The Confessionals - 218: COVID-19 | Ground Zero

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

In episode 218 we speak with two people that saw the COVID-19 virus explode right in front of their faces! First, on the show we have Brett joining us from Hong Kong! Being a U.S. citizen living in Hong Kong, Brett brings a clear and unique perspective as to what he lived through with the protests and the COVID-19 outbreak. He does not hold back in sharing what it was like living through these situations and what it’s like living inside a communist country. Later we are joined by Joe who is also an American citizen living in South Korea. Joe starts out by giving his American brothers and sisters a dire warning about COVID-19 and what it’ll do to us if we do not take every precaution possible. As the conversation unfolds Joe tells us the strategies South Korea has implemented to contain this virus better than almost any other country in the world! BECOME A MEMBER AND GET ADDITIONAL SHOWS: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/join Subscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaI Subscribe to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletter Website: www.theconfessionalspodcast.com Email: [e-mail] Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcast Twitter: @TConfessionals Tony's Twitter: @tony_merkel Show Intro INSTRUMENTAL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyub39AXxUw Show Intro FREE DOWNLOAD: https://bit.ly/2HxNcw3

This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill, but no one was supposed to talk about it. I saw three long, bony fingers, reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me. And this giant comes out of the cave, and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing up this giant. With a giant move, he's got a spear in one hand, and he's running really fast. And spears, Dan, holds him up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face, they basically decapitated.

A person when he got about 15 yards away from me, feel something pulling at my leg. And I look over, and there are two small, gray entities pulling it. And they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush and I touched air. Couldn't breathe and I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster. All right, I want to take a second before we go any further in the show and check in with Wes German from Sasquatch Chronicles.

He is actually right now hovering over Portland, Oregon in TC Chopper 1. And he is going to give us an update as to what's going on in Portland, Oregon, but also the state of Washington, since we all know that the state of Washington is actually ground zero. for the COVID-19 virus. And so, Wes, has it going up there. Thank you. The Confessionals. Over and out.

Thank you, Ghermer. You stay safe up there, buddy. Yep. Welcome to the show. Everybody, you're listening to The Confessionals. I am your host, Tony Merkel. Thank you for being here. If you've had an encounter or a story you'd like to share with me on the show,

go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is The Confessionals. at the confessionalspodcast.com. That's the confessionals at the confessionalspodcast.com. Or go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com, hit the contact section, and you can reach me that way as well. Either way it works for me, just get a hold of me. And if you want extra shows every week, we are putting out tons of content right now for

the members. Go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com, and sign up to become a member today because members get an extra fully produced show every Thursday. And we've been doing a lot of live call-in shows for members only. We're covering tons of information, tons of content, lots of people are calling in. It's been a great time. So if that interests you, go ahead and sign up to become a member today. Now, I got a lot of announcements for you all before we get into today's episode,

but bear with me because you got about over two hours of content coming your way. But I want to let people know, first of all, hopefully you enjoyed that little skit that me and West did. We sat down to do something that was a little bit lighthearted, but also informative for people, and we just couldn't get it. We took a take after take after take, and it just wasn't working. And then I introduced Wes one more time, and he comes in with some random stuff. And by then, I was just, I had it. And I just started dying. And it just, that actually turned into the final product. So there you go, guys. Hopefully you liked it. Sometimes in these kind of times that we're in right now, you got to be able to laugh.

Just like when I'm talking to people, they say, hey, how you doing? I'm like, you know, just out here, bobbing and we even trying not to get punched in the face by coronavirus things like that you just got to be lighthearted about it hopefully you guys enjoyed it now i want to let you guys know about the ohio bigfoot conference i've been talking about for months but the confessionals has officially withdrawn from the ohio bigfoot conference we can't take the chance of going out there being around a bunch of people that were shaking hands taking pictures with and stuff and catching something with my wife being pregnant we got to make sure that we keep her health as priority number one in our household so we will not be there unfortunately anybody who is going to be there if they still hold the event

i apologize if you bought tickets and you were planning on coming because we were going to be there but uh this was a very unforeseen circumstance with all this stuff happening and i just for me and my household i don't feel comfortable going into a crowd right now and especially a crowd that i know i'm going to have to take pictures and shake people's hands and be in tight quarters with everybody else. So we are greatly sorry that we're not going to be there, but for the health of the family, that's the decision that we came down on. We will do other events in the future just after the world's done ending. We can't do it in the middle of the apocalypse right now. It just, it can't happen. Maybe if it was just me and Lindsay, that's different, but we have kids in the mix now, and it's

just something we can't do. Now, I want to let everybody know that we, along with many other podcasters and many other people that are public figures on social media have been experiencing banning, shadow banning for a very long time now. And it's been kicked up 10 notches since the COVID-19. And we have personally experienced it. And a lot of people around us have been experiencing their posts being taken down by these different social media companies or their post being shadow ban where it's being very censored where not a lot of people are actually even seeing it. And I know there's a lot of people that aren't, you know, podcasters are not public figures. and they're experiencing it as well.

And I just want to let everybody know that part of the memberships to the website, the professionals podcast.com, is you get access to forums. And I just want to let all you guys know, especially those who are already members, you can post in the forums anything. As long as it's not immoral or something that you know is going to get you kicked out of the forums for, you can post your opinion and thoughts about anything you want. It doesn't matter. If it's in my forums, you're free to post about it.

So I just want to let you guys know that is a safe space for you guys to truly be yourselves and post anything you want in a time where you don't know where to turn to post your information. The confessional forums is a place that you can do that. Now, speaking of the website, we have developed a page specifically for COVID-19. If you go to the Confessionalspodcast.com, you will see a COVID-19 page at the top where you click on it and it shows you a bunch of different things that we have posted about COVID-19. And we're asking people who listen to the show that have tips and leads and things that aren't being covered in the mainstream media, please email it to the confessionals at the confessionalspodcast.com. And we will read through the stuff that you send us and try to get it on the website for everybody to see.

This is our small attempt to try exposing truths that aren't being covered in the mainstream media because they're too busy propagating what their agendas are. So hopefully you guys that are listening, that have things. that you would like to share with the world along the lines of things that aren't being talked about COVID-19. It could be pictures of your town with the military rolling through. It could be a letter that you got in the mail from somebody that tells you what's coming in the future. Whatever it is, we've had plenty of people reaching out to us and sharing their own personal stories. Please email those things to the Confessionals at the Confessionalspodcast.com and we will try to get it on the COVID-19 page on the website. And now I know everybody's at home. A lot of people are on

lockdown. I think I might be on lockdown by a time this airs. I really don't know. There's a lot of people out there that are consuming a lot of content. And I decided that I was going to try kicking up my level of content production for the members on the website. So if you're a member and you're listening to this right now and you haven't checked the website over the last week, you definitely want to go check that out because we did two live shows with live call-ins. And one was called COVID-19 with Charlie Robinson. And the other was called COVID-19, The Purge begins. And we're planning to do another one this week. It's going to be along the lines of of COVID-19, but it's actually going to be branching off into this idea of Q. And I'm not sure

what I'm going to call it, but we're going to be bringing some people on. And if you're a listener that's a member and you have thoughts and opinions about Q and what's been going on in the world and how the Q prophecies have prophetically predicted everything that we're going through, please call into the show, contribute to the conversation. But we're going to be talking about COVID-19 and Q sometime this week on a live show. we will announce when it will be when we know. So, and also I don't want to let you guys know that I know we're doing a lot of COVID-19 stuff recently, but it's very important to me personally that I'm actually sharing what I think and what I know with my audience.

I've been blessed to have an audience that comes and listens to this show, and I feel like there's a certain level of responsibility to cover something that is so groundbreaking. Like if 9-11 happened, we would be talking about it, right? Well, this is 9-11, 20 years later, only on a biological level. And so we're talking a lot about it. And I just want to let everybody know, I appreciate everybody who's been plugging in and listening to this content. I've been seeing you guys commenting.

And it's been really a really good thing for me to see everybody really contributing to the conversation. Let you guys know, we are going to be doing a paranormal show next Tuesday, though. I know we've been doing a lot of COVID-19. And I'm just trying to chop it up a little bit and let you guys have some paranormal for that paranormal fix. It's actually a show I had planned on airing. last week before everything went crazy and the whole world went to hell.

So we're going to be airing that show next Tuesday. And I'm telling you guys, it is a good one. So next Tuesday, tune in for a great paranormal show. And just a reminder, Hammer Lane Legends is a podcast that me and my dad started a few weeks back. I'd say probably about four or five weeks ago, we launched Hammer Lane Legends. And it's a podcast where me and my dad, as truckers, host conversation with other truckers about wild and crazy experiences they had out in the road. And anybody really that drives for a living doesn't have to be truckers,

but generally we're talking to truckers. And it's a great show. A lot of people have been raving about it. So if you haven't checked it out yet, go ahead and check out Hammer Lane Legends on your favorite podcast app or hammerlane legends.com. Now, today, we have a show for you. I was on Facebook in one of those coronavirus groups just snooping around,

trying to see what people are saying, articles, things like that. and I saw somebody comment on somebody else's post, and I forget what he said, but he referenced himself living in Hong Kong. And I looked at his name, and it clearly wasn't an Asian name. And so I clicked on his profile, and he's an American that lives in Hong Kong. And so I reached out to him and told him about the show, asked him to come on the show, and he said he would. Now, I had no idea where Brett was coming from in life. I didn't know what his thoughts were on things. I didn't know if he is a conspiratorial type of guy, paranormal, anything like that. I didn't know the guy. I just knew that he was an American living in Hong Kong that would probably be somebody

that would be good for the show and to provide insight as to what's going on there. He did not disappoint. I'm telling you right now, Brett really brings the hammer on this episode and he's going to share a lot of information about Hong Kong, China, the relationship between the two, the protests, COVID-19, everything. We cover it with Brett on. this episode, but that's just one interview because after Brett, we fly on over to South Korea, where we sit down and we talk with Joe Jordan. Joe Jordan is a previous guest on the show, and he lives in South Korea as a contractor for the military. And Joe has been living over there for nine years, and he has obviously lived over there through COVID-19, and he's going to share

his perspective as to how our country and South Korea handled COVID-19 and kind of compare. hair and contrast the differences between the two countries and how they handled it. So this is a fantastic episode with two fantastic guests. Let's get to it right now. Finally. Okay, today we got a great guest coming on the show. We have Brett. Brett, how you doing, man? I'm doing all right. Tony. I'm happy to be on the show. Great, man. So, listen, I came across you in a Facebook group, and it's one of the coronavirus Facebook groups. I've been joining things as I see them, just try to get as much information as possible for me and to be able to relay things to my audience. You don't listen to my show. You don't know who I am. And I reached out to you and asked if you'd

come on the show to talk about your situation. Now, from the sound of your voice, I'm assuming you're an American that lives in Hong Kong, right? That is correct. Yeah, I'm from California and from the Bay Area. Okay, got you. So before we dive into the deep. details of everything that we're bringing you on for. How does a Bay Area guy wind up in Hong Kong living there full time? Oh, man, that's the long story in itself. Well, first of all, my wife's from here. So that's, but that's not really the, you know, that's just the tip of it. Man, I came here originally back in 2009, and I did a study abroad program at a university here and ended up, you know, making a bunch of friends and just meet a bunch of people, having a good time.

