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Billionaires see COVID profits propel them into space while millions die, and the pandemic reopens old wounds, revealing America's dark history of human experimentation.
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00:13When we say while the rest of us die, the last year has been a great example of how the
00:17rest
00:18of us have literally died. COVID-19 continues to ravage the country. And while the government
00:23told us we were all in this together, the truth is we are not. We've seen a real tale of
00:30two pandemics.
00:31We've seen small businesses across the United States, especially those Black-owned and Latino-owned
00:36businesses go into shutters. Meanwhile, we've seen billionaire wealth skyrocket. It's an equal
00:44opportunity disease, but it's disproportionately impacting certain communities. Communities that
00:49were once the target of immoral medical experimentation. There have been studies focused on Black bodies
00:55and African-Americans. Very unethical, egregious experiments were conducted. Are now wary of
01:00modern efforts to stop the disease. So as a result, it is a big struggle to convince individuals
01:07to take the vaccine. And even as Americans continue to get sick and die from new strains
01:13of COVID, we're all in danger from the next, even more deadly pandemic. There are government and
01:20research labs around the country that have hidden in their vaults some of the most deadly pathogens known
01:26to man. For over 70 years, our leaders have told us one thing under the bright lights.
01:34The protection of the lives and property of Americans is the responsibility of all public
01:40officials. I care for trying. We have it so well under control. Help is here and we will not stop
01:47working for you. But for decades, America's shadow government and its powerful friends have spent
01:53trillions of dollars on an agenda that serves their interests, not ours. You guys paid for all these.
01:59So when the shit really hits the fan, we're on our own. This is not science fiction. This is reality
02:06in
02:06America right now. Truth is the rich and powerful will do whatever it takes to save themselves while the rest
02:13of us die.
02:36July 11th, 2021. Wealthy Brit Richard Branson scores an early victory in the billionaire space race.
02:44I'm an adult in a spaceship with lots of other wonderful adults looking down to our beautiful, beautiful Earth.
02:51Nine days later, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gets his turn.
03:05The price tag, an estimated $5.5 billion. After the flight, Bezos thanks the people who made his childhood dream
03:13a reality.
03:14I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this.
03:22So seriously, for every Amazon...
03:25When I saw Bezos on TV thanking the customers and the workers for fulfilling his dream to go into space,
03:33I wanted to scream because it was almost like he was mocking us.
03:39As the pandemic continues to upend our lives, one thing is becoming clearer by the day.
03:44We're not only increasingly losing friends and family, but we're seeing an increasing divide between the haves and the have
03:51-nots.
03:58It's a fabulous America. More than 300,000 enterprises of the kind you see from time to time.
04:03Some are one-man shops. Others, corporations with nearly a half million employees.
04:09Each was small to begin with. Each grew as America grew.
04:12That's the unparalleled system that brings Americans the good things of life.
04:19A lot has changed in the United States in the years after World War II.
04:23But small business and the entrepreneurial spirit remain at the heart of the American economy and the American dream.
04:30More than half of American workers today are employed by small businesses.
04:36And iconic American corporate giants from Ford to Amazon all started out as small ventures.
04:42I'm Jeff Bezos.
04:44And what is your claim to fame?
04:46I'm the founder of Amazon.com.
04:48By the 21st century, these once small, now massive corporations have started to squeeze the life out of small businesses.
04:55And with them, entire American communities.
05:00When Walmart comes to a town, you know, first what they do is they bankrupt all the other businesses in
05:07the town.
05:07They use their huge war chest of money to sell their goods below cost so no one else can compete
05:13with them.
05:13Then once everybody else is out of business, they can raise their costs to the right amount.
05:17And they're not only the sole seller in the community, they become the sole employer in the community.
05:27We've seen some companies that have been able to consolidate power in particular sectors.
05:31They've been able to excrete more and more profits before the pandemic, but even more so during the pandemic.
05:44Local news stations told the story of one small business after another going under.
05:49One in six restaurants will not survive the pandemic.
05:56Zero.
05:59To support these small businesses, in March 2020, the government created the Paycheck Protection Program, known as PPP.
06:07This $350 billion relief program allowed applicants to apply for a low-interest loan to cover their payroll.
06:15We tried to stay open.
06:17We used the PPP money that we received from the government.
06:19And after that was extinguished, there was nothing else we could do.
