Coronavirus: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

let's dive straight in with our main story tonight which concerns the subject that has dominated the news all week global hot zones the corona virus spreading fears grow of a global pandemic a huge spike in cases in Italy hundreds of cases in South Korea new cases reported in Europe that the CDC warned Americans to be prepared here at home that it's not a matter of if but when yes the corona virus on Tuesday the CDC said that it's spreading here is not a question of if but when which is just not a comforting thing to hear about the spread of something deadly it's only comforting if you're talking about whether Saoirse Ronan will win an Oscar or whether Henry Kissinger will ever die don't worry it's not a question of if but when and the CDC were not wrong there are now several dozen confirmed cases here in the United States with the first death coming just yesterday meanwhile the stock market has taken its biggest one-week dive since 2008 and many Americans have questions about how to stay safe joy Johnson emailed us asking can I get coronavirus from a package being delivered from China that's a great question talk about these masks do we get them or don't we some people are wondering if you can protect yourself from the virus by gardling with bleach we're taking steroids can you get the corona virus by eating Chinese food of course you can't get the corona virus from eating Chinese food in fact if you're eating at a Panda Express you can't even get Chinese food by eating Chinese food although I will say this you are unlikely to get the corona virus if you regularly gargle bleach because you know what they say being dead is already the best medicine look it might be helpful to get the very basics down here straight away what we're talking about is a sickness called Co vid 19 caused by a new strain of corona virus symptoms include fever cough and shortness of breath and preliminary estimates are that it has around a two percent mortality rate with the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions most at risk and I know some people don't seem to think that 2 percent is all that bad as Chuck Todd told us in the weirdest possible way so last night I surprised my teenager when I told him that only 2% of those that get this coronavirus die he goes oh well I thought it was I thought it was much worse and I understand if you just digest social media you just digest the headlines this feels more deadly than it is okay so first on behalf of your teenager dad get out of my room and stop telling me the news but second 2% of people is a lot when you're talking about those people dying think about it this way two percent of people disappearing was literally the premise of the leftovers you know the show whose pilots very much did not consist of Justin Theroux going well that was rough but to be honest could have been worse and then the show ended the fact is a 2% mortality rate if true would be about 20 times higher than the seasonal flu and while the good news is around 80% of those who get this virus have mild symptoms the bad news is that means they are more likely to spread it without even realizing that is one of the things that makes this so dangerous and why even though is mortality rate is much lower than that of SARS or MERS this virus has already killed three times as many people in fact one expert has predicted that 40 to 70% of the world's population will be infected within the next year which is incredibly upsetting because there's only one infectious disease that two-thirds of the world should be getting right now and that's Adam driver fever shatter my knees you redwood snap off my toes you big unwashed Buffalo so if the stock market is tanking and people are considering gargling bleach we thought tonight might be a good time to talk about the corona virus how we got to this point what's currently being done and how this virus has exposed governmental vulnerabilities as it has spread around the world and let's start with how all of this began the first documented cases cropped up at the end of last year in Wuhan China and initially the Chinese government wasn't just slow to respond officials tried to silence and punish medical professionals who tried to raise the alarm which almost certainly helped the disease to spread and when the Chinese leadership finally decided to act it moved aggressively putting nearly 50 million people on lockdown one month after Wuhan sealed off its borders its roads are empty and construction sites are abandoned residents had been permitted to leave their residential compounds once every seven days but this week loudspeakers placed on street corners notified households of a change from now on nobody can go out holy a talking box that tells you you can't leave your house feels pretty dystopian to be honest not much prefer our dystopia we're a talking box listen to all our conversations and then tells jeff bezos when i'll need underwear next it's such a convenient way to give up for everything people on lockdown in China are in a very unpleasant situation but they've been doing their best to try and amuse themselves like this man who either improvised a cool mask or found finally found a socially acceptable reason to indulge in a very specific fetish other citizens made makeshift hazmat suits out of inflatable Christmas tree and dinosaur costumes while still others stuck indoors or reduced to creating their own entertainment like playing snooker with chopsticks and cherry tomatoes look I have to say that is the most culinary resourcefulness that I've seen since Claire from Bon Apetit s kitchen made compost from scratch I don't know why you do this to yourself Claire they sell them in stores but but despite the government efforts at containment over 2,700 people have now died in China among them dr. Lee when Lee Ann an early whistleblower silenced by officials who has since become a symbol for citizens anger at their government's response so that is how this all began and the coronavirus has since spread to more than 60 other countries who've handled it with varying degrees of success Vietnam for instance moved quickly and among other things produce this incredible public information video about how to limit its spread through proper hygiene [Music] yes yes yes yes Vietnam made a song about washing your hands to prevent coronavirus infection and it absolutely slaps that's a genuine club banger right there in fact people like