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Feb. 18, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
22:50
The Truth About the Coronavirus - ORIGINS?
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Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from FreedomAid.
This is the truth about the coronavirus source.
Do we have a weapon?
Well, let's look at some of the data, but first let's look at the cases.
73,439 confirmed cases, deaths 1875 recovered, 13169.
Although there are indications that even if you get it, you can get it again and the second time could even be worse.
Total cases, as you can see here, it's going up on a linear scale, and it seems to be flattening out a little.
That was a jump, which had a lot to do with the change in definitions, but the definitions have changed again.
And the total deaths, as you can see, slightly flattening.
But... Effective February 17th, confirmed cases include both laboratory confirmed, as previously reported, and clinically diagnosed, currently only applicable to Hebei Province, China.
This comes from the World Health Organization, so we are not comparing apples to apples when we are looking at day-to-day numbers.
All right. So this is the big question.
Did coronavirus originate in Chinese government laboratory?
Scientists believe killer disease may have begun in research facility 300 yards from Wuhan wet fish market.
A new bombshell paper from the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology says that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control could have spawned the contagion in Hubei province.
The possible origins of 2019 NCOV coronavirus, penned by scholars Boutou Zhao and Li Zhao, claims the WHCDC kept disease-ridden animals in laboratories, including 605 bats.
It also mentions that bats, which are linked to coronavirus, once attacked a researcher and, quote, blood of bat was on his skin.
The report says, quote, Genome sequences from patients were 96 or 89% identical to the bat COVZC45 coronavirus originally found in rhino lofus affinis, the intermediate horseshoe bat.
It describes how only...
How the only native bats are found about 600 miles away from the Wuhan seafood market and that the probability of bats flying from Yunnan and Jiayang province was minimal.
In addition, there is little to suggest the local populace eat the bats as evidenced by testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors.
Instead, the authors point to research being carried out within a few hundred yards at the WHCDC. Is if they were a very prized local delicacy because you'd have to go 600 miles or somebody would have to go 600 miles, catch the bats, ship them back in a way that kept them fresh.
So if people aren't interested in eating bats, nobody's bringing bats from 600 miles away.
If it's not a particular kind of delicacy or I guess it could conceivably be that it would be used in traditional medicine.
One of the researchers at the WHCDC described quarantining himself for two weeks after a bat's blood got on his skin, according to the report.
The same man also quarantined himself after a bat urinated on him.
And he also mentions discovering a live tick from a bat, parasites known for their ability to pass infections through a host animal's blood.
The WHCDC was also adjacent to the Union Hospital, where the first group of doctors were infected during this epidemic, the report says.
It is plausible, this is the report, that the virus leaked around and some of them contaminated the initial patients in this epidemic, though solid proofs are needed in future study.
And as well as the WHCDC, the report suggests that the Wuhan Institute of Virology could also have leaked the virus, as has previously been reported on MailOnline.
This laboratory reported that the Chinese horseshoe bats were natural reservoirs for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, which caused the 2002-2003 pandemic.
The principal investigator participated in a project which generated a chimeric virus using the SARS-CoV reverse genetic system and reported the potential for human emergence 10.
A direct speculation was that SARS-CoV or its derivative might leak from the laboratory.
The report concludes that the current NCARF 2019, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.
Again, this is not peer-reviewed.
This is preliminary, to put it mildly.
But this is the latest data that I've been able to find.
And for all of those of you who say, well, it's just like the flu, even if we accept the numbers, there's a study...
That of people who had died by February 11th, 44,672 patients, 1,023 had died, a case fatality rate of 2.3%, that is 20 times higher than seasonal flu.
And of course, unlike flu, no treatments or vaccines for COVID-19.
So it's not the flu.
The Chinese are very intelligent people, and they don't shut down their economy because of the flu.
I found this was very interesting from finance.china.com.cn.
This is the translation from February 16th.
Ensure Biosecurity, Ministry of Science and Technology Course for Enhanced Management of Laboratory Viruses.
Wu Yanbin, Director of the Department of Social Development and Science at the Ministry of Science and Technology.
