect, but it's pretty good.
Two descriptions of the virus published on Nature this week indicated that the genome sequences patients were 96% or 89% identical to the bat coronavirus ZC45 originally found in Rhinolophos Afinis.
That's the name of a bat.
It was critical to study where the pathogen came from and how it passed on to human.
Okay, so bats.
How did it get into people?
That's what's important to study, they're saying.
Well, as we know, it was linked to the wet market.
An article published on The Lancet, that's a British journal, reported that 41 people in Wuhan were found to have the acute respiratory syndrome and 27 of them had contact with Huanan seafood market.
The 2019 coronavirus was found in 33 out of 585 samples collected in the market after the outbreak.
The market was suspicious to be the origin of the epidemic and was shut down according to the rule of quarantine, the source during an epidemic.
The bats carrying coronavirus ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market.
Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees, but the seafood market is in a densely populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan of 15 million people.
The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market.
According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.
There was possible natural recombination or intermediate host of the coronavirus, yet little proof has been reported.
Okay, so stop for a moment.
You notice it's called a seafood market.
They talked to 59 people there.
No one had ever seen a bat being sold there.
59 people they talked to.
How did the particular bat in question get there from 900 kilometers away in Yunnan or Zhejiang into the center of a big city, Wuhan, twice the size of Manhattan?
They obviously didn't fly there.
Was there any possible other way?
Was there any other possible pathway?
We screened the area around the seafood market and identified two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus.
Within 280 meters of the market, there was the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, figure one from Google Maps.
And look at figure one.
The Chinese government put their ultra-high security virus research lab, the one that Trudeau sent the Ebola virus to, the one that was collecting all those blood and urine samples.
These viruses, there's two of them in Wuhan.
One's right in the middle of the city, next to restaurants, next to hospitals, just a five-minute walk to the seafood market, the wet market.
Look at that map.
This is the map from the study.
WHCDC, that's the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, hosted animals in laboratories for research purpose, one of which was specialized in pathogens collection and identification.
In one of the studies, 155 bats, including Rhinolophus affinis, that's a kind of bat, were captured in Hubei province, and other 450 bats were captured in Zhejiang province.
The expert in collection was noted in the author contributions.
Moreover, he was broadcasted for collecting viruses on nationwide newspapers and websites in 2007 and 2019.
That's the hero of the propaganda movie.
He described that he was once attacked by bats and the blood of a bat shot on his skin.
He knew the extreme danger of the infection, so he quarantined himself for 14 days.
In another accident, he quarantined himself again because bats peed on him.
He was once thrilled for capturing a bat carrying a live tick.
They're talking about that guy in that propaganda movie.
They're talking about him, that guy.
Surgery was performed on the caged animals, and the tissue samples were collected for DNA and RNA extraction and sequencing.
The tissue samples and contaminated trashes were source of pathogens.
They were only 280 meters from the seafood market.
The Wuhan Center for Disease Control was also adjacent to the Union Hospital, figure one, where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic.
It is plausible that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future study.
Yeah.
Do you think that further study will happen?
Sure.
Just after the Communist Party is gone, just like in Chernobyl.
Now, I've almost read this entire study to you, so I might as well read every last word.
The second laboratory was 12 kilometers from the seafood market and belonged to Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
This laboratory reported that the Chinese horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, which caused the 2002-2003 pandemic.
The principal investigator participated in a project which generated a chimeric virus using the SARS coronavirus reverse genetic system and reported the potential for human.
In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019 coronavirus.
In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.
Safety level may need to be reinforced in high-risk biohazardous laboratories.
Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places.
Taiwan's Data Tracking Solution00:12:25
You think?
Let me read just one more note on the study again.
That's the end of the study, but these two professors were legit.
I want to show you.
They were from Wuhan.
They were serious scholars trained in both China and America, Northwestern, for heaven's sakes, a top school.
And look at this.
This was published on ResearchGate by scholars who had published dozens of times before, been cited hundreds of times before.
And look at this, acknowledgements.
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
The study was paid for by the Chinese government, but now it's poof.
It's gone.
Is it a conclusive study?
No, it is not.
As the authors of it say, this needs more study.