that song so much it even became a tick-tock dance challenge the songs incredible it makes all other songs about washing yourself look like trash and I'm I'm talking to you here Ernie look you've been on top of the pile for a long time but you got complacent didn't you and while other artists were out there innovating you kept singing the same old ducky song you lost the hunger Sun you fell asleep at the wheel and music moved on without you look not all countries have responded quite as well Japan famously botched its handling of the cruise ship diamond princess by quarantine II more than 3,500 passengers and crew on the ship itself which had disastrous results more than 620 cases have been confirmed among the passengers and crew on the cruise ship raising worries about how the virus was able to spread so rapidly among people who should have been isolated oh I'll tell you how it spread so rapidly they were on a cruise ship under the best of circumstances a cruise ship is a floating petri dish you might as well have held them in a Chucky Cheese ball pit the spread was so bad that seven passengers have since died and the WH o--'s list of coronavirus cases by country actually had a separate line just for the diamond princess which is terrifying although again in terms of cruises still not the worst if your options are the diamond princess or the actual Carnival Cruise where the toilets were so full of they were falling off the walls I'm booking the SS coronavirus ten times out of ten ten out of ten and in some countries the response was handled so badly you could watch the virus spread live on television in Iran a government spokesperson attempting to reassure people that the virus was under control while the deputy Health Minister standing next to him started mopping away fever sweat like an Alabama preacher that that guy was later confirmed to have the corona virus although not before going on TV again to explain away his symptoms while coughing all over the studio and if that wasn't bad enough which it is it turns out the Iranian people now trust their government so little they think he was staging the whole thing they say they were lying that they have Corona but they wanted to this is a propaganda it's not got it no no they say that he's lying and in three days he's gonna come out to say that I owe you see I'm recovered it's not serious don't worry the level of mistrust towards Iranian politicians is so deep that they wouldn't believe anything that comes out of their mouth right Iranians won't believe anything that comes out of their politicians mouths even if that thing is the actual coronavirus and that is a huge problem because it is going to be hard for any government to give effective advice if people don't believe in them you know trust in institutions is critical when trying to contain a possible pandemic and unfortunately that brings us to the United States response to this virus and specifically to this guy because the White House is messaging has been all over the place this week in fact on Tuesday the very same day that the CDC said that the spread of corona virus in the United States was not a question of if but when one of trumps top advisors was on TV saying this we have contained this we have contained this I won't say airtight that pretty close to airtight well which is it because airtight versus close to airtight is a pretty crucial distinction it's the difference between having a working submarine and a cool metal tube to die in and the dissonance there speaks to a real problem because it in a global health emergency you want to hear from the many trained experts who were lucky enough to have working in our nation's public health agencies you do not want to hear from politicians and yet on Wednesday the president had a surprise announcement President Trump alongside his top health advisors sought to calm a nervous nation naming a new point person to lead the administration's response I'm gonna be putting our Vice mic Benson charge he's got a certain talent for this does either because I was under the impression the only things pence have a certain talent for were avoiding off-leash women sucking up to people who represent the antithesis of everything he claims to believe in and miserably failure pulling off a haircut known as the Judi Dench putting aside pencils to put it mildly extremely mixed record as governor of Indiana on managing public health issues even the announcement that he would be leading the task force was a debacle because Alex a czar the Secretary of Health and Human Services was already supposed to be chairing that task force and Trump didn't seem interested in clarifying their roles or indeed really being there at all I'm still chairman of the task force so not in the least I'm with the program when this was mentioned to me I said I was delighted that I get to have the vice president helping in this way delighted yeah he just left this was a press conference meant to calm the nation and with the most basic question of who would be running things seemingly up in the air he just right off I know we used to only see businessman Trump but it is nice to occasionally get a glimpse of the absentee father in him too it is more than just a lack of leadership it is also concerning that Trump's main focus when discussing this virus seems to be downplaying any potentially bad news he started this week tweeting the corona virus is very much under control but there was no way to be sure of that as he frankly should have known many of the test kits the CDC initially developed to detect the virus apparently didn't work as expected meaning that as recently as Wednesday the CDC and only six state labs were testing for the virus thankfully that has since been fixed and we're presumably going to find more cases now but but Trump seemed too reluctant to admit that that will happen in you can watch that dynamic in real time as officials at the press conference say one thing and he tries to massage it into something else we can expect to see more cases in the United States we do expect more cases when you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days it's going to be down to close to zero that's a pretty good job we've done yep but it won't be close to zero will it your experts just said cases will go up and you said they will go down you can't just ignore real numbers and make up ones that you like better this is the problem with a president whose entire life has been a series of low stakes lies