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Feb. 1, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:50
The Truth About the Coronavirus
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom, Maine.
This is the truth about the coronavirus.
What is going on?
First things first, I am a philosopher.
I am not...
A doctor or a technical expert in the field.
So this is a collation of materials that have been provided to me by my contacts, by people I know and that I have reviewed.
I will put the sources below.
This is all fast-moving and tentative information, but it is important to see what the lay of the land is regarding what could be an enormous threat to health around the world.
The growth of this virus has been quite astonishing.
This is as of last night.
From Scott Gottlieb, MD, new numbers on the continuing tragic spread of hashtag coronavirus in China.
These are day-over-day increases in the running totals reflecting additional reporting over the last 24 hours.
Cases went from 96.92 to 11.791.
Deaths from 213 to 259, and you can see the other numbers there.
The graph to the right indicates the growth in the Wuhan coronavirus spread, the reported cases, compared to SARS, which was a disease, of course, that spread in 2003, causing 800 or that spread in 2003, causing 800 or so deaths.
And as you can see, it's almost like pandemics are Satan's way of teaching us about exponentials.
It has not...
Topped out at 8,000, as SARS did, for a variety of reasons we'll get into here, the Wuhan coronavirus is going straight to the stratosphere.
One of the reasons for this massive spread is that this remains unpeer-reviewed, but in a paper that has come out just recently, a term that you need to become familiar with is R0. This is the number of times somebody infects somebody else.
The R0 has been reported as 3, 3.5.
The latest calculations, again, unconfirmed, subject to change.
The latest calculations put the R0, the number of times an infected person infects someone else, at 4.08.
4.08.
That is staggeringly high.
New calculations also seem to indicate, I've heard fatality rates all over the map, The latest data that I have seen, again, sources are below, a 6.5% fatality rate.
Of course, this generally clusters around older people and people with comorbidities.
According to reports, now the transmission rate outside China has surpassed the rate inside China.
And this, of course, one of the great challenges with this virus is it appears that it can be spread both before And after these symptoms have appeared, in particular, before the symptoms appear, is especially dangerous.
This is a map of the spread, of course, originating in Wuhan, the original idea or argument that it came from A wide variety of both dead and live animals sold in a seafood market, including koala bears.
Not exactly seafood, but...
I mean, Chinese eating habits, of course, heavily conditioned by the massive famines that occurred under communist collectivization of the farms after the communists took over in the late 1940s.
And so, for those of you who are like, oh, they'll eat anything, and it's, you know...
If you haven't been reduced...
To eating tree bark, to eating the paper peel of onions, to ripping apart pillows to eat the feathers inside because you're starving to death.
It's easy to wag fingers at other cultures who have been wracked by massive socially engineered socialist starvation.
So here, of course, started in Wuhan in China and the orange dots are clusters around the world.
So, what is the background here?
So coronaviruses are a cluster of viruses that cause illnesses in mammals and birds.
So in humans, the viruses in particular cause respiratory infections, often mild, i.e.
the common cold, but SARS, MERS, and this new coronavirus causing the current outbreak can be lethal.
No vaccines or antiviral drugs are approved for prevention or treatment.
Now, the name coronavirus is derived from the Latin corona, meaning crown or halo, which refers to the characteristic appearance of the virus particles or virions.
They have a fringe reminiscent of a royal crown or of the solar corona.
There's a picture down there in the bottom left.
Now, a lot of the text in this is not original to me.
Again, the sources are below.
The virus is known to spread from human to human with initial spreaders not having symptoms of pneumonia or fever.
This presents a large problem But the containment of the virus as spreaders can unknowingly infect others in close proximity.
The virus is 96% similar to bat coronavirus and also 79.5% similar to SARS-CoV from 2003 and in the same family as MERS-CoV.
Now, this new coronavirus, designated 2019 NCOV, was identified in late 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province, after people developed pneumonia without a clear course and for which existing vaccines or treatments were not effective.
The virus can spread between people and its transmission rate.
Rate of infection appeared to increase in mid-January 2020.
Several countries, as the map indicated earlier, across Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific have reported cases.
The time from exposure to the development of symptoms is between 2 and 14 days, and there is tentative evidence that it may be contagious before the onset of symptoms.
Symptoms, of course, include fever, coughing, and breathing difficulties, and death may result.
It's this 2 to 14-day window where strong evidence exists that it's contagious, high I've heard certain evidence, but let's just go with strong evidence.
