Ezra Levant warns of escalating online censorship, citing Twitter’s 2020 suspension of the New York Post for Hunter Biden laptop reports—$730M Solomon Islands-China deal severing Taiwan ties amid Malaita rebellion—and Amazon’s removal of his book China Virus. Dr. Angelique Coovadia (SAMA) reveals Omicron’s mild symptoms even in vaccinated patients, despite 30+ mutations, while Rebel News fights vaccine mandates as "medical apartheid," comparing them to unaccountable public health officials like Fauci and Trudeau’s economic mismanagement. The episode frames tech and government overreach as a direct threat to free speech and bodily autonomy. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, I'm worried about our freedom to say what we mean online.
I'll give you two new facts to consider.
It's November 30th, and this is the Ezra Lomance 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 to say is government.
But why?
It's because it's my bloody right to do so.
Which social media company is the worst censor?
Twitter?
Facebook, YouTube, Amazon?
It's a trick question.
They're all terrible.
In the weeks before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Twitter suspended the account of the New York Post, one of America's oldest newspapers, because they published a completely true story about Hunter Biden's laptop.
He's the son of Joe Biden, who was then running for the president.
The laptop was not stolen.
It was legally obtained, and neither Hunter Biden nor his dad's campaign claimed it was a fake.
It was real, and it was insane.
Pictures, videos of Hunter Biden with prostitutes doing drugs, just absolutely crazy, crazy pictures of him in absurd and compromising situations.
That's scandalous, and perhaps it reflects a bit on Joe Biden as a father.
But you could arguably say a son's criminal conduct is not on his father's head.
I ask you what the media would have done if such a laptop featured Donald Trump Jr. and had been found.
But put aside the personal peccadillos, the emails in that laptop talked about million and billion dollar deals with foreign governments, Russia, Ukraine, China.
What would such a loose man be doing with billion-dollar deals with foreign companies and countries?
I mean, what would you hire Hunter Biden to do for you?
What skills does he have other than procuring prostitutes and drugs?
The answer is he's his father's son, and he's happy to sell access to the big guy, as he called his dad, in his emails.
10% for the big guy.
That was on one email.
Suggests that his dad got a cut of the action.
I don't know if Joe Biden took 10% of his son's haul.
I find it believable.
What was Hunter Biden doing on a Air Force jet with his dad going to China in the first place?
Why was he on that plane?
Why did a Chinese group give him a monster contract right after that flight?
You'd think the media should investigate.
Twitter stopped all that and possibly threw the election to Biden because of it.
So yeah, that's Twitter.
If you misgender someone, that is you call this fellow a fellow, you get suspended on Twitter.
If you dead name someone, that is if you call this fellow Jonathan instead of Jessica, you get suspended on Twitter.
Donald Trump was suspended permanently, but the Ayatollahs of Iran, the Taliban of Afghanistan, they're on Twitter.
Most dictators are, including an army of Chinese propagandists, which is odd considering Twitter isn't allowed in China itself.
That's weird.
So that's Twitter.
Twitter's Dictatorship00:03:08
Then of course there's YouTube.
We know a bit about them.
They treated us like royalty in 2016 when we were Canada's fastest growing news channel.
But then in 2017 they decided to stop us.
They decided conservative YouTube is why Trump won.
So they throttled every conservative site in the world, including us.
And they demonetized many of the sites, cutting our revenues back by 85% in just one month.
In this spring, they just cut it down to zero.
No explanation, no warning, no appeal.
I'll tell you the explanation.
It's because YouTube, which is owned by Google, is a far-left-wing campaign group.
Just a reminder, here are their senior executives in a funereal staff meeting a few days after Trump was elected in 2016.
History teaches us that there are periods of populism, of nationalism that rise up, and that's all the reason we need to be in the arena.
Facebook is perhaps the worst.
Of all the tech oligarchs, Mark Zuckerberg is the least human, the most sociopathic.
Obviously, I don't believe that he's actually a lizard, but the reason so many people say it is that he lacks normal human emotions.
He always has ever since his Harvard days.
And his plans for society are terrifying.
Hey, are you coming?
Yeah, she's got to find something to wear.