And ended up coming back, like, you know, a bunch of times three or four. And I ended up living in Taiwan as well, and kind of bouncing around between Hong Kong and Taiwan in San Francisco. So it's been basically a decade, like decade in coming, you know, so I met my wife in 2012. make sure I get that right. And she, you know, and then I ended up just just moving back here and the rest is pretty much history at this point. I got you. So long term, you know, you kind of move over there because your wife's from there. That's where you guys are settling into. Now, I did some snooping around online and stuff, man. It looks like you're a biker for real, for real, like a BMX. Listen. Yeah. Well, we'll call it an amateur BMXer, but yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm

pretty heavy in the game. I mean, in terms of how long I've been doing it, I've been riding for geez, man, like 20 years, I guess. And, uh, but that's, I mean, that's what prompted me to eventually like move back here because I, you know, I made so many, um, friends through riding bikes. And, uh, you know, the BMX scene here is really, is really good, man, as well as in Taiwan. And, and, you know, it's just, it's always a fun time. Yeah. I mean, I, I watched some of the videos of you and I was like holy yeah heck yeah dude I did my homework kind of that's cool that's cool man I appreciate it yeah yeah you got to get those views up you know what I'm saying for sure for sure no I'm telling you man like when I was younger I'm 34 I don't know how old you are but I um where I'm from

it was real big into skateboarding and and so I I try I'm from outside the Philadelphia area so on the other side of the country and so I I'm at I mess up around with that stuff in high school a little bit, but I could never get past the fear of busting my head or busting my nuts. Like it, I couldn't do it, man. So I just stuck with the basketball. I was good at it and it was just much more simple. Hey, man, I probably wouldn't have on that route if I were a little bit taller, man. But, you know, I ride these little bikes, man, I'm not too tall. And, uh, you know, it's the, it fits, it fits appropriately. You know what I'm saying like I don't I can't dunk you know like I don't have a good jump shot like I got you yeah

I I um dude I when I I love watching guys like you honestly like I go on YouTube sometimes and I'll just stumble across one of those videos and just takes me down a wormhole watching like compilation videos guys doing crazy stuff off rails and downstairs and it's like holy crap and that's the kind of stuff you're doing man it's it's it's really impressive hey man it gets it gets a lot crazier than when I but, you know, I'm happy to do it, man. It's been, like, basically a lifelong passion of mine. And, yeah, I'm just, I'm 30, 32. And, you know, the body starts to feel it, you know, about right now a little bit more.

But, you know, it doesn't mean I still can't, you know, get out there and try to shred, you know, whenever I can. So, yeah, it's always, it's just fun games, man. It's always fun. Yeah. And that's the bottom line. I mean, when it comes to sports, once you hit your 30s, you're looking like an old man. It's just the way it is. So it doesn't matter what sport it is.

I mean, when you're hitting your 30s into your 40s, just call it a wrap. I mean, you're not going to be what you were when you were 20. That's for sure. But you nailed it, man. Yeah. But, Brett, listen, you were over there in Hong Kong. I believe from what I saw in some of your commentary online during the protest. Is that right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely. Absolutely. Okay. So let's just start there. Before we even get into the coronavirus, what was it like for you as an American living in Hong Kong during massive protests that the whole world was watching? Did you ever feel like your life was at stake at any time, you know, maneuvering throughout the city during that time? No. I wouldn't necessarily feel like. I wouldn't categorize it like that necessarily. I felt like there was definitely danger all around me, you know, but in terms of life-threatening, I think I was, you know, I'd let low anyway, so like I don't really feel like I was,

I wasn't out there, you know, really in the shit, you know, so to speak. But I was, it was definitely difficult. You know, it was, there were times where, you know, you were, you know, nervous because, you know, there's a lot of, you know, it happened in so many different neighborhoods, right? So it would, like, pop up in the neighborhood I live in and then it would pop up in my work neighborhood. Actually, to be honest, like these two, the neighborhood I live in and where I work were, like, some hot spots for the protest. So, you know, it's just, you get a little nervous, you know, walking down the street, especially. especially, you know, my wife walking around by herself, you know, I get a little nervous about that. But, yeah, it was, I mean, there was just so much chaos at that time, man, that it was, you really just had to be alert.

That's the best way I could put it. Like, I wouldn't necessarily say that I felt like my life was threatened, but I definitely had to be on high alert, you know, during that time. Yeah, I can understand that. And, you know, I think I would be probably in the same shoes as you if I was over there. I'd just be, I'd be nervous, especially knowing the wife is walking around, things like that. Yeah, yeah. Now, the protests and the protesters, do you think that they actually made headway in what they are protesting for? I mean, obviously, it was interrupted, but, you know, from what I understand, you know, halfway across the world, it was, you know, at one time at least, like two million people.

And then as time went on, it kind of got smaller, but you still had a lot of people protesting. do you think that they really did accomplish their goals, or do you think it was something that was kind of cut off because of the virus? That is a good question. I wouldn't necessarily say that it was, I mean, like, basically like nothing dramatically changed throughout the course of the protests. And what I mean by that is like there was no, you know, there's no concession on the part of the government in terms of what the protests were trying to accomplish.

So basically, the virus has hit, right? And none of the problems from the protests have really been solved, have really been dealt with. So if you mean success in that way, then no. But if you mean success in, I mean, the extradition. Bill, right, was the, I wouldn't necessarily say, like, the ultimate reason people were protesting. I mean, it was at first, but it was basically the pin that kind of popped the bubble, right? Because, like, Hong Kong people have been living, you know, unsatisfied, we'll say, with the, with the, you know, government situation and the influence, the increase. increasing influence that Beijing has over Hong Kong politics, etc.

And so that, the extradition bill just kind of kind of pop that and expose that, right? So like nothing has really been done to to really deal with those answers, right? And so, you know, I don't really, this is not, the protests have not ended. We'll say that too. Like they've just, you know, maybe on, they're temporarily slowed down, right? Because there's even been a few, we'll say, skirmishes, you know, around Hong Kong in the last couple weeks. Maybe they haven't been as, you know, as newsworthy, right? because we're in the midst of this pandemic.

But they'll definitely start again. They'll definitely start again. Okay. Now, let me ask you another question now as you bring Beijing up. I think it's kind of hard, and it certainly is for me, and I still don't quite understand it, but for Americans, and you can sympathize with this, that we have a federal government, individual states, but, you know, it's all one. And so over there, when you say something like Beijing's influence in Hong Kong, as Americans, we would say, well, Hong Kong is part of China, isn't it? So why wouldn't they have an influence in there? So could you at least maybe try breaking it down a little bit as to why it's such a big deal that Beijing has an influence in Hong Kong? And before you go down that road, let me just ask you another question before I forget. Your wife, is she originally from Hong Kong? And how does she feel about all this?

My wife is born and raised in Hong Kong. She's Hong Kong Chinese, and she's very, very passionate on the side of the pro-democracy movement. So back to your question before that, though, about, you know, Hong Kong being part of China, which is true. It is, I mean, call what you will. it is Hong Kong, it is part of China. But the basis for that, right, the reason that Hong Kong even went back to being part of China because it was a British colony, right?

So the reason, how that even all started was through the, there was a negotiation, right, between the British government and the Chinese government, that Hong Kong would remain autonomous. And so it's written into, it was called the, what was the Ceno-Byrish, the Joint Declaration, that's what they called it. It was the Joint Declaration. And in the Joint Declaration, sorry, it states that Hong Kong is going to, you know, maintain a certain degree of autonomy. Well, Beijing hasn't necessarily respected that autonomy throughout the course of, you know, since 1997.

we'll say. And, you know, aside from that, like, in Hong Kong's basic law, right, it's, Hong Kong is supposed to remain completely autonomous, you know, minus matters of, of defense and security, right? That, obviously, you're not going to have, there's not going to be a Hong Kong army, right? But, you know, everything else, Hong Kong is supposed to maintain autonomy, and they're supposed to have, you know, full democracy in by, like, what was it, 2014, was when they chose, I'm not sure from getting that correct.

So you might want to fact check me. It decided in 2014 or 16, I think it was 14, when the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, The protests now, right, are, we're just like, it's an ongoing issue because the problems before were never dealt with accordingly. So there were huge protests. I don't know if you remember, but they were back in 2000, I believe it was 14. And that was over choosing the next chief executive for Hong Kong. And Hong Kong was promised democracy during those elections. those elections and Beijing basically just said we're not going to respect that and we're going to

choose we're going to have a group of people that you know heads of industry are going to choose for Hong Kong's next leader and you know you can you can basically kiss the idea of democracy goodbye and so it's basically just it's because it's an ongoing thing so like it's hard you can't really talk about like the protests now without really mentioning, you know, how this is all unfolded in the last, like, you know, six, eight years or so, you know what I mean? Yeah, and that makes sense. I mean, it's not like Hong Kong woke up one day and said, let's all riot and protest

because we're pissed off about something. Exactly. Protests come about because it's been a boiling issue. And that's almost with every protest. Right. There's always underlying things going on that bring, I mean, because you don't get that many people to protest just over something that just happened. Like, that's something that was boiling over time and there's backstory backdrops to it. Absolutely. Yeah. So the protests were going on and the virus hits.

Right. I'm assuming the virus is probably a big factor into why the protests got diminished so much. Am I correct in saying that? Yeah. So it, it, to, To be perfectly clear, though, they were starting to, I wouldn't say die down indefinitely, but there was a kind of a low point in basically the month of December. So there were some local elections, and they were basically only for, like, I mean, not in a disrespectful way, but non-essential representatives, like for, you know, not like in the legislative council, but like other government level jobs,

there was an election for that, and the pro-democracy side just swept, totally swept the elections. Like, it was like no, like, because before that, like the government, Carrie Lamb could claim that, like, she was doing what Hong Kong was doing what Hong Hong Kong people really wanted in that these protests were just represented a small minority of Hong Kong opinions. But after this sort of local election, we'll call it, it was like overwhelmingly like Hong Kong people are dissatisfied with what's happening. And so there was kind of, it kind of cooled

off. There was a cooling off. And then and then the virus hit. And then it was, you know, now it's, everyone is obviously concerned about their health and safety. So, I mean, safety in a different way. So, yeah, it's definitely, it's definitely, you know, shifted the sort of the attention. It's definitely shifted the attention. Yeah, it sounds like it. And, you know, over here, there's, you know, I deal with the conspiratorial community. And I'm not, I'm not embarrassed about that.

I'm not ashamed of that. Like, I do pride myself on trying to think outside the box and try to think of, like, I see what's happening before me or what's happened, you know, in years past. And I try to project what's going to happen. And I try to understand why it's happening because I do not believe, just like I'm sure you understand from being over there, I do not believe that the mainstream media here in America is telling us a truth on a lot of stuff. I think it's been propagandized.

And there's a real problem. when you turn on a certain news channel and then you flip to another one and they're saying the exact opposite what you just heard. It's everybody has their own spin. So we have been hearing people discussing about the coronavirus and suggesting that maybe it was a bio weapon released by China to stop the protests. I have always cited on the idea that that's probably not the case. but I wanted to ask you your thoughts on that.

I would come, well, okay. In my personal opinion, right, and not to offend anybody who does believe that, but I don't think that's true because, I mean, you look at like where the epicenter, right, where first broke out Wuhan, Wuhan China is hundreds and hundreds, hundreds of miles away from Hong Kong. So the idea that they would release a bio weapon in Wuhan and just hope, you know, basically just wheel it into Hong Kong to quell the protests. For me, that's a bit far-fetched.

