piece of a lot of this that seems insane to me is we are now years after, whether man-made or not, one of the worst disasters in human history. And we are genuinely less prepared for the next one than the last one. It's not one of the worst disasters in human history.
I could name a hundred worse ones. Fair enough. Bill Maher brings on another woke idiot, Ezra Klene, onto his show, Real Time with Bill Maher.
And as this woke absolute idiot, almost said something really bad, tries to claim that co was the worst thing to happen in human history, Bill Maher pauses the show and puts this idiot in his place. Let's get into this clip here where Bill Maher invites Ezra Klein onto his show real time with Bill Maher and has to put the woke idiot in his place here on live television. Let's check it out.
Co-author of the book Abundance, Ezra Klein, and he writes the weekly Dish newsletter and host of the podcast, The Dish Cast with Andrew Sullivan. Andrew Sullivan. [applause] Okay, here are the questions.
Andrew, what do you think of news that British intelligence knew CO was a lab leak in 2020 and official and officially ignored their report? Not just new aided a 95% certainty. Same with the German intelligence service.
March 2020, this there's a new book out called Co's Wake. I was reading it this last couple of weeks and uh the the core paper that killed off any idea that this was a lab leak in China, the proximal origin paper which was produced with Fouchy and Collins, the NIH and NIAD uh helping it along was a lie, a conscious lie that the people who looked at it, we now have their emails are saying in the very first days of looking at the at the virus. This looks very man-made to us.
This is so friaking obvious. This is man-made. Well, so frigin obvious, one of them said, and then they wrote the report saying there is no evidence that this was made in a lab.
The question is why? Why would they lie to us about that? And they did.
Well, I I I can give you one answer. The New York Times The New York Times said any questioning of this being from a lab was racist, which always struck me as Yeah. But I I I know I know that's a reason why, you know, because the New York Times said that it was racist, but why are they trying to protect them to where they're saying that it's racist?
I think is what this guy is trying to ask. And it's a it's a very good question. I'm curious to see what you guys think in the comments about that.
I think it's probably something along the lines of they want it to it feels like it's more dangerous if it comes naturally versus a lab leak versus humanade. man-made because if it's man-made then you can just say oh well just like let's just uh tighten security you know have better protocols so that doesn't happen again. But if it's natural then everybody's like always scared about oh the next one's coming you know we got to get the new jab because the next one's going to come naturally and there's nothing we can do about it.
It seems a lot more scary when there's nothing you can do about it versus if it's man-made you can do something about it. So I think that's probably along the lines of what it is. You know it just seems a lot more scary.
It's a lot easier to control people if it's natural because, you know, got to take all these precautions. Another one can always be made. You never know when it's coming type of thing.
Odd because it seems much more racist to go, "Wow, these people are eating bats. " I know. [laughter] I mean, it it's it's a just it's just one example, but a good example of why people lost faith in the left because they do stupid things like that.
Not to be and I told you so, but from the very beginning I was saying this shouldn't even be political, but it's at least a 50/50 came from the lab and that in 50 years I can't imagine people going, "Wait, you mean in 2020 there was this thing that escaped from a lab in Wuhan that started in Wuhan and there was a lab in Wuhan that was studying it and they didn't think that was connected and they blamed it on bats. Really, it just doesn't make any sense. It makes a little bit gaslight people so easily.
I don't think the Democrats are so much as fought as scientists who went along with this knowing better. It's their integrity I'm concerned about to actually lie and distort what they could see with their own eyes because they were afraid of politics. The other question is that is a great point too.
You know the left, we know the left lies, right? The right-wing lies too. Like everybody lies.
the left wing might lie a little bit more than the right wing. But that besides the point, um the the scary part is the fact that the scientists in the scientific community tried to hide this and they lied about it and and not just where it came from, but and how to treat it and you know if the jab would stop transmission and all these things. They were we were lied to constantly and you know a lot of people they saw through the lies but a lot of people didn't see through the lies and it's scary that the scientific community lied to us so much and they they wanted to protect the lies.
so much that anybody who try and question the lies were shunned from the scientific community. You know, there's people going on Joe Rogan saying, "I have this info. I've written this book.
I've done this research. Here's what I found. " And they get shunned from the scientific community because it doesn't go along with the official narrative.
That is scary. That is scary that our scientists are doing that. This these this lab was a gain of function lab.
That means they were creating viruses, right? dangerous viruses to turn to figure out how to how to protect you from them. Um, this gain of function uh research was always dangerous.
Everyone knew it was dangerous. Long time ago, you go back to 2015, you will find a a big meeting in London where they say there's one lab in the world most likely to have a problem with this. Wuhan.