06:25What we saw, especially at the beginning, was instead of the government working directly with small businesses,
06:30the government decided that they would funnel the money through big banks
06:33and let the big banks decide where that money would go and why.
06:39The money went out.
06:41The banks were sitting there waiting on it.
06:43And what did they do?
06:44They did what bankers would do.
06:46They shared that money with their customers first.
06:51The result?
06:52Well over half of the $350 billion originally allocated for the PPP went to large or publicly traded companies instead
07:00of small businesses.
07:01A lot of those companies that didn't receive support are out of business.
07:05$10,000, $30,000, $50,000 that could have kept them afloat and gotten them to the other side of
07:12this pandemic.
07:14It just wasn't there.
07:15It was taken to companies that don't really need it, that never really needed it.
07:18And just who owned some of these companies that didn't need the money?
07:23Our elected leaders.
07:24Our investigation found that over two dozen members of Congress received tens of millions of dollars in PPP loans
07:30that are likely to be forgiven for their privately held businesses.
07:34These members of Congress were often already among the richest members of Congress.
07:38David Moore is a journalist and co-founder of the investigative news site Sludge.
07:42In addition to holding stock in individual companies, members of Congress are allowed to hold private companies.
07:49These companies range from everything from the pharmaceutical industry to the real estate industry to fossil fuel investments.
07:55And these members of Congress, many of them voted against increasing the stimulus checks that went to working people.
08:02But many of them received funding for their privately held businesses.
08:07We need to put Americans back to work. Make America tired again.
08:11Oklahoma Representative Kevin Hearn did just that.
08:15Making his low-wage employees tired again by keeping his numerous McDonald's franchises open during the pandemic.
08:22Oh, he also received a million-dollar PPP loan.
08:26Indiana Congressman Greg Pence, the multimillionaire older brother of the then vice president, received almost $80,000 for two malls
08:34he and his wife own,
08:35valued between $5 and $25 million, and then went on TV to complain about other people getting government money.
08:43Bailing out states that have been irresponsible and imprudent with the taxpayers' money doesn't make any sense to me.
08:49Another recipient of PPP loans was a company that's affiliated with the household of former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
08:57A company belonging to his wife's family received a PPP loan of over $400,000.
09:04Sludge's investigation uncovered 28 members of Congress who received over $27 million in COVID relief loans for companies in which
09:13they or their family hold positions,
09:15while one in three small businesses went under due to the pandemic.
09:19They received this PPP funding, which is likely to be forgivable loans, while many businesses in lower-income areas struggled
09:26to access the program.
09:28That pot of funding was vital for businesses, and they weren't able to get at it.
09:32If members of Congress could have been more responsive to every one of their constituents, including the ones who had
09:37trouble accessing the funding,
09:39they might have saved jobs and recovered more easily from the pandemic.
09:41If you look at your main street in most of medium-sized towns across the United States,
09:46a lot of the companies that were there before the pandemic are gone now.
10:03Struggling businesses make headlines across the country.
10:07Many people are thrown into unemployment, into poverty, and I think as importantly, those business owners now have been pushed
10:16out of the middle class,
10:17and instead of owning businesses, are looking for jobs at kind of super profitable companies.
10:22It's like war, right?
10:24You have people who are on the receiving end, who suffer great harm, and then you have people who profit.
10:35What I would call the pandemic profiteers are affiliated with companies that have reaped windfalls because of the pandemic.
10:45They have benefited from the adverse, tragic situation that most people have felt.
10:50A hundred billion dollars more was made during the pandemic by the 33 most profitable companies than before.
10:57Ninety-eight to a hundred percent on average of those companies' earnings or profits are going to shareholders.
11:03Many of those shareholders being the billionaire class.
11:07And while the wealthy are making a fortune from the pandemic, it came at a significant cost to workers at
11:14companies like Amazon.
11:17Every day I come here to JFK 8 in Staten Island for Amazon, I stand on my feet for 10
11:23hours.
11:24There was a time where I vomited my lunch because I don't have enough time to really digest my food.
11:31It happened quite a few times, actually, and there was nothing anybody did.
11:37Instead, warehouse workers like Rena Cummings say what Amazon did was leave its employees dangerously overworked and underprotected, even as
11:45the pandemic led to record profit.
11:48There was no supplies at my station. Nobody was social distancing.