So, I mean, if your listeners have an argument, you know, in favor of that, then I'm obviously open to hearing that. I mean, the fact of the matter is that Chinese government is capable of an awful lot of horrible things. So, you know, again, I don't believe that to be true myself, but, you know, to each his own. Sure, absolutely. And you're not going to offend anybody in my audience. Trust me, I do a good job of that myself. So you don't have to worry about saying trust.

me. My audience is thick skin because of guests I've had on before. You're, you're lightweight. Trust me. Well, okay. Well, let me, a caveat to that. Cavalots to that. So they, they, I don't believe that they, like, created it in a lab. I mean, unless I see further evidence, right, that, you know, who knows could change my opinion. But it was something that is less far-fetched would be that they didn't, they covered it up. They covered it up in crucial, crucial early stages, right? Like, when something like this breaks out,

like you have to get a handle on it and get a handle on it quick. Rather than doing that, the Chinese authorities arrested whistleblowers, they arrested reporters, doctors, they destroyed lab results. They did all sorts of shady, shady things to protect their own self-image, right? And that this is like also, I should mention, though, that it's not an accident that they handled it that way. They handled it the way that the Chinese system of government is designed to handle it. It's designed to protect the leadership at the top and throw the local leadership under the bus if ever there's a problem. And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened.

You know, they threw a couple local Wuhan officials, you know, they asked a couple of them. And then, you know, Beijing gets to act like it was on top of this from the beginning when that was completely and that's complete and utter nonsense. they definitely were not on top of it. So watching that all unfold is interesting. And it's interesting to see how they spin it now, you know, knowing what it was like from the beginning, you know? So yeah. Yeah.

I'll tell you what. And even in this country in America, I know you're not here right now, our media has been trying to celebrate China's handling of this virus. And I've been telling people, like, I'm not. a fan, okay? And you can tell me right now, and I'll bleep out your name if you want me to make sure that your identity is concealed and stuff for this interview. I forgot to ask you that before we started. But if you want me to do that, I can. But let's see, let's see how interesting the conversation. Oh, yeah, that's what I'm saying, man. Feel free to say anything

you want. And at the end of it, if you want to be bleeped out, we can bleep your name out. But I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I'm not scared. And you go ahead. man. So, well, I just want to make sure I'm protecting you. But, um, so I've been telling people that. I've been telling people that you, you can't trust China. I did a show last week on Tuesday where I went on like a 45 minute rant about a lot of stuff because I believe that this is something that, uh, there are certain groups of people in the world that saw this coming and knew this was coming and kept it quiet. And I think China was one of them. And I say that because on, December 31st, they officially went to the World Health Organization and told them they had an

unusual case of pneumonia going on in Wuhan. But they had over a month of cases to fall back on where they now have traced the very, so far, they've traced the earliest case to November 17th. And people say, well, then they reported on November 17th. They didn't report it on November 17th. they're looking back now saying, okay, we're tracing it back to November 17th, and they had over a month to try covering it up and try squashing it. And I've been telling people, it's the Chinese government. So they're not going to go and announce to the world that they got a real serious problem until they know they can't confine it within their borders. Am I right in saying that? You're not wrong in saying that. You're definitely not wrong in saying that. They, and I'll take you one step further, man. They, they, So like year after year after year, like it's one of the feathers in their cats. They always boast, which is Chinese New Year is the largest human migration in the entire world. I know the exact word and phrasing of it because they pump it out every year during Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is the largest human migration in the world.

And it's. And so my question is, if you have this novel pathogen circulating throughout your population for months and you know about it and you're arresting people talking about it and you are destroying lab results and you're just sitting on this information and you know Chinese New Year's coming and that millions of Chinese people are going to be traveling throughout the world. and you're not going to say anything, you're going to downplay it, you're going to allow this to get outside your border, you're going to allow this to become a global crisis. So the idea that like, like, oh, maybe they knew, maybe they absolutely knew what was going to happen

and did nothing, and did nothing until it was too late, until they could do the major authoritarian thing and shut shit down, right? And sorry to curse, but like, like just shut it all down. And so they wait and look, we're going to build a whole hospital in fucking 10 days, eight days or whatever, however long it took. Like, they can do the big, obvious thing, but they can't do the small, subtle thing.

And the small subtle thing in this case would have been telling the truth about it, right? I mean, clearly to us, but for them, it was. Because if they are to tell the truth about it, it puts their own position of power in jeopardy. And they will never, ever, ever put themselves in the position to where that could happen, to where they will suddenly, you know, to where the citizenry is blaming them. And that's what happens exactly what was happening early on, right? the you know people all over the internet were were blaming the chinese government's handling of it you know and then there is negative news coming out and they issued a mandate like an actual

mandate like not not like is he saying mandate no it was a mandate like that all negative news should cease should stop you cannot report negative things about the coronavirus right and then things started to get better somehow i don't know how that happened And I mean, they've got this magic power to, you know, I don't know, very, very interesting, though. So they knew what was going to happen. And in the very least, they could have put data into a model and thought, hey, wait a minute. If we allow this largest human migration to take place during this price, during this health problem, it's going to be a big problem for the whole world. And it does not take, does not take a genius to see that. I'm not a genius and I can see that, you know, so it's, it's, it's, it's just, it's bad all the way around. It's bad all the way around.

Yeah, it absolutely is. And, you know, what, what I was saying earlier about the, our media saying, you know, giving a golf clap to China on how they handle just so they can pounce on Trump and say that, you know, he's doing an awful job. And I'm not saying, yeah, I'm, I'm in support of everything that they've done as far as how they handle it over here. and stuff. I'm just saying the pettiness that gets involved here, because if anybody has a clue as to who China is, how they treat their people, how they operate within their borders, you should know that they have much more freedom to do things to their citizens to get this under control than a Western democracy. There are certain things you cannot do in America because it is not a dictatorship. And China is a communist country. So they can do certain things that are on a draconian level that they cannot do here, at least not as fast as China has. And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think this is important to mention, which is we can't, we can't, we can't fault America too much in because.

And what I mean by that, like, yes, okay, the border closure, right? You people might come down on either side of that, but at, you know, in terms of You know, allowing more and more cases to come in like I understand the logic behind that You know, in terms of you know, they say oh the government didn't prepare You know beyond that for the next month or two or month or whatever, but like That much is true, but now my my main point is this that We can't fall in it. We can't fall in America too much in this. This is not something that is it is deeply ingrained into our cultural DNA and what I mean by

that is like in places like Hong Kong in countries like Taiwan and South Korea they've had these major pandemics several times in the last 20 years right I mean going back to SARS which was a major a huge problem people in Hong Kong were disproportionately affected by SARS, right? So there is just this, this cultural,

it's in the cultural DNA that when something like this happens, people are immediately ultra, ultra cautious, right? Everyone's wearing a mask, dude. I haven't seen,

I haven't seen a bottom of a face since January, man. Like, that's real. People could be walking around with no bottom of a face. I have no idea.

Like, you know, it's like, So people are just like extra careful because of because of their history with it. Now if you go to America, like these like stars was primarily a like we knew about it, but it wasn't, it didn't affect us like that. You know, all these these sort of pandemics or these, these, these, you know, health crises or whatever that's there happened. We've had, we've had a few things, but it's not like it's been super widespread in our culture. So the fact that Americans, and that's the other thing too, is like the Hong Kong government really did do much.

It was Hong Kong people because the Hong Kong government was echoing what was said by Beijing in the beginning, that this is not a big deal, right? I don't know if you remember, but like, you know, all these, you know, foreign diplomats that were in Wuhan, like, their countries were taking them out. And Beijing was criticizing them. How could you take their your diplomats out? Blah, blah. This is not a big problem. And Hong Kong government is echoing that same sentiment. So Hong Kong people have a deep distrust of Hong Kong government, especially, you know, now.

And so they took it upon themselves to protect themselves, right? Everyone's walking around with hand sanitizer. I'm washing my hands like 15 times a day, dude. Like I'm wearing face masks. Yeah. It's like, so, so like, Americans just aren't prepared like that because we haven't had to be. And I think that's important for people to realize. Like we, like, we need to do everything that we can. But at the same time, we can't really blame ourselves in the way that we are. Right. And, you know, that's something that you bring up a great point is that, you know, China has dealt with this in the past. They, they're actually accustomed to it in the sense that they know what they're doing. In America, this is new. This is new. And so there is going to be a lot of paranoia, but there's also going to be a lot of people who don't know how to physically handle this. Like, how much do I really need to wash my hands?

Is it really that bad? I know people. There's tons of people around me, tons of people because of what I do, that people fall on both sides of the fence. Some people say that this is just a hoax. And some people are saying, it's the end of the world. And God's coming back tomorrow. And so, like, it's, but I think we're very undereducated on how to truly handle. something like this. And so for me, my wife is pregnant. I have a two-year-old. My wife doesn't work. She

stays home with my child. So they are staying home, like straight up. They're staying home right now. And I have to go to work. I drive tractor trailer for a living. And so I go out. I do my job. I stop at the grocery store when I need to stop at the grocery store to pick stuff up to bring it home. But unless she absolutely has to go out like to the doctor, my wife's staying home because this is all new. and I'm trying to protect her. I'm trying to protect the baby inside and I'm trying to protect my son. I'm not even sleeping in the same bed as my wife right now because I'm trying to make sure that I don't bring home something and lay next to her for six, seven, eight hours a night.

And so, you know, I'm trying to take as many precautions as I can. And I think maybe in China, it's actually, like you said, ingrained in them where they know how to handle these things. Now, in China, you saw this unfold. and a very basic question that I'll ask you here is, and I don't know how in tune you are as to what the American media is saying about this, but I'll just say it this way, and you'll probably get the hint. Is this really as bad as the media is spinning it to be?

Okay, well, first of all, congratulations on the, you know, the new baby. Oh, thanks, man. And I think that's an excellent, you know, course of action. for you to take, you know, in, you know, protecting a family like that. That's definitely admirable. But, you know, yeah, it's a big deal, man. It's a definitely big deal because, I mean, one, you've, you had like, it's, it's just, it's, we're unable to control it.

So if, you know, if we can't control it, then we have no, we have no, you know, we have no timeline on it, right? We don't know how long it's going to be around. So, like, this is just sort of this adding to the fear of it. And but the fear is, is, is, you know, well grounded because this, the, this virus just, like, it spreads so rapidly. And so, it's so destructive in ways that you don't know it is until, until almost it's too late, right? Because you've got this, you know, this two-week period. basically where you could be showing no symptoms at all, and then you can go home or you can go

to your grandparents' house, or you can go to, you know, or you can sit next to an elderly person on the bus, and, you know, one tiny little droplet of whatever, right, can spread and it can cause untold damage. So this is definitely something that we need to be taking seriously. And I just hope that people are, man, because, you know, the other problem is like America, you know, we all know the politics of America are extremely divided, right? Like, I don't need to say that. Everybody knows that. And so I just, I fear that people who, people who, you know, hear a message from Trump, for instance, and they don't trust Trump. So they think this is all bullshit.