Perfect.
Oh, hey, Mark.
Hey, what's going on?
Hi.
Whoa, we're floating in space, huh?
And then, of course, there's Amazon.com, one of the biggest companies out there that has doubled in value because of the lockdowns.
They love the lockdowns.
They were already winning the competitive war against local retailers, anyways.
And then, surprise, politicians outlawed local retailers for a year, and many of them haven't come back.
That's good news for Amazon.
May I remind you that Amazon, which so dearly wants to break into China, suspended my book, China Virus, because they said it contradicted official views about the virus.
They never had answered our lawyers' questions.
Did they mean American officials or Amazon officials or officials in the Chinese Communist Party?
Hmm.
All these tech titans are obsessed with China.
Did you know that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, besides learning to speak Chinese, which I think is probably a good idea, did you know he actually asked the Chinese dictator, Xi Jinping, to name his own daughter, Zuckerberg's daughter.
Who would do that?
What sort of emotionless lizard would turn something as personal and intimate and familial as naming your own child and giving that as some sort of weird gift, a lobbying gift, a bribe to a foreign politician and say, I'll let you name my own baby.
Xi Jinping is a murderer and a tyrant, but even he thought that was just too weird.
And he declined.
Did you know that story?
Free Speech Battles00:15:58
That's true.
So who's the worst?
Well, they're all awful.
I think Jack Dorsey, the boss of Twitter, threw the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
It would be like someone breaking Watergate, but then the printing presses refusing to run the stories and the Washington Post just refusing to print the newspaper.
That's the modern-day equivalent to Twitter deciding they know better than the New York Post about a blockbuster story.
And yet every once in a while, Jack Dorsey of Twitter showed at least some self-awareness.
Not that it was worth a tinker's dam, but he later apologized for the Hunter Biden laptop censorship.
He said it was a mistake.
Whip CT is worthless, really, but the fact that he did later admit it was wrong was much more than that lizard at Facebook would do.
Of course, he was a woke Democrat, kooky too, going for the full resputant look.
But underneath that cult leader exterior was an ember, even it was a dying ember, of someone who once upon a time believed that the internet should be free.
So he quit yesterday.
He has other projects.
He's smart and he's rich and he's famous.
He can do whatever he wants.
He's a builder.
He was the founder of Square, a payment processor.
He liked cryptocurrency.
He's not done yet, but Twitter remains.
And like it or not, and whether you're on it or not, it is the central political communications tool in Canada, America, the UK, Australia, other countries, too.
It's the public square.
It's the town hall.
It's the community bulletin board, it's speaker's corner.
Except it's a private public square, isn't it?
It's not owned by the public or by the government, it's owned by a company.
And as I mentioned earlier, they've started banning you from saying things, not illegal things like death threats or fraud.
There are kinds of speech that are banned in the world, extortion, for example.
I'm not talking about the actual crimes with words.
I'm talking about feelings, things that people find offensive.
And for some reason, all the censorship seems to point in the same direction.
It's always censorship of the right by the left.
Tell me one instance to the contrary.
And so the saying goes, better the devil you know, because let me introduce you to Jack Dorsey's successor as the CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal is his name.
He was born and raised in India and as an adult moved to America.
Now, India is a democracy, of course, part of the British Commonwealth.
And it's an ally.
But to be blunt about it, and I'd say the same as about someone from France or Germany, it's not the country of the First Amendment.
It's not the first country that comes to mind when you say the word freedom and civil liberties.
I say it's better than most, better than China, for example, but free speech isn't the same as other values.
It's easy to believe in capitalism.
It's easy to believe in the free market.
That's just about getting rich, getting money.
Everyone can believe in that.
But only some cultures place a very high value on speech, including offensive speech and the right to it.
And in case you're wondering, in case you're in any doubt, I'm here to tell you that Canada is not particularly encouraging on that front either.
I'd say we're about where India is.
Do you disagree?
But I'm not judging Parag Agrawal based on his country of origin.
There are many outstanding free speech activists in America and Canada who come from unfree or only partly free countries.
One of the leading free speech activists in America is from India herself.
They come to America precisely to be free.
