Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nol.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben and you can too. We're joined
Speaker 3: as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan.
Speaker 3: Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes
Speaker 3: this the stuff they don't want you to know? And
Speaker 3: we are recording on Monday, July sixth. Guys, here in
Speaker 3: our episode doc we usually have like some kind of
Speaker 3: inspirational pull quote or something apropos, but now we have
Speaker 3: a surprise. It is a strange confluence of events that
Speaker 3: we would be recording today's episode on July sixth, because
Speaker 3: get this, folks, it is World Zoonosis Day.
Speaker 4: Dude, tell what is zonosis? Is this like a utopia?
Speaker 3: I think it is like zoonotics, like not good, not
Speaker 3: casered infection that passes from a non human animal to
Speaker 3: a human animal. World Zoonosis Day commemorates the very first
Speaker 3: rabies vaccine, which was given on July sixth, eighteen eighty
Speaker 3: five and is commemorated to serve as a reminder of
Speaker 3: the ongoing threat posed by zoonotic diseases. It's a holiday
Speaker 3: that a lot of us haven't heard about, including yours.
Speaker 2: Truly, well, we are so glad to be here celebrating
Speaker 2: with you in this moment from the past. While you're
Speaker 2: listening to this episode WASHERR Gosh, speaking of anniversaries, guys,
Speaker 2: we should at least mention it here at the top
Speaker 2: of the show. The United States recently two days ago
Speaker 2: turned two hundred and fifty years. That's uh, it's pretty great, huh.
Speaker 3: Freedom to fifty baby, or America two.
Speaker 5: Fifty right, Well, that's the one as intended. Yes, maybe
Speaker 5: we walked through that just briefly. With the deal was
Speaker 5: that that was a taxpayer funded initiative to do some
Speaker 5: festivities for the anniversary of America the two hundred and
Speaker 5: fiftieth birthday, and then Trump sort of did a little
Speaker 5: bit of a switcherroony on that and target started his
Speaker 5: own pack that was called Freedom to fifty that essentially
Speaker 5: subsumed the original much more bipartisan initiative and basically made
Speaker 5: it where all of the activities and festivities were kind
Speaker 5: of enriching him and his Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yes with Sessquininnial. I want to say, is the word
Speaker 3: that's probably the best thing to come from that celebration.
Speaker 3: Let me make sure I get the word right.
Speaker 2: Here, Okay, I would just say the one the one
Speaker 2: thing that really stood out to me, And there are a
Speaker 2: lot of things that stood out there we go they're
Speaker 2: worth mentioning. Just when it comes to that celebration, you
Speaker 2: talk about the weather, how you know nature itself didn't
Speaker 2: want the festivities to contult it. But just there was
Speaker 2: a singer on stage before Greenwood or you know that
Speaker 2: guy that sings that one song that he wrote that
Speaker 2: one time, I'm proud to be in America. Least we
Speaker 2: can sing. Before all that occurred, there's another singer out
Speaker 2: there just doing playing the hits, America's hits, and at
Speaker 2: one point he yelled to the audience mid song, let
Speaker 2: the President hear you, as though it was you know it.
Speaker 2: It reminded me a lot of this concept that there's
Speaker 2: some ruler behind the scenes that is listening and needs
Speaker 2: to hear your adorations or else, what are we doing this?
Speaker 3: For sure?
Speaker 2: Does one man needs to be built up so much
Speaker 2: because he can't handle not being built up.
Speaker 3: It reminded me very much of the Hunger Games young
Speaker 3: adult novels which were later adapted into a film series.
Speaker 3: And also Folks, just to beat the emails here, I
Speaker 3: was incorrect. Transparency is important. It is not the Sesquis centennial.
Speaker 3: It is the semi quin centennial. That's two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty years. So that's the best. That's the best takeaway.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Now, how
Speaker 3: did we go from Let's see, we started talking about
Speaker 3: zoonotic disease. We went to July fourth.
Speaker 2: About infectious things, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And remember years back before the outbreak of the
Speaker 3: COVID nineteen pandemic, we did a lot of research on
Speaker 3: things like the rise of the superbug, and all of
Speaker 3: the research we looked into indicated pre COVID that a
Speaker 3: global pandemic was on the horizon was statistically inevitable. Now,
Speaker 3: this prediction was not based on any kind of insider information,
Speaker 3: no strange powers of deduction or weird Edgar Casey style prophecies.
Speaker 3: We just acknowledged that rising pollution, rising population centers, and
Speaker 3: density of populations antibiotic mass dosinge of livestock, bioweapon experiments.
Speaker 3: All these factors indicated something was going to go wrong
Speaker 3: and soon. So now two hundred and fifty years, in
Speaker 3: a few days after the foundation of the United States,
Speaker 3: we are called back to this line of inquiry. Folks.
Speaker 3: Those same experts are increasingly skittish. The people who tried
Speaker 3: to warn the world before COVID are now raising the
Speaker 3: same flags, making the same clarion calls because some of
Speaker 3: the warning signs that they clocked earlier long ago are
Speaker 3: back in play or were never resolved in the first place.
Speaker 3: So we're returning to doozy tonight, folks. What are the
Speaker 3: next pandemics and what do they mean for the future.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts, all right, just a brief thing,
Speaker 3: because we know this can be confusing. You have endemic diseases,
Speaker 3: you have disease epidemics, and then you have pandemics. So
Speaker 3: to understand pandemics, we have to understand and what we
Speaker 3: could call their little brother, the epidemic.
Speaker 2: What is an epidemic?
Speaker 5: Indeed, yes, it's wait a minute, so a pandemic.
Speaker 4: It crosses international.
Speaker 5: Borders, right, it's more of a worldwide concern. An epidemic
Speaker 5: maybe is just a little more not micro, but it's
Speaker 5: a little more contained than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. An epidemic is an outbreak of disease that's generally,
Speaker 3: as you said, going to be confined to a single
Speaker 3: part of an area, like a single country or maybe
Speaker 3: even a single population, and it spreads rapidly within a
Speaker 3: short period of time. So an endemic is a disease
Speaker 3: that is historically consistently present, but it's linked to a
Speaker 3: particular region like malaria is the most famous example of
Speaker 3: an endemic disease, right, And epidemic is when a disease
Speaker 3: has a rapid increase in infection in that specific area.
Speaker 3: And like you were saying, a pandemic is sort of
Speaker 3: our final boss. It is a disease with exponential growth.
Speaker 3: The difference all comes down to the rate of spread
Speaker 3: rather than to the severity of the specific disease. And
Speaker 3: so if it goes on a J curve and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, this thing that used to only happen
Speaker 3: in a specific part of Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia
Speaker 3: or South America, all of a sudden it becomes an
Speaker 3: international lethal superstar, and a J curve that's a pandemic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's particularly troubling when one of these begins to
Speaker 2: rise in a place that has a lot of transportation,
Speaker 2: specifically air and ship like boat transportation, where you've got
Speaker 2: folks lots and lots of folks traveling internationally. And then
Speaker 2: I mean, that's exactly what happened with the COVID outbreak.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and epidemics, by the way, you'll hear that phrase
Speaker 3: thrown around a lot in popular news. It can take
Speaker 3: all kinds of forms an epidemic. It occurs through a
Speaker 3: variety of factors. They don't always have to be this
Speaker 3: interesting because an epidemic doesn't always have to describe an
Speaker 3: infectious disease. That's why you read about stuff like a
Speaker 3: heart disease epidemic, right, or an obesity epidemic. All that
Speaker 3: means in that usage is that more people than the
Speaker 3: historical average are contracting a condition at a faster rate
Speaker 3: than expected, and we got to keep an eye on it.
Speaker 3: Health experts take epidemics so seriously because it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like if you have a problem in your car
Speaker 3: and you don't address it, it becomes a bigger problem
Speaker 3: down the road. That's why you know. That's why Stephen
Speaker 3: King wrote an awesome novel about a news reign of influenza.
Speaker 3: That's an that was an epidemic that became a pandemic.
Speaker 2: It's interesting how that word gets thrown around in pop culture,
Speaker 2: specifically with comedians. I like, do a quick Google search
Speaker 2: for Bill Burr epidemic and just see what you come
Speaker 2: up with. It's interesting how that term is used to
Speaker 2: describe the quick transmission of something that has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with being sick or you know, microbes or viruses.
Speaker 3: And it's never it's actually, maybe we can flip the
Speaker 3: script here. Epidemic is is always going to have an
Speaker 3: English and negative common connotation. Nobody is like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: we had an epidemic of fun.