But if you look at all these other countries around the world, like, everyone is doing the same thing. This is not like a Trump is full of shit thing. You know, so also like what's been interesting for me to, you know, because I'm basically acutely aware of how people are acting in Hong Kong and how people are acting in America. Because my whole family is still back there, right? So like, to answer your question earlier, yeah, I'm heavy. up to date on the information that's that's happening back home. But, you know, the, so there's a, there's a, there's a natural distrust of government in America, right?

Throughout our whole history. That's just, that's basically what we found it on, right? So, like, there's a distrust of government, and there's a huge distrust of government in Hong Kong. And what's been interesting is the same, the same, I'm not called it an emotion, but the same distrust, the same distrust of government has prompted two different responses from the citizen. And I'm not saying that

all Americans aren't taking this seriously because a lot of them are now, fortunately. But, you know, there's still like that Hong Kong people didn't trust what was being said by the government so they took extra precautions, right? And Americans, you know, don't trust what the government says,

so they take less precautions. You know, it's just, it's kind of interesting the sort of, you know, seeing that the socio-whatever, right? The sociopolitical part of it unfold. You know, that would you bring up a great point because at the root of it then, the two cultures, when you compare them, though Americans wouldn't want to say this, at the root of it, they must have a much more of a general trust in their government then, because if they're willing to watch the mainstream media who's saying, this is crazy, then the world's happening,

and they're like, well, if the mainstream media says that, I'm not going to believe it. and it's nothing then, then they must, at the very root base of it, have a general trust that if it is something, my government will be able to help me and take care of me. Whereas in China, they're like, the Chinese government's like, hey, this is really bad. And they're like, I don't trust you. So it really must be the end of the world because you just said it's really bad. So it's 10 times worse than what you just said it is. Yeah, basically. I mean, and aside from it again, like, it was the complete opposite from the beginning that this was not a problem. This was not a big deal. These governments that are

shutting their borders to Chinese citizens, they're all overreacting, you know, taking their diplomats out of Wuhan. You're overreacting. How can you do this? It's just because it's from China and you hate China, right? And that's invariably. That is what their what their argument always goes to is that you're biased against China. You hate China. So you're doing this against China. But this is not a China thing. This is just the fact that this happened there. So we're trying to control, you know, the virus from coming.

We're not trying to control Chinese people. We're trying to control the virus. So, you know, but Beijing is always going to, is always going to play into the racial aspect of it. They're always going to try to wiggle in somehow, some way. And, you know, that's just what they do. It seems like it, you know. And, you know, all right, let me throw some numbers at you, okay? I'm not going to go global numbers, but I'm going to give you some numbers here.

And you're going to see where I'm going with this. Sure, sure, sure. In China, as of right now, according to Johns Hopkins database, they have 81,321 confirmed cases. they have 3,260 deaths and 71,860 recover. Now, this is, as of a recording on Saturday night, Eastern time at almost 10 o'clock at night. Now, Italy is at 53,000. I want to get to this, though, the United States just yesterday, Friday, when I looked at it and I did a live video on my Instagram for people, we were at just under 15,000 cases, and now we're over 25,000. We're number three in the world and confirmed cases. But here's what I want to talk to you about a little bit. In the United States,

we have 307 deaths and 171 people recovered. Italy, out of 53,000 cases, they have, well, now my thing is freezing on me, of course, right? But last time I had checked, it was really close to like a 50-50 thing where it was like recovered and deaths. It was 50-50. I can't remember which way it leaned and stuff, but it was about 50-50. China's numbers just don't seem to add up when it comes to the ratio of recovered versus death, especially for where it originated. Like the idea of a pandemic starting at ground zero, you would think the most damage would be there.

And on top of it, can we trust these numbers as in China? Do they really only have 81,000 cases when Italy is at 53,000? And the U.S. is steadily increasing now. we're at 25,000. It almost looks like Italy and the U.S. by the end of next week is going to be passing China in total cases. Yeah. So the short answer to your question is that authoritarian governments are always going to lie. They're always going to, they're always going to lie their number, about their numbers. I mean, you think North Korea has no cases? You think Russia has very few cases? You think Iran has, Iran has, has, has.

I mean, Iran's cases are a lot, but do you think that that's an actual true statistic? No, I think all these numbers are completely fabricated. I think they might point in the correct direction, but to what degree they points is, you know, is totally unknown. The, I mean, the Chinese authorities were lying about this from the beginning. So the idea that they would suddenly tell the truth, they've never had to tell the truth about anything. I'm not even talking about the virus. They've never had to tell the truth. They never have to answer difficult questions.

They are insulated from criticism because Chinese citizens can't say anything that the government has done. Yeah. negative and they say if you are not chinese you can't talk about china that's what they say so so the the question then becomes well can talk about china then if chinese people can't talk about china and non-chinese people can't talk about china cpc and i think this is this is uh again the chinese government did exactly what it was designed to do i don't believe that these numbers are accurate. And that's just, I mean, like, I don't know why anyone would believe that these numbers are accurate.

Like I said, there was a mandate that no negative news be reported on about the virus. And so, you know, of course they'd be capping their numbers. Why would they stop? Why would they say no negative news can be reported and then stop at, we're going to give you real numbers, though. Like, it's just, it's not going to happen. And again, any authoritarian government has every incentive to lie about their numbers. Right. And so you're saying that. You're in Hong Kong. I've been saying that for a while and I'm in Philadelphia. Why is it, and this is a rhetorical question. Please don't even waste your time or rather answering this. Why is the mainstream media so

stupidly going and giving China the golf clap saying, good job China. We see what you're doing and by your numbers, you did a great job. They know, they know, but they are so conditioned to take the opposite side politically from the people in this country that they oppose. So it's, and I, I rail on this all the time, man, with my show, you cannot trust the mainstream propaganda and the mainstream media for truth where it lies. There's always a spin to it. And so that's why it's important that you listen to me. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just Well, I think that's warranted, definitely. I think that some people, and I don't share in this sentiment,

but I believe that some people think that we need to play ball with the Chinese government and what they tell us, because if we don't, then we don't have access to anything. and information. So people will ration that it's better to play nice and get something rather than

fully criticize them and get nothing because that's what they will do. Then we have to say, well, if they can't handle criticism and will withhold important information, simply by fact of them being criticized, then, you know, that's another question that should be asked. So why is the onus on us to play ball with them rather than them just being transparent?

And, you know, and another thing about, you know, the mainstream media is, yeah, I mean, what you're saying happens, and that's true. I am, I've grown to be a bit more open-minded in terms of our different news networks. What I mean by that is that in China, you don't hear an opinion from somebody with a radically different worldview than you have. and that's incredibly damaging because then like I've been saying the Chinese government can just do whatever it pleases without and is insulated from criticism

but in America one of our strengths and I know that you know liberals conservatives we're always they're always at each other's throats and everything but that's a real strength because you actually hear criticism you actually hear something that can make your position better, right? If they criticize your position, you can put more thought into it.

You can put more research into it. You can get better, right? Whereas, you know, in places like China or North Korea, like you don't hear a different worldview from your government. The people at the top especially, right? They don't hear a radically different worldview than the one that they hold. So they aren't able to course, correct in the way that we are.

They're not able to, to, you know, recognize wrongdoings on the part of the government because they never have to. So I, just believe me, man, I get so frustrated at some of the stuff I read and watch in Western media, right? Completely frustrated. But I think I'm glad that we have this. difference of opinions on a large form like that. Does that make sense? Oh, 100%. 100%. And you saying that I 100% agree with you. It was just like literally like two, three weeks ago, I ended my show and I had a controversial show. And I just kind of told my audience the exact same thing you said. I said, just because you don't agree with somebody, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't listen to them.

because at the end of the day, when you hear somebody else's viewpoint and how they view the world around them, even though you don't agree with it, you gain because you learned how somebody else thought, how somebody else thinks. And so I absolutely 100% agree with you on that sentiment. Now, do you think that there was getting back to the virus, I can go all over the place? Yeah, so now that's another. not a mess. Yeah, I mean, seriously, I could, I can, I'm looking at the clock right now. We've been going for 50 minutes. I'm like, man, I could go for hours of this guy.

But. So, the hospitals. Let me ask you about that. Yeah. How are the hospitals right now? Maybe not right now, but I may be at the height of this. First of all, let me ask you this. According to you, it almost sounded at one point like you, like you believe that this is actually

in retraction in China. And if so, are the hospitals? clearing out and did the hospitals max out where they had a problem actually giving medical, you know, treatment to people? Right. So because of the the opacity of mainland China, right? I don't know, you just don't know what is the actual case. I mean, you can, you can look at their figures and you can think, well, this is kind of BS, but, you know, because it's because of the heavy censorship, you just don't really get a strong idea of what is happening there. My perspective, though, in terms of what's happening in Hong Kong, our hospitals have not been

overwhelmed in a way that, say, Italy has, right? And I credit that to Hong Kong people, in Hong Kong people being, again, like, older. careful in this situation and like not touching anything like honestly dude I like I have not kicked I've not like I don't try I try not to touch door handles like I try not to touch elevator buttons like I and I wrap my finger in a like a receipt or a tissue or something like like and that's like I'm just like I'm just kind of this I'm an idiot I'm just looking around me seeing what other people are doing I'm like I should probably do that too but you know but but it but back to the hospital question. This is not, it's not overwhelmed the hospital system or the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the information, uh, in a way that it has in Italy, or that people in America, we have not over, over, just over 900,000 hospital beds nationwide, which even on that level, it's like, really, that's it. But 65% of those hospital beds as of a week ago were occupied by patients outside of COVID-19. And we're preparing for this wave. And I think that's the scary thing for people. It's like when this wave really hits hard, which is starting to hit now, I mean, 25,000 cases, we jump 10,000 in 24 hours, pretty much. it's it's a it's a it's a nerve-wracking thing to think that if we're overrun and they're already getting ready to retrofit gym facilities things like that to help handle this so i i think people's nerves are justified in the sense that we don't prepare for such things like this and maybe china maybe is more prepared for such things even just culturally like you just described how they handled themselves um we we don't do that there's no such thing like the i even from like i know people that that really love their houses and they're just real meticulous and stuff. I'm not one of those guys.

I'm like, it's my freaking house. I'm not taking my shoes off to come in my house. I'm wearing my shoes. Well, I started taking my boots off in the garage and leaving them there because I'm like, I don't know what I stepped in today. And I don't know. That's right, man. That's right. Good idea. So like, I'm leaving my, I'm leaving my slippers in the garage. I can slide right into those before I go in the house. But so I totally understand what you're saying with that. And I wanted to ask you, along the lines of the hospitalization and the deaths and things like that, do you think the death toll just, I'm just going to ask you, do you think the death toll is much, much, much, much, much higher than what China's telling us? Or do you think, I'm pretty sure you probably believe it's

higher? Or do you think it's just, you know, maybe a little bit higher? I mean, because I've been, so for instance, and I haven't released this anywhere yet, so this is the first time I'm even bringing this up. He, I saw today on a website. Now, is, is China Mobile like a national cell phone provider? Is that what that is? No, no, it's a private company. Okay, it's a private company. I wasn't sure if it was like, I just wasn't sure. But I saw on a report for China Mobile, actually on their website today, that they had lost. and I misread this at first, but the graph is in the thousands. So when it, the number was, I don't have it in front of me, but 8,116, yeah, they were down 8,116, but you have to take that and multiply it by a thousand to get the true number of

customers that they're down in the months of February, just in February alone. And so that comes out to like 8.1 million or whatever it is, people that they, lost in customer base. Now, is that, do you think, a reflection of a death rate? Or do you think that's a reflection of people staying home and not being able to pay their bills? That is, so there's a lot to unpack there. The, the, first of all, I need to reiterate that I don't think, like, I'm not endorsing China's response. I don't know if I need to make that clear for you. No, no, yeah. I don't get that. No, I'm endorsing the response of from the country of Taiwan and South Korea and places like Singapore.