a man it was lying about among other things his net worth his apprentice ratings at the number of flaws in Trump Tower the size of electoral college victory the attendance at his rallies whether it rained at his inaugural and even whether or not he was invited on this very boring and low rated show which he doesn't like about something that means literally nothing and lying about the spread of a deadly disease and that is not the only time the Trump has peddled false hope if you seem to speak on this virus at all lately you may have seen him repeatedly reassure everyone that there was a chance the end of the outbreak is just around the corner there's a theory that in April when it gets warm historically that has been able to kill the virus you know a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat as the heat comes you know in April supposedly it dies with a hotter weather and that's a beautiful day to look forward to it's up first never call calendar dates beautiful I don't know I don't know how he did it but I'm pretty sure Trump just sexually harassed the month of April the second again the truth is much more complicated there because yes some viruses do recede in warmer months and yes history's worst flu pandemic in 1918 did ever way over the summer but it is worth knowing that come the fall the virus returned was far more severe and ended up killing nearly 200,000 Americans in October alone this is a bad time to have a president who cannot speak clearly because there's already enough bad information flying around and the president's favorite channel has been a particular offender here Fox anchors and guests have repeatedly amplified false claims from the idea that the virus was created in a Chinese bioweapons lab - the baseless internet rumor that it came from Chinese people eating bat soup which one commentator used as an excuse to say how he really feels bat soup may be delicious to certain people but unfortunately bats are the world's greatest reservoir for viruses what are we gonna do about China what are we gonna do about a totalitarian dictatorship where it's okay to sell live virus infected bats in open-air market places and then have business travel and tourists travel between that country and the civilized world that escalated quickly he really moves from the vaguely dog whistling what are we going to do about China all the way - it's not part of the civilized world at lightning speed truly that man is the Usain Bolt of racism a comparison I'm certain he absolutely hates it gets worse because some people are even clearly trying to profit off the present panic like televangelist Jim Baker who has a cure that he'd love to sell you would you recommend is a doctor people to have silver in their house for it you never want to be without silver you're saying that Silver's solution would be effective well let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the corona virus but it's been tested on other stranger on of the corona virus and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours yeah totally dominate it kills it and deactivates it okay that is ridiculous silver does not kill coronavirus silver kills werewolves which means first you need to get your coronavirus bitten by a microscopic wealth and where am I going to find one of those in this economy well that's right from our online store for just $49.99 we will send you John Oliver's premium work solution it contains millions of microscopic world's ready to spread their bestial curse to your coronavirus and then you can use the silver solution which is based on the exact same amount of science the truth is the truth is while clinic while clinical trials are underway there is no treatment for the corona virus at the moment and a vaccine could take between a year and 18 months to develop and at this point you may be wondering how scared should you be and the answer is probably a bit a bit look I don't want to be alarmist here but I also don't want to minimize what we could be facing it's really about trying to strike a sensible balance basically if you're drinking bleach to protect yourself right now you should probably calm the down if you are say licking subway poles because you're certain nothing can hurt you maybe don't do that you want to stay somewhere between those extremes don't be complacent and don't be a idiot and look as a practical matter until experts advise that this threat is over we should all be following some basic advice first don't be racist that's just good general advice for now so don't hold masks what I understand that you might want to do that you are potentially taking away those masks from the people who really need them health care providers and those who are sick three check the CDC website for future updates because they could have additional guidance as this develops and finally and this is more important than it might sound wash your hands regularly for at least 20 seconds and I know that that last lesson is boring and easy to forget but luckily we now know that there is a way to ensure that it absolutely never leaves your head hit [Applause] [Applause]

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 15,513,681

Rating: 4.8464732 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: c09m5f7Gnic

Length: 20min 9sec (1209 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Felix_Dracul]

That Claire shoutout though, lol. BA's moving up in the world.

[u/Hp22h]

I'm surprised he didn't mention the situation in South Korea, where a cult held religious congregations against government warnings and then proceeded to hide its members when health officials came knocking. They are now responsible for 2/3 of all cases in Korea.

Considering his distaste for people twisting religion for their own gains, I'm surprised he didn't make a few jokes about it.

[u/PrecedentialAssassin]

"Shatter my knees you fuckable redwood"

Holy hell.

[u/Dawesfan]

“I don’t know why you do this to yourself Claire”

Neither does she, John, neither does she.

[u/Enigma343]

We're starting a streak of catchy PSAs. Let's not forget last week's Let's Take the Poo To the Loo

[u/violue]

That song really does slap.

[u/Colossal89]

I work in a large teaching hospital. We are already in a shortage for N95 masks because everyone is hoarding them. This is real.

[u/fluffypun]

The question everyone should be asking is.. where can we find that Vietnamese coronavirus song?!

[u/aliceinwunderlust]

Is there a mirror for us un-american plebs please?