Latest / Kvetch & Release / The Siberian 'Plague Leak': Kremlin Word Games, Sci-Fi Bioweapon Claims, & Other Spin

Transcript

The Siberian 'Plague Leak': Kremlin Word Games, Sci-Fi Bioweapon Claims, & Other Spin · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Time for Litke's Got a Take. Good morning, John Litke.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Good morning, Gene.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Well, this is interesting. I find this story very, very fascinating.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: We talked with Dave Trafford a little bit about it.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I want to continue the conversation. There was a plague
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: research institute in Siberia. And I want to find out
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: what really happened in Russia. Reports out of Siberia about
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: a lab worker dying after dropping a test tube concern me.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: especially when our health minister says, oh, there's no risk
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: for Canada. To me, that's a red flag. So what
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: actually happened, and what are Russian health authorities saying about it?
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Let me tell you what happened, Gene. It's the literal
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: opening scene of a B-list horror flick. The Siberian Plague
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Research Institute, and come on, the writers have just been
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: phoning it in, quite frankly. We've got a broken vial,
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: hospital lockdowns, airplane security checks and temperature checks, and now
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: local quarantines. First, it was reported by media that she
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: died of plague, but then Moscow chimed in and was like, no, no, no,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: she died of pneumonia of unknown origin. Well, you know,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: there's actually this thing that's called plague pneumonia. It's a
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: real thing. So I've seen this movie before. It's bad cinema.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: But it's even worse public communication. So we can separate
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: the horror movie tropes from reality. Because you and I
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: both know fear spreads faster than any bug, quite frankly.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: We saw this collective brain rot when people started hoarding
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: toilet paper during COVID-19. Before everyone loses their minds online
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: over a single lab accident, though, we should probably just
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: dive into some of the facts.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: All right. Okay, so when people hear the word plague,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: they immediately think of things like Black Death or March 2020.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: What are we actually dealing with here? And how does
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: modern medicine handle a bacterial infection compared to COVID and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: the novel virus?
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I'm not a doctor, so... Be clear
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: about that. But you don't need a medical degree to
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: get this. This is not a brand new mystery virus
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: like COVID was in 2020 that we had no idea about.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: We've known about plague for 2,000 years. This is a
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: bacterial infection, and we've actually had simple everyday antibiotics that
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: knock it out dead for decades. The reason this is
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: trending on social media is because the word plague brings
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: up images of the Middle Ages. But in reality, a
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: bacterial bug with a simple proven cure is way easier
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: for health officials to be able to isolate and wipe
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: out than a brand new airborne virus. But the rub is,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: of course, it's not necessarily the bug that's the issue.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: It's typically the people that are the issue. Yeah.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Well, I think we learned a lot during COVID. And
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: one thing I learned was not to trust people who
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: you believe were trustworthy. Now, Russian officials insist this was
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: just what they call pneumonia of an unknown origin, and
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: they deny any lab leak. But at the same time,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: as you mentioned, they've quarantined nearly 200 people. They've put
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: local hospitals on lockdown. And as you mentioned, there were
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: videos emerging on social media of airplane passengers undergoing temperature checks.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: So what's your take on all of this? It makes
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: me nervous.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, listen, if Health Canada or the CDC
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: came out with a story that had this many holes
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: in it, we'd laugh them off the air. But this
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: is the Kremlin. I mean, covering things up is what
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: they do. Admitting that someone dropped a vial in a
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: high-security lab is embarrassing. So we're getting word games out
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: of them. And I'm not saying that there's nothing to fear.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I'm just saying that right now I think we should
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: just wait and see until more fact points are put
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: onto the dartboard, if you will. But look at what
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: they're actually doing, right? Locking down hospitals, they're quarantining, sending
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: in some security forces. That tells you the real story.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: They're taking it seriously. But there's Dr. Jha, who is
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: a bioresearcher, and he pointed out on X, that Moscow
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: has actually done this before. They actually covered up an
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: anthrax leak back in 1979, and it took decades to
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: find out about it publicly. So this could be classic
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Russian spin, but at this point it's still no reason
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: for anyone in Niagara or in Windsor, where I am,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: to panic.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'm a news junkie, so I watch all
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the news channels, and we've seen political figures like Adam
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Kissinger and commentators on social media say, jumping straight to
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: claims that Russia was secretly developing antibiotic-resistant plague bioweapons. Now,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: that sounds like a real horror show right there, or
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: a science fiction movie. Now, is there any actual evidence
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: for that, or is just this classic Internet hyperbola?