11:52While Amazon says it did everything it could to protect its workers during this unprecedented time,
11:56It was reported company employees were urinating in bottles and having miscarriages, and some even dying of COVID, all to
12:04ensure customers got their hand sanitizer shipped on time.
12:08When Amazon workers sought protection by joining a union, the company allegedly spied on the organizers and spread disinformation, all
12:15designed to crush the movement.
12:17We are not anti-union, but we are not neutral either.
12:20We have very good communications with our employees, so we don't believe that we need a union to be an
12:27intermediary between us and our employees.
12:29I have a quota. I have to do 1,800 package an hour. It's one package every two seconds in
12:35order to make my quota.
12:37We do not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers, our shareholders, or most importantly, our associates.
12:43And if I don't make my quota, I could be written up. And after the third write-up, I will
12:48be fired.
12:49Of course, at the end of the day, it's always the employee's choice.
12:53Jeff Bezos increased his wealth during the course of the pandemic by $85 billion.
12:57If you split it up amongst that 1.3 million workers, it could have provided a $67,000 bonus to
13:04every single Amazon employee and still be just as rich as he was when the pandemic began.
13:09The pandemic just really exposed what I already knew, that it was all about profit and they don't give a
13:15damn about the workers.
13:17Jeff Bezos made $80 billion, retired and went into space, while the rest of us have to stay here and
13:26work every day like a slave.
13:30I'm not asking for a trip to space. I just want to have better working conditions and I want to
13:37get paid for my work, my fair share.
13:40But Bezos isn't the only billionaire to profit from the pandemic at his workers' expense.
13:46My mom is a 60-year-old black woman, has a number of different conditions that put her in the
13:54high-risk category, but also had to show up to work every day.
14:00Walmart offered a one-time bonus payment, wouldn't have been enough to allow her to take real time off.
14:08So she had to put herself at risk, like so many other people, just to be able to survive during
14:15this time.
14:16As thousands of Walmart workers caught COVID, the retail giant's owners made a fortune.
14:22The Walton family are the descendants of Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart.
14:26In 1983, Sam Walton had an estimated $6 billion in wealth in today's dollars.
14:34Today, the Walton family has over $250 billion.
14:38So their wealth has gone up over 4,000 percent since the lockdown in March 2020.
14:45The wealth of U.S. billionaires has gone up $1.6 trillion.
14:51These billionaire wealth gains have happened at the same time that almost 600,000 people have lost their lives.
14:58The racial wealth divide has grown.
15:00People have lost their savings.
15:03They've lost their health if they got COVID, but they're still alive.
15:06They are worse off.
15:08COVID pandemic in and of itself really does sort of highlight who's more likely to profit from a pandemic versus
15:14those who can't.
15:19So the ripple effect of the black small business is closing in this community.
15:23It's the difference between life and death.
15:25The COVID-19 pandemic has upended most lives.
15:28But in some communities, it has transformed challenges into something potentially deadly.
15:34When I heard the title, while the rest of us died, I immediately thought to myself,
15:37that is truly analogous to what's happening here.
15:41That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
15:48A rat done bit my sister Nell with Whitey on the Moon.
15:51In 1970, Gil Scott Herron sang Whitey on the Moon, which captured the experience of many black Americans oppressed and
15:59living in poverty,
15:59watching the Apollo astronauts triumphantly plant the American flag on the lunar surface.
16:04The man just upped my rent last night, because Whitey's on the moon.
16:09No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
16:11The pandemic has shown the timelessness of the song.
16:13I wonder why he's upping me.
16:16I just...
16:17Two minutes, there we go.
16:32I lost 49 friends as a result of COVID in a short window.
16:39It seemed like every time the phone rang, it was someone telling me about someone who was either in the
16:44hospital or who had died.
16:48My sister right now is battling COVID.
16:52Oh, that was a tough one. I'm sorry.
16:57I've done more funerals than what I would ever want to do in my lifetime as a pastor.
17:12To get a handle on the pandemic, the government told people that staying home would help save lives.
17:17But for essential workers, that wasn't an option.
17:21The pandemic revealed how expansive and vital essential workers are.
17:28Yet at the same time, those essential workers were sent into harm's way with crappy wages, shitty health care, and
17:35not even enough PPE.
17:36Remember when the pandemic broke out in places like New York?
17:40Firefighters and cops who were going in to get the bodies of people who died, couldn't get face masks, couldn't
17:45get PPE.