Do you know who was the biggest supporter of gain of function research for the last 30 years? Anthony Fouchy. Anthony Fouchy.
Now remember that name. There's a reason he was given a pardon back to 2014. There is something very wrong going on here, you know.
Yeah. I also don't think [clears throat] he did it for nefarious reasons. There's an argument to be made.
There's an actual intellectual debate to be had. Should gain of function research be done? We want to get ahead of viruses.
The other answer is the other response would be it's too dangerous because if it gets out it's going to be bad and that's what happened. But it is a I don't think he's an evil guy. You know whether whether or not he's an evil guy, whether or not he did it for nefarious purposes, it still happened under his watch.
He's supposed to be protecting the people of the world and he failed. So he should be held accountable. Whether or not he did it on purpose, whether it's incompetence or malice, who cares?
He needed to be held accountable, you know, like some people do. Who was trying to get rich off this? Okay, he just made the wrong call.
No, he knew from the get-go that the Wuhan lab had security levels that were average of a dentist's office. They should have been at the highest level imaginable. He knew that.
Not only that, yeah, he made the wrong call. The NIH and NAD had helped fund it. Right.
So, so, so you don't want to go down in history as the person who helped develop the virus that killed millions of people. you want to go down as the one who saved millions of people. That was at stake a reputational matter.
Piece of a lot of this that seems insane to me is we are now years after whether man-made or not one of the worst disasters in human history. And we are genuinely less prepared for the next one than the last one. It's not one of the worst disasters in human history.
I could name a hundred worst ones. Fair enough. But it was bad.
I didn't enjoy it. But it but I mean I mean it let's not be perfect. It was a bad pandemic.
Let's put it a lot lot worse. The the the the real disaster part of it, the reason why it was one of the worst disasters in human history is because of how the governments of the world, not just United States government, but how the governments of the world handled it, locking people down in their houses, canceling school, you know, closing workplaces. That's what made it one of the worst disasters.
Not the actual virus itself, you know, the virus itself. It it sucked. Like I I had it a couple of times and it sucked.
It's like it it really sucked. Especially one of the times I got it. It was real bad.
I was I was sick. Very very sick. And it was really not fun.
But it wasn't one of the worst disasters in the world. You know, you get it once, twice, maybe three times, and then you kind of get immune to it. And even if you get it again, it'll just it won't be as bad.
And it's it's, you know, there was no there was no bombs dropped on us. There was no genocide happening. It was just a virus.
It was just a little bit worse than a common cold. You know, it wasn't one of the wor the disaster part was how the government handled it and the fact that we got locked on our houses. I I I as pandemic genuinely not my point on this.
I will I'm happy to see I'm happy to see that the Holocaust was worse than the pandemic. I think it's fine. But in other things, other countries in this country, right, uh after something terrible happens, you often have these big bipartisan commissions that come up with a bunch of recommendations and try to create preparedness for next time.
I sort of agree with you that we've gone way too far on airport security for too long. But we did a lot on things like biocurity that made sense and actually did make us safer. Yeah.
And we have learned we have anti-learned lessons, right? On the one hand, we had amazing success with things like Operation Warp Speed and now you got RFK Jr. running HHS on the other hand bunch of huge mistakes are made on things like lockdowns and we're just arguing about them we haven't put out say a new best practices right gain of function research which you all were just talking about it is just an argument it's something I try to keep paying attention to and they haven't come out with strong new guidelines bird flu everybody I read who knows what they're talking about says we are in a terrible position on bird flu if it actually begins to mutate and make the jump we just have never figured out a way to find a policy equilibrium here as opposed to sort of keep rehabing the argument.
The argument I wonder like what this guy expects us to do. Are we supposed to just get vaccinated for every single disease that could possibly come in the future? Whether or not it actually appears or not?
I I don't I don't really get it. But I um I'm curious to see you like what do you guys think we should do? Should we treat this as like a 9/11 type event and then, you know, upgrade our security so much like we did with the airports or should we just I feel like we should just continue as we are.
You know, I think we've we I think we've done pretty fine so far. I think we're okay. I think we're okay.
You know, everybody always talks about this like what if we get hit with a giant pandemic? We're so underprepared. You've been saying that since as long as I've been alive and it hasn't really happened.
The worst thing that happened is we got locked in our houses, you know, and it's unfortunate. A lot of old people did die from it. It's unfortunate, but it's it's okay.
Like, we'll I think we'll be okay. Maybe maybe I'm naive, but I think we'll be okay. Hey, let me know in the comments you guys think about Bill Maher shutting down.
