Glenn Beck is joined by Nick DiPaolo to discuss the Bloomberg vs. Biden debate, Bernie Sanders, and the coronavirus update, and much, much more! Glenn Beck is a conservative commentator and host of the Glenn Beck Show on the Blaze TV satellite channel. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, and other media outlets, and is one of the most recognizable names in American politics.
00:15:04.180Now, we found out, and I can't seem to figure this out, and I know you're the guy looking for answers.
00:15:10.860But the China state newspaper says that the coronavirus didn't come from bat soup in that market.
00:15:20.140They have not been able to find patient zero, and it didn't come from there.
00:15:26.240And this is really important that we find these things.
00:15:30.200You said about, I don't know, six weeks ago that you were concerned that it might have been a weapon from that bio level four plant, if you will, there in Wuhan.
00:15:45.980What are we thinking this actually, where this actually came from?
00:15:49.400No, Glenn, we haven't found out anything more, in part because the Chinese Communist Party continues to restrict access to Wuhan in general, and the laboratory in particular, and continue to be dishonest and deceitful about this virus.
00:16:04.040However, I would note that just over the weekend, the Global Times, which is the Chinese Communist Party's international propaganda rag, admitted that their first origin story, which you cited, Glenn, that it came from a food market in Wuhan, was false.
00:16:20.260That was conclusively established by Chinese researchers over a month ago in the report that I was citing in mid-January.
00:16:27.920That virus went into the market before it came out of the market.
00:16:31.640At least 14 of the first 40 cases had no contact with the market.
00:16:36.880So it raises the question, where did it originate?
00:16:43.140It could have been a food processing facility.
00:16:45.280But obviously, when you have China's only super laboratory that deals with human infectious diseases, including the coronaviruses, just a few miles away from the food market, it is only responsible and reasonable to ask the question.
00:17:01.880You don't even have to say that China was engaged in dark biological weapon research there.
00:17:09.040You can simply say they had bad safety practices.
00:17:11.800Maybe they were researching vaccines or diagnostic tests or therapeutic drugs, but they simply won't provide us any answers.
00:17:20.320And until they provide us the answers, until we can get our hands around how this outbreak started, we need to ask the questions and demand answers from the Chinese Communist Party.
00:17:31.240So is there anything, I thought of you immediately when I saw this come out of Iran, because they're immediately saying this is an American Zionist plot against China and against Iran, but the numbers are so skewed in Iran, and I trust them less than I do China.
00:17:49.080But their numbers are so skewed, their numbers are saying that there is a 20% or a 19% death rate of those who are getting coronavirus in Iran.
00:18:00.560And I thought, well, geez, Iran, China, North Korea, they all kind of work together on, you know, bad things.
00:18:08.620Is there a – are we looking into what's happening in Iran at all?
00:18:12.800So you are correct, Glenn, not to trust the government of Iran on this matter or anything else.
00:18:18.760And I suspect that one reason those numbers are so skewed in Iran is that Iran is still lying about these cases.
00:18:24.560They got to the point where they could no longer conceal it from their own people credibly, but they are still managing the flow of information.
00:18:31.080But they're saying – they're saying now that there is – I guess our scientists, as much as we can, are saying there is no connection to China, that there's no patient zero there either.
00:18:46.580But every case in the world of which I'm aware has some kind of connection back to China.
00:18:54.340It may be two or three persons removed has some kind of connection.
00:18:57.060You are correct that it's not just the governments of Iran and China that collaborate a lot, but there's obviously a lot of Chinese tourism that goes on in Iran.
00:19:05.480There is a lot of Chinese labor that is exported around the world to fund remittances back to China.
00:19:12.840So that's a second possibility for the outbreaks that you see in Iran and throughout East and South Asia and the Middle East is Chinese migrant labor going to these countries.
00:19:21.380But the reason I suspect that you see such high rates of mortality in Iran is that they are underreporting the cases they have.