Let's be cautious, of course, in the transmission of this kind of information.
But of course, 14 days being asymptomatic but contagious is pretty catastrophic.
And of course, this coincided with Chinese New Year, one of the largest mass migrations of human beings on the planet, dwarfing, I believe, even Thanksgiving in North America, in the United States.
And this, unfortunately, has helped spread the virus.
So regarding prevention, coronavirus is spread by binding to the patient's lungs.
As there is no direct cure for the virus, prevention is the best defense measure against it.
If you are sick, wearing a surgical mask will stop the spread of the virus as it filters coughs and prevents water particles carrying the virus from entering.
The air. This, of course, is one of the most chilling things.
There's always in these disaster movies about plagues and pandemics and so on, there's always this chilling moment where one scientist announces that the virus has gone airborne, and of course, that is the case with this.
Surgical masks, of course, are not 100% effective in protecting the wearer, as there are holes in the mask that allow unfiltered air through it.
Even though it's not 100% effective, surgical masks help reduce infection by preventing The wearer from touching their nose, a potential method for the virus to enter the lungs.
Special masks like the N95 mask, famous of course for hospital workers in the 2003 SARS breakout, are shown to be more effective but only worn properly with a tight fit around the face.
Villagers in China are also taking matters into their own hands by isolating themselves.
There was a segment from Sky News.
Some villagers have built surrounding walls to severely limit the people going in and out or creating their own checkpoints and taking people's temperature before allowing them access.
These self-containment measures can be seen all across China, including outside the epicenter of the coronavirus in Wuhan.
From my contact in Hong Kong or one of them, across China, old people in particular are guarding their villages from outsiders, which makes sense, of course, given the high fatality rate or higher fatality rate for older people.
In Hong Kong, there is a threat of strikes from healthcare workers.
A Hong Kong police officer, the one who became famous for aiming a shotgun at pedestrians, reporters, and protesters, went on China media recently to express wishes that, quote, medical workers considering strike become infected with NCAR virus, calling them deserters.
This, of course, is one of the great challenges of this kind of outbreak, which is that The healthcare system can work against containing the virus because a large number of people and their friends and their family come to what could be an epicenter of transmission, i.e.
a hospital or a doctor's office.
As of 31st January 2020, approximately 11,948 cases have been confirmed, including in every province-level division of China.
Now, please understand, in my particular view, These are vastly underreported, not just because of potential corruption within the reporting systems in China, but also because you have to actually test people in order to confirm a case, and testing is limited by the availability of testing kits, by human timeframes, and so on.
The first confirmed death from the coronavirus infection occurred on 9th January, and since then, 259 deaths have been confirmed, and this data, of course, is highly changing upwards, unfortunately.
Studies estimate that a larger number of people may have been infected but not detected.
Of the first 41 people confirmed to have been infected, two-thirds were found to have a link with the Huanan seafood wholesale market which also sold live animals.
The first local spread of the virus outside China occurred in Vietnam from a father to his son, whereas the first local spread not involving family occurred in Germany on 22nd January when a German man contracted the disease from a Chinese business visitor at a meeting In the German state of Bavaria.
The lockdown in China is truly staggering.
Cities with a combined population of over 57 million people, including Wuhan and 15 cities in the surrounding Hubei province, were placed on full or partial lockdown involving the termination of all urban public transport and outward transport by train, air and long distance buses.
Many New Year events and tourist attractions have been closed over fear of transmission, including the Forbidden City in Beijing, traditional temple fairs, and other celebratory gatherings.
And just on a slightly personal note, the fact that I went out to Hong Kong to cover the protests and created a documentary, I will link to it below, called Hong Kong Fight for Freedom shortly before the spread of this was alarming.
Hong Kong also raised its infectious disease response level to the highest level and declared an emergency, closed its schools until mid-February, and cancelled its New Year celebrations.
On 30 January, far too late in my humble opinion, the outbreak was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization the sixth time that the measure has been invoked since the H1N1 pandemic in 2009.
In my particular view, the head of the World Health Organization is not exactly anti-China and this may have delayed it.
Can it be stopped? In a recent study done by the University of Hong Kong, the number of patients infected with the Wuhan virus is modeled to reach 43,590 infected.
The study is conducted by Professor Gabriel Leung's team at the Leica Shing Faculty of Medicine in Hong Kong University.