Like this has been a much, I think obviously a much better response than what happened to China. But so back to your other question, do I think that that reflects a spike in death? I would go ahead and say that that is more of a from the economic impact. you know, I think a lot of people, and again, China is not going to be transparent about this, that this probably has shook the Chinese economy in profound ways. And I think we're going to be seeing that. And I think moving forward, you know, now, you know, all of China's customers are dealing with the same problem. So I think this is going to, I am not an economist by any stretch.

of the imagination. I need to make that clear. But I just, I see this, you know, I see the economic impact of this being much worse than the long-term health problem from it. I mean, people dying is not good. Like, people dying is very, very, very bad. We need to stop that. And, you know, just because we have a spike in the amount of cases, you know, does not mean,

everything that's hit the fan, right? You know, if we have a spike in deaths, which they've been steadily increasing, unfortunately, the last few days, right? I mean, before the last few days, but especially, like, I'm checking the numbers every morning I wake up and they increase, and I'm like, Jesus, when are we going to get a handle on this?

But, like, I don't think, I think that the economic impact of that is going to far outweigh the sort of medical impact. You know, and I tend to agree with you. And I wasn't sure about the numbers here that I just rattled off to you as far as through the China mobile. That's why I wanted to ask you what your opinion was on that. But I think that people are very much overlooking the long game here in this country I'm talking about in America where, yeah, we're scared that this is a for real thing and we got to go on lockdown or whatever. If we go on lockdown, some states aren't on lockdown yet. We're scared to die. We're scared that our kids are going to die. We're scared to our kids are going to die. We're scared of all that. But at the end of it, when there is a vaccine, when there is a cure, when there is a way of life to operate around this virus, we are still going to be feeling the repercussions of the economic downfall that came from this. If it got better today, if everything went fine as of right now, somehow it just boom, done, we would feel the economic feeling of that for at least

six months still until the economy gets up and going. And they're talking about this going into August or later. So that's from Trump himself just like three days ago. And so when you hear that, the economic downfall from that is terrifying. I can't stress enough how very much concerned I am about the global economy and obviously the American economy. And as a truck driver, my job is going to be directly affected by that. And if there's not a lot of freight being pushed around, guess who's out of a job? You know? Like, I'm at a company right now where the most senior guy has been there for 32, no, 33 or 34 years,

almost as long as I've been alive. I've been there for seven years. I get cut. You know what I mean? So. Yeah, man. And that's particularly, man, I really feel for you, man, because you've got a family to take care of, man.

You've got a kid on the way. that could be a very, very stressful situation, man. So I really feel for you in that. Well, I mean, listen, I'm a big proponent of the idea that time moves forward and so will I. I'm extremely adaptable. I always have been. And I actually relish times of struggle and challenge because it really does make me stronger. And then you're the perfect person for right now.

Right, right. And people that know me in my everyday life, They know that to be true. And my wife does that too. Like my wife probably like six months ago just randomly she had said to me, she told me that, you know, you really adapt well in high stress situations. And it's the little things that I lose my head over. And it's like I can't handle the stupid little stuff that don't matter.

But the big things is that I'm like, okay, everybody stay calm. This is what we're going to do. But anyways. So yeah, that's the economic side of things. I want to bring it back, though. I know we've been talking for a while here. and I want to get back to some of these questions that listeners of the show submitted on the Facebook page, I wanted to run through some of these.

I thought some of these questions were pretty good. I think we covered some of them. But let me ask you, and I don't know what you've seen over there because I don't know what the internet situation is like in China as far as the firewall goes and what you're allowed to see. But here we have seen videos of people being stuffed in the white vans, being taken. away, like being carried away. They're like kicking and screaming, trying to not to be taken away. They get shoved in a white van and they're driven off down the road. And we don't know what happened to

them. Do you know anything about those people? Could you enlighten us at all about these videos? So I have access to what you have access to. And so, you know, the great firewall, as they call it does not affect Hong Kong. And so, you know, I've, we've got free internet. I'm not free in terms of we, I got to pay for it. But, you know, it's, it's freedom of the internet. And so, so it's to answer your question. We've all seen those videos, right? We've all watched, you know, the videos of police officers welding people into their houses. We've all seen, you know, we've seen people of Wuhan chancing that it's all fake in terms of like the progress that they've made right when Chinese higher up officials went toward uh Wuhan and uh so yeah I think again I have access to what you have

access to so but knowing what I know about China like watching them carefully studying them for years and years and years living on their doorstep, like watching how they bully the country of Taiwan and how they bully Hong Kong and, you know, the nine dash line, South China Sea, all this, all this, this, this fantasy in their heads about what is, you know, where, where their authority reaches. And I just think, uh, yeah, it, it, you can't trust, you never ultimately trust what they are telling you. And, you know, the fact that you're seeing these videos and, you know, we in Hong Kong are seeing these videos, I mean, everybody can make their own conclusion from that. Like, so, and again, they've, they've, the Chinese censors have really done a, I have to applaud them in that they've done a really good job, controlling the outflow of information, uh, in the, uh,

in the last, you know, couple months now. You know, early on, it was just going crazy. You know, every, all these, uh, these users on Waybo and, you know, other platforms in China, even TikTok, like, were, you know, making videos explaining what was actually happening. And, uh, you know, they've since then like been deleted and curtailed a lot. But, uh, you know, again, you just, you can't trust what, what their government is saying.

ultimately. Yeah. And I've been following this for a very long time. I literally since like the first or first and a half second week most in January, I've been following this because I've been telling people, you got to watch this, got to watch and they're like, ah, it's nothing. I'm like, okay. You know, so along the lines of the deaths and people being pushing the vans and we don't know what happens to them, come conspiracy theories and all that stuff. We've heard about the hospitals being built in record time. I have heard that these hospitals had bars on the windows and stuff. And from what I understand, that's probably because they're actually retrofitted prisons that they were making into hospitals. So they already had it pretty much pre-built. Can you shed any light on

that idea of things? I'm not familiar with that particular idea. But I can say that, you know, just because they can build up. Like, it would be, like, it's funny to me that, like, it became like, look, we can build a hospital when it was so much more practical to retrofit buildings, right? And it's so much more practical to, to, to, you already have infrastructure for this, presumably. Go cities, right? Right?

I mean, we're looking at school of gymnasiums. We're looking at all sorts of places that are already built. The idea that you would have to build a brand new hospital to combat this thing is just, it's, again, it's authoritarian thought process. That's all it is. You know, it's look at this big, obvious thing we could do. Aren't we great? When the reality is you could have done this way more cost effectively and way, probably even quicker. So, so, yeah, I just, again, I'm not familiar with that particular.

particular theory, but I know that they do things quite often in a, we'll just say, a less than practical way. I got you. And I just brought it up here and I wanted to bring it up to you now because I didn't even think about it before. Can you shed light on any of these, I don't know what to call them other than ghost cities. Like apparently China has cities that they built that could house millions of people that are just sitting there waiting to be used. Is that true? And do you know why? Yeah, I know that, okay, I'm as familiar with it as you are. So, you know, they, they, I have seen these videos. I have seen these photos, like everyone, and people, this is circulated, right?

People are familiar with this. So I, you know, I think it's, it's more of like, possibly in the future, these will be inhabited by people. but again, I don't know. That's just me, like, theorizing. I really have no clue. Like, I don't want to give your listeners any impression that I have some sort of special information about that. I don't.

And so, yeah, I just think, who knows? China, ultimately what you can say with China is, who knows, man? Right. Are these cities accessible, though? Like, today, if you wanted to, could you just go there and walk around this empty city or is it like blocked off and guarded? Again, I don't know. I don't have a visa for mainland China.

I have to apply for that separately. I think right now, well, right now the border's closed between Hong Kong and China. So right now I literally couldn't go. But, you know, aside from that, like I have to apply for a Chinese visa. And then I have to find out how to get to these supposed ghost cities. Like for me personally,

It's just not worth my time. For life. You don't know what's going to happen. Exactly. So, yeah, I would say, I mean, who knows, depending on who you talk to in China, I'm sure you could really do anything as long as you know the right people in China. The corruption is quite, you know, is quite widespread. So it all depends, man.

So, all right. Yeah, I mean, I just, that wasn't even something I wanted to talk about, but I just had to ask you because you're the first person. It's a good question. I'm not mad at it. Welcome to the confessional. So how's the population or the population, how's the pollution levels over there that, that you know of? I know Beijing tends to have some heavy pollution.

I don't know what Hong Kong is like. Do you know anything about like the idea of this big shutdown they went through? I would assume it helps the population or the pollution levels, but just figured I'd ask. Yeah. So the two parts to that. Number one, the typical level of pollution in Hong Kong, I would say is much higher than, you know, most places back home. But the geography and the landscape of Hong Kong is such that it kind of acts as a, we can say, a filter in certain ways. Like it's right on the sea and there's, you know, mountains and water flowing all around Hong Kong.

so, you know, very good fengsoi. And so, you know, it sort of helps to filter out a lot of the pollution. I mean, it's, I'm not going to say it's like zero. Like, there's definitely a pollution problem in Hong Kong, but a part of that could also be attributed to being so close to this sort of factory mecca of Guantio. China. You know, it's very close to China, so, you know, a lot of that could be spilling over from there. In terms of the pollution levels going down because of the virus, I mean, yeah, whenever you have people not doing anything, like, it's going to, the pollution levels are

going to drop. I, I hesitate to, like, fully endorse. a lot of these like reports like, hey, because the virus, the pollution levels are down. Like that that might be true, but that's sort of like negate, it kind of sidesteps the fact that the huge problem of the virus, right? Like, of course, if you have people not doing anything, then the pollution levels are going to go down. But I don't want, like, I don't want the focus to be on that. Like, we can acknowledge that, but the focus needs to be that. this virus is a big problem and we it needs to be dealt with right and so yeah again like it's just kind of obvious that that would happen right so let me ask you about this virus and its origin we know

that it comes from uh Wuhan and yeah uh there has been a lot of speculation about this being a biological attack of some kind um and also that there has also been reported that China has accused the United States military of using this as a biological attack on China. And I know you're limited to what is information and all that stuff. What are your thoughts on it, though, at least? I mean, I'm sure you probably don't know much more than what we know about that stuff, but what do you think about all that? Look, from its inception, the Chinese government has blamed America for every,

Every single problem they have ever created themselves. Every single problem. This is not anything new. This is par for the course. They have to blame America. They have to scapegoat some else to avoid the blame their mishandling of it. This is like when, I'm not like a Trump dude, like, but when Trump says that, he's not wrong. wrong in saying that.

