 This is what lessons from the East wasn't Steve. What was the name of the show, Steve? We're facing facing the east facing the east. Okay. And we do this usually on Monday at this time and we talk to Steve as circle where ever Steve is. And usually he's in Kobe, Japan. And are you in Kobe, Japan today, Steve? Yes I am. But next weekend you're going to be here in Honolulu. I will be there, yes. Okay. We'll catch you over the weekend for another show. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, you and Alan Meyer who was on before also, so that'll be great. So today is a show that follows up on what we discussed just last hour with somebody who was in Bang Pro Bang. You get that right? Close. Which is a 50,000 person city in Laos. And he was there and he was talking to us about various things that happened there, but also mostly about the coronavirus as it appears in Laos. And so let's talk to you about the coronavirus too. Let's find out what is happening in Japan and how people and the government are reacting. Because you are much bigger than Laos, which is only 7 million people. And you have actual reported cases. And that makes it different. So what's happening in Japan on coronavirus, Steve? Yeah, well the government is being proactive in that it's yesterday actually allocated funds to be able to handle any further outbreak of the virus. Also, they've increased security for tourists coming in. As you probably know, when you walk through immigration, I think this is worldwide. They have those heat sensors that measures your temperature before you actually go through the immigration process. So they've beat up the personnel around there. They are taking this very seriously. And as you noted, Jake, Japan already has three cases of tourists from China. Actually, all three of them are from the Wuhan area where this virus originated. And they have been identified and have been isolated. Some are in hospitals. One is in the hotel room and she can't leave that. So I think those of us that have been in Asia, we remember SARS, which is just a little over 20 years ago. That was a major virus outbreak. In fact, the coronavirus is in the same family. It's a similar type of virus. And I think in that case, that one also originated in China. I don't know why China is the king of these threatening viruses, but they seem to originate from that country. And in that time, China was very slow to recognize the danger of this virus. And I think Asia overall was a little bit slow to respond. So I think because of that, the fact that 800 people died from SARS, there were about 8,400 cases of SARS. Jake, you probably remember that. I don't know if it impacted Hawaii or not, but it certainly was a big deal out here, working in Asia at the time. So I think because of that, the politicians remember how poorly that was handled and how probably people needlessly died because of lack of response. China seems to be more proactive about dealing with this and surrounding countries as well. No major, there's no like embargo on Chinese tourists. I read Malaysia is now preventing, not Malaysia, Mongolia, is preventing Chinese tourists, period, from coming into the country until this is figured out. So Japan's not at that state, but it certainly has raised its defenses and has allocated funds in case this becomes a much broader contagion within Japan. Yeah, I read about the Mongolia also. And my reaction is if I were running a given country, I'd have to have a really good reason not to stop all the Chinese because they're the ones carrying it. And they come in the country, they infect a few people before you know it, that country. So maybe Mongolia is absolutely right about this. One of the big issues, I don't know if it's been discussed, it's a culture point. What's happening in China is Xi Jinping now belatedly is in the health authorities, they're belatedly reacting and they're reacting in a very controlling manner. I think it's the nature of the PRC. So he's shut down that province, what is it, Huay province? What? And Wuhan, the city, and he's shut down an area which has, I don't know, more than 30 million people. And you can't come and go and the streets are empty and everybody has to stay home and all these curfew kinds of things. You can't bring in food or supplies. He's really shut the place down and that's probably going to expand the way he's going. And then he's dictated that two hospitals will be built virtually overnight to handle those who are infected. There are thousands of beds in these hospitals and the Chinese, they can do that. They can build hospitals overnight with thousands of beds. They're quite amazing at that. So he's taking all these, I want to say draconian steps, all these bold steps, these control steps. But the question, and maybe you've thought about this, the question is, does that work? Bold steps, does that work? I mean, you mentioned that governments should respond and certainly they should. But the question is, when you have an unknown, brand new coronavirus where nobody knows exactly what the dimensions are and what the molecular travel speed is and so, does shutting everything down the right solution? I think it's a culture point. It's a point in the PRC. And probably I would guess that the Japanese have a different culture reaction to this and they're not going to be so overwhelmingly controlling all of a sudden and maybe more thoughtful, more medical research oriented and figuring something out about it before they take these bold social and governmental geopolitical steps. Do you have any thoughts about the comparison and how that works? Yeah, well, I know Japan better than China, but certainly, both actually Jay are one party state. Basically Japan's been run by the Liberal Democratic Party or called Jiminto in Japanese since World War II but the control that they have over the functions of government is nowhere near as comprehensive as what China can do. I mean, and their leadership, they can order a quarantine of an entire