But as to that seafood market, they literally interviewed 59 people in the market, and none of them had seen any bats there.
These guys call it a seafood market.
So maybe it didn't come from the market.
Let me read that one line again.
According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city and no bat was traded in the market.
Is that true?
It's a Chinese government paper.
If you interview 59 people and none of them say that bats were in the market, maybe, just maybe it's worth looking at the two virus labs in town, including where a guy says he was peed on and bled on by a bat that's just 280 meters away.
Yeah, just maybe.
Look, in some ways it doesn't matter.
Just like what caused Chernobyl didn't matter.
What mattered was how to fix it.
But really, if you don't want Chernobyl to happen again, you need to know.
Chernobyl was an engineering flaw and it was a training flaw and it was an operational flaw, but mainly it was a flaw of the Communist Party that hid all those things.
Wuhan is a biological problem.
It is a technical problem.
It is a globalism problem.
It's a public health problem, but it's also a Communist Party of China problem.
Don't you think?
Stay with us for more.
That is an excerpt of a short video published by President Tsai of Taiwan, showing how months ago Taiwan knew it couldn't rely on the World Health Organization and their bad advice and China's disinformation they had to protect themselves.
It's a small thing, the face masks, but they make 10 million a day and they have a very careful rationing system to avoid people buying them all up and hoarding them.
Any mask is not particularly valuable, but it's valuable if you don't have one.
In Taiwan, they have a system where people stop by their local pharmacy, almost like picking up a weekly prescription.
They get a little envelope with their masks in them.
It's one of the many ways that Taiwan has learned to deal with the dual threat of the biological virus itself, but also of China's authoritarian political system that hides information, covers up, almost in the manner of Chernobyl, when the Soviet Union covered up their disaster there.
I think we have a lot to learn from Taiwan, a country of 25 million people just across the Strait of Formosa from China, so integrated with China.
Almost a million Taiwanese people live in China.
I think the number is 800,000.
At least until recently, were extremely frequent travels between the two countries.
And yet, the number of Taiwanese who contracted the virus is measured in very low numbers.
The number who have died from the virus is a grand total of five.
As I like to say, more Taiwanese are at risk of being struck by lightning than catching the coronavirus.
And it's not because of luck, it's because of their planning and their system.
Well, we wanted to send a reporter to Taiwan to report on it, but alas, part of their strict rules are that even foreigners like us who promised to take the virus test immediately before going there would be subject to a 14-day quarantine and we couldn't go about our business of reporting the news.
Well, we've done the next best thing.
We have found an expert in Taiwanese health who's actually based in Vancouver, Canada.
She is the president of the National Taiwan University Alumni Association in Vancouver.
She's a nurse herself and a PhD.
Her name is Dr. Lyron Chu, and she joins us now via Skype.
Dr. Chu, what a pleasure to have you on the show.
Thank you.
Have I accurately summed up Taiwan's mindset?
Because Taiwan is really alone in the world of health authorities, because it's marginalized by the United Nations and the World Health Organization, and because it suffered from communist China's secrecy during the SARS epidemic, it's really had to make its own command center approach to the virus.
Is that right?
Yes.
Taiwan is not excluded from the global conversation because Taiwan is not part of the WHO, not even an observer of WHA.
So Taiwan has to do it on its own.
Yeah, that has meant a lot of work and a lot of effort to replace the World Health Organization.
But I think in this case, it meant the very fact that Taiwan was excluded means it didn't get bad advice.
It didn't trust the disinformation from Beijing.
Is that your view as well?
Actually, Taiwan did their own investigation.
You learned that on December 30, 2019, China informed the WHO about a known virus, which occurred in Wuhan.
Around this time, Taiwan also heard about this news, not direct communication with WHO, but they get that information.
So Taiwan sent a representative to China to investigate the virus and its spread.
Right after the investigation team returned, Taiwan Institute surveillance on passengers who were flying in from Wuhan, China.
So, and the first case appeared on January 21st.
Learning from experience, the SARS experience back to a decade ago, Taiwan quickly mobilized resources and institute the National Health Command Center that you just mentioned for case identification, for containment, for resource allocation to protect the public.
And one of the strategy is I think we can share with the world is Taiwan used big data, new technology, and proactive testing.