Like when, uh, like it's, it's all about just sidestepping the blame. They don't want to be blamed for it. Now, in terms of it being a biological weapon created by China,

I, so my position on that is that I don't want people to view them as these sorts of evil geniuses. I don't,

don't think it is it is healthy to view them as evil geniuses they are inept government bureaucrats they are inept but government bureaucrats like i i cannot emphasize that enough now they are shady they are shady government bureaucrats but inept government bureaucrats nonetheless. So I don't believe now I know that they are again completely shady so anything is possible. Right. But in terms of like my my sort of natural state

when looking at these sort of situations is that they screwed up. They're not they're not like they're not playing sort of love chess game. I mean, they are. They definitely are. But they're not like so adept that they

that they can, that they could do this. Like that they could engineer this sort of this problem. And so, I mean, maybe they are. Maybe they are. But they are not, I think it's, it's not healthy for us to spread the

idea that they are evil geniuses because then it's like we can never, their actions can never change, that things can never get better. If they're so, if they're so adept, if they're so good at their evil geniusness, that, you know, the people,

people start to think it's hopeless. And so I don't, I don't want people to, to take that away. I think it's, it's much more important that we view them as, as bad at their job, basically. I think, because, because they, They sort of, they put on this cloak of infallibility, right? They, like I said, time and time again, they insulate themselves from criticism.

So anything they can do to insulate themselves from criticism, they're going to do, including blaming the erroneous claims of blaming the United States government for something that obviously happened there. Now, what is also very dangerous about that, and I think is also dangerous in terms of, we don't want to make it seem like they are a group of evil geniuses, is that if we, if we blame it on that, they have no responsibility to, to fix the source of the problem, right? Which is they themselves have said from the beginning was the Wuhan seafood market, right? Like they, if they, you know, if we just say that, oh, this is a biological weapon created by China, then they don't have to deal with the actual source of it. You know, and so this problem is going to happen again. Now, I don't think that they're going to deal with the source in an effective way anyway.

I think this is going to happen again because they don't ever, one thing about Chinese government is they will never apologize for anything. period point blank period they will never apologize they will never admit wrongdoing they will never course correct this is just built into the system so uh so we have to be careful right we can't we can't think that that's that's a policy of of weakness ultimately because you don't allow people to again with a different worldview from your own don't allow them to question you so you you're you're insulating yourself with your weakness. And I don't want to, I don't want people to view them as strong because I think that's not the correct categorization of them. You know, that's really well said. That is really well said. Thank you. I think about it a lot, man. I mean, at least on my end,

it's well taken and stuff. And I, I appreciate your thought process through that. And it makes a lot of sense. Let me ask you about the virus itself. First, it's almost like a two-part question. One, do you know anybody who got the virus? And also, how fast is the recovery rate of this that you have seen? And I ask these questions because there are people in America, and because of what I do, I come across these people frequently that are saying that this is a hoax and it's not even real. And so obviously, you believe it's real. I believe it's real. But do you know anybody that has the virus to maybe to say, I've actually seen it? Because I've actually had listeners reach out to me saying they actually have the virus themselves.

But I just wanted to ask you, balls in your court. Yeah, absolutely. So I do have one friend's mother contracted the virus. She's a like an avid traveler. So she's always traveling everywhere. So I wouldn't, I don't know where or when she got. There's a loose time frame as to when she got it, but I don't know where exactly she would have gotten it, but it could have been anywhere. So she is in recovery.

She's, I believe she posted on Facebook, it was day like 14 or something, and she was feeling much better. Over here, this is an American friend of mine, his mom. And over here, I've not, I don't know anybody who's actually had it, but my friend, or sorry, my. My wife's friend was on the cruise ship that was basically stuck off the coast of Japan. I forget the name was a diamond princess or something like that. Yeah. Cruise ship were like a whole bunch of people on the cruise ship, you know, and staff got the infection. She miraculously, thank God, didn't.

But a lot of people around her did. So it's, yeah, it's definitely out there. it's definitely around. People definitely need to be ultra-cautious, ultra-caution. Yeah. Well, Brett, let me tell you something, man. I appreciate you coming on and sharing some information here. And I'm sure you and I could probably go on forever. Uh, but-huh. This has been, there's been nothing, man. It's just been like a nice casual conversation. Yeah. And that's how I like approaching these things, man. I'm not a, I'm not a journalist and I don't want to pretend to be. And quite frankly, I wouldn't want to be labeled as a journalist. But I just approach these things as conversation pieces. And I appreciate you coming on and holding a conversation with me. And I can't tell you how blown away I am as to how well this went. I wasn't exactly sure when I reached out to you, how much you would be willing to share, things like that. But I do appreciate you coming on and sharing. And before we get out of here, my final question to you is this. Do you or do you not

want me to bleep your name. I want the audience to hear you say yes or no so that they cannot hound me if I leave you in. I do not want you to bleep my name. I'm, I'm, I stand behind everything I said. Uh, I could back it up. I people, if they want to, uh, you know, take issue with anything I, I've said, I'm happy to, to have a conversation. Um, being said, don't like, uh, like, uh, like, uh, you know, hit my. inbox a bunch of messages. I'm kind of a busy dude. So I appreciate

serious inquiries only, you know? But again, man, this has been this has been an absolute pleasure, man. I'm thankful and I'm happy that you reached out. I think it's important that people talk about this, especially. I mean, right now, people are at home.

Like, what else are you going to do? Talk about it. Right? Like, so yeah, and that's not to downplay the issue here. I think people absolutely need to be taking it seriously. Again, it's been my pleasure, man, and thanks a lot, man. I really appreciate it. So good. Okay, well, I want to say thank you very much to Brett for coming on the show again. I thought that was a fascinating interview, and hopefully you guys feel like you gained from that interview because I think he shared a lot of knowledge from somebody who

actually lives on the inside of Hong Kong. Next up, we have a returning guest, Joe Jordan. Now, Joe Jordan was on the show. I don't remember exactly what episode it was, but it was probably the, I think it was the second most popular show we did in 2019 when we polled our listeners. Joe, how you doing, man? I'm good, Tony. Good to talk to you again. Awesome, man. Now, I'm drawing a blank as to which episode number you were, but I believe the episode we titled it was Alien Abduction Stopped by Jesus or something like that. And it was, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, it was a, controversial show, for sure. I mean, people that listen to it that, you know, don't fall in line with the same theological viewpoint, they didn't care for it, obviously.

But overall, that episode, whether you loved it or hated it, people listened to it for sure, because when we pulled our audience, they actually came back that your episode was the second most favorite episode next to episode 122, which is legendary for the year, So thanks for coming on for that episode. And thanks for coming back, man. Oh, sure. Hey, anytime you want to talk, I'm here for you. Awesome, man. So, Joe, your situation is unique that you are a safety professional for a top 100 company that supports the American military. And you're a contractor in South Korea.

And you have been basically at the Ground Zero epicenter of the outbreak. in South Korea, right? That's correct. Okay. So if you could just kind of share with us things that you have went through, things that you've seen change over there, how has this affected everyday life over there, things like that. We're trying to gain some insight as to how especially Asian countries have handled this

and also how from that how we can handle it as well. And I'm sure we'll have plenty of fun discussion along the way. So go ahead and take it away, my friend. Sure. I got to tell you, your listeners there, especially the ones in America that are just getting into this battle with this virus, it's going to change your world. Whether you accepted for being real or not this virus,

whether you think it's a conspiracy, whether you think it is, in the end, your world's going to be changed. And mine has been changed. We've been through this now, going. on over a month now since it hit bad here in the Daegu area of South Korea. I live about 20 minutes outside of Daegu in a town called Weiwan. This is where I live and I work at a military base here. We support the American military here in Korea. And I'm an American contractor, like you said, and I'm a safety specialist. We have a job to help support the military and what they're doing here

to protect the Korean people from the crazy guy up north. When this hit here a month ago, a little over a month ago now, it caught us by surprise. We saw what was happening in China, and then all of a sudden, bam, and it just exploded here in Daegu. And what happened was, is it all came from a close connection of a few certain people with the people in China. And it all came down to it was a church member here. And actually this church is actually a cult in a way. It's got close to 200,000 plus members throughout South Korea and some in China. One of the members had actually been in the Wuhan area and the church there in Wuhan

and was Korean and came back to Korea, had signs of the illness, okay, not bad, but was a carrier at the time when she came back to Daegu and went to the church here, went to a funeral here, went to some dinners here, and actually, you know, did a lot of mingling with the church members at the large church they have here in Daegu. All the time being with the virus. And that just spread like wildfire. This whole thing is based on close contact with other people. This is why you see the social distancing. subject being brought up and constantly being pushed out. Now, we didn't see that at first. We didn't understand how this thing was actually spreading. But the more they started going backwards in her contacts and her whereabouts, they were able to see that this was a close contact virus. And they were able to track it back through a lot of the members of the church.

And once that happened, they knew that they needed to get a grip on this right away. So first thing they tried to do is find out everywhere she's been and then get her under lockdown and then try to find out where everybody else that she's been in contact with has been also. They were able to get the records of the church released of all the members and they did all the testing on the different members of the church. Many, many, many of them were already, you know, showing signs of the virus. Most of them went under quarantine. and that was a big thing they did right away here was the quarantine. Now, I'll tell you, it wasn't a good thing what happened here with this church and her getting, you know, out there and exposing so many people. But there was a good thing that came out of it.

Because of what happened with this woman and exposing so many people so fast, it caused the Korean government to get kicked into gear really hard to get motivated. If this hadn't have happened, I think they would have still been dragging their feet waiting for something bigger to come along to show that this was something more than they expected. So it was a bad thing which she did, but it was a good thing to get the government kicking in and get him in action. Everything went under lockdown right away in Daegu. They were finding areas where this church is located, blocks and blocks where people had made contact with each other and members of the church. They did a lot of emergency disinfecting. And if you've seen the videos here from South Korea, you see people in, you know, full costume of protection and with these aerorator machines that are out there blasting, you know, disinfecting everywhere. They would go in and do entire buildings, you know, every level floor and stairways and stairwells and elevators, everything to get disinfecting everywhere they could to try and stop the spread of this stuff.

Because we do know that it's close contact from person to person, and it's picking it up from surfaces where these contaminated people have been, you know, effective people have been. And that's the thing that they're having to watch for. It made a difference in the lifestyle here, you know, very, very fast. And I don't think the Korean people were ready for it. I'm watching the news on America, and I can see that they're definitely not ready. for it. But this self-quarantine and this social distancing is a major, major tool to fight this

virus. But it goes against everything we're made of. We want to be around other people. You know, we want to be close together. And the Koreans absolutely are very close-knit people, close-knit family, close-knit friends. At lunch times and dinner times, you know, if they're outside of the home life, they will share dinners with everybody, share meals. They're all about sharing time and resources together. So to get them to try and split up, you know, I can see that that was going to be a major change for them. In the nine years, I've been here, the one thing that probably irritates me the most as an American being over here, even though I love this place, is they don't understand personal space.

You know, everything's a city life over here. The people have congregated to the cities. They live in high rises. And, you know, there's just millions upon millions in each of these major cities here in Korea. And when you're down on the street level or anywhere that you go, it's just masses of people,

like you see in New York, Chicago, or, you know, any other major cities, where everybody's close together, you know, bumping into each other, rubbing up against each other, you know, subway trains where everybody's packed in, you know, face to face, I mean, inches away, you know. And they took that as that's part of life. But me coming from, you know, rural Florida before I came over here and living the past 40 years there, I wasn't used to having, you know, no personal space at all. But when I come over here and personal space was just something we never heard of over here, you know, that really,

It's bugged me ever since. It's been a hard thing they get used to. But, you know, it's forced these people to step back now and say, okay, this is a problem with this virus. And we've got to allow personal space. And this whole idea of social distancing is just kicked in here. You know, it's been a month now. They've been talking about self-quarantine, but now they're talking about the social distancing.