That's quite a business card. Introduced at the State Council's Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism Conference on the afternoon of the 15th of February.
To meet the needs of scientific and technological research, all competent departments should strengthen the management of laboratories, especially viruses, to ensure biological safety.
He said that since the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, science and technology departments and a large number of scientific workers have carried out four main tasks.
One is to clarify the main direction of scientific research.
The other is to quickly deploy emergency tasks.
The third is to establish a coordinated promotion mechanism.
And the fourth is to strengthen and standardize management and service.
Well, that's interesting.
Enhanced management and security.
Seems like an interesting thing to be talking about when there seems to be a lot more important things going on unless they are, of course, related.
Speculation and rumors and claims are still circling and swirling about the origin of NCOV 2019.
A woman who identifies herself as a co-worker claims the head of the Wuhan Virus Research Lab has previously brought lab animals to sell in the public market.
Here's the quote. I am Wuhan virus research lab researcher X. Identity card number X. Using my real identity, I report that the head of this facility, X, has spread this virus.
She has no knowledge of the medical sciences and relied on talent for admission into Beijing University, high-ranking university in China.
Daily research activities are undertaken by other researchers.
She frequently brings lab experiment animals to sell to the stalls of the Huanan seafood market specializing in wild animals.
More people are speaking out with real names and identities.
Of course, Chinese social media uses only real names.
Now, this information that was put out is important to note in the light of the fact that spreading rumors on the internet carries a prison sentence of seven years and almost complete certainty one will be caught, of course, because of the real name situation.
The censorship machine is efficient.
Her original post was reportedly deleted within minutes.
A response was later posted by the author claiming that others had posted this with her identity without her permission.
This could be more circumstantial evidence towards the source of the COVID-19 NCARF-29 Wuhan pneumonia being a biolab leak.
It also, of course, highlights the great difficulty of definitive proof, which we may never, of course, get.
The head of a Wuhan hospital at the center of the coronavirus outbreak has died of the disease.
Now, this was reported on Chinese state TV after local officials revealed and then denied his death.
Dr. Ximing, who was only 51, died on Tuesday morning after, quote, all-out rescue efforts failed.
Officials and state media confirmed his death today after confusion last night.
There were, of course, similar confusions over the death of whistleblower medic Lai Wenliang.
The doctor's death today...
Has sparked a fresh wave of anger on Chinese social media.
His wife told reporters that her husband had been ill since late January.
Now this highlights something very important, which is that this doctor, who's only 51, not elderly, not in frail health, that he was unable to avoid being infected, and even with all of the resources of the hospital at his disposal, was unable to survive this disease.
Okay, let's talk about the economy.
This is really important and will have worldwide effects, which I'll talk about in a few minutes, but let's look at these three figures.
So these are four lines, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
2020, of course, is in red.
Day one is Chinese New Year's Day, so of course there's a diminishment of activity leading up to Chinese New Year, but then as you can see in previous years, the Activity resumed.
So we've got the daily coal consumption, 100-city average transportation congestion index, and daily property sales volume in 30 major cities.
None of it is recovering.
There's been a slight uptick in daily property sales volume, but that could, of course, be because people have died and their homes are for sale.
So, this flatlining of economic activity is continuing and is going to have massive impacts on the world scale, on the movement of goods, particularly in the B2B or business-to-business sector, which is going to have a ripple effect all around the world.
Regardless of the outcome of this illness, this is going to be a catastrophic and enormous economic ripple effect in the world.
So, For the first time since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, China's National Health Commission reported on February 14th that at least 1,716 health workers had been infected while treating patients with the virus.
And this, of course, is similar.
During the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic, the SARS epidemic, in 2002-2003, a significant proportion of health care workers in mainland China also succumbed to the virus, with about 20% of them contracting SARS. On Sunday, Hubei announced tough new measures to try and curb the outbreak, ordering its cities to block roads to all private vehicles.
Meanwhile, a newly published speech revealed Chinese President Xi was aware of the potential severity of the outbreak long before the public was informed.