This is based off the current rate of infection with numbers doubling every 6.2 days.
Additional models have found that current quarantine measures will not contain the virus nor halt its spread.
Now, delay its spread, slow it down somewhat, but not halt.
Here are some more recent updates, just as I went to record.
China's Premier Li has asked the European Union to facilitate urgent procurement of medical supplies.
From Reuters, China's Premier Li Keguang has asked the European Union to facilitate China's urgent procurement of medical supplies from member countries.
The Chinese government said on Saturday, this is today, of course, amid the coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 250 people and infected over 10,000.
Now, just to put this in perspective, I know it's a different time, but when China is asking for help, that means things have really gotten out of control.
China, of course, was famous for giving food aid to Africa back in the 1950s, while tens of millions of Chinese people were starving to death under communism.
The government is reportedly once again forcefully attempting to create quarantine camps near dense neighborhoods without prior negotiations.
A vlogger reportedly kidnapped by the state or who's gone missing published concrete evidence of death toll well exceeding reported figures.
Again, I will put links to all of this below.
All right. Whenever there's a disaster and the government is involved, the first thing that is required is not a solution.
But a scapegoat. Initially, all fingers were pointed at the mayor of Wuhan, Zhao Jingwang, for delayed or inaccurate reporting of information.
He has since gone on Chinese state television CCTV to give his side of the story in an interview on 27th January 2020.
Zhao admitted that information on the coronavirus was not disclosed in a timely manner and did not effectively use the information to improve on containing the spread.
He also said... That he and the Communist Party, Secretary of Wuhan, would be prepared to hand in their resignation as an apology over the incident.
I gotta tell you, my friends, I'm not quite sure that resignation covers the butcher's bill.
However, in an interesting turn, Zhao also revealed to CCTV... That as a local government official, he can only publicize information on the coronavirus after obtaining authorization from the Beijing central government.
Clearly, this was shifting some of the blame for the lack of information on the Beijing government.
This is a daring move considering any criticism of the central government may result in severe consequences.
It reminds me of standing in Hong Kong harbor and delivering a speech about China's century of humiliation that started When the local Chinese bureaucrats refused to tell the Emperor how effective the British Navy was,
thus creating a situation where Britain easily won the war and ended up taking Hong Kong and other locations because the messenger philosophy or culture is incredibly dangerous.
So the coronavirus was initially discovered in Wuhan on December 2019, and there are questions on whether the reported information is accurate.
Even in Chinese media itself, such as this article by Kaixin.com, it was noted that the actual number of people infected are greater than reported by the Wuhan Municipal Health and Health Commission.
Chinese news commentators in their talk show also spoke of the origins of the coronavirus and that unlike what was initially made public, some of those infected had no connection to the Wuhan South China seafood wholesale market.
Medical professionals on the front lines are also speaking out.
Zhao Wenhong, leader of the Shanghai Medical Treatment Expert Team and director of infectious diseases at Huashan Hospital, suggested in an interview to replace all frontline doctors with members of the Communist Party, in essence to make the party members see what is happening themselves, because as Zhang points out, they promised to put the people's interests first when they took the oath to join the party.
So, The seafood market you have probably heard about as considered to be eating bats or other creatures referred to in other contexts as bushmeat, non-traditional sources of meat.
But as confirmed cases of a novel virus surge around the world with worrisome speed, all eyes have so far focused on a seafood market in Wuhan, China as the origin of the outbreak.
But a description of the first clinical cases published in The medical journal The Lancet on Friday challenges that hypothesis, which is very, very important.
The paper, written by a large group of Chinese researchers from several institutions, offers details about the first 41 hospitalized patients who had confirmed infections with what has been dubbed 2019 novel coronavirus.
In the earliest case, the patient became ill on the 1st of December 2019 and had no reported link to the seafood market, the author's report.
Quote, no epidemiological link was found between the first patient and later cases, they state.
Their data also show that in total, 13 of the 41 cases had no link to the marketplace.
That's a big number, 13 with no link, says Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University.
Lucy says, if the new data are accurate, the first human infections must have occurred in November 2019, if not earlier, because there is an incubation time between infection and symptoms surfacing.
If so, the virus possibly spread silently between people in Wuhan and perhaps elsewhere before the cluster of cases from the city's now infamous Huanan seafood wholesale market was discovered in late December.
The virus came into that marketplace before it came out.