My observation is that the most freedom-oriented people fighting lockdowns in the West right now, many of them have fled from communism, either from Asia or Europe, and they see the same seeds of it now.
But Parag Agrawal didn't come to be free, really.
He came to get rich, and free speech isn't really a priority for him.
Here's what he said when asked about the subject just last year.
I'll read it to you.
He was at a conference, and he was being interviewed on stage.
He was asked, you're caught in a bit of a hard place, as somebody in the audience is also pointing out, that you're trying to combat misinformation.
You also want to protect free speech as a core value, and also in the U.S. as the First Amendment.
How do you balance those two?
And here's what he said.
He said, our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation, and our moves are reflective of things as we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.
Okay, so he gets to judge whether a conversation is healthy.
He's the judge, right?
The kind of things that we do about this is focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.
Focusing less on free speech is in they're thinking too much about freedom right now.
He seriously said that.
One of the changes today that we see is speech is easy on the internet.
Most people can speak, where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.
The scarce commodity today is attention.
There's a lot of content out there, a lot of tweets out there.
Not all of it gets attention.
Some subset of it gets attention.
And so increasingly our role is moving towards how we recommend content.
And that sort of is a struggle that we're working through in terms of how we make sure these recommendation systems that we're building, how we direct people's attention, is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.
So he's saying right there, something about freedom.
His role is to boost his friends and suppress his foes to make sure the right people are participating in the conversation.
That's exactly what he means.
That's shadow banning his opponents.
That's making his friends go viral.
Sometimes it's brutal to watch, like how they banned New York Post and the Hunter Biden laptop.
Most of it, though, is quite subtle.
Like what shows up in your Twitter feed and what doesn't.
Like what is hidden, what you think you've published to the world, but literally no one else saw it but you.
That's Parag Agrawal's idea of freedom.
Freedom for his friends, censorship for his enemies.
Come to think of it, I retract everything I said about India.
As you can see, India itself doesn't much like Twitter's style of selective free speech.
They've banned the app themselves several times for interfering in their domestic affairs.
So yeah, do you think Twitter is about to get better or worse under their new CEO?
And then there's this little bump in the road.
You know, we have a lot of website domains, right?
Like fightthefines.com or rebelinvestigates.com.
We actually have over a thousand different domain names.
People laugh about that, but there's just a really simple reason.
It makes it easy for people to remember them and to find them.
Instead of saying something like, go to rebelnews.com/slash fightthefines.html, we just say go to fightthefines.com.
We actually have a thousand different domain names for seven years.
We bought them from GoDaddy, that's a domain registry company.
They actually call us a VIP customer because we have so many.
No problems, easy to deal with.
Until yesterday, when they simply deleted a website, poof, just gone.
They just deleted it.
And it was this page, killthebill.com.au, a massive position, petition, excuse me, against the lockdown emergency powers bill in Victoria, Australia.
And what a coincidence.
The page was deleted on the day of the vote.
Here, Avi did a story about it.
Take a look for a bit.
Here's a few minutes.
The bill puts Victoria into essentially a permanent state of emergency and gives Andrews dictator-like powers.
He's been abusive with the powers he already has.
With his new bill, he'll be even more like his friends in the Chinese Communist Party.
It's why hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters have taken to the streets in Melbourne over the past few weeks.
But suddenly, on the eve of the vote, that website was just turned off.
You can see the whole video on our YouTube page.
I recommended it.
So, seven years, a thousand domain names, no problem ever.
VIP client, until one day a complainant, so obviously someone from the government down there, demands that the website, a petition website, a peaceful protest, be deleted.
And it just was.
Today they did that to killthebill.com.au.
What if they do that tomorrow to, I don't know, rebelnews.com itself?
We've hired the top media lawyer in Australia to get on it, but in the meantime, the site was taken down.
How long will the lawsuit take?
Weeks, months, years?
Sometimes I think we're winning.
Sometimes I think we'll get freer, that technology will be our liberator.
Sometimes I think we're getting less free and that technology will be our prison warden.
Yesterday felt like losing.
Stay with us for more.
There are about 200 countries in the world, and some of the smallest countries in the world are in the Pacific Ocean.
