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Jan. 30, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
42:31
Coronavirus Update: Pandemic?
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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
I'm back here with the guy we used to call John, but now we're calling Bob because I used John yesterday in another call.
And John is a friend of mine from Hong Kong who gave us an update on the coronavirus and has new information, new experiences that he wanted to share with us who were obviously quite distant from being closer to Thank you.
So, if I can start from what's happening just near me.
So, I have a confirmed case, actually in the very building that I live in.
I'm not exactly sure which floor it was, but I did see the police and the ambulance come, take the person away.
It is quite surreal, to be honest, to have a confirmed case out of all those apartment buildings in Hong Kong.
It has to be mine.
On one hand, it is very scary.
But at the same time, I feel that The fact that I don't think I have any symptoms yet makes me feel a bit snug.
I'm confident in my preventative measures.
For example, I wear a respirator when I go out.
I'm looking for goggles because I understand that the eye protection is actually quite important from the aerosols.
So the name of the game is to reduce aerosols exposure to mucous membranes, such as the eye, the mouth, the nose, and And avoid touching things.
So I am starting to consider wearing gloves when I go out, when I go to the grocery store.
And basically, whenever I touch anything, so for example, an escalator button, I would try to use a pen or some other object instead.
Yeah, I would say it's quite surreal.
I can see that people are definitely tensing up and being extremely cautious now.
Almost everyone I can see outside is wearing a mask, except for maybe the runners in the park or the people who are just taking a leisurely walk with their dog.
Speaking of dogs, actually, for pets, actually there is a case or a suspected How should I put it?
A source that states that actually pets such as dogs, cats, and other mammals can actually be infected with the coronavirus as well.
However, they may not be symptomatic, so they may not display symptoms.
But that doesn't mean that they're not dangerous.
they can pass it on to their owners and they can pass it on to other pets.
Or just spread it in the neighborhood as a whole, right?
Yes, exactly.
And so it just so happens that we actually do have a public health issue for many years in the nearby park where I would say the dog owners have been very irresponsible of They have more or less let their dogs roam free and pee at every lamppost and corner.
That, I would say, could be quite a serious issue in this epidemic.
Speaking of parks, actually the nearby parks, all the playgrounds are actually sealed off now because they don't want the children playing in them and touching things.
I think the The medical term for this is called fomites, so they don't want this fomite exposure and people contacting surfaces and then wiping their nose and then getting infected.
So all these public facilities, swimming pools, libraries, playgrounds, and so forth, are all sealed off now.
So I think there's a lot of gyms that have closed, although I'm not sure about the private ones, but the public ones are all closed.
Yeah, gyms can be, because everybody touching the same equipment with sweat and so on, gyms can be a real transmission.
And how is the work situation?
I mean, you mentioned that you're working from home because of this.
Another friend of mine says that the offices in Shanghai have been instructed by the government to not have workers come in for at least two weeks.
It seems like everything's kind of grinding to a halt, except for, of course, the feverish preparations for the medical emergencies.
Yeah. Yes, indeed.
I understand that in the mainland, it is more government driven, so the government will give direct orders to businesses and tell them to do certain things like shut down the offices for two weeks.
In Hong Kong, I think we don't directly have that, but most employers, especially the The civil service, so the public servants, and some major, I think,
telecom utilities, such as the electric companies, such as the CLP, one of the largest ones in Hong Kong, are actually just temporarily closing their offices.
And I think all office staff are basically working at home.
Right. Now, another friend of mine was telling me, he sent me a message saying, China is actively wiping video from the internet which display how bad the situation is in Wuhan.
He saw one video of bodies lying in the street and people falling over.
Now it's gone. And various videos he saw showed bodies left dead in the hallways of a hospital, multiple people falling over into the street, unconscious from standing in a telephone call of a doctor freaking out as he claims the director of the hospital fled.
But he is left dead.
Have you heard anything about what's going on that is beyond the reach of most of the media?
Yes, I understand that there is one specific key opinion leader that you can find on YouTube that has been sort of streaming from Wuhan.
I think he's using a VPN. And he has this footage.
He actually goes to these hospitals and actually films what is going on inside and outside.
And it is fairly common, I think, to see people on oxygen tanks, so they are breathing more than normal oxygen.
Some people appear to be unconscious, and there are, in fact, actually people who basically have died waiting for healthcare.
Just from that limited sample, I would say that it is a very prevalent issue.