Of that marketplace, Lucy asserts.
Which, of course, begs the question, which we'll deal with in a few minutes.
Where did the virus come from?
The Lancet's paper...
Data also raises questions about the accuracy of the initial information China provided, Lucy stays.
At the beginning of the outbreak, the main official source of public information were notices from the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission.
Its notices on 11th January started to refer to the 41 patients as the only confirmed cases, and the count remained the same until 18th January.
The notices did not state that the seafood market was the source, but they repeatedly noted that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission and that most cases linked to the market.
So you understand, of course, if there's no evidence of human-to-human transmission, then it must have come from something that people ate, we would assume.
Because the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission noted that diagnostic tests had confirmed these 41 cases by 10th of January, and officials presumably knew the case histories of each patient, quote, China must have realized the epidemic did not originate in that Wuhan-Huanan seafood market, Lucy tells Science Insider.
So the question is how many people are infected, how many people are dying?
Tests will be ex post facto and tests are limited by human hourly capacities and the number of testing kits available.
But one thing you can do is you can check with the funeral homes and see what the delta is between average death rates at this time of year and the amount that they're actually processing.
Reports were also being circulated online that Chinese crematoriums are extending their operating hours and working around the funeral.
This fueled further speculation that the situation is more serious than reported and that the crematoriums were working hard to cope with the rising death tolls.
An announcement that was dated 25th January 2020.
Whilst the names on the seal is censored, as reported by New Tang Dynasty's television, Chinese netizens speculate it was from a Quingshan crematorium.
In Wuhan City, paragraph 3 of the announcement says that from 10 a.m.
on 25th January 2019, the crematorium would stop providing viewings and funeral rites and services.
Instead, they will only provide the basic service of immediately transporting the deceased for cremation and storage of ashes 24 hours a day.
Now, a theory, one could quite easily call it a conspiracy theory floating around the web, which I want to deal with here.
Did the coronavirus originate from a lab?
Thank you.
Now, I am fully aware of the ridiculousness of this opening sentence, but I'll tell you why I've included it.
According to research down by Reddit user Kakarot50, there are certain facts which raises suspicion that the coronavirus originated from one of the labs of the Wuhan Virology Institute.
And I'll put links to all of this below.
I checked his links. They appear valid.
So... Back in 2017, researchers at the Institute claimed to have edited the bat genome using CRISPR-Cas technology.
This would mean that they had more than two years to further edit the bat genome and create or explore variations for viruses.
The Institute's senior researcher had a sole grant dedicated to the research of bat viruses, and a huge part of the research was concentrated on studying coronaviruses.
News reports say that the Institute was around 32 kilometers from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the coronavirus was said to have originated.
In fact, according to Baidu maps, one of the Institute's buildings is only 20 kilometers from the market.
On the Institute's webpage, there are pictures of researchers handling bats and bat samples with little or no protective equipment.
Now... Please understand, I do not speak Mandarin.
I am not an expert in this.
I provide this as a public service to deal with The reasoning behind the idea that coronavirus could have originated from a lab.
Now, this, of course, does not mean, if it did, that it's purposefully released.
It could have been accidental. It could have been careless.
It could have been, who knows? Guy wanted to make a couple of extra bucks selling bats.
Again, quite unlikely.
But these are the theories that are floating around.
Of course, I cannot confirm any of them, but I'll put the sources below.
Shai Zhengli, senior researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, had a sole grant dedicated to the research of bat viruses, quote, identification, genetic evolution, and pathogenesis of bat viruses in China.
The large bulk of their research was spent researching coronaviruses.
And I will put a link to the research profile below.
Of particular note, according to this Reddit user, are recent articles from the Wuhan Institute.
Here they are. Bat coronaviruses in China.
Origin and evolution of pathogenic coronaviruses.
Characterization of a new member of alpha coronavirus with unique genomic features in rhinolophus bats.
Detection and characterization of a novel bat-borne coronavirus in Singapore using multiple molecular approaches.
Discovery of bat coronaviruses through surveillance and probe capture-based next-generation sequencing.
This, of course, proves nothing.
It's not even evidence for much, but this is one of the reasons why the theory is floating around that the virus could have originated in a lab that's close to the seafood market.
Here is a photo that is reportedly of workers in the lab handling bat samples, and you can see one person does not even have a mask.