Have you ever heard of Kiribati or Nauru or Tuvalu?
Those are all independent countries.
You've probably heard of Tuvalu.
That's where the .tv internet suffix comes from.
Well, one of the smallest countries in the world by population is the Solomon Islands, but it's still a country, and it's still diplomatically and politically valuable.
So if you are China and you're trying to grow your sphere of influence, what's a few hundred million dollars to you?
That's quite a bit to the Solomon Islands.
Imagine outright bribing an entire country, even if it's a little one, to cut ties with Taiwan and endorse a new alliance with China.
Surely the PR value, the diplomatic value, the momentum value, even just for domestic propaganda, is worth more than the $700 million or so that China purportedly gave to the country.
Well, I'm shocked that this has not been more widely reported, but I'm equally delighted and proud that our own rebel news published this story by the hand of our Sydney-based writer, Alexandra Marshall, who joins me now via Skype from Sydney, very early morning over there.
Well, Alexandra, I'm so proud that we are publishing this work.
I hope I introduced it satisfactorily.
Why don't you take it from here?
Tell us a little bit more about this China-Solomon Islands deal and what's happened in the country since that shocking move.
Oh, look, you did a beautiful job.
So what we really have here is what's being painted as a civil war and a civil unrest, but it's actually about China growing its sphere of influence across the Pacific Ocean.
And what's happened is normally it goes into a little island and it basically does debt trap politics where it gives the island a lot of money and the island gets itself into trouble and can't make the repayments on it.
But the Solomon Islands, they did the same thing.
The president there, it made a $730 million deal with China on the proviso that it cut ties with Taiwan.
Now, Taiwan had been very good to the Solomon Islands and most of the Solomon Islands really loved their relationship with Taiwan.
They helped them through the pandemic and they provided them all kinds of assistance.
And so the largest area, the largest province in the Solomon Islands has rebelled against the government and has started this civil unrest to fight back against Chinese influence in their region.
And so we're seeing a period of violence and protesting happening in the Solomon Islands, but it's really a flashpoint of China's ever-expanding empire as it tries to control the whole of the Pacific region for the purposes of cutting off the Malacca Strait.
And yeah, so Australia is in a very difficult position.
We have a couple of choices.
We can either do nothing and see how this plays out, or we can go and try and stabilize the situation, which is what our Prime Minister is doing.
Now, the problem is stabilizing the situation in the Solomon Islands essentially means helping China to secure its influence.
And that is where we're at right now.
Very interesting.
I was shocked to learn that this stimulated an independence referendum in part of Solomon Islands.
I honestly don't know much about the Solomon Islands.
I think it's pretty small.
But the fact that this is so divisive, I find that incredible, that there are people in the Solomon Islands rebelling so forcefully.
Yes, so basically what happened is Prime Minister Sogovere, he took the money from China, right?
And he agreed to cut ties to Taiwan.
But Malayta, which is the largest province, their premier, so they're sort of divided, they've got some autonomy between the provinces in the Solomon Islands.
They have said no, they want to keep their ties with Taiwan.
They want to keep their diplomatic arrangements.
And so it's that province in their Malayta that has rebelled.
And that's where all the uprising is.
And so the violence is centered around the parliamentary buildings.
And it's also sweeping through Chinatown.
So there have been, unfortunately, three deaths as some of these buildings caught fire.
And that's where the majority of the peacekeepers, the army, and the police have been sent to try and calm the situation.
Now, Australia has sent people.
We've had Fiji send people.
We've had Papua New Guinea send people.
So there's a lot of interest in the Pacific region about what's going to happen in the Solomon Islands.
And no one's really sure.
In all likelihood, China's influence will be secured.
Because if the peacekeepers go there, then the government is more likely to succeed than this rebellion against China.
So by going in to help quell the uprising, the Australians are actually helping China because they're tamping down the reaction to the Chinese bribe.
Yeah, so the government are in league with China.
So if you go there to help the government secure the area, then you're essentially upholding China's influence in there.
Instead of allowing the uprising to continue and seeing if perhaps this streak for independence and to restore the Taiwan relationship with the Solomon Islands can succeed.