Speaker 5: Maybe you know it's I don't mind that turn of phrase, though,
Speaker 5: I would appreciate that as someone word to trot that out. Guys,
Speaker 5: this is an epidemic of fun.
Speaker 4: Reclaim the word, guys, reclaim epidemic script.
Speaker 2: We have an epidemic of red cards being overturned by administration. Yo.
Speaker 4: That's something maybe we reserve for strange news.
Speaker 5: But when does it end, guys in the influence.
Speaker 3: An epidemic of corruption.
Speaker 4: That's what we can say.
Speaker 5: It's not even controversial, not even I'm sorry, it's just
Speaker 5: it's a great pandemic now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we also know pandemics. Once you get to
Speaker 3: that final boss level, a pandemic is often not going
Speaker 3: to be just one big push like the end of
Speaker 3: a Dragon Ball Z episode. It's going to be something
Speaker 3: that occurs with frequency in ways. Pandemics have a very
Speaker 3: nasty habit of spreading. Like all of us who are
Speaker 3: live post COVID nineteen lockdown, Congratulations, We're glad you're here,
Speaker 3: Thanks for tuning in. You know full well that the
Speaker 3: spread of a disease can appear to temporarily EBB, right,
Speaker 3: and then it's followed by another period of high infection,
Speaker 3: often driven by by people relaxing too much, or by god,
Speaker 3: infection mutating and evolving.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry the way you put that then has made
Speaker 4: me chuckle. A epidemic of relaxation.
Speaker 3: We had a.
Speaker 2: But Ben, you're still right. I'm just on that thinking
Speaker 2: about the mutation of something like a virus, and how
Speaker 2: many times through that, you know, from twenty nineteen all
Speaker 2: the way up until today when we see all the
Speaker 2: different variations, right, the news often talks about a variant.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you'll hear subclade as a word that gets thrown around,
Speaker 2: just a highly mutated version of the same thing. It's
Speaker 2: just now got different parts of it that infect people
Speaker 2: more effectively often or are more severe in the symptoms
Speaker 2: that they cause. And you, guys, remember earlier this year
Speaker 2: we heard a lot on the news about super flu.
Speaker 2: Remember this, yes, and just how that was so not
Speaker 2: played up. It was still dangerous, right, dangerous because it
Speaker 2: was infecting people more quickly and more effectively than other
Speaker 2: strains of the same flu with H three and two
Speaker 2: one of the flus, but it was talked about. My
Speaker 2: point I'm getting to here when we're talking about these
Speaker 2: mutations and how dangerous that little thing can be as
Speaker 2: it's going from host to host to host and changing
Speaker 2: the news often, I would say, plays on people's fear.
Speaker 2: And I wonder how much of that is just the
Speaker 2: need for clicks, the need to be the first to
Speaker 2: the post, the need you know, is it all of that?
Speaker 2: Do you think, guys, or are we just are we
Speaker 2: relaxed as you're saying, Ben, are we in that that
Speaker 2: downturn of just being and feeling relaxed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's too quiet. Eye of the storm to changes.
Speaker 3: We create a strain.
Speaker 4: Accepted.
Speaker 3: I mean it's true, right, the avenue flow, and people
Speaker 3: are losing lives, they're losing their jobs when stuff like
Speaker 3: this happens. Check out our earlier episode about mirror Life
Speaker 3: where we talk about the quick pace of evolution, the
Speaker 3: very very tiny things, and that's I do agree with.
Speaker 2: You, Matt.
Speaker 3: I think we can all agree that there is a
Speaker 3: lot of fear mongering, especially as legitimate journalism erodes, continues
Speaker 3: to decay and be targeted, and the journalism we're left
Speaker 3: with often becomes increasingly performative, increasingly bred in circuses. So maybe, yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe they do want to be Promethean, be first to
Speaker 3: the post. At least we can tell you a little trick.
Speaker 3: Always check out the news articles, past the headlines and
Speaker 3: look for people who are specifically citing public health experts,
Speaker 3: not necessarily political higher right, which is fine, We're not
Speaker 3: casting inspersion on them. But if you have problems with
Speaker 3: like a government person say warning you about a disease,
Speaker 3: go check out the nerds in the ivy leagues. Go
Speaker 3: find out what this guy from Harvard is saying. About hauntavirus. Right,
Speaker 3: those are the people who should be headlined in the news.
Speaker 5: Well, and this came up in a recent I think
Speaker 5: it was Strange News or maybe it was a listener mail,
Speaker 5: because we had somebody write in about a particular news
Speaker 5: aggregating app and we got into our particular methods for
Speaker 5: finding the heart of stories. And at time that's increasingly
Speaker 5: kind of muddied by you know, negative rhetoric around the press,
Speaker 5: and also the fact there are some real problems with
Speaker 5: the press in terms of like trying to be the
Speaker 5: quickest to market with a story and and doing so
Speaker 5: sort of cutting corners and not having the same level
Speaker 5: of journalistic ethics that maybe once apply when things were
Speaker 5: more print driven. So you really do just have to
Speaker 5: to your point. But I think the thing that you
Speaker 5: brought to that conversation was read a study. Even if
Speaker 5: you can't get the whole thing, you can get so
Speaker 5: much information just by reading the abstract, the little you know,
Speaker 5: the before the fold kind of summary of an academic
Speaker 5: or scientific study, and those things are out there and
Speaker 5: to your point as well, you can even email researchers
Speaker 5: and they love to hear from you to get the
Speaker 5: full text, but more important now than ever to not
Speaker 5: just you know, believe what's what's put in front of you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, triangulate your sources always. This is also folks, This
Speaker 3: is part of this approach, is part of how we
Speaker 3: ended up befriending the world's foremost expert on underwater explosions.
Speaker 3: That is a true story, Doctor Rachel Big Spinach Lance.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, but a big Spinach.
Speaker 4: Herself dubbed nickname.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, Well, it's just such a good point, Ben
Speaker 2: talking about the politicization of science and institutions that represent
Speaker 2: science that's supposed to be at the cutting edge and
Speaker 2: supposed to be on the front lines of protecting people,
Speaker 2: like at the Centers for Disease Control, the Institute of
Speaker 2: Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and National Institutes of Health. How
Speaker 2: often and a new administration can come in in the
Speaker 2: US and put a figurehead of sorts at the at
Speaker 2: the top of one of these organizations that is really
Speaker 2: more of a liaison between that organization and the administration.
Speaker 2: Often not always. Sometimes they're the best at the game
Speaker 2: and they're there, they're doing their thing. Sometimes it's both.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's just somebody who's kind of putting you know,
Speaker 2: some policies forward and using these organizations to do it.
Speaker 2: It's tough to know where you are right in that
Speaker 2: in that spectrum of are we actually getting the best
Speaker 2: information here or are we being told things that somebody
Speaker 2: wants us to hear. It's a scary position to be
Speaker 2: in as a passive interpreter of the news, Like we
Speaker 2: all are right, we're all just doing that thing, trying
Speaker 2: to figure out and triangulate. I would just say, right now,
Speaker 2: when we look out as we're going to do as
Speaker 2: we're doing right now in this episode, looking out at
Speaker 2: the potentials that are coming our way, the viruses, the
Speaker 2: iicky things that might get inside our bodies, it is
Speaker 2: tough to trust anybody right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's tough to verify in a lot of ways,
Speaker 3: right I mean, Reagan was not the best actor, not
Speaker 3: the best president. But trust but verify is is a
Speaker 3: pretty interesting philosophical perspective.
Speaker 5: I think we dropped that all the time, and Matt
Speaker 5: dare we say difficult but also unwise.
Speaker 4: To trust anyone?
Speaker 5: And I hate to be that guy or that that's
Speaker 5: like sort of our mantra here on the show is
Speaker 5: trust no one. But I mean people are there are
Speaker 5: some bad actors out there that are trying to, you know,
Speaker 5: take control of the narrative. And it's really really important
Speaker 5: now more than ever to be wise to that. So
Speaker 5: don't go living your life in fear thinking everyone's trying
Speaker 5: to do you harm. But just keep your eyes open.
Speaker 5: Trust but verify, I think is the way, right.
Speaker 3: And remember, no one thinks they're the bad guy, which.
Speaker 5: Makes it even more dangerous, right because they're doing God's
Speaker 5: work right, right, especially.
Speaker 2: The guy that's got the you know, the microphone connected
Speaker 2: up to to your thing, going oh what did they say?