But besides that, for the people who aren't in the hospitals, life is basically extremely isolated because basically the transportation has been limited by the government policy and every I would say neighborhood is only allowed to have certain vehicles.
And these vehicles are basically the lifeline or lifeblood of that community.
So they're constantly firing supplies, daily necessities, etc.
But also the sick people to hospitals.
Now, the problem is that That's not nearly enough transportation.
So actually a lot of people are sick at home, and therefore it is basically impossible to get accurate statistics on how many people are sick, what degree of sickness are they in.
And so even if they try to get these accurate statistics, I'm not sure they would be able to because the situation is very chaotic.
The transportation networks are more or less down.
And most people, I think, are, I would say, rationally not venturing outside and meeting anyone.
Now, sorry, there's a couple of things that have come together that have made it even more unpleasant or risky, of course, and it's so weird to think that I was in Hong Kong just a couple of weeks before this all began to emerge, but help people understand, if you could, the issue of the Chinese New Year, the amount of travel that's going on, and also the Wuhan mayor who claimed that about 5 million people had left the city before the quarantine came down.
Yes. So it all started actually before Chinese New Year.
So before that, they were in full, I would say, containment.
They weren't really containment mode, but they were trying to lie their way through it.
So there were no accurate statistics.
I think the WHO had no idea about it.
And at the same time, the whole goal, I think, was to sort of bury this issue and hope it would just go away.
And basically, by doing that, they actually exacerbated the whole situation.
Specifically, what they wanted to do before Chinese New Year was to make sure that the Chinese New Year migration, which, for those of you who aren't familiar with China, is, I think, one of the largest human migrations in the entire world.
It's somewhat equivalent to Thanksgiving, but I think certainly more people and more of an impetus to move.
Yes. So, China predominantly...
I would say the industries are very centralized in some major cities and most people work there.
However, most of these people are not from these cities.
So in effect, they are migrant workers.
So Chinese New Year is the only time they can actually go out of their workplaces in these major cities, go back to their towns and villages and in more faraway regions and actually Spend time with family.
That's the only time they actually get to sit around the dinner table and behave as a family.
So it's a very precious time and basically all the efforts we're taking to try and not disrupt this.
But of course, you know, viruses spread as a result.
They spread especially quickly in crowds.
And so this migration, because it was not really halted until it was too late.
So people basically had their tickets booked, etc.
They were, you know, just traveling well, well, well, they're already traveling well before any actually I don't think they really banned it until it was very, very late.
But eventually they did start telling people not to travel to actually celebrate Chinese New Year in place.
So just, you know, do a social media call with your family and stay safe.
But yeah, so they...
Basically did not want to disrupt the status quo and be the person or the bureaucrat who drops the ball.
So they wanted the music to keep playing, the dancing to continue.
It's part of the Chinese culture that I talked about in the documentary Hong Kong Fight for Freedom, that nobody wants to bring the bad news to the emperor, so to speak, and this idea that there's a shoot-the-messenger aspect to Chinese culture that does, I think, cripple them in trying to deal with these kinds of major issues.
Yes, absolutely. I'm not sure if Machiavellianism would be a reasonable word to use, but I would say that Chinese culture or organizational culture prioritizes the human relations over the actual facts of empirical reality.
So what that means is that An organization is a game.
So within the Communist Party or within the government structure, it is a game to rise in the hierarchy.
Not necessarily based on excellence, but based on what you can get away with.
So the civilians, the people outside government are ultimately the The losers of the game every time.
So it's, I would say, not just the epidemics.
I mean, there's also the economic bubbles.
There's the housing bubbles.
There was, I think, a few years ago, there was a peer-to-peer lending bubble where a lot of people I think entrepreneurial people and investors lost their money.
I would say it's just part of culture.
It's very deeply ingrained.
I think that is ultimately the issue that we need to tackle.
So let's talk about two other things that are key to this.
The first is that, boy, there's nothing like a pandemic to teach you what the word exponential means, right?
Because looking at the number of confirmed and reported cases, it took six months for SARS to go over 5,000.
But they've gone to 5,000 in a month.
And I think it's faster than that myself, because I mean, the first were very, very small numbers.
But so there's the exponential growth, which, as we all know, given transmission rates and travel and 5 million people leaving Wuhan before the barriers came down, so to speak, that is a massive spread.
And the other is this incredibly wide disparity in reports of the death rate of coronavirus, which I've heard anywhere from 2% to, well, I mean, I don't even want to say how high I've heard because it just seems too ludicrous.