17:46It's important to understand during the pandemic that the most vulnerable frontline workers were disproportionately women, disproportionately people of color
17:54who were kind of dispatched into the viral line of fire, sometimes against their own choice, against their own will.
18:01It's very difficult to social distance when you have to go to work, and then you're coming home, and African
18:09Americans are more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to live in multi-generational households, in extended family households.
18:17And so there's a higher rate of exposure.
18:19COVID is an equal opportunity disease, but it's disproportionately impacting certain communities.
18:26When it came to minority communities, it was catastrophic.
18:32In the first few months of the pandemic, Black Americans were contracting COVID at three times the rate of white
18:38Americans.
18:39Another painful reminder that America remains a divided society.
18:45There's an old aphorism.
18:47When America catches a cold, Black America catches pneumonia.
18:51And if that pneumonia sends you to the hospital, you could discover another way Americans differ from each other.
18:57Black Americans are more likely to die there.
19:00It didn't make a difference to what their ages were.
19:04It didn't make a difference to what their health issues were.
19:07Many could not figure out, why are our people dying in hospitals?
19:12And then when you think about that, in the hospitals, they were not put in rooms.
19:18They were in the hallways.
19:20At the height of the pandemic, healthcare workers like this nurse in New York began posting videos claiming Black COVID
19:27patients were dying as a result of unequal care.
19:30I am literally telling you that they're murdering these people and nobody will listen to me.
19:36And they all know what's happening.
19:37They all agree with me and they all just shake their heads.
19:39And I'm like, am I the only one who is not a sociopath?
19:47COVID has ravaged our community.
19:51Dennis Talbert is a community activist in the Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit.
19:56nicknamed Blightmore, the four square mile neighborhood located 11 miles
20:00northwest of downtown Detroit, is one of the poorest communities in the United
20:05States. Like many similar communities, Blightmore was hard hit by the COVID
20:09related closings of black owned small businesses. The stress that it put on the
20:15community, I don't know that we'll fully understand for years to come. Talk about
20:21a fragile system from the beginning. Most people lost their jobs. Most of my
20:27friends and family lost their jobs at the beginning of the pandemic. My niece who
20:32has four children, she struggled to feed her children. She didn't have daycare,
20:38childcare, food was an issue, and of course money. And then the big things with
20:44unemployment that people faced as well. So the ripple effect of the black small
20:51businesses closing in this community is the difference between life and death
20:55because most of the families and community here, they're working in the
20:58local small businesses, which may be the local restaurants, the local bars. My
21:01husband actually was laid off immediately as soon as the pandemic started. I was
21:06working two jobs and I was laid off for my second job. Somewhere around half of the
21:11businesses that went out of business in the first six months of the pandemic were
21:16black owned. And you see that those companies in particular were serving
21:21communities that don't get served otherwise, with products that may not be
21:25available otherwise, hiring folks that may not be of interest for others to hire.
21:33This pantry sees over 3,000 pounds. Normally they would shop and they would go
21:38through the house and they'll leave it between 100 to 125 pounds of food. The
21:43pandemic hit, we went from 9,000 to 48,000 pounds in one week. When I heard the
21:49title while the rest of us died, I immediately thought to myself that is
21:53truly analogous to what's happening here. I've seen families who've been
21:59fighting and struggling on the margins for so long and this just up ended them
22:04totally. It is extremely hard to see people every day just trying to make
22:15it. The state government, federal government, they've let us down. There
22:19has been virtually no help to our communities. There's been no assistance
22:23whatsoever. In those low-income communities where people don't have the
22:30resources, where they get the short end of the stick. Including not having easy
22:35access to COVID-related programs like eviction moratoriums made necessary by the
22:40COVID forced closings of many neighborhood businesses. An estimated 13.4 million
22:46adults living in rental housing today. Nearly one in five renters were not caught up on rent.
22:53No work, no pay, no evictions any day. This community that you're in also has one of the highest population
23:03of home evictions.
23:04Landlords filed at least 43,500 evictions in 17 major cities from March until September.
23:14What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! This year! And I need people to understand if
23:20they don't get anything else, it's always about removing people and displacing people from their homes.
23:30One of my former roles is chairman of the Brightmoor Community Center and chairman of the Brightmoor Alliance. I entertain
23:38offers to buy major acreage to build million-dollar homes. What? You want to build million-dollar homes? Where will
23:46the folks who currently live in this neighborhood go? We're about to move the poor out so that the millionaires
23:51can come in.