So I have a feeling that's what will really happen.
And if that does, China will have had another victory in the Pacific.
And think about it this way.
They've already got a 99-year lease port on our Darwin port in the top of Australia.
So they've been moving all the way down.
Yeah, China does that.
It provides financing, for example, to airports or canals or mines.
And the terms of the financing often convert very quickly from loans to equity.
If, for example, a third world country campaign, before you know it, like the airport in Entebbe is now owned by China, things like that.
It's shocking.
I was just Googling Solomon Islands, fewer than 700,000 people.
So it's not teeny tiny.
It's not like, you know, Nauru, which has fewer than 100,000 people.
But still, if you think about it, $730 million for a country of 700,000 people, that would sort of be like a bribe to Canada of $40 billion.
Like that is proportionately a shocking amount of money.
But to China, it's just a rounding error.
Is it just a gift?
Bribery In The Deep Water00:02:03
Is it a foreign aid grant?
Is it a contract?
Like, that's a pretty heavy quid pro quo saying, here's the cash.
Now dump your friends in Taiwan.
Like that, that's as brazen as it gets.
How is it actually, like, is it that expressly a tit for tat?
Or was it like a more of a nudge-nudge-wink-wink?
Well, it's not about the Solomon Islands.
They're not buying the Solomon Islands.
What they're doing is buying Taiwan and the future control of the specific area.
So they're buying Taiwan.
And so what we've got there is they're trying to basically distance Taiwan from all of its diplomatic friends so that when they roll in to take back this escaped province, they won't have any friends and they won't have any way of getting to Taiwan to defend it.
So that's what the Solomon Islands is actually about, as well as all their other debt trap politics.
So you talked about areas where they go in with a big bribe and then they're able to control the region.
So Sri Lanka has a deep water port, which is crucial to global trade.
And China now owns that deep water port after Sri Lanka was unable to make payments on the grant that they used to build it.
And the same thing has happened at the bottom of Pakistan with the port of Wada.
And it's happening all across the world, including a major airport in Africa and just dozens of little Pacific islands.
So they're buying strategic points for military and trade.
And they're also trying to isolate their next basically geopolitical victim.
Well, it's incredible.
I mean, on the map, the Solomon Islands pretty much is in the middle of nowhere, not to be rude, but it is.
It's not that far away from us.
I mean, I was going to say, other than it starts to surround Australia.
So, you know, there's obviously this Taiwanese aspect to it, but it's also like if you could knock off these little islands one at a time, you've built a little wall around Australia where you could have air bases, you could have naval activities.
It's scary.
Solomon Islands Standoff00:03:44
And I think you're exactly right.
They're just trying to roll up the dominoes.
And then when the terrifying moment comes, they'll have all these assets in place.
Well, Alexandra, I'm very proud, again, as I said at the beginning, that we're publishing this article from you.
And I would like to encourage all our Rebel viewers to read, if they're not already doing so, your written work on our site.
You're one of our lively Australians fighting a good fight during the pandemic.
I love to follow you on Twitter.
You punch hard, which is the way we like to do it.
It's great to see you.
Thanks for getting up early to tell us this story.
I get into a lot of trouble, but thank you very much for adopting me into the Rebel News family.
Well, you're so welcome.
It's a pleasure having you.
Well, there you have it.
Alexandra Marshall, part of our Rebel Australia team.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Your viewer feedback.
Bruce Atchison says Anthony Fauci is typical of all health bureaucrats, like Jimi Hendrix saying.
They think they're made of gold and can't be sold.
But like Stepanwalf saying, remember, if you plan to stay, those who give can take away.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
That's a good one.
I don't know those songs myself, I have to confess.
Listen, I think that medical doctors have a way of thinking.
They look at one patient holistically.
They talk to the patient.
They listen to what patients say.
They adjust their diagnosis and their prescription, their advice, and the patient can take it or leave and they can get a second opinion.
It's a very personal connection.
Public health, a lot of them have a doctor, an MD behind their name, though not all of them.
But they don't deal with a patient.
They deal with people en masse.
They're really politicians.
And the whole nature of the doctor-patient relationship is gone.