Speaker 2: What are they saying? Oh God, what did they say?
Speaker 3: Everybody?
Speaker 2: But what I'm saying is that the person, the perhaps
Speaker 2: like creepiest person in all of this is the one
Speaker 2: that's listening and trying to verify, right, Which is scary
Speaker 2: because that that ends up being the person that we
Speaker 2: have to trust, is the person that is checking on
Speaker 2: everybody else because they're terrified of what everybody else might
Speaker 2: be doing. It's it's a messed up situation. It feels
Speaker 2: very similar to me, guys, when I'm looking out of
Speaker 2: the landscape of all of these things, like having a
Speaker 2: parental guardian or someone in your family that is supposed
Speaker 2: to be looking out for you right as a child
Speaker 2: or something, but they've got maybe a medical condition or
Speaker 2: I'm imagining bipolar or a substance abuse problem, where you
Speaker 2: never know if you're going to get the good version
Speaker 2: of dad or mom or like the really really bad version.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the shadow version.
Speaker 2: They look the same, they sound the same. When we're
Speaker 2: talking about looking at a news article, right, or something
Speaker 2: coming from one of these official organizations. It looks the same,
Speaker 2: it sounds the same, but you have no idea if
Speaker 2: it's going to be the good or the bad version.
Speaker 3: And we also know that a lot of people didn't
Speaker 3: listen to the experts historically. I don't know if it's
Speaker 3: specifically a US thing. I think now it's more revalent
Speaker 3: across the world. But we know that until COVID nineteen
Speaker 3: hit in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, right until COVID nineteen hit,
Speaker 3: a lot of people were not listening to the boffins right.
Speaker 3: They were to breathless headlines, and they were listening to
Speaker 3: what told them their identity and pre existing beliefs were correct.
Speaker 3: So in the years that followed, pretty much every aspect
Speaker 3: of the outbreak was heavily weaponized, like you were saying earlier, Matt,
Speaker 3: for one reason or another, it absolutely made the situation worse.
Speaker 3: People were looking for trusted sources, right, but their framework
Speaker 3: had been so warped and messed with, so fuxed with
Speaker 3: that it was difficult for them to find those sources.
Speaker 3: And countries then already were not booed up with each other, China, Russia,
Speaker 3: and the US in particular, they went crazy blaming each other.
Speaker 3: And even now we're recording again on July sixth, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty six, a lot of scientists are still debating the
Speaker 3: origin story of COVID, and a lot of the politicians
Speaker 3: are expressly not helping solve the mystery because they're trying
Speaker 3: to score points with their constituents.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and as we learned earlier on this show,
Speaker 2: the folks at the Nai D sure don't want you
Speaker 2: to know they were sponsoring gain of function research in
Speaker 2: a little city called Wuhan in China, specifically about coronaviruses.
Speaker 2: They do not want you to know that or think
Speaker 2: about that, right, But.
Speaker 3: We do check out our multiple episodes on that. So
Speaker 3: it's funny because we often when we're doing this as
Speaker 3: a peep behind the curtain. I'm looking over here at
Speaker 3: our research. We often put in our related episodes from
Speaker 3: the past in case we need to refer back to them.
Speaker 3: And guys, did you know that we have seven coronavirus episodes?
Speaker 4: Unfortunately a bit of a hot topic.
Speaker 3: It was a bit of a It was a bit
Speaker 3: of a time, and we know that we were recording
Speaker 3: a lot of those during the height of the COVID lockdowns.
Speaker 3: The same first time we did this, right, yeah, crap
Speaker 3: the city. Yep, the first time we went into remote recording,
Speaker 3: which has normalized for us today. While we were recording
Speaker 3: these things, while everybody was dealing with the COVID lockdowns
Speaker 3: and all the fallout, those same scientists that have been
Speaker 3: telling the world to watch out for something like COVID,
Speaker 3: they said, Okay, maybe now you'll take us seriously and
Speaker 3: know that we're not the kids who cried wolf. There
Speaker 3: is another pandemic or series of pandemics inevitably on the horizon.
Speaker 3: Everybody is hoping that we could take the lessons learned
Speaker 3: from COVID nineteen and apply them towards monitoring these things.
Speaker 3: We will call emergent threats and there are a lot
Speaker 3: of them. It was funny. I think a lot of
Speaker 3: us saw this. About six months ago, the founder of Microsoft,
Speaker 3: Bill Gates, had an in depth interview where he estimated
Speaker 3: there's a ten to fifteen percent chance of a natural
Speaker 3: pandemic urging within the next four years. A lot of
Speaker 3: us are going to say, Bill Gates, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well but you know ebstin files.
Speaker 5: But also Bill Gates got to give him maybe a
Speaker 5: little credit where credit is due of some of the
Speaker 5: billionaire gazillionaires. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done
Speaker 5: good work with you know, doing research into infectious diseases.
Speaker 4: In other countries and other parts.
Speaker 5: Of the world. So he definitely was coming at that
Speaker 5: information from a place of you know, of research, like
Speaker 5: a research place, you know.
Speaker 3: Because he doesn't he's not an expert himself.
Speaker 5: No, but he's surrounded by them and they've been doing
Speaker 5: this work. I'm not trying to say he's one of
Speaker 5: the guys, but I'm just saying it was.
Speaker 4: Accurate the information in this particular discussion.
Speaker 3: I agree with you, Yes, yeah, I agree with you. There.
Speaker 3: He hired some of the best and brightest on earth
Speaker 3: to fight.
Speaker 5: This, but wasn't there even an argument too that him
Speaker 5: coming out with that information in the way he did
Speaker 5: also in some ways represented a kind of agenda. I
Speaker 5: want to say that we talked about this, that there
Speaker 5: was something to do with the way he came out
Speaker 5: with that information that in and of itself had some
Speaker 5: sort of nefarious undertone.
Speaker 2: Well, we'd know why people in general hold a distrust
Speaker 2: for somebody like Bill Gates because of the money and
Speaker 2: power one person can wield. Right. That doesn't mean Bill
Speaker 2: Gates is doing the conspiratorial things that are alleged on
Speaker 2: forums that you'll find, but it does mean that, I think, guys,
Speaker 2: we can fully understand why people are have a hard
Speaker 2: time fully trusting him, or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
Speaker 2: or something like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which
Speaker 2: is one of the things that Bill and Melinda Gates
Speaker 2: and their foundation founded along with the World Economic Forum
Speaker 2: in Davos, Switzerland. Because a lot of us associate some
Speaker 2: of that stuff with the bigger government thing, right, that
Speaker 2: the thing that would be labeled illuminati, right, something that
Speaker 2: is done by billionaires, potentially for billionaires, But on the
Speaker 2: face of it, it looks like philanthropy or you know,
Speaker 2: good works to help humanity.
Speaker 3: Right, like a hidden I think that's what you're saying, though,
Speaker 3: like a possible hidden financial That's what I'm getting.
Speaker 5: It was something to do with as well. They were
Speaker 5: like these events two oh one modeling exercises that sort
Speaker 5: of stemmed from some of those talks that there was
Speaker 5: some conspiratorial chatter around. But it's a little hazy for me.
Speaker 5: But that's the problem, right, Like we're literally saying, Okay,
Speaker 5: good on you Bill Gates for you know, predicting this
Speaker 5: stuff and for doing this work. But then immediately like
Speaker 5: what did I just say? Of course he's doing it
Speaker 5: for the wrong.
Speaker 3: Reasons, right, And sometimes doing the right things for the
Speaker 3: wrong reasons still creates the same effect. Like he has
Speaker 3: the Gates Foundation, the Gates Foundation posts the divorce right,
Speaker 3: the Gates Foundation has hired again some of the best
Speaker 3: and brightest minds in the field of pathology, public health,
Speaker 3: all related disciplines. And when he say, when Gates is
Speaker 3: saying a ten to fifteen percent chance of an outbreak,
Speaker 3: he's really quoting all those people he paid to do
Speaker 3: mind breaking research, And yeah, ten to fifteen percent doesn't
Speaker 3: sound like much, but we have to remember if another
Speaker 3: pandemic occurs, and statistically it will, that small percentage equates
Speaker 3: to hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of fatalities. People can't
Speaker 3: agree on the specifics, but they all have inside and
Speaker 3: outside the Gates Foundation. Pretty much everybody on the planet
Speaker 3: who is qualified to look into this returns to one damning,
Speaker 3: terrifying consensus. When this thing emerges, whatever it may be,
Speaker 3: humanity will be thoroughly unprepared. It reminded me of the
Speaker 3: Cohen Brothers film. I think it's Cohen Brothers. Oh brother,
Speaker 3: where art thou? Where?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 3: Ulysses? Everett McGill keeps saying, is you is or.