23:56So when I hear people say, well, this country is not racist, there's not a class system, there's no inequity.
24:03If you just pull yourself up by the bootstraps, well, if you ain't got no boots, it don't work that
24:06way.
24:08There's something that our young people have learned. That is, do not trust government with your health.
24:18There have been studies where very unethical, egregious types of experiments were conducted, and there have been several since Tuskegee.
24:31In 2020 and 2021, the American government tested hydroxychloroquine on American veterans.
24:39Trump's magical cure for the coronavirus that was found to have no scientific value was tested on an unknown number
24:46of dying American veterans.
24:48We still don't know how many were tested, we still don't know how many died, and we still don't know
24:53if any of them ever even signed off on allowing themselves to be used as guinea pigs.
25:08Some wealthy Americans are maneuvering to get the COVID vaccine before others.
25:12Taking an appointment away from someone who lives in a high transmission area makes the pandemic harder to fight.
25:19Early on in the vaccination process here in Los Angeles, it was very difficult to get an appointment.
25:24At sites that are located in African American neighborhoods, all the appointments were taken up by people who didn't live
25:29in that neighborhood.
25:31The vaccine is not reaching those who are black and brown. Those neighborhoods are still going through the higher infection
25:39rates, still dying at rates that are disproportionate to the national numbers.
25:46But low levels of vaccination in many black communities isn't just about access.
25:52The people in the city were skeptical, and the people who were encouraging them to get vaccinated didn't look like
25:59them.
25:59And was saying things that didn't exactly instill confidence in the messenger.
26:03And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute.
26:09And is there a way we can do something like that? By injection inside or almost a cleaning?
26:17Because you see it gets on the lungs and it does a tremendous number of the lungs, so it would
26:21be interesting to check that.
26:22Here he was talking about putting disinfectant in your veins.
26:26But it sounds interesting to me.
26:28Then when Donald Trump started talking about Lysol and injecting Lysol, you know, in the black community, in the brown
26:37community, they said, hell no.
26:41You know, we're out.
26:43We may not have the PhD in nuclear physics, but we know that we're not taking Lysol.
26:48And so the African-American community said, you go first. We'll follow your lead. So let's just see what happens.
26:59If there's something that our young people have learned, that is do not trust government with your health.
27:10And that education and distrust dates back to the fall of 1932. The U.S. Public Health Service offered free
27:18blood tests and treatment to black men in Macon County, Alabama.
27:22What none of the 600 volunteers knew was that they had signed up for a secret experiment.
27:28There was this belief that African-Americans are biologically different than whites and that the syphilis disease would manifest very
27:39differently in black bodies versus white bodies.
27:41So that was the general premise. The Tuskegee syphilis study was to see how syphilis would behave in a black
27:48body.
27:48These African-American men either had syphilis or contracted syphilis over the course of this study, and they were allowed
27:55to go untreated to see how syphilis would manifest in their bodies.
28:01The idea was to let them die and then perform autopsies to see if syphilis behaved differently in their bodies.
28:09The Tuskegee syphilis study ran for 40 years, and 128 of the 600 participants died as a result of not
28:17being properly treated.
28:18But this was not the only unconscionable study conducted on black Americans.
28:23The Tuskegee study has been identified as the primary reason for vaccine hesitancy among African-Americans
28:31and why there's a generally high mistrust in the healthcare system, and I've argued that that's not necessarily true.
28:39There have been studies focused on black bodies and African-Americans prior to the Tuskegee syphilis study where very unethical,
28:47egregious types of experiments were conducted, and there have been several since Tuskegee.
28:51Throughout much of the 20th century, tens of thousands of people were forcibly sterilized as part of state-run eugenics
28:58boards.
28:59Most of the victims were women of color.
29:03Forced sterilizations of black people.
29:06Been around forever.
29:11And in Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison between 1951 and 1974, hundreds of mostly black prisoners were used as human guinea pigs.
29:23Dermatologist Dr. Albert Kligman exposed inmates to experimental drugs, dangerous carcinogens, and even radioactive isotopes.
29:32The experiments were conducted with the support of an Ivy League university, pharmaceutical companies, and the U.S. government.
29:41We certainly have enough evidence that shows us that certain bodies are valued differently than other bodies.