I kind of think they got that from the U.S. bringing it up. But now that the government over here is taking hold of it, it's a full propaganda machine going right now to show these Korean people that this is something that absolutely must happen. You've got to keep your space. You've got to keep six feet as much as possible, you know. Because everything went under lockdown here, the government, you know, asked that everybody do a self-quarantine and everybody pretty much went with it. A lot of people don't like it, but they were actually understanding and voluntarily taking it on. You see that there were very few people on the trains and on the buses, and because of that, even though they were still running and some people were using them, they make sure that they get you plenty of seats apart from each other, you know, and not put you all together side by side on the train or on the buses.

So, you know, they've been doing what they can to make that happen. They set up major testing areas. There's actually a drive-through testing area we have downtown Degu at one of the major hospitals. One of the employees that I work with here just had to go there the other day. He was feeling some of the symptoms, but it wasn't the virus. It was just a cold coming on. We're still in a cold season, cold flu season. So you're going to still get those symptoms that show up, but they may not be the

the coronavirus. But he was worried and he just wanted to make sure because he really didn't want to go on a self-quarantine unless he had to. So he took the drive. They tell you to get in your own personal car, drive over, and they've got an area set up right in the parking lot of the hospital. That's a drive-through testing site. They asked you a barrage of questions to try to narrow down to whether they think you might actually be showing symptoms of the virus. or you're showing symptoms on something else. And then finally at the end, they actually did the test on them. And it's done with a swab in the mouth and the throat area

and then the swab being stuck way up in the nose and a swab done up inside the nasal cavity. And he told me, he says, that was not comfortable at all. He said, he don't even want to have that happen again. That was something that actually hurt. But they told him, go home, go back to his apartment, stay there until they call him. And then about six hours later, they got the results for the test,

and they told him he was negative. But that's how organized it is over here on trying to get ahead of this. These Koreans jumped in really, really fast. From the news that I've listened to on the Korean side of television, they said they've tested over 330,000 people so far. You know, that's a lot of tests that have been performed. So they've got a major jump on it here, but it is a major change in lifestyle.

You know, my wife and I have stayed home here in the house, you know, the whole time. I still go to work every day because the military bases jumped on a real good control because they needed to continue to have their people to come to work because we're here for a special reason. So the way they did this is no visitors were allowed to enter the base, but people that were, what they call mission essential, So people that needed to be there to make sure that the bases continue doing what they're here to do, they were able to continue access and spouses and family members of those mission essential. But they set up the GIs and all the entry points to the bases, the gates, should you say, security gates. And every single time you come on base, you have to answer a barrage of questions,

whether you've been to China in the past 30 days, whether you've had, any contact with anybody from that church or you're showing signs and symptoms. And last one, do you feel okay? And then they take your temperature. They got an infrared non-touched thermometer that they use. And once you pass all of that, they let you on through the gate. And they do this all day and night for anybody leaving, you know, anybody entering the base. If you leave the base five times and each time you come back in, you've got to go through the same process to get. So we're good on how we're handling, you know, on the basis. We were able to verify that we weren't going to have any issues on the basis so that people could continue to

do their shopping because, you know, we don't have to shop on the economy. We can shop at the base PX or the base commissary, you know, for food and other items. But as long as we stay clean and, you know, they let us on the base. We can continue without having to use the economy stores. It's hurt their economy here quite a bit, but they're dealing with it, you know. And something that I've been watching and listening to my Korean friends on what they're doing, is a lot of the mom and pop stores, which there are many, many of here compared to what we see in the U.S. They have a close neighborhood of people that visit their store and that they trust.

Okay. And if the store owner can convince the local people that they're doing everything they can to stay clean, then they'll welcome the customers to come in and let them know that, hey, we're making this as clean as possible for you. And as we're seeing on the military base, we're now seeing it on the economy too. Like in a grocery store, when you go in to do the shop and you see a lot of people that handle things, right? You pick up a package, you read the items on it. You know, make sure it's what you want. If it's not, you put it back on the shelf. Well, there's people that are in there full time now that are doing nothing but wiping things down, disinfecting.

So they're taking every precautions so that you can continue to buy your products, but also, you know, be comfortable that everything's been cleaned for you. You can't come into a grocery store now or a store without having to use hand sanitizer before they let you in. On base, before we come in the commissary, they actually do a hand-wash. hand sanitizer, and they're again taking your temperature, you know, because you don't want anybody in there that's going to make it to where they've got to shut down our groceries. So it's been a major change in lifestyle, but it's been an acceptable change in lifestyle. Like I said, when I'm at home, outside of work, we stay put. The only time we do go out, just my wife, it drives her crazy,

sitting here all day long, she'd like to get outside. So as much as we can in the evening, we'll take a walk. And the streets are pretty much empty. You know, you'll see a few other people taking advantage of the empty streets also to, you know, to go get some fresh air and take a walk, which is good. It keeps the immune system up if you can keep some exercise. And, you know, the social distancing, you can actually see it working because on a crowded street, which we used to see, people would just rub up against you, you know, like you aren't even there. We used to think we were invisible, you know, they were just run into us. But now even the Koreans, you know, they'll see you coming and they'll actually cross the street and then come back around you on the other side once you pass. So there's no risk of being out at night and getting some exercise and, you know, in fresh air.

Plus, it takes away that, you know, a lot of the panic and stuff that we're dealing with, too. So that's a good part, you know. Yeah, you know, let me ask you this. It seems like in South Korea, the culture is that people maybe have. have a more better general trust in what's being told to them as far as this outbreak goes. Now, I want to use the example, two examples, actually. And we actually talked about this with Brett on our previous interview here. And Brett mentioned how, like, if the Chinese government says to them, don't worry, it's not

that bad. That's when everybody starts putting face masks on and, you know, hazmat suits because they're like, if you're saying that, we're going to do the opposite. And then here in the United States, it's like the media is an extension of the political mouthpiece. And so if the media is saying, don't sweat it's not that bad people or the government, let's just put it that way, people are tending to be like, oh, well, if the media says that, then I'm going to do the opposite because they're wrong about everything. go Trump or, you know, if Trump is saying that, that I'm going to do the opposite because Trump is a moron and I'm not going to follow his lead. So, you know, you see what I'm saying? Like, there's not a whole lot of trust when it comes in this country to the government and the media

telling you things and likewise in China. But in South Korea, in order to have that kind of exceptional response and have everybody kind of really fall in line with it. And then you see the results coming from South Korea. It seems like people maybe have a better, more general trust in their government or their media. And I think you're correct there, you know, talking to my Korean friends, you know, I do understand they have a split government here. They've got a Democratic government, you know, a Democratic side, more liberal side, and then a conservative side. And, you know, there's quite a difference between the two. The liberal side is actually in power right now. And elections coming up here next week for some of the different positions.

But a lot of my conservative Korean friends, they'll talk about the liberal side. But when it comes to dealing in issues like this that are non-political, that are more life-or-death situation, they pay attention. You know, and this is something they don't want to, they don't want this thing to run over them. You know, they jumped on this right away. and, you know, like I said, it took some attention getting in the beginning. And, you know, even though it was really a bad thing that lady did getting all those people infected, it did shock them into understanding it, oh, my God, this is real. You know, this is not some crazy thing that just they're talking about in China.

No, this is actually real. And, you know, we've had apartment buildings here high rises with, you know, 10, 12, 15 or more floors of apartments. you know, that have been totally quarantined to where, you know, the people, you know, they got to stay put. You know, they got to stay put for a certain amount of time until the government releases them to, you know, to come out. And they've had some that are made off limits where only the people that live there can come and go to do what they need to do. But no visitors are allowed to go there until, you know, the government releases that. And they send a list out every day to show that what new places that, you know, that they've, that have come under the

quarantine or come under being off limits. And they also show the ones that are opened up again. So they're staying way ahead on this and helping everybody, you know, do what they need to do, still live a normal everyday life. You know, and, you know, like I said, I'm still going to work every day. There's 90-some people on the contract I'm on that work on the base. And we have to, we have to trust each other that when we come to work and have to work close proximity with a fellow worker, that we have to trust that he's doing the right thing after hours. You know, and you have to develop that trust with your fellow workers to be able to continue to work. And that's something that's majorly important because we do trust each other.

We're watching each other. We're having meeting after meeting after meeting on how to protect our job. ourselves to be able to continue to work, continue to do the job we're doing. We're living in a foreign country as Americans. If we get shut down, that's not a good thing. It's one thing to be shut down being at home in America, in your own home and everything else. But if we get shut down over here, we lose a lot.

You know, we can't even leave here right now. You know, the traffic that is coming out of DeGue area, that's going to be tough. Not only would we have a hard time getting out. But we'd probably be quarantined on the U.S. side once we got there. You know, and who's paying for all of that? So we're doing everything we can to make sure that the guys we work with, guys and gals we work with, are doing the right thing where we can come together and feel safe to actually do our job together every day.

And I think that if you can get the people to do that in America, you won't have to go to full 100% shutdowns, you know, which everybody's afraid of right now, which is a last-ditch resort that they're talking about, that doesn't need to happen. I don't see that. There's a different way of life that's coming, possibly, but we'll adjust to it.

We're seeing it here, and we are adjusting to it, not going to restaurants, you know, stay in, do your own cooking. But there's also takeout. If you get a restaurant that's doing the right thing, and you can trust them to do the right thing, which most likely you can because they want to stay open and make money. They'll do deliveries.

And here in Korea, everything's in more or less a city life setting, you know, millions of people living in a city, they deliver everything here. I mean, you can order from your apartment. You can order McDonald's, and a delivery driver is going to bring you McDonald's to your door. The only thing you have to do is, you know, slip the money out the door. He's going to leave the food there at the door for you, knock on it, leave the food back away from me,

doing exchange of money, and away he goes, and you get to have dinner. You know, and you can do this with any restaurant here. Same thing with grocery stores. They're actually do grocery deliveries here. A lot of the Koreans take advantage of using the delivery service. Even before we have the viruses, I see other Korean families in my building.

They're constantly getting stuff delivered. I don't think they go shopping for anything, except online. You know, everything comes to the door. So it works. It can make it work. It's just different than what you're used to in the States. Yeah. And, you know, talking about the deliveries and stuff, we have a lot of similar services here that I think many people on a broad level don't really even recognize that that's a possibility. We have apps in the United States that, like one I know is called Instacart, where you can go and there's certain stores in your area that are on this app and you can go ahead and, you can go ahead and, you can go ahead and, you know, shop online, make a list of everything that you want to have, and then there will be a shopper

that goes and picks up the stuff for you and brings it to your house. Now, with Instacart, it's a contracted kind of thing, so you would have to have a real good trust in the people who are, you know, going and shopping for your grocery because they're not hired by the grocery stores. But it would limit your exposure, at least, from a mass amount of people. And the same thing with restaurants and things like that. Joe, so this is something that I have been concerned about as far as restaurants staying open and having drive-thrus and delivery service. So what you're saying is as long as they're doing what they need to do on their end as far as sanitation goes and stuff, it seems to be working over there in South Korea as far as letting some food places stay open for delivery and drive-through. Yeah, absolutely.