Speaker 4: Is you ain't? My constituency?
Speaker 3: He keeps saying Ulysses. Everett McGill keeps saying, we're in
Speaker 3: a tight spot.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Oh yeah, I also tight spot. I made it
Speaker 4: infinitely quotable that movie.
Speaker 3: I wonder if he kept saying it because he forgot
Speaker 3: the lines in the script, because like, there's a run
Speaker 3: you guys remember where he just someone's like, oh blah
Speaker 3: blah blah, new information for the story dialogue, and he's.
Speaker 5: Like, we're in a tight spots, very funny and also
Speaker 5: people for people kind of forget that that was That
Speaker 5: was the odyssey is what that movie is sort of
Speaker 5: based on.
Speaker 4: Very much, very interested to see it.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 5: All this kerfuffle about Chris Nolan's honesty, we should talk
Speaker 5: about that on Strange News this week too, But.
Speaker 2: I still going to see it.
Speaker 4: I'm with you, I'm with you.
Speaker 3: I will see it for sure.
Speaker 2: Bigger vision. Yeah, serious question. Do you think that ten
Speaker 2: to fifteen percent, as quoted by the Gates Foundation as
Speaker 2: a potential new pandemic? Do you think that is based
Speaker 2: on zoo the chances of a new zoanotic form of
Speaker 2: a disease we're aware of, or do you think that's
Speaker 2: taking into account all of the diseases that are being
Speaker 2: manufactured in the GAINO function research in labs, or the
Speaker 2: chances of a leak from one of these supposedly secure facilities.
Speaker 2: I do wonder that ten fifteen percent chance is just
Speaker 2: like the scientific version of hey, one of these might
Speaker 2: mutate enough to then jump to humans or attend a
Speaker 2: fifteen percent chance that there's another mess up at a lab.
Speaker 3: Right, whether it's based on abstract modeling or whether it's
Speaker 3: based on knowledge of current applied by a weaponry research really.
Speaker 5: Quickly, guys, I just found a really fascinating term. I
Speaker 5: was trying to figure out what I was thinking about
Speaker 5: with this gate stuff and any potential criticisms philanthro capitalism
Speaker 5: gonna leave that there just.
Speaker 3: Perfect well or learning so many new words today, I
Speaker 3: couldn't be more excited. And that is a question because
Speaker 3: as we're going to see that, that's a great question
Speaker 3: that ten to fifteen percent, what's the methodology? How is
Speaker 3: it derived? The reason that's such a great question is
Speaker 3: because there is a lot of stuff they don't want
Speaker 3: you to know about gain of function research. Like you've
Speaker 3: been saying, Matt, we also know that climate change is
Speaker 3: fundamentally altering all the old checks and balances can't recommend
Speaker 3: our mirror life episode enough. Geopolitical cooperation, forget about it.
Speaker 3: That stuff is plummeting, income inequalities on the rise. Everything
Speaker 3: that is bad for humanity is kind of happening to
Speaker 3: some degree. And on the flip side, all of those
Speaker 3: things that are bad for the human animals are great
Speaker 3: for the organisms that create infectious disease, a new pandemic
Speaker 3: on the way. We have a question what will cause
Speaker 3: this pandemic? Who would our culprit be so more bad news?
Speaker 3: Get this, fellow conspiracy realist. There's way more than what.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's so many.
Speaker 3: There's so many. It's an embarrassment of riches.
Speaker 4: And definitely an embarrassment we have.
Speaker 3: We have an ad break ahead, and we'll dive into it.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. It's just like the usual suspect. Sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm throwing so many pop culture references, guys, but.
Speaker 4: You never apologize for that.
Speaker 2: I mean, these are the best I know.
Speaker 4: I'm a fan personally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, carry on, I mean think of like your favorite
Speaker 3: Who Done It? Mystery novels? All right, we have a
Speaker 3: straight up rogues gallery of diseases that could potentially go worldwide,
Speaker 3: either through human tinkering, environmental factors, socio political factors, or
Speaker 3: just plain old force hack of evolution. They're all waiting
Speaker 3: for just the right recipe of bad luck to run
Speaker 3: wide rife across the planet. Big thanks to Frank Wilharan
Speaker 3: for teaching us the word wide.
Speaker 2: Rife, not matt rife.
Speaker 4: No, I think he learned that from the Brits, though,
Speaker 4: to be focus, he.
Speaker 3: Did learn it from the Big thanks to our British
Speaker 3: cousins as well, and good luck to Matt Rife on
Speaker 3: purchasing the the museum. I'm trying to remember the name
Speaker 3: of the museum, but the Lorraine Ed and Lorden Ed
Speaker 3: and Lorraine Warren.
Speaker 4: Oh, right with the doll.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, Ben, do you is there a place people
Speaker 2: can go to see a generalized list of some of
Speaker 2: the things we're going to talk about. I've found one
Speaker 2: on that cep I dot net, the Coalition for Epidemic
Speaker 2: Preparedness Innovations. They kind of list them off and you
Speaker 2: can dig deep or if you want to, in each
Speaker 2: one individually if you're trying to support your own research.
Speaker 2: There's so much that we're going to get into here,
Speaker 2: it gets it gets quite confusing, Ben and Nol For
Speaker 2: me personally, as I'm thinking about some of these different viruses,
Speaker 2: because they all do seem to be they seem more
Speaker 2: related in my head than they are because they are
Speaker 2: occurring across the world in different places, in different pockets.
Speaker 2: Right as we're talking about the potential endemics or just
Speaker 2: a potential you know, outbreak, a small outbreak in one area,
Speaker 2: Especially when we get into things like a bola and chicken.
Speaker 2: I don't even know how to say it, chicken gunya.
Speaker 2: Some of these things are a little more isolated, but
Speaker 2: then some of them really are spreading pretty quickly or
Speaker 2: more widely, but not in a pandemic way.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, that's a great question, Matt. We highly
Speaker 3: recommend checking out the World Health Organization aside from, you know,
Speaker 3: some of the conspiratory thoughts we've entertained about this outfit
Speaker 3: in the past. For years, they have kept a list
Speaker 3: of viruses and bacteria with the potential to metastasize into
Speaker 3: pandemic level threats. Some of these old beans, right, Some
Speaker 3: of these you probably have never heard of unless you're
Speaker 3: unlucky enough to be infected, and some have gained new
Speaker 3: horrifying relevance in just like the past few years or
Speaker 3: even the past few months. Shout out to Marburg. We
Speaker 3: got to get to that one. But if we want
Speaker 3: to blaze through some real quickly. Nepa virus. I hate
Speaker 3: how it sounds like a kawhi right yeah, yeah, Oh,
Speaker 3: go to McDonald's and get your happy meal. It comes
Speaker 3: with a Nepa virus.
Speaker 2: I genuinely don't know if that's how I've been pronouncing
Speaker 2: it too, Ben. I do wonder if it is differently pronounced,
Speaker 2: because it is it. I can't remember if it's China based.
Speaker 2: I know it's on the Asian continent, but if if
Speaker 2: it's like a knee paw or you know, just a
Speaker 2: different nipa. Yeah, yeah, it's such a different sound that
Speaker 2: you can make. Right.
Speaker 3: If it's total We're just saying nepa virus because it's
Speaker 3: a real way to say. That's what it looks like.
Speaker 3: It's an iph n iPAH and it is as you
Speaker 3: were saying, Matt. It is by far most prevalent in
Speaker 3: parts of the Asian continent, and outbreaks of this virus
Speaker 3: occur pretty much every year on that continent. They barely
Speaker 3: make Western news. It is eunatic. It can be carried
Speaker 3: by fruit, bats, cats, dogs, horses, pigs, and any of
Speaker 3: them can give it to a human organism. This scary
Speaker 3: part is it has a forty to seventy five percent
Speaker 3: fatality rate for humans soon.
Speaker 2: It's really scary. That's scary.
Speaker 3: Every year, the almost every year, virtually every year this
Speaker 3: is happening, and people are through like, these are not
Speaker 3: bad people, these are innocent people. They can track this
Speaker 3: virus and they have a forty chance of die in
Speaker 3: the best of us.