So, of course, the user's findings do not positively point to the coronavirus originating from the Institute's labs, but did they have proper protective measures in place?
I hope that we'll find out.
I doubt that we ever will.
So, mutation. So, the new coronavirus is an RNA virus, that is, it's a virus that has an RNA as its genetic material rather than DNA. Which have a high mutation rate which allows it to change properties very quickly.
The RNA sequence of the coronavirus isolated from six patients from the same household are different from each other.
So that's not good.
Six patients from the same household but the RNA sequences are different.
And this is quotes and I will put sources to this below.
This is a sign that the virus is evolving.
This may not be so good to the ear.
In other words, this doesn't sound good.
It suggests the difficulty of containing this virus.
Notably, the new coronavirus provides a new lineage for almost half of its genome with no close genetic relationship to other viruses within the subgenus of sarbicovirus.
Basically, it's saying it's completely brand new to coronavirus subgenus.
Very strange, says this So, what is in this new mystery middle segment that has no coronavirus history?
The study authors continue.
This genomic part, right, so there is a mystery middle segment that is not related to the other coronavirus history.
This genomic part comprises also half of the spike region encoding a multifunctional protein responsible for virus entry into host cells.
It continues, our study rejects the hypothesis of emergence.
This is a study quoted by the doctor.
Our study rejects the hypothesis of emergence as a result of a recent recombination event, i.e., the authors also conclude that the new coronavirus did not originate from random recent admixture between different coronaviruses.
Other possibilities, of course.
So, again, my obviously armchair amateur take on this is that in the RNA sequence, There is a chunk in the middle, and I've seen the graph.
There's a gap right in the middle of the graph where there is an RNA sequence that does not seem to originate from admixture, from other coronaviruses.
So, the seafood market does not appear to be the source.
This RNA coronavirus mutates really fast.
It has an unusual middle segment never seen before in any coronavirus, not from recent admixtures with other coronaviruses.
That mystery middle segment encodes protein responsible for entry into host cells.
Now, of course, this kind of information, which is, again, hotly disputed, and there is a lot of technical back and forth that is obviously impenetrable to outsiders, But this is the reason why there is speculation that the coronavirus was some sort of weaponized virus.
And again, I'm not saying that it is.
Please understand that. I'm certainly not saying that it is.
But this is why the arguments are raging online about it.
Here's another one. Again, source below.
This indicates that these insertions have been preferably acquired by the 2019 NCARF, providing it with additional survival and infectivity advantage.
Delving deeper, we found that these insertions were similar to HIV-1.
The authors dunked this final conclusion, says the Twitter user.
This uncanny similarity of novel inserts in the 2019 NCARF spike protein to HIV-1 GP120 and GAG is unlikely to be fortuitous.
Now, fortuitous here doesn't mean fortunate.
It means mutational, combinational, random, mix-and-match, shake-and-bake genetics.
Now, one researcher did a blast search and did find the insertions existing in other related viruses.
And the doctor says, let's wait and see for more confirming slash refuting studies to be published.
So again, this is a big swirl of confusing information, but this is why the debates are occurring, and the debates will continue.
Now, what's also curious is that HIV and AIDS drugs are being used on Wuhan coronavirus patients in Beijing.
And this is from CNN. Sorry.
Drugs often used to combat HIV and AIDS are being used to treat patients of the Wuhan coronavirus in Beijing, the city's health commission said in a statement.
Three designated hospitals are using the drugs Lipinavir and Ritonavir to treat patients as part of a test program titled Pneumonitis Diagnosis and Treatment Program for New Coronavirus Infection Trial Edition.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the U.S. National Institute of Health, told CNN there are currently no proven effective drugs to treat this virus.
The U.S. National Institute of Health is working on a vaccine against the new virus, but it would take a few months until the first phase of the clinical trials get underway and more than a year until a vaccine might be available, Fauci said.
Now, I... Put this forward, of course, recognizing that this has been strenuously denied by significant elements of the Canadian media, but since there is this rumor floating around about the Canadian connection, I will put it here again.
No proof of anything. Now, this story was published on July 14th, 2019.
A researcher with ties to China was recently escorted out of the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg amid an RCMP, that's Royal Canadian Mounted Police, investigation into what's being described as a possible, quote, policy breach.
This is from CBC.ca.
Links below. Now that's curious.
That's curious. So, a policy breach, I don't know, what is that?
You're dating the wrong person in the lab?