29:48But this dark history of medical experimentation on Americans extends beyond people of color, to the men and women in
29:56uniform.
29:57The American military has long used its own soldiers and service members as guinea pigs.
30:03Every generation, there's an unlucky or a courageous group of people who end up on the bad end of this
30:09situation.
30:10Push through almost a conveyor belt of biological and medical testing.
30:16Between the 1920s and 1970s, U.S. soldiers were used in tests involving mustard gas, nerve weapons, and hallucinogenic drugs,
30:25as the U.S. government tested their impact on human subjects.
30:30I'd like to say this is ancient history, but history continues to repeat itself in America.
30:35From 1998 until 2004, nearly a million members of the armed forces were forced to take an anthrax vaccine.
30:44Eighty-five percent of those who received the vaccine suffered adverse reactions, a small number even dying as a result.
30:51Symptoms that I had, they had noted in other service members that had had anthrax vaccines.
30:58And they just didn't know the remedy had to fix us.
31:01The ultimate feeling of expendability on the part of American service members is when they shoot something in your arm
31:07and say,
31:07don't worry about it until 20 years later.
31:09Well, 20 years later, you're still fighting the after effects of those health issues.
31:13And every generation of Americans faces a situation where they feel like their government doesn't give a shit about them.
31:19It's dark and it's nasty, and in many ways, it's basically un-American.
31:26As devastating as COVID has been for all but the elite, there are other, even more dangerous viruses out there,
31:33capable of causing another, even deadlier pandemic.
31:36And some are in labs on American soil.
31:40Most Americans don't realize that there are government research labs around the country that have hidden in their vaults
31:48some of the most deadly pathogens known to man.
31:54Can you move your head a little while in front?
31:55Oh, yeah.
31:57I love it.
32:01Before billionaires fought over whose rocket was bigger,
32:04it was the U.S. and the Soviet Union battling in a space race.
32:11To get an edge over their rivals, the U.S. launched Operation Paperclip,
32:16a covert plan to tap the skills of Nazi scientists, including the ones celebrated in this Disney film for inventing
32:23the rocket
32:23that killed thousands of Londoners in World War II.
32:28Dr. Werner von Braun, who is at present the chief of the guided missile division of the Army's Rocket Center
32:35at Redstone Arsenal.
32:37He was also overall director of the development of the original V-2 rocket.
32:41Now here's a model I designed for a four-stage orbital rocket ship.
32:46But the U.S. also tapped the skills of another enemy for an even more sinister purpose.
32:52Not many people are aware of is that the American Biological Weapons Program
32:57was started based on a Japanese program called Unit 731.
33:11The atrocities committed by Unit 731 are the types of things that keep people up at night.
33:18In carrying out their brutal war against the Chinese,
33:22Japanese forces actually dropped bombs full of plague-infested fleas
33:28in order to spread disease and pandemics among the population leading to terrible agonizing deaths.
33:40In addition to developing and unleashing biological weapons, Unit 731 experimented on humans.
33:48Not just by exposing prisoners to chemicals and experimenting on them,
33:55but actually cutting them apart while they were alive in order to watch them as they suffered.
34:03These strange, completely unethical and unproductive experiments
34:09that were based only on exploiting human cruelty and fragility.
34:14The unit didn't just have Chinese victims.
34:17American servicemen are believed to have fallen into their hands.
34:23Yet despite this horrific record, Unit 731 scientists were seen as important enough
34:29to America's Cold War defenses to be given immunity in exchange for their services.
34:35The use of Japanese research, while at the time, you know, some may have justified,
34:40really reveals a very dark and sinister underbelly of how the American government
34:44and our national security has often benefited from really heinous, terrible acts committed even by our enemies,
34:51whether it's the Nazis or the Japanese.
34:55By the 1960s, the U.S. government had spent tens of millions of dollars
34:59building a biological weapons arsenal that rivaled the nation's nuclear weapons
35:04in its capacity to kill every man, woman, and child on the planet.
35:10But in 1969, with support for the war in Vietnam falling and anti-war sentiment rising,
35:17an embattled President Richard Nixon ends America's offensive biological weapons program.
35:22The United States of America will renounce the use of any form of deadly biological weapons
35:28that either kill or incapacitate.
35:32But while the United States claims no longer to possess an offensive biological weapons program,
35:37the U.S. military still maintains labs with deadly biological agents for defensive purposes.