But as far as that exponential stuff goes, I just wanted to sort of jam it in here because if you look at the numbers, man, it's just hitting the roof.
And I mean, it makes American debt numbers look conservative.
What have you heard about fatality rates?
Because that's all over the map from what I can hear.
As you've mentioned, there are huge, widely varying estimates of the fatality rates.
But at the same time, I would...
I would say that it is quite a complicated issue to actually tally that, because there are, I think, many healthcare systems in China that are, I think, in quite a Significant chaos.
That's not including the bureaucracy that wants to maintain this assemblance of normality by trying to hide that exponential growth.
So for a time, they were trying to actually add Add maybe 200 a day and then slowly that went up to 400.
They were trying to scale that up in a planned manner.
They want to do it in arithmetic progression instead of exponential.
I would say that what I have heard about fatality is there's a lot of People who are actually not really tested because they have very limited number of testing kits.
So in order to say that someone died of the ANCOV virus, they will need to first be tested positive for that virus.
And to be tested positive, you know, they need to be tested first.
But I think they have a lack of those testing kits.
Basically, I would say it is one way of gaming the figures.
Of course, I'm not sure about how the availability of those testing kits in the current situation there is, but it's What I can see is that there's too few kids, and so fewer people are being tested positive, so there are fewer confirmed cases, so there are fewer confirmed fatalities.
When in reality, I think there are a lot of these people who are actually dying at home, or on the street, or waiting in line at the hospital.
But they haven't been tested before.
So they wouldn't be counted, I mean, if you die from home.
I mean, let's say, because one of the big problems with the Wuhan coronavirus is it's leading to this type of pneumonia, and pneumonia, of course, particularly for elder people or people with comorbidities, like other health problems, you say, oh, well, they were killed by pneumonia, and, of course, you will dispose of the body through cremation or burial, and it won't go through the testing, and so it's not going to show up.
In those numbers, and that is, I mean, that's kind of chilling as well, that you do need that confirmation, and the testing kit availability is so limited.
Yes. Actually, to sort of overcome that, I think some people have suggested, or actually, and there are figures to back that, that let's count the number of bodies going through funeral homes, and let's count those that are going through the crematoriums.
And you would compare the delta between the normal rate for this type of year and you would assume that any delta is probably related to the coronavirus?
Yes. And the results of that is that it is far exceeding the normal.
From what I've heard, the funeral homes are actually They don't have enough vehicles to actually transport the bodies.
So they are actually bringing in vehicles from other regions into the severely affected regions to actually try and deal with the transportation problem.
And the crematoriums are also working 24-7.
To deal with this epidemic because there is an official policy that all of these bodies that have been suspected to have died of this viral cause need to be burned.
Right. Now, even compared to SARS, which only killed about 800 people, I mean, you say only, like it's not a tragedy for those 800 of them.
I do.
And of course it is.
But in terms of the overall numbers, uh, the, um, uh, the connectivity in terms of transportation and the economic sort of interlinks between China and other countries is far greater now than it was, Thank you. We all are.
Now let's talk about what the countries around China are doing.
Mongolia, Russia, other countries seem to be acting very decisively in a way that the Western countries just aren't.
And Hong Kong, of course, as well.
Yes, I would say that for Mongolia and Russia, while they are close neighbors of China, I wouldn't say that they are totally reliable allies.
They are more of friends with benefits, if I can put it that way.
They have some alliance, but ultimately it's about self-interest.
The power bases, I think, are based on fundamentally different things.
I think Russia is fundamentally based on the natural resources, or China is based on some other things.
Basically, I think that sort of allows them, or they set the relationship up with China so that it is not entangling.
So that they're not really owing China anything.
In the extreme opposite, actually, we can look at Cambodia.
I wouldn't call Cambodia a China ally because I understand that they borrowed a lot of money from China and China has a lot of project investments in Cambodia.
So in effect, I would almost call it a colony.
So, they have, I think, they have declared that they will not quarantine anyone from China.
They will continue all flights and transportation from China as normal.
They have vowed to actually ban the wearing of masks in public.
And they have also blasted all the, what they call the misinformation about this ANCOR virus.
So, I would say that this is perhaps one of the most extreme acceptance of the virus, accepting responses out there.
But you also have a lot of other nations which are somewhat in the middle.
I think Singapore, if I recall, they actually So I would say...