region. I don't know if that would actually be possible in Japan. I guess theoretically it would be, but it would be, I think, difficult for the leadership to actually do that unless it was a really severe threat. So there is a cultural difference and also a political difference between the two countries. When my time in Japan, has there ever been anything where, one of the numbers I read yesterday, so almost 3,000 people have been infected and 80 people have died already. I've never experienced that in Japan, so the government hasn't been challenged in that same respect in Japan but I would think based on my observation and study of Japan over the decades that they would not be able to do exactly what China is doing. So I contrasted this breakout, the coronavirus with SARS. In that case it was a different leader but China kind of tried to hide it and didn't report it even though the numbers were growing and so forth and hindsight turned out that they actually made things worse. So maybe in this instance the leadership of China is going, okay, we were criticized quite harshly 20 years ago for not responsibly dealing with this threat and not helping the rest of the world deal with it as well. But now China is taking these measures to perhaps demonstrate that they're being responsible. They've been sequencing the virus, you probably read this as well, Jay, and they've turned that over freely to researchers worldwide who would be asking for help to try to figure out how to deal with this. But it is remarkable when your one party state and the government in China has that much control that you can just shut down 30 million people basically overnight. Well, I think the police will respond to whatever he wants and they are strong in their response. Yeah, there's another point though, the Chinese New Year holiday has already begun and I read that the governor of the Wuhan area was saying that there's probably 3 million, I read as many as 5 million Chinese people from that area that are traveling right now and I would guess the percentages of them are traveling internationally. So they're out there already, they're Chinese people, they're in Japan, they certainly come here, they're going to come to Hawaii. I was in Las Vegas two years ago during Chinese New Year, I couldn't believe the whole place looked Chinese, it was remarkable how many tourists were there. So I'm sure they're in the United States in large numbers already. Yeah, I was in Sydney a couple of years ago at Chinese New Year time and the whole city of Sydney was Chinese, it was very interesting. Yeah, it's the largest movement of people in the world period. I guess it used to be the Hajj in the Middle East but no longer, now that the Chinese have become wealthy and they can travel, there's millions and millions of people that are going to be traveling. So I think maybe that's in part why the world is responding so actively. My Japan is concerned in beginning to build its defenses for a potential outbreak here. Yeah, and I had the impression that some of the people who left Wuhan left because they wanted to get away from the quarantine, they saw it coming. It was not just New Year's travel, it was, let me get out of here before they shut the place down. And you're right, it was altogether 5 million people left that area from Wuhan or somewhere else and potentially those people are spreading a disease. So in other countries, I mean in SARS there were 11 countries involved. There are already more than 11 countries now that are involved and it's only a few days after this has become public. Yeah, this seems to be taking off much faster. By the way, just a very side note, I was working in Korea during SARS and there were no outbreaks of SARS in Korea, which was surprising because other Asian nations experienced that. And they claimed that eating kimchi was the reason why Korea did not have SARS. Why do I feel that's it? I just tell you, Jay, maybe you want to be on the safe side here because there's the same family of viruses. You may want to go buy some kimchi from my quality kimchi. I like kimchi. Maybe that's the secret. This will be in the movie and the sequel. Well, I think it's very scary because they don't have a handle on it, although Xi Jinping has a certain amount of medical expertise available in the country. China has come a long way in medical research and development of vaccines and the like since Xi was there. Their biochemistry and their medicine is way beyond what it was in 2002. They've already done some work. He's built some teams. He dedicated more people to focus on this than we have in the United States, which is interesting. And that's another question about whether the United States government is doing the appropriate thing. But I don't think this is a virus and viruses are viruses and they mutate and it's very hard to understand them and catch them. And who's to say what the real problem is here? It may require a long time to develop a vaccine. Meanwhile, the thing is moving like wildfire. I remember reading not too long ago, Gates was mentioning, he was kind of predicting. I don't want to fear Mounder at all, but this is Gates. He's spending a lot of money on medical research to try and fight malaria and so forth. So he said that at some point in the near future there will be a pandemic disease like this one potentially and that the deaths would not be thousands, but actually millions. He thinks that that will happen at some point. So hopefully it's not this case. So hopefully they'll be able to sequence this virus and figure out how to beat it. But anyway, he thinks that that kind of massive deaths will occur at some point. I guess his understanding of the medical area and the cultivation of these viruses and so forth. Two points on that. One is the sequencing thing. I just recall that in fact the Chinese medical teams that have been assigned to this in the past few days have already sequenced the virus and shared the sequence. So the medical community globally now has the