They don't think of someone holistically.
They don't listen and go back and forth and option for a second opinion.
They're really little tyrants with MD after their names.
They're politicians who don't have the political accountability.
That's the difference between a public health expert and a real doctor.
Naki Gulliver says, Trudeau said he never thinks of monetary issues.
Canadians elected a leader that never thinks of monetary issues.
How could people become such ideologues?
Well, I don't think that people are ideologues on the issue of monetary policy.
I think most people don't really understand it.
I myself do certainly don't consider myself a master of it.
People voted for Trudeau because he's cool and hip and young and handsomer and less square than his conservative opponents.
The media loves him for all those reasons.
I don't think there's an ideological choice to vote for a guy who doesn't think about monetary policy, but we'll all pay the price for that.
It's been a generation since inflation ravaged things.
It'll be terrible when it comes, and it's coming.
El Dacho 357 says, the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money.
Margaret Thatcher.
That's a great quote.
The thing is, a country as wealthy as Canada can borrow quite a lot of money and can print quite a lot of money before disaster strikes.
And I fear that because things have only gotten better in Canada over time on average, we're not used to what a deep recession is like.
I mean, certainly not with inflation and hyperinflation and the kind of things that could well come.
I just saw today that cereals, Cheerios are going up in price 20%.
How you doing in the gas pump these days?
That's insane.
Canada has so much oil and gas, but Trudeau's shut down the pipelines.
New Variant Symptoms00:10:41
We're in for some pain, folks, I got to tell you.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.
And let me leave you with this great video of the day from Drea Humphrey, who interviewed the doctor in South Africa who discovered the Omicron virus.
A great interview.
I'll let you watch that now.
Good night.
Breaking news, a virus mutated.
Now, before 2020, that probably wouldn't be breaking news because that's what viruses do.
But when it comes to COVID-19, it sure as heck is.
And unless you live under a rock, you're familiar with the term now of the Omicron variant.
But what does this new variant actually mean?
Is it making people drop like flies or is it closer to the common cold?
Who better to ask that question to than the first doctor to identify that there seems to be a new variant in town and also to deal with patients who have it.
Drea Humphrey here with Rebel News.
And depending on where you get your news, you might be shaking in your boots about this variant.
Maybe you're scared that you or your loved ones might die from it.
Or maybe you're scared that it's going to be used to lock you down.
Maybe your business, your friendships, your freedoms, your worshiping, what have you.
A lot of fears surrounding this.
But risk-wise, what does this variant mean to the people?
If you look at articles like this, you might think it means doom and gloom.
Look at this one here from Global.
Omicron COVID-19 variant poses very high global risk, WHO warns.
But yet you'll see in this interview I have for you with Dr. Angelique Kutzia, who is the national chair of the South African Medical Association and who was the first to identify that there's a new variant in town, that the symptoms so far to date with patients who have this are mild.
Scratch that, extremely mild, regardless of your vaccination status.
And that, my friends, should be breaking news.
That should be the titles you see.
Am I right?
Do we not deserve some good news like that?
So why don't we hear it?
But if you appreciate that at Rebel News, we got that for you.
We gave you that.
We head with that and we didn't hide or skirt around it.
You might want to consider supporting our independent journalism.
That's journalism that's independent of government interests.
And you can do so in a super fun and cool way.
You can head to rebelnewsstore.com.
That's where you get a cool hoodie like the one I have on, but tons of other choices of hoodies, shirts.
We've even got art in there, coffee cups, cell phone cases.
You can totally get your Christmas shopping done there.
And like I said, that supports our journalism.
That's how the bills get paid to bring you the other side of the story.
For now, take a look at this interview with Dr. Kutsia.
All right, right now I have Dr. Angelique Kutsia here.
Now, the Omicron variant has been all the talk, and you yourself happen to be the doctor to first identify that.
So, thanks for being on Rebel News today.
Now, can you tell us exactly how you came across the variant?
Good afternoon to all rebel viewers out there and to Drea for asking us.
So, I was just in the lucky position to be able to also be part of an advice committee on COVID-19 vaccines.
And I know a lot what is happening in the background.