Two more cases have been confirmed in Taiwan.
Taiwan has reported two more confirmed cases, saying they were linked to the island's first death and lifted the number of those infected to 22.
The mother of the deceased who died on Saturday and a male relative were tested positive, according to the Minister of Health and Welfare.
A court in the Russian city of St.
Petersburg ordered a woman to be forcibly returned to coronavirus quarantine in hospital after she broke out and went home.
The city's Botkin Hospital filed a highly unusual request for a court order to hospitalize 33-year-old Alainia after she posted on social media about breaking out of her isolation room, complaining of, how do you threaten an entire city?
On what grounds? On what basis?
Well, she didn't like the food, and she needed shampoo.
And that's why you put an entire city at risk.
Nearly half of the U.S. companies in China say their global operations are already seeing an impact from business shutdowns due to the coronavirus epidemic, according to a poll by Shanghai's American Chamber of Commerce.
Some 78% of the respondents also said they did not have sufficient staff at their Chinese plants to resume full production, while 48% of respondents said plant shutdowns had already impacted their global supply chains.
There is a speech, I will link to this below, as I will to all the sources here, a critique, viral alarm when fury overcomes fear.
A beautiful translation of this critique has widely circulated in Chinese social media and messaging.
Tsinghua University professor Zhu Zhangrun, he is under house arrest without internet access.
Now, as the author, it sums up the fundamental fight between the culture that emerged, the socio-political economic consequences, and human freedom.
And you should really read this.
Here's a quote. One can only hope that our fellow Chinese, both young and old, will finally take the lesson to heart and abandon their long-practiced slavish acquiescence.
It is high time that people relied on their own rational judgment and avoided sacrificing themselves on the altar of the power-holders.
Otherwise, you will all be no better than fields of garlic chives giving yourselves up to being harvested by the blade of power time and time again.
The coronavirus has reportedly spread to North Korea, a fairly, of course, sealed Hermit Kingdom country.
And this is according to South Korean news outlets.
Though the country has further isolated itself from the rest of the world, its lack of medical supplies and crumbling healthcare system leave it ill-equipped to handle an outbreak.
Kim Jong-un recently cancelled an annual parade that celebrates the founding of the military's armed forces.
He did not give an explanation fueling suspicions about the virus.
A former world health official reported they cannot produce the medicine they need because of the sanctions.
Nothing new has come to the country to update their medicine or technology.
So the president, Chinese president, a recent speech that has been published by state media indicates for the first time that he was leading the response to this new virus outbreak from early on in the crisis.
The publication of the February 3rd speech was an apparent attempt to demonstrate that the Communist Party leadership had acted decisively from the beginning, But it also opens up the Chinese leader to criticism over why the public was not alerted sooner.
In the speech, the president said he gave instructions on fighting the virus on Jan 7th and ordered the shutdown that began on January the 23rd of cities at the epicenter of the outbreak.
His remarks were published by state media late Saturday.
So that is important that they sat on this for quite some time.
There are indications that knowledge might have been available even earlier.
And of course, when it comes to these kinds of outbreaks, the sooner you act, the sooner you can flatten, arrest, or even reverse the exponential growth of the spread.
So this ship, for those of you who've been following this, the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, has had a very large number.
I believe the number is closer to 500 now.
So another 99 people have been tested positive.
This is as of yesterday for coronavirus onboard the stricken Princess Diamond cruise ship docked in Japan, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 454.
And that is a very large number of people who have got this from one person, as far as I understand it.
One person who went on, and then it just spread, I guess literally, like wildfire.
And that is...
Not good. So, Chief Director of the Japan Community Healthcare Organization said, Many people are testing positive on the ship, but that is because we are testing everyone on board, regardless of their medical condition.
And 70% of those testing positive are not showing any symptoms at all.
Now, Japan has advised its citizens to avoid mass gatherings.
It canceled celebrations for the Emperor's birthday.
Organizers of the Tokyo Marathon canceled next month's math participation race, in which 38,000 people would take part.
And that is, I mean, it's quite striking.