Speaker 2: Well, it's in the same family as measles and mumps,
Speaker 2: which if you know you know about those things where
Speaker 2: you're actually getting the physical manifestation on your skin of
Speaker 2: the thing that's also going to affect you know, the rest.
Speaker 5: Of your body is also vaguely plaguelike in the whole,
Speaker 5: and it's been that also means it's been there for
Speaker 5: a while, right when you start exhibiting on the skin,
Speaker 5: which also you know, the best way to compare it is,
Speaker 5: or a good way to compare it is the old
Speaker 5: adage about seeing roaches in your house.
Speaker 3: If you see one roach in your house, they've been
Speaker 3: around for a hot they've been around. That means they're
Speaker 3: a lot more.
Speaker 2: Then, think about how scary this is because it can
Speaker 2: jump from all of these different species, right, canines, felines, horses,
Speaker 2: pigs like anti hue umans, And every time there's that jump,
Speaker 2: that's where it gets really scary, right guys. I mean
Speaker 2: maybe I'm wrong, but I think that's where it gets
Speaker 2: the most scary because a jump to another species means
Speaker 2: some new mutations like heavily mutated to be able to
Speaker 2: jump to a new species and infect that species.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, it always seems actly a real indicator that things
Speaker 5: are about to go pear shaped.
Speaker 2: Well when you're talking about the age of it, right
Speaker 2: in showing those symptoms and then being able to jump
Speaker 2: to that many species. That's why that one is I'm
Speaker 2: assuming guys, that's one of the reasons's at the top
Speaker 2: of our list because all it takes is a few
Speaker 2: more changes in that thing, and now it affects you
Speaker 2: as a human in a different way, and it's way
Speaker 2: worse than forty to seventy five percent.
Speaker 3: Rtality, and it can evolve more approach vectors as well, right,
Speaker 3: so then it maybe one day evolution says, uh, we're
Speaker 3: a little NEPA virus. You tired of hopping around with
Speaker 3: cats and dogs, You should get into birds, and then
Speaker 3: you know, then there's a whole nerds, what fly? Birds
Speaker 3: what fly? And birds which cast away?
Speaker 2: Genuinely, guys, doesn't that make it one of the most
Speaker 2: terrifying ones on here, because that means nepavirus is probably
Speaker 2: target number one, if not one, through three of gain
Speaker 2: of function research to come up with vaccines to fight
Speaker 2: against it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very fatile. Yeah, And that's that's a great point, Matt,
Speaker 3: because there are some what we call monoclonal antibiotic or
Speaker 3: antibody treatments, but as of yet, as we're recording, there
Speaker 3: is no known vaccine for this infection at all. So
Speaker 3: if you if you snag an infection of the cutes
Speaker 3: named nepavirus, and we don't want to make too much
Speaker 3: light of it, because a ton of people have died
Speaker 3: from this. If you snag it an infection, this is real, Jesus,
Speaker 3: take the wheel stuff. You are going to become religious quickly.
Speaker 3: And the best way to combat it, since there's not
Speaker 3: a vaccine, is to try to avoid all those transmission
Speaker 3: vectors we named like stay away from bats. Not to
Speaker 3: sound anti bat, uh. You can't eat fruit that fruit
Speaker 3: bats may have nibbled on. You have to be careful
Speaker 3: drinking broad juice in case an infected bat fed upon
Speaker 3: that fruit before it became part of your juice. And also,
Speaker 3: remember how washing groceries was kind of propagandistic panic during COVID.
Speaker 3: You have to do that with NEPA. You have to
Speaker 3: wash the fruit, you should probably peel it. Actually, maybe
Speaker 3: just go light on the fruit.
Speaker 5: This is not medical advice, no, but I mean fruit
Speaker 5: is Ultimately it's a lot of sugar.
Speaker 4: You gotta be careful. Don't don't overdo it.
Speaker 6: Don't over pine Apple is amazing distances vegetable, the only
Speaker 6: edible from meliad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's fair. That is fascinating. But I don't know
Speaker 4: how it's good for your gun. But yeah, I hear you. No,
Speaker 4: you're right, you're right, You're right.
Speaker 3: And there's some other benefits to pineapple.
Speaker 4: Oh, I've heard some some, Yeah, ok.
Speaker 3: Some potentially.
Speaker 2: Pineapple is one of the best things ever created.
Speaker 4: It's so good.
Speaker 5: I know. That really makes you look like you like
Speaker 5: you're you're very successful in posh carry around a pineapple,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. Yeah, we have a whole episode on
Speaker 3: ridiculous history.
Speaker 4: Pineapple rentals.
Speaker 3: Yes about pineapple rentals. Do check it out. Do check
Speaker 3: it out. Wash your hands, wash your fruit, and watch
Speaker 3: out for this is an interesting name, the crimean congo
Speaker 3: hemorrhagic fever.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't like the sound of that.
Speaker 5: Nothing kawai about that one, guys, not at all hemorrhagic.
Speaker 5: I assume that means it causes one to hemorrhage.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yeah, and this this spreads from another insidious
Speaker 3: fector from uh, one of the great assholes of nature,
Speaker 3: a tick, or in a livestock that's been infected by
Speaker 3: again one of the great a assholes of nature.
Speaker 2: The tick worse second only to the mosquito.
Speaker 3: Second to the mosquito. Yeah, but I bet they hang out,
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 5: But the tick is the silent killer though. You know,
Speaker 5: you catch a tick in some tall grass, you don't
Speaker 5: even know it's there. Mosquito buzzes around and bites you.
Speaker 5: You kind of know what happened at the very least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good point. Also, we should do an
Speaker 3: episode on lime disease.
Speaker 5: I was about to say, these days, at least in
Speaker 5: the States, you're a lot less likely to contract malaria
Speaker 5: from a mosquito bite than you are a lime disease
Speaker 5: from a secret tick hangaround.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another I would call that a silent epidemic
Speaker 3: in the States right now, totally. Oh, we know that
Speaker 3: to get creman congo you have to come in close
Speaker 3: contact with blood or other bodily fluids from a person
Speaker 3: who was infected earlier. So as ever, again not medical advice.
Speaker 3: These are just your pals on stuff they don't want
Speaker 3: you to know. Giving you an adage as ever, don't
Speaker 3: put your hands in other people's wounds if you could
Speaker 3: help it, and do your best not to let somebody
Speaker 3: spit in your mouth.
Speaker 4: Okay, rules to live by pretty good.
Speaker 3: Not to yock anybody's album, but that's basic day one stuff, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But these kinds of diseases are terrifying because if
Speaker 2: you're if you have a loved one, let's say, a child,
Speaker 2: a spouse, you know someone in your immediate family that
Speaker 2: has contracted something like this, especially when you're not aware
Speaker 2: that they've contracted this yet, you are going to be
Speaker 2: around these people doing things if it's your spouse. My god,
Speaker 2: we humans do weird things to each other that involve
Speaker 2: all kinds of things and mouths and other parts of
Speaker 2: our bodies. And if you don't know, you're you know
Speaker 2: someone is infected yet. That's why this kind of stuff
Speaker 2: can spread, right, And we also we learned about funerary
Speaker 2: rites in a couple of places where we were talking
Speaker 2: about a bull while back. Just the absolutely innocent ways
Speaker 2: that human beings end up spreading disease like this, just
Speaker 2: because of close personal relationships.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also because of socio religious requirements, there's stuff
Speaker 3: that you can't not do and some funereal rights. And
Speaker 3: I love that point, Matt. We also know that Crimean
Speaker 3: Congo has a ten to forty percent fatality rate. That's
Speaker 3: a wide variation and a lot of it is due
Speaker 3: to lack of public health institutions and support. So this
Speaker 3: could be a solvable problem. It's endemic, like we said,
Speaker 3: it occurs regularly throughout parts of Africa, the Balkans, Middle
Speaker 3: East Asia. You don't hear a ton about it in
Speaker 3: Western news just yet. It's gross though. It does serious
Speaker 3: damage to your organs, your cardiovascular system, and it includes
Speaker 3: a lot of heavy bleeding. And this is a little conspiratorial. Well,
Speaker 3: I have spent too much time on it, but I
Speaker 3: love your take. Guys. There is technically a vaccine for
Speaker 3: this infection. However, that vaccine only exists in Bulgaria. It's
Speaker 3: the only place that exists. There's no peer reviewed research
Speaker 3: on it that we could find, and it is not
Speaker 3: legal to be used anywhere else but Bulgaria. What do
Speaker 3: you guys think about that?
Speaker 4: Is it faith?