We haven't seen any COVID-19 patients for the last eight to 10 weeks.
And then, all of a sudden, on that 18th of November, when the patient came in complaining of muscle pains and fatigue and a bit of a headache, I then realized that this sounds like a viral infection.
I tested him and he was positive.
And he was 30 years old, or he is 30 years old.
But very mild symptoms.
This whole family also tested positive.
Again, mild symptoms.
We treated them.
And then after I've seen the family, I also saw more patients, seven more patients that day who tested positive, both, all of them very mild symptoms.
So I then alerted the advisory committee and say, listen, guys, here's some clinical picture that doesn't really fit in with the current Delta variant.
And at that stage, at the same time, in the background, the labs also were aware of the PCR tests that didn't fit the criteria as well.
And they also alerted NICD.
And then last week, the diagnosis were made from the scientists.
Yes, there is indeed a new variant.
Okay, wow, lots to unpack there.
Now, first of all, I'm going to ask you about not seeing a COVID patient for 18 weeks.
That's what you said.
Eight to 10.
Oh, eight to 10 weeks.
Wow.
And so you're in South Africa.
My understanding is that compared to Canada, you have a lower vaccination rate than us here.
So what would you attribute not seeing so many COVID-19 patients for in that amount of time?
So we went out of our third wave and that's the natural evolution of these waves.
So we were out of that in South Africa and now this came back.
So yes, I think this is quite a fast spreading variant.
Maybe it's on par with what we have seen with Delta.
I'm not one of the scientists that actually can say to you, no, it's fast or it's slower.
But we are seeing increasing numbers, but it's again not a lot of very, very sick patients at this stage.
This is a clinical picture at primary healthcare level.
However, they might see a different picture in the hospitals, but we are also aware that our hospitals are not seeing a huge amount of patients up until, let's say, today.
And maybe it might change with the new stats coming out tonight.
But for now, we are fairly sure that we can handle these mild cases out of hospital.
Right, you used the phrase, at least for the younger one, extremely mild cases or sorry, symptoms.
What is it about this particular variant and the symptoms that differ from the Delta exactly?
So your delta variants will give you loss of smell, taste, a lot of a stuffy type of nose, you know, like if you've got a cold.
We so far haven't had any patients with oxygen levels that's low and also not really temperature that we have seen.
It was one or two patients that had increased temperatures, but the majority are quite mild, as I've said.
We have seen patients above the age of 60.
Again, that does break through infections and they also very mild.
Did you find any difference in the amount of people based on what you have so far who have this new variant that were vaccinated versus unvaccinated or does it seem to be pairing about the same?
It's more unvaccinated people that we're now starting to see than vaccinated people.
And again, the vaccinated people that we so far have seen with breakthrough infections, extremely mild.
And are the unvaccinated also extremely mild?
At this stage, they're still mild, but I don't think it's going to stay like that.
I think within the next week or two, we will know once if it hits the more older people, we will know what's going to happen.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Don't viruses typically mutate?
That's a pretty normal thing.
And then don't they get more contagious usually?
And that means, yes, they're spreading easier, kind of like the common cold, but it does not mean that they're more deadly.
Is that not sort of a normal transition?
That can happen.
And that is actually what needs to be happening, except in this case, this variant's got 30 plus mutations.
And I think this is what is worrying everyone.
They're not sure what is going to happen with these mutations going forward, whether it's going to mean anything or nothing.
And we also can't tell you.
We can only say to you what we are clinically seeing at this stage.
And then we have to watch the space.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Rebel News.
We'll follow it closely.
It's always interesting.
I mean, here we're a more vaccinated country, but we are seeing breakthrough infections as well.
So it's interesting to see how it all plays out.
Yes, and let's see and let's keep in touch and see in two weeks time what happened.
There you have it.
Yes, she has some concerns about the mutations, but we don't know which way that's going to go.
Is this going to be cold?
Is this going to be flu?
What we do know is right now, symptoms are extremely mild.
Music to our ears.
And that's regardless of a vaccination status.
Now, if you are happy you heard it, remember, you heard it at Rebel News.
I'm Drea Humphrey, and I'll see you next time.
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