In my opinion, this is very dangerous for them because just looking at the virus spread within China, we can see that if you don't have strong borders, what do people in an infected area generally do?
They try to get out of there.
They try to stay away from the crowds.
They try to stay away from the danger, obviously.
They want to go somewhere Where they can be treated.
And if they have some preliminary symptoms and they know that they have the virus, they want to seek better treatment, which is one of the reasons why Hong Kong actually has quite a few imported cases from Wuhan and other affected regions.
So, talking back about the Closer to home, Hong Kong is not a nation.
We have border controls, we have passport, identity card controls, but ultimately the Hong Kong government is waiting for China.
Or China is sort of waiting to see what Hong Kong does with specific relation to this local policy.
And they have actually sealed off certain border crossings, but that doesn't really mean anything because you can still get across as long as you maybe wait in line for a bit longer.
So basically, it Does not really matter.
So I would say it was a kind of linguistic game.
So they're trying to play with language to make it seem like we've sealed most of the border when in fact actually it does not really diminish the number of people and actually Decreased the probability of infections coming into Hong Kong.
So I would say that people in general are quite disappointed about that, but at the same time we We had to make a push for that.
I think it was a great opportunity to actually unite the yellow camp and the blue camp.
So the yellows are the more, I think people call them more pro-democracy, and the blues are more of the pro-Beijing government camps.
And actually they are, I would say, somewhat united on For example, we had one case where the government was trying to, near the Chinese border, use some of these recently completed Government estate buildings and turn them into quarantine centers.
But obviously, you know, there's this phenomenon called not in my backyard.
And so actually, some, I would say, relatively Pro-government people actually started up some roadblocks to actually prevent that from happening.
And actually then some young people who I think self-identified as yellow joined in and so they started to block the roads together.
So it's a very interesting situation right now.
I think This common enemy, I think, has helped unite on certain issues.
But I think ultimately the differences in principle are still there.
Because, for example, there is still some issues that they differ on, which is the medical worker strikes.
In Hong Kong, healthcare workers were trying to organize strikes and they actually got quite successfully about 3,000-something people or healthcare workers to actually sign up.
When was that? Yes.
So I would say this was in the past week.
Yes. In the past week, Hong Kong people were trying to push the government to close the border.
With China, because that is basically the only surefire way to actually prevent the infection from coming in.
The key part of that effort was the medical workers' unions which organized together and basically threatened to go on strike if The borders were not closed by, I think, 22nd or 20-something of January.
So actually, what really happened, looking back, was some hospitals had some staff of certain departments, such as the respiratory, I think, The pulmonary department of Queen Mary Hospital, they actually collectively took sick leave for a day.
So you had some of these things go on, but I would say so far it hasn't been a massive effort to push for it.
It is, I would say, somewhat...
I think people consider it somewhat late now because if you close the border after thousands of potentially infected people come in, it's a bit late because they are already in neighborhoods.
They could already be spreading the virus.
So I would say We are considering the next steps of what to do about this.
Sorry, let me just jump in for one last comment and question.
So just some things popped up.
Russia has closed its border, of course, got a massive land border with China.
This closure affects the movement of people, not goods.
So it's still possible to fly to China, but the foreign ministry has warned Russians to refrain from non-essential travel to the country.
Russia has reported no cases of the virus.
Hong Kong warns of surgical mask shortage.
The U.S. is planning another Wuhan evacuation flight.
India and Philippines have reported the first virus cases.
And what I found to be quite interesting and rather terrifying is that we were talking just a few minutes ago about 5,000 cases, but as of this morning, it's over 7,700, and that's how much it's grown.
in a day or two.
And that's really quite astonishing.
So the last thing I wanted to ask you is, we've seen on Twitter, other places, we've seen people being bolted into their own homes in China and, you know, opening the door to find that they have this giant steel bar across their door.
Have you heard anything about that?
Is that a response?
I don't think it would be legally possible in Hong Kong, not that I would really know for sure.
But what are your thoughts on that?
Well, I personally have not heard much about that.
But I will say that much more extreme things have happened.
I think there was a video circulating around about someone actually Getting knifed on the street because that person was supposedly from Wuhan.
In Hong Kong, there has actually been someone who was seedy.
It's like, I would say, vigilantism.
So I think someone got slashed on the neck because that person was suspected to be from Wuhan.
And I'm not sure if they had any symptoms, but yeah, they There's just this whole...
Both in reality and in social media, the craze of actually catching these people.