Speaker 3: Is it propaganda?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, how could you make something like that and
Speaker 3: not give it to the world.
Speaker 5: So I've been watching I think I mentioned off air
Speaker 5: the West Wing a lot as sort of a remedy
Speaker 5: to some of the craziness going on in.
Speaker 4: Our political atmosphere.
Speaker 5: And there's an episode that just happened where there was
Speaker 5: discussions with the President of Kenya, I believe, about the
Speaker 5: AIDS epidemic that was going on there at the time,
Speaker 5: at the table with all these pharmaceutical CEOs and this
Speaker 5: whole you know, discussion around how why are we not
Speaker 5: providing affordable AIDS medication to you know, this country whose
Speaker 5: citizens are literally dying. I believe the number was something
Speaker 5: around thirty five to forty percent of citizens of the
Speaker 5: country were infected with HIV. And it just that that
Speaker 5: reminds me of what you're talking about here, and just
Speaker 5: the whole like business of pandemics, the business of infection,
Speaker 5: and how there could be things that could save people's lives.
Speaker 5: Because of politics and you know, trade agreements, et cetera,
Speaker 5: they might not be made available or it might not
Speaker 5: be you know, tenable to literally save human lives.
Speaker 3: I like that sort of phrase. Noal and terrifying the
Speaker 3: business of disease, the business of infections.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, because as we learned, the
Speaker 2: vaccines are a major they could they could be very
Speaker 2: low for organizations as we saw, especially when a government
Speaker 2: is buying them, or governments across the globe start buying
Speaker 2: their developing their own. This thing that we're talking about, Ben,
Speaker 2: this is a I'm not going to say it, right
Speaker 2: philo philo viruses like the hemorrhagic fever ones like ubola.
Speaker 2: This is in that same like range, Rightah, exactly, And
Speaker 2: there there is a huge vaccine library for various strains
Speaker 2: and forms of these types of fevers, hemorrhagic fevers that
Speaker 2: exist out there. It is strange that this one would
Speaker 2: have a singular country that is developed one and they're
Speaker 2: holding it close. I do. I do wonder if it's
Speaker 2: just is it too early? Is this one of those
Speaker 2: that is pretty recently created. I guess that's the big question.
Speaker 2: Because it's recently created, then these other countries have to
Speaker 2: get a hold of vaccine, you know, test it enough
Speaker 2: to then get it approved by whatever bodies are out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hopefully that is the case. And it's it's strange
Speaker 3: that it's always a question we'd love to hear your
Speaker 3: thoughts on that as well. Folks. We'll run through a
Speaker 3: couple quick ones maybe before we get to the big
Speaker 3: Daddy's loss of fever. Nothing to do with mango LASSI
Speaker 3: carried via rats primarily a couple of Yeah, it's another
Speaker 3: one endemic to parts of West Africa, so it keeps.
Speaker 3: Recurring fatality rate is comparatively low, still terrible, one to
Speaker 3: fifteen percent, especially deadly for pregnant people and fetuses in
Speaker 3: the third trimester. If you get infected or your parent
Speaker 3: gets infected while they're carrying you. If neither of you die,
Speaker 3: you as the child still run a very high risk
Speaker 3: of becoming death for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: Oh lord, Yeah, that's crazy that it would affect you
Speaker 2: that way, like specifically.
Speaker 3: Target specifically the hearing right. Yeah, it shows us that
Speaker 3: we have more to learn. Because rats harry the virus.
Speaker 3: We know that it spreads when you accidentally touch rat
Speaker 3: poop right or contaminated food. If you have direct being
Speaker 3: diplomatic about this, direct interactions with the bodily fluids of
Speaker 3: another person who has infected you will also contract it.
Speaker 3: There is no vaccine. The good news is that the
Speaker 3: primary transmission vector right now in its current form is
Speaker 3: that specific type of rat, which means that the disease
Speaker 3: in its current state is limited to areas where that
Speaker 3: particular rat already lives. So careful at the pet store.
Speaker 4: I think I might have a rat in the walls
Speaker 4: in my garage. Guys, I smelt it. I mean it's
Speaker 4: I think it's dead. But that's how it goes. You
Speaker 4: can't really find the dead thing, and hopefully the smell
Speaker 4: will subside, and a few.
Speaker 7: And a few I hate it for you, man that
Speaker 7: he it's the thing. That's what happened. That's exactly what happened.
Speaker 7: And I noticed that it wasn't just the run of
Speaker 7: the mill basement smell. Hopefully it didn't have any kind
Speaker 7: of infectious disease.
Speaker 2: Quick reminder, as we've been just kind of saying, just reminder,
Speaker 2: interacting with rat feces, mice feces, other rodent feces like
Speaker 2: that can be enough to get you infected. Remember pretty
Speaker 2: recently we talked about the andes virus or hantavirus. And
Speaker 2: notice that that's not on this list, and I don't
Speaker 2: think it is in this list at all, by the way,
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 3: Good news about hantavirus.
Speaker 5: I don't have any kind of vermin problem. This is
Speaker 5: not something it's just you know, when it gets.
Speaker 2: Hot, it only takes one baby.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying though.
Speaker 5: So just don't think that you're safe because you think
Speaker 5: don't have any kind of any kind of rat or
Speaker 5: mouse problem.
Speaker 4: They can find their way in, especially when it gets
Speaker 4: really really hot. That's crazy weather they had.
Speaker 3: The fecal contamination of the contamination may.
Speaker 4: Not be visible to you can be in there.
Speaker 3: You don't want to sound like fun police saying don't
Speaker 3: play with poop, But don't play with poop.
Speaker 5: Better get some slime, Yeah, get some gat Nickelodeon, Oh Japan,
Speaker 5: We've come so far in the slime game Cloud Slime,
Speaker 5: all kinds of fun slime opportunities.
Speaker 3: It's very popular with kids these days.
Speaker 4: Apparently you can make it yourself.
Speaker 5: All you need is Elmer's glue contact solution and some
Speaker 5: sort of scent or coloring.
Speaker 3: Oh and we have to shaving cream, sorry, shaving crease. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's do some science experiments, guys. We also have to
Speaker 3: mention h Like you said, Matt, mosquitoes are probably even
Speaker 3: bigger jerks than ticks when it comes to the spread
Speaker 3: of a lot of these infections, thinking specifically DJ Khaled
Speaker 3: voice another one, Rift Valley fever and zica. Remember when
Speaker 3: everybody was very worried about zica and then sort of
Speaker 3: forgot about it.
Speaker 4: That's kind of how these things go.
Speaker 3: Man, It's still it's still happening. Rift Valley has a
Speaker 3: fatality rate of less than one percent, but unfortunately eight
Speaker 3: to ten percent of people who get it, if they're infected,
Speaker 3: they don't die. They still get eye lesions, encephalitis, morrhagic fever,
Speaker 3: and there is a vaccine, but there's still a lot
Speaker 3: of testing to be done. And zica is not often fatal,
Speaker 3: but it deserves a mention here because it can cause
Speaker 3: some just truly unclean things miscarriages, still birth, heartbreaking birth
Speaker 3: defects like micro cephally. It's yeah, it's there's no no
Speaker 3: efficacious treatment, there's no vaccine. The only bright side is
Speaker 3: that zeka, like LASA, is limited to areas where those
Speaker 3: infected mosquitoes already live.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really scary just to add the list simply
Speaker 2: because it's non in here and is one you can
Speaker 2: look up is that chic and Gunya disease is another
Speaker 2: one of these mosquito born or uh what is it?
Speaker 2: What do we say? Biting flies? Like any insect that
Speaker 2: bites and potentially so yeah, get into your blood. Uh,
Speaker 2: it's just another really dangerous one. And it's one of
Speaker 2: it's Some of these just have such it's weird to me.
Speaker 2: Some of these, like the one we're mentioning Zeca, has
Speaker 2: such a low morbidity rate, But then some of them
Speaker 2: have crazy high morbidity rates but also don't seem to
Speaker 2: be spreading as much and don't seem to be as
Speaker 2: much of a problem. But every time one of these
Speaker 2: things gets on a list like this, it just raises
Speaker 2: the chances that there's some pharmaceutical company that wants to
Speaker 2: do that gaino function research. I'm sorry to keep doing
Speaker 2: the same thing as beating the dead horse here. It's
Speaker 2: the money wants to get in there and test these
Speaker 2: things and see how deadly they can make them so
Speaker 2: they can save the world one day when it's time
Speaker 2: to give out the vaccines, or at least convince you
Speaker 2: that you have to get around of like six vaccines.