And this is a little bit challenging for North American because you can really concern about privacy, confidentiality, because Taiwan has leverage with national insurance pro one, National Health Insurance Administration, so they get the data, so they can track the visitor and identify case.
So let me see if I understand that correctly.
So if you were flying to or from Wuhan in January, Taiwan would know that you're flying, obviously.
We know who's flying in and out of Canada too.
And it would match it with your health records if you had an underlying condition, if you had respiratory issues, if you had diabetes maybe, obviously your age.
So it would cross-reference who's traveling and who's at risk.
Is that correct?
So that would be matched.
And if they found someone, they wouldn't ban them or lock them up.
They would maybe test them or warn them.
Am I reading that correctly?
Correct.
They assess the travel's risk.
They will look at their symptoms and look at where they come from.
So they identify three different type of things and give different advice.
Then they will follow using the form, QCOR scanning, and of course also online reporting to track the person.
And so let's say you were someone who was old and had a history.
Let's say you were 75 years old.
You had a history of respiratory problems and you wanted to fly to Wuhan or you just came, let's say you just came back from Wuhan.
You just came back from Wuhan.
So tell me what would happen to that person.
So if this person showed the symptoms, so this person will be sent to quarantine.
So Taiwan may do very early quarantine for the suspected cases.
And in the beginning, we sent it to them, but later they provide accommodation and food to the person, but not in the beginning.
Got it.
So quarantine wasn't just on the honors system.
It was like tracked and monitored.
And you said they provided food and other things.
So it wouldn't just be on scout's honor, as we say.
Someone would go and check on them and make sure they didn't leave the house.
Is that what you mean?
They would bring the food to them, maybe even with protective gear, is that right?
Actually, they can track through their phone.
So they know if they stay home.
They know if they stay in a particular place.
Oh, so they track with the phone.
So you've got their travel data, you've got their health data, and then you have your phone GPS.
Is that what you're saying?
Yes, you will find, locate where is the person right now.
And so that is the beauty of the technology.
So you will make sure the person is not fooling around, go around and to contact people.
Now, the North American sensibility of individual freedom would be worried that their movements are being tracked.
Taiwan has a different national mindset.
I've had the pleasure of visiting Taiwan and, of course, they know they're really in a battle with Communist China.
How has this lack of privacy, I mean, I suppose that information isn't shared to everyone, but if the, I presume it's the government knows where you are, do Taiwanese people accept that?
How does that go over in terms of personal liberty?
You probably already know Taiwan is a democratic country.
And so in order to get those data, Taiwan has to leverage with National Health Insurance Program and Administration.
Taiwan's COVID Collaboration00:13:33
And also, the Minister of Health and Wellness update everything and give the public education every day.
And so the public understand and public don't feel intruded or don't feel very fearful.
So that is also very important, the reassurance, the education, and etc.
Well, I think part of that goes to if the people, if the ministers and the politicians are credible.
In Canada, we've had such strange advice.
The first piece of advice that Patty Heidu, our health minister, issued was, run out to the stores and buy up all you can.
She literally said, buy a stockpile.
That was crazy.
Her advice since then has been don't wear a mask.
And that's what I really want to ask you about.
I've seen pictures of Taiwanese schools.
The kids are going to school.
They all wear the mask.
At lunch, the mask comes off and they have a little plastic shield around them so they're not spitting or dribbling or something or coughing.
And then the mask goes back on after lunch.
Restaurants are even open with some spacing.
So I want to ask you about masks.
We showed at the beginning the video of the 10 million masks a day.
I'm so jealous.
But you not only, like, you've had five deaths, and of course, any deaths is a tragedy, but in the scale and scope of things, five deaths this year is so modest, it wouldn't even be news if it weren't for the pandemic elsewhere.
Taiwan has had five deaths grand total, but you're still letting people go out and about, and you're still letting kids go to school, and you're still letting go to people who go to restaurants.
How did that work?
Is it that everyone has to wear a mask rule?
Is that all it took, the masks?
Yes, you can say that.
And you all described correctly about Taiwan.
So you've done a lot of research about Taiwan already.
So maybe just provide more information about the mask.
It's not just mask.