Well, and sorry to interrupt again, but just, I mean, the psychology behind it to me is somewhat comprehensible, which doesn't excuse it, but if your beloved grandmother just died of this virus and you believe that people are traveling to your region selfishly against best practices of containing the outbreak, I can understand that in your grief, in your fear, in your anger, That people could act out in very aggressive ways.
Again, it doesn't justify it morally, but we can at least understand the dominoes in people's minds that half them end up being that aggressive in the world.
Indeed, indeed. Actually, besides that, ultimately that our anger still gets directed at the government.
So, for example, in the past few days, there have been some Molotov cocktail hit and runs at some regional police stations in Hong Kong, as well as at a certain police vehicle.
And actually, the social media response from most people was that they were not surprised, and actually some people said, well done.
So I would say that people are acting, I think, it's inexcusable, but at the same time it's very comprehensible.
As for Hong Kong, regarding quarantine, absolutely the government does have authority under law to quarantine people suspected of having the virus.
So they have actually sort of converted many holiday camps actually into basically containment quarantine facilities.
So, yeah.
Pretty much, I think that's the main issue.
But actually, on top of that, I think another major issue, not just in Hong Kong, but also in China, is the shortage of masks.
Now, in China, actually in many cities, you are legally obligated to wear a mask.
If you don't, you can get arrested and fined.
Now, in Hong Kong, We have a massive shortage of masks.
I think almost nobody really has enough masks to last through February.
But at the same time, as you can see from the statistics, the number of infected is expected to rise exponentially.
So there is a great sense of desperation here.
There are overnight queues outside major health and wellness stores that put out Facebook posts stating that they may have face masks available for sale the next morning.
So it's It's infuriating.
I personally actually also do not have many masks.
I don't have enough to last through February.
How many days can you wear the masks?
Yes, so I have heard different figures, but I would say that I need at least one mask a day.
So that's like the bare minimum.
So unless I don't go out at all, well...
That's not really possible because eventually I need to do some shopping, I need to run errands, etc.
So I would say one mask per day is very, very, it's kind of rationing already because you're not supposed to re-wear them.
Actually, speaking re-wearing or recycling the mask, there have been many videos circulating of people collecting these masks from garbage cans.
I don't know, supposedly sanitizing them in some way and then actually reselling them and repackaged, of course.
So there's a huge problem of fake masks, uncertified masks, and masks of questionable origin.
Actually, there was this one box, I think, That actually had a production date in March of 2020.
So there's a lot of actually quite obvious and poorly made fakes out there as well.
It's risky business just trying to get a mask that you know will protect you.
And at the same time, actually, speaking of masks, there's at least three to four levels that I think everybody should know about.
So there's like an ASTM level that basically measures the amount of aerosol that it can protect you from.
So there's ASTM level one, two, and three.
And I think according to the WHO, I'll need to pull out the guidelines, they recommend that you wear a level 2 or above, so level 2, 3 or a respirator, such as the N95 respirator.
Obviously those are, to be honest, out of the question for the vast majority of the population because we don't really have enough mass to go around in the first place.
So it remains to be seen how this will be resolved and it is definitely a developing story that I'm not sure is capturing that much attention outside.
of Hong Kong.
But I do understand that Amazon US has also had, is also kind of out of stock for these, these protective equipment, especially the, the higher grade especially the, the higher grade masks.
Yeah.
Well, and of course, when, when economic activity gets interrupted by this kind of stuff, you have a high demand and a lower supply, which does of course generally involve cheating.
Listen, I really, really appreciate your time today to get us up to speed on what is going on.
We kind of have to drill past, I think, some of the obfuscation of the mainstream media that has various incentives.
And boy, it's really, really wild to see.
You can almost see the countries that are beholden to China.
Based upon their responses to this kind of outbreak, those who can act decisively to protect their own population versus those who just seem to be throwing the doors wide to all infections that could come their way.
But obviously, please, please keep me posted about any changes in your health.
I'm so sorry to hear that there's an infection in the building.
That's bad luck, of course.
And I really, really do appreciate your time.
Please, please keep me posted.
Stay safe as best you can.
And if there's anything I can do to help, please let me know.
Sure, Steph. Thank you, Steph.
We are sourcing masks from actually all over the world.
We've got some orders going to Germany, but the thing is, we're not sure if they will ship successfully.
So, yeah, it's a developing story, and I definitely will keep you posted on that.
Thank you, my friend. Stay safe.
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