Speaker 3: And our producer has also convinced us we got to
Speaker 3: take one more ad break. We're going a little long
Speaker 3: on this one, but we promise it's worth your time.
Speaker 4: Folks.
Speaker 3: We're about to introduce you to some of the big dogs.
Speaker 4: We're back.
Speaker 3: The list goes on and on. Marburg and Ebola are
Speaker 3: of particular interest when it comes to the next potential pandemics.
Speaker 3: These are probably the names you have heard most recently.
Speaker 3: Marburg and Ebola are kissing cousins. They're both very nasty
Speaker 3: customers get this. Marburg, which is named after where it
Speaker 3: was discovered. Officially, it can kill nine out of ten
Speaker 3: of the people it infects. Ebola is not much easier
Speaker 3: to deal with. Marboard technically has an estimated eighty eight
Speaker 3: percent mortality rate, which means this thing could well be
Speaker 3: a death sentence. It spreads through all sorts of animals.
Speaker 3: It's zoonotic as well Happy zuenosis day. It spreads rapidly,
Speaker 3: but the symptoms don't show up for a while. It's
Speaker 3: if you go to the vaccine Alliance well you'll see
Speaker 3: as symptoms include high fever, chills, muscle ache, vomiting. You
Speaker 3: get sick after when the incubation period ends, things go
Speaker 3: south quickly. You will have a few days of increasingly
Speaker 3: terrifying sickness, and then in some cases, you will begin
Speaker 3: bleeding from every orifice of your body, including needle marks.
Speaker 3: So like if you're in a hospital and they've been
Speaker 3: sticking you with metain and or some kind of treatment
Speaker 3: and you hit the bleed phase, you're going to bleed
Speaker 3: out of that puncture wound as well.
Speaker 8: No, thank you, craky nightmare fuel, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 8: we know that outbreaks still occur, Like to the earlier
Speaker 8: point about I keep going back to this, why do
Speaker 8: we not hear more about these things?
Speaker 3: Right? Because they don't directly affect the West, Yet in two.
Speaker 2: Hours too busy thinking about monkey Pock's beIN obviously right.
Speaker 3: Right right, they're weaponizing smallpox right out out west right
Speaker 3: in Angola in two thousand and four, there was an
Speaker 3: outbreak that affected two hundred and fifty people ninety percent
Speaker 3: fatality rate. It takes, yeah, it takes anywhere from two
Speaker 3: to twenty six days. So here us well, folks anywhere
Speaker 3: from forty eight hours to almost a month to incubate,
Speaker 3: which means the entire time you could be asymptomatic, you
Speaker 3: could be a world traveler spreading marb around, feeling dapper
Speaker 3: as a daisy, which is the phrase we made up.
Speaker 3: I hope it works.
Speaker 4: I think it works quite well. I feel that way
Speaker 4: on a good day.
Speaker 3: You're dapper is a daisy makes me adapt for you.
Speaker 3: And the thing is, when it kicks in, things go
Speaker 3: south so so very quickly. People will die eight to
Speaker 3: nine days later, and it's usually because or often because
Speaker 3: of an extreme loss of blood. It also hides out.
Speaker 3: It just keeps getting worse. Marburg and abulla can persist
Speaker 3: in the bodies of infected patients who survive, Like you
Speaker 3: beat the odds, right, you survive Marbur. God is great
Speaker 3: and evolution is hiding the Marburg virus in your eyes,
Speaker 3: your testes, your placenta, your amniotic fluid, your breast milk,
Speaker 3: if you're nursing, you could believe you survive the pandemic.
Speaker 3: And then a month later, this incubation, this new incubation
Speaker 3: period ends and another wave of outbreaks occur.
Speaker 2: That's just well, does that mean you're Does that mean
Speaker 2: you're infectious to others? When you're carrying it around after
Speaker 2: you think you're you've finished the whole.
Speaker 3: Thing, hold in one just so Jesus, you're released from
Speaker 3: the hospital, you go to a crowded church to pray.
Speaker 2: Well, this is a tangent, but it's related, and we've
Speaker 2: talked about it on Strange News a little bit. Another one,
Speaker 2: it's not on our list today, but one that I think,
Speaker 2: I mean, we're at least keeping our eyes on, is
Speaker 2: the chronic wasting disease. It's not the same as one
Speaker 2: of these infectious things. It currently does not infect humans.
Speaker 2: There's never been a chronic wasting disease human case yet,
Speaker 2: but researchers are paying attention to it because it's another
Speaker 2: one of these things that if it's in your body
Speaker 2: and you're infected with the prions as a deer servant
Speaker 2: right now, you may not show any kind of signs
Speaker 2: for years, months or years, but you're still just by
Speaker 2: going around as a deer, in peeing and pooping and
Speaker 2: having sex with other deer, you are infecting everybody else
Speaker 2: in your herd and in the surrounding area, and not
Speaker 2: just your species, other species too. And we know that
Speaker 2: like something like that is so so terrifying for its
Speaker 2: pandemic potential, because like you'd have to develop very specific
Speaker 2: ways to find out if it's in, if it's in
Speaker 2: people like this one, right, Ben, because you'd have to
Speaker 2: test the blood and get tested all the time to
Speaker 2: make sure there's nothing currently cooking in your body that
Speaker 2: has been in there and you're not a serious threat
Speaker 2: a danger to everybody around you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, your epidemic of deer finn could like destroy
Speaker 3: a species, honestly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it sounds like this with Marbourg, right, I mean
Speaker 2: it sounds similar.
Speaker 3: So we have to consider that this is Most of
Speaker 3: the outbreaks are occurring in places that historically have problems
Speaker 3: with public health, the DRC, the Democratic Republic of the
Speaker 3: Congo Angola, as we mentioned South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania,
Speaker 3: and Equatorial Guinea. There have also been outbreaks in the
Speaker 3: European theater and in the United States. The fact that
Speaker 3: it can hide out should keep you up at night.
Speaker 3: Hope nobody was planning to sleep after this. There is
Speaker 3: an ebola outbreak happening right now as we record more
Speaker 3: than thirteen hundred confirmed cases three hundred and seventy five
Speaker 3: confirmed deaths in the DRC. The infection has already spread
Speaker 3: to the adjacent Uganda. This evaded detection to your point, Matt,
Speaker 3: not just because clinicians or public health health experts failed
Speaker 3: to recognize the hemorrhagic fever was viral in nature, but
Speaker 3: also because a lot of the tools that these experts
Speaker 3: have are designed for different outbreaks. It's mirror life all
Speaker 3: over again, right, and so we're getting false positives, we're
Speaker 3: getting false negatives. We don't know what is true. Well.
Speaker 2: And there's also that issue that we've discussed before on
Speaker 2: the show where there are outsiders coming into your area
Speaker 2: and they put you know, if you're someone one of
Speaker 2: your family members is infected, they take your family member away,
Speaker 2: they do all this weird craft to them, put them
Speaker 2: in this place that you don't understand. You don't get
Speaker 2: to see them, and then they're dead. You don't know
Speaker 2: exactly what happened to them. You just hear from those
Speaker 2: same people that took your family member way that they died, right.
Speaker 2: You could just imagine what the distrust that that can foster,
Speaker 2: right exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then that compounds and disascerbates the problem of
Speaker 3: the health the health experts on the right, because now
Speaker 3: the population is not going to trust you. It's kind
Speaker 3: of like how vaccination is never going to recover from
Speaker 3: that CIA op to find Osama bin Lutt, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, it's just the Pakistan's not going to
Speaker 3: trust vaccines for a while.
Speaker 2: Dude. I think humanity has a problem with vaccines now.
Speaker 2: And I know we went through the craziness when it
Speaker 2: you know, comes to I don't want to shout any names,
Speaker 2: but linking something like autism as well as other things
Speaker 2: directly to vaccinations didn't do a lot to help anybody
Speaker 2: when it comes to being scientifically literate and or you know,
Speaker 2: having a better understanding of what an actual vaccination is
Speaker 2: and what's in a vaccination. We also know there's problems
Speaker 2: with vaccines, right we also, I mean there's so it
Speaker 2: becomes so complicated because it gives vaccines such a bad rap.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, by their very nature, I mean,
Speaker 5: you want to roll them out as quickly as possible.