In the beginning, Taiwan already prepared for this battle because they learned from the South's experience.
So they already prepared, so they know they need to prepare the supplies.
They need the supplies in mask.
not just masks.
Taiwan had 20,000 ventilators.
Taiwan already prepared that for that.
Taiwan have 11,000, I think it's 1100.
Yeah, 1100 negative pressure isolation room.
And so Taiwan also prepared masks because they believe it's not just for self-protection, and also protect other people.
And also it's a kind of practice of social distancing.
You know, Taiwan have 23 million people.
It's such small island.
People are, it's so crowded.
It's very difficult to have such required distancing between people.
So this is also one way of practice social distancing.
So not just self-protection.
And also Taiwan researchers done a lot of the research in the beginning.
They know, they learned that because I learned that in January, in February, early February, I already know how this virus transmits to people.
And we already know is airborne.
This virus also airborne and they also can stay on the surface quite a long time.
And also you know that 86% of confirmed cases are symptomatic.
So you don't know the person next to you has virus or not.
So the best way to protect yourself and protect others is to wear masks.
It's such a simple thing.
It's such a simple thing, such a cheap thing.
I can only imagine the cost of a mask is pennies to make, and yet for such a simple thing, we don't have them in Canada.
Our prime minister sent our national stockpile of masks to Communist China in February.
I'll never understand that.
I'm worried that we haven't geared up our manufacturing either.
We've let two, three months go by and we're not ready to even start making the masks at that scale.
Is there anything Taiwan can do for Canada, either in lessons or in actually, if you can make enough masks, export them to us?
I mean, obviously you have to take care of your own people first in Taiwan.
And amazingly, you have.
I mean, what scares me, Dr. Chu, is that Canada, like so many other countries, has marginalized Taiwan to please Communist China.
If we had proper relations with Taiwan, we could have been learning all along.
We could have trade in masks.
I'm just worried that not only are we not wise with Taiwan's strategy, but we don't even have strong relations.
We should be making Taiwan our best friend and coach and God willing, even a supplier of masks until we get our own act together.
I don't think any of that is being done, at least not that I've heard of.
What do you think of these things?
You are so on the spot.
I just want to mention about masks a little bit.
In the beginning, Taiwan already invests 6.8 million US dollars to create 60 new mask production lines.
And right now, Taiwan have 92 production lines.
It means Taiwan produce 130 million masks per day.
And yesterday, April 1st, actually, in Taiwan is yesterday, but today is April 1st.
On April 1st, President Tsai already mentioned that Taiwan is willing to donate 1,000, it's a 10 million masks to those people, those countries in need.
So that is one.
Sorry, go ahead.
I interrupted you, sorry.
And that is one we, because we are very happy to collaborate with, not we, I'm Canadian.
I mean, Taiwan is very pleased to connect, to collaborate with Canada to fight against COVID-19.
So masks is something Taiwan is very willing to collaborate with Canada.
And also, Taiwan make very good masks.
And recently, Taiwan already received the, also Taiwan is making the mask machine for over 12 countries.
So over 12 countries send order to Taiwan to make the machine for them.
You say 12 countries have asked for the mask-making machines, and that's probably smarter.
Taiwan needs its own mask machines to make masks for Taiwanese people.
But if we just got the blueprints or if you made an extra machines, we could set up factories in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Emmont, Winnipeg, Halifax, and Canada would be set.
Do you know if one of those 12 countries is Canada?
Do you have a list of those 12 countries?
I don't think 12 countries include Canada, but you can.
You know what?
Justin Trudeau is so in love with Communist China, he's too proud to even ask the only people who've got it together.
And you said that the amount of money for these production lines, I think you said 6.8 million U.S. Is that what you said?
At that time, for 60 new masks.
Trudeau just gave $50 million to Greece for the virus.
And that amount of money could have built a mask factory in every city.
It just drives me crazy to hear this.
Listen, I know that politics is not your business.
You're a nurse, you're a PhD, and you're president of the Taiwan University Alumni Association of Vancouver.
And you've given us a lot of information.
You have confirmed from me that Canada's relationship with Communist China and our lack of a relationship with Taiwan is a serious problem for our public health.