35:44Most Americans don't realize that there are government and research labs around the country
35:50that have hidden in their vaults some of the most deadly pathogens known to man.
35:56And, frankly, the security and safety track record of many of those labs is not as good as you would
36:02want.
36:02The culture of laboratory safety needs to improve at some CDC laboratories.
36:08The bio labs for the Centers for Disease Control actually in recent years have seen accidents involving pathogens
36:14like the avian flu, anthrax, and even Ebola.
36:18And the threat of a deadly pathogen escaping from a secure U.S. government facility is not the stuff of
36:24science fiction.
36:28In the fall of 2001, letters containing anthrax were sent to the offices of two U.S. senators and several
36:35major media outlets.
36:37Coming only a week after September 11th, the letters were initially thought to be a second wave of attacks by
36:43al-Qaeda.
36:44But the attack didn't come from a foreign terrorist. It was homegrown.
36:48The FBI's top suspect actually ended up being one of the U.S. government's own biological weapons researchers.
36:55Bruce Ivins working at a military lab researching these most deadly diseases and using that knowledge to exert terror nationally.
37:06The real threat may be something far more dangerous than a single disgruntled government employee.
37:12One of the ground truths is that, ultimately, Mama Nature is the biggest bioterrorist.
37:23Part of what makes the nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic so worrisome to experts is that this was
37:29supposed to be the easy one.
37:31That, in fact, the next pandemic might actually be worse.
37:38This year, the 4th of July, is a day of special celebration.
37:43For we are emerging from the darkness of years, a year of pandemic and isolation, a year of pain, fear
37:54and heartbreaking loss.
37:56Today, all across this nation, we can say with confidence, America is coming back together.
38:06I think Independence Day 2021 is powerful.
38:11Maybe it's a lot like Independence Day for America in 1776 because we also had to fight the War of
38:161812.
38:17Then we had to fight a civil war just under 100 years later.
38:21I think the message is, yeah, celebrate Independence Day, but understand that there may be more fights to come.
38:26And the fights to come may be more devastating, more divisive and longer and more costly than this first one.
38:38It feels like the coronavirus pandemic is starting to recede and there's certainly hope on the horizon.
38:45But we still face incredible dangers in the forms of variants that might be cooking up around the world.
38:53Folks in the space that I'm talking with say, if the new variant can evade the protections from vaccines,
38:59could we see spread among vaccinated people from mu?
39:02This is just a question we don't know the answer to yet.
39:05Right now, the prevalence is extremely low.
39:06As we are seeing new variants emerge, it is entirely possible that a variant will emerge,
39:15that the current vaccinations are either significantly reduced in their effectiveness or no longer effective.
39:24The truth is, though we feel that there is a better tomorrow ahead,
39:29we could be looking at further problems, the likes of which that we have yet to really wrap our heads
39:35around.
39:35And even if we might be seeing the beginning of the end of COVID,
39:39the truth is, we could be in for another, even costlier pandemic.
39:44One of the ground truths is that ultimately, mama nature is the biggest bioterrorist.
39:53And the likelihood is that a naturally occurring infectious disease will again in the future result in a global pandemic.
40:04And rising global temperatures caused by a rapidly changing climate will put us at increased risk from even more lethal
40:13pathogens.
40:15Climate change is driving the expansion of the areas that certain infectious diseases are found in.
40:24And it's also melting the permafrost.
40:29In 2016, a small village in Siberia found itself in the grips of a mysterious anthrax outbreak.
40:37The disease was eventually linked to anthrax-infected reindeer that had been buried in the permafrost decades earlier.
40:44A sudden heat wave had exposed the bodies and with them, the deadly bacteria.
40:51So bodies that had been buried in the permafrost that have diseases like anthrax are melting and causing epidemics.
41:03As the planet warms, more dangerous viruses and bacteria buried in the ice will emerge.
41:11The 1918 Spanish flu virus has been discovered in corpses buried in mass graves in Alaska's tundra.
41:18And in Siberia, bodies carrying smallpox and the bubonic plague are also believed to lay just beneath the surface.
41:27Part of what makes the nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic so worrisome to experts is that this was
41:33supposed to be the easy one.
41:35That this is not one of the worst case scenarios that pandemic planners have been warning about or plotting and
41:41planning in recent years.
41:43That, in fact, the next pandemic might actually be worse.
41:47That this is not one of the worst cases.
41:47Let's go.
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