opportunity to find out what's going on and maybe to stop it somehow with some kind of medicinal cure kind of medicine or possibly a vaccine although that's hard. That's one thing. The other thing is that this is largely a question of burning out because the way it ended in 2003 was it just sort of burned out. We didn't do too much. It just burned itself out. And MERS in 2012, the same thing. I mean something like 8,000 people infected in each case and 800 died and of the 820% of those were healthcare workers. Pretty scary. As opposed to the disease in the Congo, I forget the name now, the disease in the Congo where it comes and goes and as it comes and goes, science has been able to find vaccines. So there are vaccines now and the vaccines actually work. The problem is that people do not accept the vaccines. So there's a social overlay on how you do this. And I think the common denominator in all of this is the social overlay because you've got to get people to behave in a certain way to contain it, to isolate it and let it burn itself out. Anyway, sorry, you were saying. Yeah, is it Ebola? Is that the disease you were thinking of, Jay? Yeah, Ebola. Okay, one thing that's interesting, you mentioned some of the cultural aspects of how to deal with these types of diseases. In Japan, when you arrive here, you notice that many people are wearing facial masks. And as an American, you're thinking, oh, they're afraid that they're going to pick up a disease from somebody else. But in fact, what you hear a little while, you realize that Japanese people are wearing those masks because they are sick and they don't want to make others sick. And the use of surgical masks and these facial masks are quite common. And the motivation for that is to try and limit the spread of disease when you recognize that you are ill yourself. So this is one thing that if this did take off, there's kind of a cultural practice already. Yes. Because Japanese people care about each other and they're willing to wear masks to protect others. This would, I think, in a way limit the spread of disease. If indeed these facial masks actually work, I've read that some people think they do and some people think that they don't. Well, in China, they don't have enough masks to go around yet. And the call was out. Oh, yeah. You know, Jay, I was in Costco a couple of days ago shopping for my family. And there was a Chinese couple that was in front of me. And they had a huge pot. They had the 25 boxes of facial masks. So they're either probably going back to China. I sort of get the prices of facial masks there going up by six or seven times. They were making an investor. They probably paid for their airplane ticket just by purchasing those facial masks here in Japan at that cheaper rate. Yeah. So one other thing too that kind of counterbalances the government reaction to this disease. And that is already hotels, department stores are complaining at the number of Chinese, which is the major group of tourists that come to Japan period, but especially during this time frame during the Lunar New Year, the numbers are falling off dramatically. So they see it. So hotel cancellations are up significantly. The Chinese tourists that are shopping in the department stores in Osaka, the number of shoppers during Lunar New Year is 80% Chinese. So Japan has developed a dependency on Chinese tourism. And now that the Chinese government has banned group tours, they just did that I think yesterday or the day before. There's an economic impact. Yes. So you can see the government wants to protect the Japanese citizenry, but they don't want to go overboard to the point where even fewer Chinese come because then some industries that are dependent on Chinese tourists are going to complain as well. So it's an interesting dynamic. Obviously public health is number one, but economic interests also are at play when tourism, which is a major, which is the fastest growing industry in Japan as we talked about before in previous shows. And when that's impacted negatively, that hurts a lot of businesses here locally. Well, if I could just finish, it's actually if the number is really significantly, the number of tourists significantly goes down. The GDP, the Japanese GDP, which is not so high to begin with, the growth rate could go down by a tenth of a percent or one or two point percentage off the GDP for 2020. And has that significant effect? Well, I think it's kind of like terrorism. It's like weapons of mass destruction, like bioterrorism. People get panicked and they slow down their economic activity. It's not just the government. Everybody gets scared and they stop doing the things that contribute to the national product. And so the market went down over 200 points this morning. I don't know exactly, it was a substantial drop and clearly related to this epidemic. Yeah, the Nikkei went down by two percent yesterday and it's because of this virus outbreak and the uncertainty. You know, business hates uncertainty and this is a huge uncertainty right now because they don't know yet how it's being spread and how much this will impact Japan or the rest of Asia. Well, let's get some advice from you, Steve. Let's get some advice. What is your advice to the Japan government? What would you tell them to do at this point? I very rarely agree with what the Japanese government does, especially the current leadership. I think we've talked about that a couple of times. I'm not a big fan of the current Prime Minister Abe. I think he's not really helped the country over the last six or seven years. In this instance, I think they are proactive, but I don't think they're pushing too far and making the Japanese people feel scared more than maybe they would naturally be when they read about this type of thing in the newspaper. So I would say that in this instance, I agree with how they're handling this so far. So they're beating up the defenses at the airports and where tourists come in to try and catch this if they can. They've allocated funds