And it remains a serious problem today.
The fact that we're not one of the 12 countries asking for help frankly breaks my heart.
Dr. Chu, I don't want to keep you much longer here.
No, I have one more point to mention.
Yes.
Taiwan already invests, Taiwan invests a lot of money in biomedical research.
And on March 8th, Taiwan has a national team.
They already announced they have a rapid diagnosis diagnostic test on SARS-CoV-2.
This test already been synthesized and successfully on trial.
So the test requires only 15 minutes to see the result.
So, and they are already being mass producing right now and will be on market very soon.
So this is all prior 50 minutes.
So a rapid test, 15 minutes to check if you have the virus.
And you say that's been in trials and it's moving to production in Taiwan, is that right?
Yes, and it will come on market very soon.
Well, that's just another example of how we need to be friends with Taiwan because we need to learn that.
If that's a special technology, we need to license it and get it going here.
We don't need Taiwan to make that stuff for us.
Let's just do a deal with them where we can set up the factory here, get the, you know, buy the rights, the Canadian rights to it and get it going.
I am so frustrated that we're not doing that yet.
But I hope that in the course of time we do, I think it'll save lives.
It'll obviously save money.
But of course, right now, saving lives is the top thing.
Dr. Chu, what a pleasure to meet you today.
Go ahead.
I just heard a good news because I heard Canadian government already announced work with Taiwanese top research institute called Ecadémica Sinica to work together to fight against COVID-19.
So maybe you want to explore further about this news.
I absolutely will.
And that's news to me.
And I'm learning more from you every minute.
I'm going to investigate that because maybe Trudeau has finally gotten over his romance with Communist China and he's actually going to the Republic of China, which is the formal name of Taiwan, people who we can actually learn from and get help from because Lord knows we need it.
Dr. Chu, thanks so much for your time today.
Let's talk again in the weeks ahead because I'm sure we'll still be facing these issues for months to come.
Good.
All right.
Have a great day.
Thank you very much.
There you have a Dr. Lyren Chu, president of the National Taiwan University Alumni Association in Vancouver.
She was the head of the nursing department at a Taiwanese hospital and is a PhD.
Stay with us more ahead on the road.
Hey, welcome back to my monologue yesterday about Trump using industry to fight the coronavirus.
Sam writes, American citizens should stop buying made in China products.
It may sound extreme, but it's time to bring manufacturing back home.
Yeah, you know, I learned that an iPhone costs something like $400 to make that sells in Canada for like $1,100, like a fancy iPhone.
Okay, so how much cheaper is it really to manufacture that thing in China than in Canada, the United States?
Is it 50 bucks cheaper?
Is it 100 bucks cheaper?
So either Apple takes a slightly smaller profit or I pay $1,200 instead of $1,100, but then I don't have to be quarantined for a month.
Yeah, I'd pay $100 extra for gadgets.
And by the way, what about the safety?
We showed you the high-hygien way that Taiwan is protecting its people.
I trust stuff made in Taiwan.
I tell you one thing, I don't want to buy a mask made in China, do you?
Roger writes, Trudeau doesn't use industry to help Canada in normal times.
He's not going to help Canada now.
Why Pay Raises Matter00:01:04
You're exactly right.
Trudeau doesn't know anyone in real industry.
The only industry he knows about are things that he invests in with innovation, superclusters, grants, and schemes.
He doesn't know any actual entrepreneurs.
There's not a single genuine entrepreneur in his circle of advisors or friends.
Bruce Wrights, a race for MPs and an increase in the carbon tax.
The Red Tories won't say a word about it.
I see today that Andrew Scheer has, in fact, decided to give up his, but why isn't he whipping the entire Conservative Party and then causing pressure on the Liberal Party?
Do they really, really need their few thousand bucks extra?
Like, where's the political sense?
Why don't they say, hey, guys, it's just a rule.
I'm whipping you.
If you want to be a Conservative MP, you must give up this pay raise.
And we're going to flip it on the other parties and show that we're with the people.
Why won't you do that?
Why won't you do that?
I don't know.
It's just embarrassing.
Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed today's show.
We're going heavy on the coronavirus, but I think we're telling you things that you don't get anywhere else.