00:19:30.380Unfortunately, they were probably lying all along hoping that they can conceal the cases that are present in their borders, and they got to a point where they decided they couldn't do so anymore.
00:19:39.320I mean, I don't know if you saw, Senator, the video that we just played that I was just describing on air, the health minister, the head of the health ministry in Iran, standing next to another guy from the health ministry.
00:19:53.540And the main minister is already feverish.
00:20:12.900And it would be funny in a Monty Python kind of way if it weren't so serious.
00:20:19.920And this is why, when there's so many unknowns, why it's so important that we continue to err on the side of caution, that we can continue to overshare information with the American people.
00:20:29.840We'd be upfront and honest with them about what we know and, just as important, about what we don't know.
00:20:35.380And that while we are prepared for the worst in the United States, we are working overtime to prevent the worst.
00:20:41.700We, you know, there was a test two years ago here in the United States for a coronavirus outbreak, not this one, but for an outbreak like this.
00:20:50.880We were number one in the world on response.
00:20:55.720I believe we are prepared, but I don't, I mean, we haven't, if this goes through, we haven't seen anything like this in over 100 years.
00:21:04.180And, you know, there's going to be things we're not prepared for.
00:21:07.100I'm really concerned about the economic impact.
00:21:11.600Do you believe our government is moving and doing all of the things that we can do?
00:21:18.140Is the administration doing all the things?
00:21:22.340I know that the president, who plans to speak to the nation later today about the coronavirus, is deeply engaged, and he's driving a lot of the response.
00:21:30.880I think that we are doing everything we can at this point.
00:21:34.780The only thing I would like to see happen faster is to get testing kits out of the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and get them to all 50 states.
00:21:44.440So out on the front lines, you can have prompt tests in a matter of hours, like we do with the flu, as opposed to tests that take a matter of days when they go to and from Atlanta.
00:21:53.640And there's only, are there only four states now that have those testing kits?
00:21:59.180I think that, I think both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration should aggressively use their emergency authorities under established law to encourage laboratories around the country to develop kits, get those verified, and get them used in addition to producing more of the established kits we have at CDC headquarters.
00:22:19.800You would think that there would be a big market.
00:22:22.860Somebody, a capitalist, would look at that and go, that's a growth market.
00:22:26.280Yeah, and these laboratories, you know, whether they're at academic institutions or big hospitals, they develop their own tests frequently for all kinds of maladies.
00:22:35.960So there's no reason they can't do so now.
00:22:38.640But with the proper standards and protocols, it will accelerate the dissemination of test kits all around the country.
00:22:45.200Because even if we do have an outbreak, Glenn, let's say, you know, that we get five people in Columbus, Ohio, come down with coronavirus.
00:22:53.660If we know it early and we can isolate those five people, that's much better than if there are 50 or 500 people.
00:23:00.860So it's not just a matter of trying to prevent every single possible outbreak, but also containing it as quickly as possible.
00:23:07.700The economic impact, unfortunately, is going to take to a degree, as we saw in the markets this week.
00:23:14.460Our economy is already dependent, in many cases, on supply chains from China.
00:23:21.180I think this is going to open a lot of eyes to a point I've long made, which is that we should not be dependent on China in that regard.
00:32:34.380When they say, you're giving them no liability, imagine if we did that for drug companies.
00:32:40.260Well, we wouldn't do that for drug companies because if I'm taking the product as directed, as it is prescribed to me, and I'm taking it that way and it kills me, it is their problem.
00:32:55.560Now, if a gun, if I'm using it and shooting it, it would be called a backfire and it backfires on me.
00:33:03.000They do have liability because I was using the gun as intended the right way, the way they say it's to be used.
00:33:12.580Now, nowhere, nowhere do they say this is to be used to go out because you're high on crack or you want your crack money and you're going to shoot people.
00:33:24.400That can be used for that, but that's not why they're making those.