It's a very, very important part of Tokyo culture.
A hospital near Tokyo said it was no longer accepting new patients because one of its nurses had tested positive for the virus after treating an infected patient who later died.
Analysts warned of a potentially huge damage to Japan's economy, saying the widening fallout from the virus was damaging output in tourism, undermining growth and risking pushing the country.
Into recession.
And of course, I was very lucky to be out of Hong Kong last year before this fell.
But of course, Hong Kong tourism has collapsed.
There was a massive amount of tourism in China.
Now, with regards to what is going on in China, and this is something to be aware of, of course.
People are... Being forcibly confined and quarantined.
Some indications welded into their homes, as I talked about last time.
So this is a village.
It says the translation is, the villagers were reluctant to be sealed up at home and they fought back.
The police fired shots.
And this, of course, is what is going on.
This is the panic. And this is not a group of people who are easily panicked.
But this is really...
Quite alarming. To be sealed up in your home for who knows how long, without necessary supplies, people are going to fight back.
If you look here, this is a situation.
Somebody has filmed the Chinese, apparently, as you can see, moving up these barricades and welding people into their homes.
I talked about this before.
Some money is being destroyed.
Some shop owners in China are boiling cash to sterilize it from coronavirus.
The Chinese government has ordered cash quarantines to sanitize old banknotes from the virus.
And people told me, oh, people don't use cash in China.
Well, they do if you're in the country in particular.
So here you can see somebody boiling cash to try and get rid of the virus.
So, of course, a lot was made of the government hospitals built in 10 days for coronavirus patients in Wuhan.
But, of course, it's a government program.
It's a mess and a disaster, and here somebody has footage that they say is coming from this hospital, and cracks in the water pipes, fractures on the walls, partial collapses.
This is just another government program.
People are getting incredibly frustrated.
So this is a medical tent, and there's a driver here who's angry about something we don't know exactly what, and he has actually just driven his car into the tent.
And this is appalling.
This is the level of frustration, of course, that people are facing with regards to this situation.
Now, here, I mean, this is eerie, right?
This is in Wuhan, China.
This is the emptiness of the city.
Now, of course, I was in China in 2000 for business, and you couldn't ever see a street like this even at 2 o'clock in the morning.
But this is how silent the city has become.
And this collapse of movement, this collapse of industry, this collapse of business is going to have ripple effects around the world.
Burger King has shut down.
Starbucks has shut down.
Apple is having trouble sourcing its iPhones.
A lot of people have invested their time and their energy and their focus and their business relationships into China.
And when something like this happens, of course, what happens is people have to look for other sources and other solutions to China.
So if you are getting your materials from China and the economy has ground to a halt, you need some other place to get your materials.
And so you're going to set up other sources, other places where you can get stuff.
So there's this thing called just-in-time manufacturing, which is you don't get whatever it is that you need until right before you need it.
And then the supplier hands it to you.
And that saves you money on having to store inventory and so on.
So this just-in-time manufacturing has created a real house of cards when it comes to international business supply chains, which sounds like a really abstract and boring topic, but it is what delivers everything that you need to live, basically.
And so because people have adopted just-in-time delivery, whenever there's an interruption, it has a massive ripple effect and there's not much slack to deal with these kinds of interruptions.
Now, of course, if you need to get materials, you will just get them from somewhere else.
And so people are going to start decoupling materials.
They're business relationships from China and they're going to start creating more stable sources for materials and products and goods and services locally.
And that is going to be very important.
This could be the beginning of a de-internationalization.
of the business relationships.
In other words, it could stimulate more domestic demand, domestic economy, domestic jobs, and it could uncouple the money that is flowing into places like China.
Now that people realize and understand and recognize the intense vulnerability that they have when their materials are sourced from an incompetent and brutal dictatorship, it doesn't pay off in the long run.
This is going to cause change in China.
This is going to cause large ripple effects and In the domestic economies around the world, particularly, of course, in America.
And that is going to be very, very interesting to watch.
So thank you so much for listening.
I really look forward to your feedback.
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