42: CHINESE CORONA VIRUS UPDATE #2 - FROM Sources INSIDE CHINA!

Different sunrise, different location. Yeah, so we're now on Ko Lipe and way in the background you can see where we came from on Ko Wadong, Ko meaning island. And yeah, so we're on the more crowded island, but we're at a place that's right at the end of the road up against the National Park, so we're happy about that. Just super chill. And by the way, it would really help us guys. We're almost at 200 subscribers. I know it's meager and menial, but we're on our way to get more. A fame and fortune with 200 subscribers. So please click the button right down here to subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. And also the like button and please share. It would be very meaningful to us. Okay, enough of that. Let's move on. We have newscaster Eileen Council right here. She's got her notes and we're ready to roll. Take it. So we have a lot of information. It's been a little overwhelming hearing everything that's going on and getting updates from our Chinese friends and then our international friends as well. But we want to share some things that we thought were interesting with you. And the first was that back in 2003, SARS began in Guangzhou in a wet market and it happened to be specifically with the civet cats. Guangzhou is down south in the Cantonese area and I used to go there on business in the furniture industry and it's right outside of Shenzhen, which is right outside of Hong Kong. So this time the virus has started in a wet market in Hubei, in Wuhan, and Hubei is the province. You want to explain what a wet market is to everybody? It's a place where animals, live animals, are brought in. They are slaughtered on the spot and it's usually exotic animals like snakes, dogs, ostrich. Well, dogs aren't exactly exotic, but odd animals. Ostrich, crocodile, and they kill them right on the spot. Koala bears. Can you believe they eat koala bear? And all of these things are slaughtered and there's no separation of the animals and there's no separation of the blood and the carcasses that are destroyed. And there's just water to clean it off, there's no disinfectant. This rinse and repeat happens every single day. It's a miracle more viruses don't begin and this is where they said the virus, they think the virus began. Obviously we don't know for sure, but apparently it happened over a month ago and the virus had started and they had seen evidence of this and interestingly enough, six miles away there's another small village and that small village announced a big community party. And the province of Hubei and Wuhan city did not shut down this community party even though they knew that this was happening. And as soon as those, and they even advertised it in the newspaper, as soon as those 200 plus people got together and had this party, that's when the virus started to spread like wildfire. So the thought is that this is truly the center of it all, but it did start a long time ago and it was known and unfortunately it's an epidemic that's as bad as SARS, if not worse. Yeah, and so the communist party, one of the reasons, one of the things that I guess their advantage is, is they provide a sense of calm and order to civilization China. And so part of that and not exposing this early enough so that people can go on and live their lives, especially right around the holiday, is part of what's made it expand as much as it has. But there's a number of, I mean, Brown just said that there's calm given by the communist government, but the reality is that the Wuhan municipality has really been criticized heavily by the locals because of their lack of response and their ineffective response. For example, they had a press conference and one of the men that was at the dice had no mask on. One had one upside down and one had one that was not fitted over his nose properly. So there's a case of three people who are supposed to be running the province and they were incapable of putting on masks correctly or putting them on at all. The other thing is that they gave information that had to be corrected several times and the mayor actually didn't seem to know much about what was happening. He seemed fairly ignorant, which is shocking. One statistic that is staggering that they gave us was that five million people of the 14 million in the city have left and left when they were told that there would be quarantine on the city and no one would be allowed in or out. So almost half of the five out of 14 million people left the city and scattered everywhere across China and internationally, which is why we're seeing the spread of the virus so much. So recently we've had some news from the ground from friends who have friends in Shenzhen. The colleague in Shenzhen said that things there are in absolute chaos, that temperatures are being taken of anyone who is out and walking about. They're also coming to the apartments to take temperatures of each person living in each apartment. There's also crazy rumors from him about... Well, not rumors, from his friends. Yeah, from his friends. So it's third-hand information, but his friends have seen trucks full of dead bodies that have resulted from this illness. Taken out of the city to be burned. His friends in Wuhan are estimating more than 100,000 have been impacted and that was four days ago. The hospitals are full, patients are waiting and while they wait, they die. And as they die, they're not counted because if they haven't been diagnosed correctly for the coronavirus, then it's considered not part of the death toll, even though it very likely was the coronavirus that killed them. So he also said just recently that many cities are not allowing anyone to go in and out, no family members even. And he was going to visit his grandparents in the district next to where his family has a house in Shenzhen. And he was turned away. They had closed down the district without any knowledge of that. Also he had friends that went to visit their family in Hunan province and they were not allowed into their own village either and Hunan province is not very close to that area. Yeah, Wuhan now is quite isolated, but, you know, things have spread across the country. And that's not the only place that's isolated. Qingdao, where we're from, which I think is typical of many Chinese cities. How many reported cases do they have? Well, there were, I think it was 13 one day and the next day it was double that. But Qingdao has had a mass exodus for the Chinese New Year because most people are not from Qingdao. They're from somewhere else. It's a relatively new city. So they're gone and friends that are still living in Qingdao, many of our colleagues are there. They've closed down the subway system. You can't. No buses. No grocery stores. No delivery. No DD. The shelves are empty in the grocery stores. It's like snow in High Point, North Carolina. Yeah, exactly. No masks. You can't get masks. You can't get gloves. Surgical gloves. The Chinese actually at our resort over on Adong Island, on Koh Adong, were actually told by the Chinese government. They received a message from the Chinese government that said, don't come back. You have an extended Chinese New Year holiday and we don't want you back in the country. So it's interesting that they're receiving those messages even while they're traveling internationally. Yes, in our school, initially, they were postponing us coming back for one week on the 10th. However, they've since pushed it out to two weeks. We don't know if this is the last push out. I mean, truthfully, we don't actually have an official word on it being the 17th. We're assuming it because the province has said an indefinite start to education. So we're assuming we'll be part of that. And truth be told, it could get pushed out a couple of months. We don't know. So that's why you need to go ahead. Stay tuned for future episodes. Hopefully, next episode, we're going to have a Chinese perspective on this from some wonderful Chinese person that we know. And so you can get his perspective, right? Yeah. A lot of places now are being quarantined. For example, in Shanghai, if you don't have a home, if you're not a resident in the district in Shanghai, if you're a guest or tourist, you're quarantined for two weeks in your hotel room and you have to have temperature checks twice a day and you have to hand over all of your waste to be identified as well or tested. So if you're a resident, you're also quarantined. And they're keeping a very close eye on anyone who's been obviously to Wuhan, but anyone who's traveled at all. So it's pretty dire. Those are friends who are in Qingdao have basically quarantined themselves. They're not going out. They're concerned with the multiplication of the disease. Of course, as you can see, ladies and gentlemen, you don't have to worry about us. We're doing just fine. Are you okay, sweetie? We're hanging in there. It's a rough life here. My sunburn got really bad yesterday on the face. Well, we don't want to make light of the moment by any means. We certainly are very sad for the people in China for this whole situation that has gotten way out of hand. And we certainly want to pray for them and hope for a quick recovery and maybe some antidotes to the virus. You know, that's our hope. So certainly we appreciate your thoughts and prayers for us and just your concern about us and returning to China. We don't have any plans at this point to go back, but we'll let you know once things are better and we are summoned home, summoned back to China. We appreciate you guys and thanks for watching. Stay tuned for next episodes where we'll give you more updated information from a Chinese person and from a Chinese perspective. Thanks a lot, you all.