We haven't seen any issues or outbreaks in the news as far as dealing with that type of delivery service or that type of drive-through service. These people are going to do the right thing so they can stay open. This is the one thing that scares them the most is not being able to work. The Korean people are a lot different than Americans in a lot of ways. They're a hard driving type of person. If they're not spending all of their day working or all of their day running in business, they're in school all day. You know, even their school kids here go 10, 12, 14 hours a day to school. These people are striving to be the best and not just the best in Korea.

These people want to be the best in the world. And, you know, a lot of the products in America now you're seeing are Korean products. What years ago used to be Japanese or Chinese, a lot of the products that we have are actually Korean products. LG, Samsung, Hyundai, you know, Kia. All those are Korean products, and most of the Americans got one or two of the Korean, you know, items. So they're pushing to be successful. They don't want to jeopardize that in any way. They don't want to, you know, to lose that control of what they have right now.

In this small little country, you know, I'm talking a really small country. I mean, what is it? People say it's the size of Massachusetts or something, I think. you know, compared to the U.S. But look how much importance they serve in the world right now for products. So they don't want to jeopardize that. You know, this one thing that's really been on my mind here lately is I watch the numbers increase in America on the news here every day,

is it's a concern because I don't see it here. I don't see the homeless population here in Korea like you do in the, the U.S. You rarely see people that are homeless on the street in Korea. Okay, really, you rarely do. Because family takes care of them, okay? That's a different culture than what we have in America. You know, they're quick to put away the elderly in America, you know, once they can't take, once they can't support themselves. But in Korea, no, family takes care of them as they get old. And the other one is we don't have a drug culture here like in America. You don't see the gangs.

You don't see the gangbangers. You don't see the gangbangers. You don't see the drug crazes like you do in America. And that scares me the death. Between those two groups of people, I think you've got a potential for a major catastrophe in America right now. And I'm not seeing people talk about that too much. But it does concern me because I do see it. in America when I visit and I see it more and more.

You've got probably millions of people in a group that are either homeless with, you know, destroyed immune systems because they live on the street, you know, surviving the best they can without medical care. And then you've also got, you know, on one coast, you got the cocaine addicts on the other coast, you got the heroin junkies, and in the middle of you got the Mets for All of those millions of people involved in that activity have destroyed immune systems. If this virus gets a hold of that group of people, it's going to go crazy. And trying to tell those people they need to stay home, uh-uh.

You've got a guy that needs a fix. He's going out to get it. He might do what he's got to do to rob and get into another person's place, potential contamination to somebody else right there. and they're not going to stay away from other people, you know, in locations where they've got to get their fix from. Again, more contact with other people. They're not going to care. The only thing they care about is getting the next fix.

Okay. And that's the group I think you need to be afraid of in a population that is going to be very hard to control. I don't see that here in Korea. You know, that's really interesting to bring that up. I have not heard anybody kind of talk. I've heard people talk about the homeless population. and more and along the lines of how that could be a problem, but it was more in the tone of how can we get rid of the homeless. And it's like, well, if we, if we focused on the homeless a little bit

more than what we do, we wouldn't have the problem to begin with. But the idea of the gangs and also drug addicts, like that is something that I don't think, I don't think I've ever really thought about and I haven't heard a whole lot about. Gang life is very much a quote-unquote family orient, where you are together, you stick together, you do. do things together. It's not social distancing. And you're not going to get gangs to social distance. Because what you're going to get is them saying that's for, you know, whims. That's for, you know, we're not, we're not social distancing. We're tough. We're fine. You know, it's like, and it's group, it's group thinking. So, uh, you have the leader of a gang saying something and everybody thinks

that and everybody says that. Everybody does that. And so that is very much a concern. And kind of Relaying to South Korea, we have, not we, you, South Korea has just under 9,000 cases confirmed. And as of right now, I'm looking at it, it has 104 deaths and 2,909 recoveries. That is, I mean, that's a really good ratio. And honestly, out of these top countries and stuff, the very top country, China, we can't trust the numbers. they're giving us. And so the ratios that they are giving us just, they don't seem to match. And the same thing with Iran. And we know Iran, when Iran first kind of started reporting that they had this, at one time, they had five deaths to 14 cases. And we're, I'm sitting here thinking, that doesn't make sense,

ratio-wise. You clearly have more than 14 cases if you have five deaths already. And obviously, it blew up. And I do question whether they have been telling us the truth with numbers as well. But South Korea, no gangs, not a lot of homeless. You took it serious. And your numbers are showing it. Here's another country here. Let me just tell you, Joe, a couple more countries for context here. Germany has over 22,000 cases.

Their death total is 17,000. And the recovery total is 21,000. That ratio is about 50-50. in Spain, actually this thing isn't giving me Spain's numbers, so we'll move on. But in Italy, it's not doing that either. Interesting. I don't know why it's glitching out on me here. But from my recollection from, you know, 12 hours ago when I looked at this last, it was a lot of like pushing 50-50 kind of statistics here when it comes to the deaths to recovery in the moment. But in your moment, in South Korea, it's not like that. And I think it's because of the response to you guys

had. And I was going to ask you this, but I think I know the answer to this, but I'll ask anyways, just in case somebody wants me to. Have you guys seen any escalation in crime with people staying home? Is there any opportunity that people are taking advantage of trying to do looting or something like that? No. And let me take it a little farther. That's another part of this culture that keeps me living over here. And I've been here nine years now. Originally, I planned on five-year plan that I would stick it out for five years and then go back to America and pick up employment there. The reason I came over here is because I was last employed at the Kennedy Space Center during the shuttle program, and I stayed there as the shuttle program wound down, you know,

and they stayed long enough to see some of the shuttles head out to the museums. But then I realized that, you know, I better move on because it's good possibility. I'll end up without a job eventually, too. So I took the contract and worked, but I figured five years a space program will kick in again and I'll go back home. But the longer I stayed, the more I realize that this is one awesome place, you know, and there's so many things that this country has here that I wish we had in America. You talk about crime. Let me give an example of the way this culture works here. I was on a public train, okay? First couple of years I got here, and this really changed.

by mine and I had just bought my first iPhone and you know iPhones aren't cheap and I took a train ride over to Daegu and was on the train coming back and when I got off the train I went to stick stick my hand in my pocket to grab my phone and I realized it wasn't there I had taken my phone out and set it on the windowsill because I had a window seat on the train and obviously it was still there on the window sill so I went to the counter, the ticket counter, and I had to wait for a couple people to get their tickets ahead of me. So the train's long gone. And I went up there and I talked to the gal that was at the window. You know, most everybody here speaks a decent amount of English. And I said, she asked,

how can I help you? And I said, I forgot my phone on the train. She says, where did you come from? And I said, Daegu, she said, when did you arrive? And I said about five minutes ago. So she's looking on her, everything's electronic here. It's amazing. They're so high tech here. It's unbelievable. And she looks it right up. She's got the train number. She's got where it's going next.

And then I see her get on a phone. And she calls somebody and she said she's holding her finger up for me to wait. And when she gets done with the phone call, she says, can you wait one hour? And I said, yes, ma'am, I can. She says, sit right over there. So I went over to the seat and sat down. An hour goes by. I'm watching my watch.

And then here comes one of the conductor guys from the train that checks your tickets on the train. And he comes walking over and went to the counter where she was at and she points over to me. And he comes walking over. And he goes, sir, is this your phone? What are the odds of that happening in America? Yeah. Yeah. You know that the cities here went up so fast that they wanted to get people in apartments.

And not everybody had cars. Like in America in the beginning. Most of the wealthier people had cars, but the newer people getting into the apartments, they didn't all own cars. They use public transportation. Public transportation is super cheap and super high tech, and it's just amazing. I lived the first three years here without a car. I didn't need it. Okay?

Everything was right there. I can get a taxi and go anywhere in the city I live in, you know, for less than $3. You know, that's cheap. And it's cheaper than having to pay for gas and insurance and a car payment. You know, if you're not traveling that much and going short distances, use a public transportation. It's great. Well, I finally did get a car. And that's when I realized that they built all these apartment buildings and didn't take into consideration that everybody in the building might own a car.

Or, like in America, might own two cars. So there's no parking. So what you see at nighttime is double and double. triple parking around every building in the city as the night goes to sleep. Okay. Well, what if you're on the inside and you've got two cars blocking you, you know, out blocking you from getting out to go to work in the morning? You go to work before they do.

How are you getting your car out of there? That's a good question. You know how they deal with that? They either leave the key in the car so that I can move. their car for them and then get mine out and move theirs back or they leave a number on the dash so you can call them and they'll come down and move it for you. Wow. You know, would you do that in America? Never, never. Never. But that's the way this country works. You can leave things. Packages are delivered to the doors and apartment buildings. I come home every day. There's apartment,

apartment apartment, apartment. They've got packages waiting that they got delivered. Nobody takes that stuff. You know, if you're not home when they deliver a package, if you're not, you know, like a special package, you know, one that's like mail, when you order something through the internet and it comes, if you're not there, they take it to the nearest mini mart or 7-Eleven and they leave it there.

And you automatically, it's just normal here to know that if you're expecting, a package and it's late. They told you three days and it's not there. You need to go to the most smithmark because that's probably where it got delivered to. Wow. That happened in America? No. I don't think so. No. There's no crime here, Tony. It's amazing. No crime. Wow. So that, I mean, obviously that's amazing. Good for you, Joe. Absolutely good for you. You have no crimes. But over here in America, we got some issues here. They don't have guns here either. And I was an avid gun owner and, you know, NRA guy.

I mean, I've had guns all my life. My dad was born and raised and was a gunsmith, was a gun competitor. And he actually had an indoor Olympic record at one time back in the 70s. You know, and his whole life is about guns. And so was mine. But, you know, I had to let all that go. came over here because no guns are allowed here in Korea. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did enjoy,

please share the show with your friends. Take the link of the show right now and share it on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok. I don't care how you share the show, but please share the show if you enjoyed it because that's the best thing you could do to help the show grow. And just a reminder, please go ahead and check out Hammer Lane Legends, the podcast that me and my dad started. It's literally a very similar format to the confessionals, only we're talking to people who drive for a living and they're sharing their wild and crazy experiences from the road. And if you're looking for extra content, you're bored at home, you have nothing better to do. Maybe becoming a member would be a good time for you right now.

So go ahead and check that out at the confessionalspodcast.com. And until next week, friends, stay safe. Take care and remember. The truth will set you free, but first they'll piss you off. Bye. I never anticipated something like this. And soon, we are staring. down the barrel of the possibility that the National Guard can be walking up and down our streets here. You're in Philadelphia. I'm in New York. So we're in the hot spots. And so we can really be looking at some type of martial law. Are you concerned about that at all? Yeah. Well, I'm for, all right, let me say this. I think we're already in martial law.

They're not going to tell you that we're going to martial law. If you think that you're going to have one day Trump come up on the stand and say, that's it. We're locking it down. Everybody don't move. Like, that's not going to happen, okay? Because do the Trump impression one more time? That's it. There's a big door and nobody goes through. So, but he's not going to do that. But what he did do, that's it. We're locking it down. Everybody don't move. There's a big door and nobody goes through. Everybody don't move. We're locking it down. That's it. Everybody don't move.