Speaker 5: And I think especially with the pandemic, with the COVID stuff,
Speaker 5: they you know, understandably passed some things that allowed them
Speaker 5: to do that much quicker, some little exactly, but then
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, down the stream you start to
Speaker 5: see all these little issues perhaps that were not you know,
Speaker 5: understood upfront, and that is the nature I think of
Speaker 5: that distrust. It's under the best of circumstances, there's.
Speaker 4: A lot of that.
Speaker 3: You know, the ticking time bomb scenario is real in
Speaker 3: that case. I love that you're pointing that out in
Speaker 3: the Ale because it turned it turned the world almost
Speaker 3: Soviet level in its approach to a large systemic problem. Right.
Speaker 3: The Soviet Union was famous for a long long time
Speaker 3: for having a surplus of bodies and no compunction about
Speaker 3: throwing bodies at a problem. So you could argue, and
Speaker 3: a lot of vaccine skeptics will argue that in some
Speaker 3: cases world governments and the multinational pharma firms, we're doing
Speaker 3: the same thing. We don't know what their calculus was.
Speaker 3: We don't know what meetings they had about acceptable rates
Speaker 3: of side effects or indeed fatalities or lifelong chronic conditions.
Speaker 3: We do know that ebola comes in different forms, right,
Speaker 3: just like hauntavirus, Just like so many other of the
Speaker 3: culprits or usual suspects on our list here. Some forms
Speaker 3: of ebola do have approved vaccines. Marburg, when we've been
Speaker 3: harping on, has no vaccines that we know of. Both
Speaker 3: viruses are popping up in the same region quite recently,
Speaker 3: and we're wondering if that could be a double whammy
Speaker 3: pandemic of good news. Unlike COVID nineteen, they are not
Speaker 3: highly contagious respiratory viruses. They're very dangerous if you get them,
Speaker 3: but this is not like something you could catch because
Speaker 3: you walk by an infected person who happens to be
Speaker 3: breathing the same air as you. Right, So that's kind
Speaker 3: of good news.
Speaker 2: Agreed, Yeah, I agreed.
Speaker 3: I mean we can hit one more good news thing
Speaker 3: too as we're wrapping up.
Speaker 2: Oh, I forgot one before we hit the bigger one man. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I just learned about something called canine coronavirus or CCoV
Speaker 2: Good news is, guys, probably not gonna affect us. But
Speaker 2: it is crazy to think about dog coronavirus, canine coronavirus
Speaker 2: being a thing that's kind of it's under the radar
Speaker 2: because it's not infecting humans quite yet.
Speaker 5: Well, so, how does the zoonotic nature of it all
Speaker 5: affect something like that forming it would Yeah.
Speaker 3: To be zeronautic, it would have to mutate so such
Speaker 3: that it could go from the canid to the human.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it jumped to the canid in the first place.
Speaker 2: Ye oh wait, I'm wrong, guys, I'm so sorry. According
Speaker 2: to the University of Florida, there have been a few
Speaker 2: documented canine coronavirus infections and humans. It's very rare, okay,
Speaker 2: but it links to pneumonia hospitalizations, which is ultimately, right,
Speaker 2: one of the scariest things with any of these, especially
Speaker 2: the viruses that affect your respiration, it's developing pneumonia because
Speaker 2: that's when you end up on a ventilator in a hospital.
Speaker 5: And of course that's why you often see that the
Speaker 5: people that are most affected as older folks.
Speaker 4: Who have weakened immune systems already and coborbidities exactly. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: then you have good news.
Speaker 3: We do have good news. We we've been telling folks,
Speaker 3: as you know, as a gang, we've been we've been
Speaker 3: aiming for like nihlistic optimism and good news. Piece of yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: a little a little bit of candy after the medicine. Right. So,
Speaker 3: in our weekly Strange News segment a while back, we
Speaker 3: were covering outbreak of something called haunt, a virus, specifically
Speaker 3: the Andy strain of it. There was a very unlucky
Speaker 3: cruise ship called Envy haundius. On that ship, three passengers
Speaker 3: died of haunt of virus. At least four other people
Speaker 3: were infected. Hauntavirus is spread by rudents. It causes hemorrhagic fever,
Speaker 3: It causes some nasty pulmonary syndromes. The people caught the
Speaker 3: one strain of haunt of virus that we know can
Speaker 3: infect humans, or the one that can spread from person
Speaker 3: to person. So more than one haunt of virus is zoonotic,
Speaker 3: but the Hodi strain and De strain, if you prefer,
Speaker 3: spreads from person to person. Everybody was worried, right, We
Speaker 3: were worried in full transparency when we're talking about this
Speaker 3: on strange news, that it could become the next pandemic. Luckily,
Speaker 3: we went past the headlines. We went to the sources.
Speaker 3: We went to the public health experts, and we found
Speaker 3: folks like Bill Henige or Bill hanegi Ha n a
Speaker 3: ge from Harvard THH. Chan In School of Public Health,
Speaker 3: and he said it's probably not. Hauntavirus is probably not
Speaker 3: pandemic level threat. It doesn't spread easily in humans, and
Speaker 3: people begin exhibiting visible symptoms pretty quickly. So in the
Speaker 3: handias could have been much worse. If people on the
Speaker 3: ship were infected with Marbourg could have been game over.
Speaker 3: But because it was hauntavirus and not that easily transmissible,
Speaker 3: a significant amount of people spent an extended amount of
Speaker 3: time in extremely close quarters and very few folks actually
Speaker 3: got infected. So the Again, this leads the boffins to say,
Speaker 3: it is not the case fatality rate that matters for
Speaker 3: pandemic potential. It's the ability to transmit between humans. Transmission
Speaker 3: happens enough, efficiently enough before people become seriously ill, just
Speaker 3: like in that game Pandemic. They're very very few constraints
Speaker 3: on virulence. So this is overall that this is good news.
Speaker 3: Hauntavirus is not the threat that maybe popular news portrayed
Speaker 3: it as not too long ago. But we still have
Speaker 3: a lot to worry about, you know what I mean
Speaker 3: A lot. I want to wash my hands so bad.
Speaker 2: I can't stop thinking about chronic wasting disease, you guys.
Speaker 2: They folks are harping so much about how much research
Speaker 2: is being done on this, the zombie dear disease, and
Speaker 2: just how worried folks are. Imagine if a small population
Speaker 2: of humans got infected by a disease like that, where
Speaker 2: they can carry it around for years and be infectious
Speaker 2: and infect everybody they're interacting with, and nobody notices for
Speaker 2: years until they start, you know, not worrying about anything.
Speaker 2: They're not thinking about anything. They're just walking around, drinking
Speaker 2: water and urinating everywhere, and you know, don't have thoughts anymore.
Speaker 2: They are literally zombies. But imagine it took a year
Speaker 2: or two years for them to even show those signs,
Speaker 2: but they've already infected everyone. Like what if we just realized, oh,
Speaker 2: there's a huge population in Oregon and everybody there is
Speaker 2: infected with human wasting disease and there's nothing we can
Speaker 2: do about it. They've got about six months to a
Speaker 2: year before they start showing symptoms. At least at that point,
Speaker 2: you could potentially develop some kind of treatment for it,
Speaker 2: if you had a runway, right, and enough human beings
Speaker 2: to you know, get samples from to test.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 3: It, you guys, I'm with you there, man. I also
Speaker 3: can't stop thinking about something we probably won't have time
Speaker 3: to get to today. Maybe it's a future episode, but
Speaker 3: what if the worst happens? I'd love to hear the
Speaker 3: gamed oubt scenarios. Maybe it's a thought experiment for us.
Speaker 3: In the future, the next pandemic will emerge, humanity will
Speaker 3: depend upon a few key factors that humans aren't super
Speaker 3: great at learning lessons from the past, like COVID international cooperation.
Speaker 3: That's another swing in amiss historically, and as much as
Speaker 3: we despise government overreach, it's inarguable that practices like contact
Speaker 3: tracing saved lives during the pandemic response time will be crucial.
Speaker 3: Another thing humanity is not super great at. The US
Speaker 3: in particular, as we know, is not going to be
Speaker 3: anywhere near as prepared as it could have been due
Speaker 3: to the massive budget cuts at places like the Center
Speaker 3: for Disease Control the CDC here in Atlanta. Here you
Speaker 3: have it, folks, So far as we know, another little
Speaker 3: piece of good news at present July sixth, twenty twenty six,
Speaker 3: none of these diseases we have mentioned have birthed a
Speaker 3: new pandemic just yet. So hug your loved ones, wash
Speaker 3: your hands. We wish you the best. Let us know
Speaker 3: what's going on in your neck of the global woods.
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