just in case this outbreak becomes more severe. They're already figuring out where to put these patients, which hospitals to put them in. A hundred different hospitals have been identified in Japan that would take these patients. So obviously, they have quarantine facilities there. So I'd say at this point, so far, what the Japanese government is doing is responsible and I think is not crossing the line to where it's polarizing or making the fear level go up. One thing that I haven't seen... It almost hurts me to say that that the Japanese government is doing a good job here, but I have to be honest with you. It's okay, it's okay. One thing that I haven't seen it in print, but I'm surmising and see what your reaction is, that they are able to confirm the existence, the infection in a given person. They're able to tell us with pretty much total certainty that this person, this individual is infected or not. So I gather from that that there must be a test. The medical community must have a test to determine this virus as opposed to other viruses. Flu, for example. And I give them credit for that, for having the test and having it available so quickly. Yeah, that's correct. In the news, some Chinese tourists have gone to the hospitals and they're showing flu symptoms, but they don't have the coronavirus. They have some other type of virus. So you're right, that they can determine whether or not it's a severe infestation with the coronavirus or it's just a more common cold or influenza. Let me ask you for a little more advice, Steve. What about the United States? The United States. Yesterday, Senator Chuck Schumer, who was so heavily involved in the impeachment trial, got up and made a statement which was way outside the impeachment trial. He said, we have a serious problem here and the CDC has a special fund of $85 million, which it can release on the determination that we have an epidemic. The CDC must make that determination. And then Bingo, on that alone, $85 million is released to the medical community in order to deal with this epidemic. On the other hand, Trump said, he made a kind of a bland statement about everything is going to be fine, which I think is, again, as so many things he says is not based on fact or evidence, but that was his address. Everything is going to be fine while Schumer is saying they haven't released the money yet. They haven't treated it as an epidemic. And I really wonder, you know, you talk about whether the Chinese government is being treated with us, whether the American government is being candid with us. What is your advice to the American government, Steve? Yeah, well, clearly, Japan made that decision. Just with the three instances of identification of the virus here in Japan, they did what Schumer is saying the United States should do. The Japanese government made that decision quickly and that's why these funds have been released to the medical community to be able to fight this disease if it becomes a bigger threat. So they had made that decision and I would imagine the United States should do that as well. There's going to be instances of this in the United States. I can't imagine, there's so many countries, but there already is instances in the United States, right? Yeah, oh yes. They've already been identified there. Yes, several cases. Yeah, it's not in large numbers. Yeah, it's not in large numbers, but clearly there are people coming into the country that are carrying this virus. Maybe they're not showing symptoms yet. You know, the medical science doesn't understand it yet, so you don't know what the incubation time is or how the disease is spread. So I think Schumer is correct that it's irresponsible for the United States to not take this seriously as other governments clearly are to try and protect their citizens. What about... I don't know, you know... Go ahead. What about traveling... Americans traveling to Asia? I mean, a lot of Americans regularly plan trips. Plan trips overseas to vacation or business and go to Europe, and Europe has some cases. And of course Asia, you know, a number of cases, especially China. But what about... What's your advice to them? What about pursuing some travel that people had planned at this point in time? Well, already Japanese businesses that have operations in China are pulling their people out. And they're canceling any type of business trips into, especially the Wuhan area, but in China in general. So many businesses, and I imagine many people are canceling their trips. I don't know if that's the advice that I would give. Certainly, I don't think you'd want to go to the area that's been shut down by the Chinese government. In fact, you couldn't get in there anyway. But the Japanese government's actually sending a plane. Most Japanese citizens got out of that area before the quarantine occurred. But now they're going to send in a plane to get the rest of the remaining Japanese citizens. They're going to get all Japanese people out of that area. As the U.S. is. We're doing the same thing. We're taking all the Americans out of China. Right. I think all governments are trying to get all of their citizens out of there. Because obviously they don't want them to become infected and face the risk of dying from this virus. Well, we've got to follow this team. We've got to follow it. We've got to talk about it again. We've got to see every day how the numbers change. And we have to make our, our own decisions. And more, we have to be informed about it because I think it is a risk for everyone. Anyway, I will, I will see you on Saturday for our show on Saturday this week. Looking forward to it, Jay. You and Alan Minor and have a good trip over. And I hope you don't have any issues at the airport. Jay, shall I bring some face masks with me? Do you want me, some of the Japanese ones are probably, you know, top of the line. I can bring them with me. I'm glad to see you there. Thank you, Steve Sergei. Really appreciate it. Take care. It was a pleasure, Jay. Thank you. Take care.