Getting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police involved in a possible policy breach seems a bit overkill, unless the policy breach is quite serious.
Dr... I'm afraid I'm going to mess this up.
Dr. Zhang Kuo-Kui, her husband, Qi-Ring Cheng, and an unknown number of her students from China were removed from Canada's only Level 4 lab on July 5th.
CBC News has learned.
A Level 4 virology facility is a lab equipped to work with the most serious and deadly human and animal diseases.
That makes the Arlington Street Lab one of only a handful in North America capable of handling pathogens requiring the highest level of containment, such as Ebola.
Security access for this Chinese couple and the Chinese students was revoked, according to sources who work at the lab and do not want to be identified because they fear consequences for speaking out.
Sources say this comes several months after IT specialists for the NML entered Kui's office after hours and replaced her computer.
Her regular trips to China also started being denied.
At meetings on July 8th, NML staff were told the researchers are on leave for an unknown period of time.
They were told not to communicate with them.
So replace her computer.
That means, I assume, I'm no expert in this area, but I assume that there was suspicious activity on her computer and they mirrored it and replaced it so that they could get into more detail about what she had been doing.
Her regular trips to China also started being denied, which means that I assume that there were concerns that she was taking something from the lab and delivering it to China.
Or there were electronic transmissions of data that was proprietary.
Not proven, and it would be really nice to know what the hell happened.
But, of course, Canadians were assured there was no threat to health.
While there are few details available, experts say this could be a case of intellectual property theft or technology leakage to China.
And I quote from Gordon Holden, director of the University of Alberta's China Institute, the National Microbiology Laboratory would have some pretty sensitive biological research material that could be shared either with or without authorization with foreign countries.
All of this is unproven, but even microbiology, sometimes especially microbiology, can have issues that involve national security.
It's something that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has already warned about, said Leah West, who teaches national security law at Carleton's Norman Patterson School of International Affairs, she said.
Canada is facing threats from foreign governments seeking to steal intellectual property, and that could include state-funded research.
The two big things I want to see is whether or not these individuals are charged with crimes by the RCMP.
That will give us a lot of information about what is really at stake here.
This isn't the first time police have investigated an incident at the lab.
In 2009, a former researcher at the lab was convicted of trying to smuggle genetic material from the Ebola virus across the Manitoba-North Dakota border.
The FBI is also investigating cases involving Chinese researchers in the United States.
Yes.
A separate article here.
I will link below. Federal authorities on Tuesday discussed three cases in which researchers affiliated with Boston-area institutions are accused of trying to provide clandestine scientific aid to the People's Republic of China.
U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said during a press conference at the Mowgli Federal Courthouse, this is a small sample of China's ongoing campaign to siphon off American technology and know-how for Chinese gain.
Although otherwise unrelated, each of the cases involves a scientist accused of hiding their affiliation with Chinese institutions.
One in particular was Professor Lieber at Harvard.
According to a criminal complaint, Lieber did not disclose that he was being paid a salary of up to $50,000 per month and up to $158,000 per year in living expenses by China.
China has something called a Thousand Talents Plan, and the Wuhan University of Technology helped to fund him.
Federal investigators also determined that Harvard Professor Lieber was awarded more than $1.5 million to establish a nanotechnology research lab at WUT. So, a little public service announcement.
How do you protect yourself from the coronavirus?
The best way to protect yourself is avoid being exposed to the virus.
The CDC, Center for Disease Control, always recommends simple everyday preventative steps to help prevent the spread of respiratory virus, including avoid close contact with people who are sick.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.
Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.
If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces.
Stay home when you are sick.
Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
As with all infectious diseases, good hygiene can play a role in controlling its spread.
However, the most important public health recommendation is that people report to the nearest health facility if they develop any symptoms indicative of coronavirus.
Call the office of your health care provider before you go and tell them about your travel and your symptoms.
They will give you instructions on how to get care without exposing other people to your illness.
you Naturally, of course, there will be no accountability.
There will be a few scapegoats who are arrested and tried and jailed or perhaps shot.
But there will be no fundamental accountability for the cover-up, for the mismanagement, for the suppression, or for other causes behind the spread of the coronavirus.
And one day, one day we will learn That the government will not keep us safe.
that relying on the government to keep us safe, healthy, protected, and long-lived is like relying on the dairy farmer to tend his cows into their peaceful old age.
Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest Free Domain Show on Philosophy.
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