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: You know, Adam Kinzer, he's got a big platform and
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: he's got a military background, so I'm not going to
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: brush him off out of hand. But I do think
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: what we should call it what it is, which is,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: you know, cable news theater. Sensationalism can get you clicks
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: and it'll get you the TV hits. And I haven't
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: seen him on CNN that recently, so maybe this is
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: a way to get on. Is Russia testing weird biological stuff? Probably.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, big powers always do that stuff. But I'm
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: not going to jump straight to they're building a super
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: plague without one single shred of evidence. That's just irresponsible.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: that lab actually sits right in a part of Siberia
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: where wild animals naturally carry the plague anyway. So turning
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: a messy lab accident into a sci-fi bioweapon movie plot
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: makes people trust the news even less. So I like
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: to temper my expectations right now, and especially just because
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: of COVID as well. I mean, things were amped up
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: so much, and we saw that they didn't necessarily go
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: the way that they were billed to us. So, you know,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: I think it's in everyone's interest just to take a peek. Yeah.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, as we're paying a lot of attention
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: to this, I mean, you know, we're doing a whole
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: segment here on the show this morning. New York State,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: right below us, has just declared a statewide emergency over
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: a surging measles outbreak. You know, measles was dead and
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: gone up until a couple of years ago when this
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: new generation of parents decided that the measles vaccine was, oh,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: can't give that to my kid. So are we ignoring
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: real health threats in our own backyard? just to chase
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: virile headlines out of Siberia, of all places?
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: 100%, Gene. This is classic outrage chasing. After years of
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: COVID mandates, confusing public health advice, and political fighting, people
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: simply don't trust the experts anymore. I saw that firsthand
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: when I covered the Ambassador Bridge blockade in Windsor. That
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: public trust completely broke down, and it shut down international
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: trade as well with it. And now we're actually seeing
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: the fallout of it years later. Measles, a disease that
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: we practically wiped out decades ago, is spreading across, you know, America.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: But we can't be letting our laurels be lost here,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: or be sitting on them, rather. Canada has lost artificial
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: status for eliminating measles from the World Health Organization. Meanwhile, though,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: politicians across the border are feeding directly into anti-vaccine theories,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: and we're ignoring a real preventable health crisis that's going
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: on in our house, on our doorstep, just to be
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: doom-scrolling about Siberia.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Well, listen, with Health Canada confirming, or at least they believe,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: there's no health risk to Canadians, and all isolated contacts
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: in Russia are testing negatively so far, what's the big
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: takeaway here for listeners today? who might be seeing alarming
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: headlines on their feeds.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I think the biggest takeaway for everyone is simple, Gene.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Stop letting internet panic think for you. The facts are
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: in now. Official testing has confirmed all nearly 200 contacts
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: have tested completely negative for plague. That's a positive. The
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: only thing they did turn up were two cases of
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: COVID and a couple of common colds. The Siberian incident, though,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: was isolated, and it was an accident, as we know
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: right now, at least, in a remote lab that was
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: quickly locked down, and there was the quarantines and whatnot.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: And the real public health crisis, though, as we just said,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: it's not thousands of miles away in Russia. It's here
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: at home. It's on our doorstep in the United States.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: where people have stopped trusting basic proven medicine. So I'm
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: not saying to blindly believe everything that you hear, but
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: I would also say turn off the doom scrolling, ignore
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: the online bioweapon plots, put on a movie instead, quite frankly.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: It's got better production value. And pay attention to what's
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: actually going on in our own communities, because when we
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: all actually decide to make our communities better, we can
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: actually achieve that.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: All right. Great take. Thank you.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Gene.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Litke's got a take. John Litke. He'll be with us
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: later on this week as well.