 review a book today here on Global Connections with its author, Rupamati Kandekar, and the book is called Raging COVID Pandemic, the Wuhan Conspiracy, question mark. The question mark is very important. But welcome to the show, Rupamati, it's so nice to see you. Aloha, Jay. Many, many. It's just a pleasure again to see you, to meet you and to talk about this book again. And you did not forget the question mark. So I have to give you a little background from our side. We made a movie last year. Okay, and we had eight scientists, our faculty, we called them from around the country. And the question was the connection between climate change and COVID. The name of the movie was spiraling crisis, the alarming convergence of climate change and pandemics. And it was all about, you know, viruses and it was all about how they, how they find their way from the wild into a population and kill 700,000 people, you know, at a time. And we looked at the question of what people were saying about the laboratory in Wuhan, just as you looked at it. So I am familiar with the issue, okay. And therefore, I would like you to tell us about this book. Tell us what you started off trying to find what you, what you did to find it and what you ultimately concluded about the laboratory in Wuhan and the existence of a Wuhan conspiracy question mark. It's, it's now very becoming very clear isn't it, that it is a virus, which is not natural. The the book, which started with the premise that it is not naturally occurring virus, it's not, it doesn't have a zoonotic origin, it has a lab origin. So that now holds true, because we see unnatural mutations we see, we are seeing an unnatural evolution. This virus is stronger than what we are giving to it. The antibodies that we are trying to create through vaccines, the innovations that we are making, it can escape it. Why? Because it's an interspecies vaccine. It's an interspecies virus. It's created between, allegedly, between a pangolin and a bad genome sequence. That makes it stronger. When two, two, two species unite, it creates a stronger beam. So that's how this virus is so dynamic, if you say so. And we, at the moment, do not have the required vaccines. We have a preventive vaccine, Jay. We don't have an effective vaccine. That is the problem. We cannot relax on this, that we have a vaccine which is found to cure. We are having a vaccine which can prevent it, maybe save you from hospitalizations, maybe reduce the severity of the vaccine of the virus. But can, have we still found a vaccine which can say that we have cured the virus? No. So that's why we cannot relax as yet. Now the origin is going further and further behind. Now we are looking at what are the effects, the side effects, and now you're going to have, suppose now we are dealing with the Omicron virus variant. If we had two mutations to deal with, two mutated viruses, what would we do? The world just now is imploding in every given opportunity. So we have to understand that this pandemic, though now we have to relegate the origin to a little bit further, this and understand that now is the time to understand we don't want more mutations. We don't know how do we stop it? So that is the stage that we are in. It's a very unknown territory that we all are sitting in. Dangerous, unknown and terrifying. So you have some slides that you were going to present to us, which I guess comes come out of your book or our reflection of your methodology in the book. Can you can you present the slides? Yes. So now we go to what was, see, there was the beta, the beta variant, which came in, and it was the dominant variant in the big need. But the SARS-CoV-2, it was identified in Wuhan. But the thing with it was that it was not the transmissibility J. It was not that transmissible as the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. Now the Omicron variant has this particular variant of Omicron has got 50 mutations in the amino protein area. Now this spike protein in technical terms is the spike protein mutation is the lock and key system by which the virus enters the human body and locks on to your protein receptor. That is how they can enter your body and escape your immune system and attack you. So because our vaccines were effective up to the delta variant, now with the 50 new mutations of 18 on the amino acids and 43 on the entire spike protein area. So technically our vaccines, we don't know as yet. We will find this out after 14 days because our case first case was reported on the 26th, 23rd. So we need 14 days from hence on to understand what will happen to the mutated virus, how it will react, will it be effective against our vaccines. These spike mutations are new. So the vaccines that they have created are not effective against this. All the companies have said that they need 100 days to tweak their vaccine to be effective against the new variant. But it took them two years to find something against the previous delta variant which was far less evolved. Now this virus has gone in its own system of evolution. Darwin's theory has set in a different context over here. So it's coming up with new mutations. It's coming up with new spike protein variations. It's becoming more transmissible. Plus point is that it could be detected with a PCR test. So that fact is established that we can detect it through a PCR test. Now how much is this transmissibility is a big issue because it's spread from 200 some cases to around 2000 cases in a week. So an important point to know in this is that it was in a country which was low vaccinated. Now which we have these anti-vaxxers all over the world, they should understand that the spread of this vaccine of this virus started from a low vaccinated area. And it has spread to so many countries. Immediately it was started from 1 to 2 to 14 to 28 and now it can go to the rest of the 200 plus countries. So we have to understand that this variant is viral. It is very, very dynamic and effects are unknown. Detectable? Yes. Effectiveness or the how much is going to hurt the human race? We don't and till it hurts will there be another mutation? We don't know that yet. So now right now the best solution for everybody is to the international travel restrictions that were coming in coming off after two years of traveling or sitting at in your quarantine in your country. All these countries are still don't have any travel bands. They are they are still opening up everything. They have to stop. They have to take this seriously because again this spreads we don't know where it's going to end. And another plus point for us, let's go optimism. It has mild fever. It doesn't have severe effects as of yet. People are being cured just through hospitalizations in South Africa. There are no deaths as such reported from this virus but that is all just just it's very new. But we if we have the experience of the beta and the delta. We have to understand that the severity can be in a smashing method. We saw in India last time last show that we did. We saw India was cruising surfing the wave of this and suddenly in February we got hit by the delta virus. So we need to understand that nothing can be taken easily in this pandemic because we have mutating lab-originous virus. So that's why we have to be careful about it. Well couple I have so many questions. If you don't mind I'd like to ask you some of them anyway. One of the one of the possibilities that you raise in the book to begin at the beginning is that there was no sign no significant sign of COVID in the Wuhan area or anywhere in China until it popped out of that laboratory in Wuhan and the question the suggestion there the implication is that that laboratory was engaged in weaponizing viruses. Is there any evidence that it was? That's that's the entire premise of the book that there is ample evidence that the lab was indulging in creating this virus and it is if a naturally occurring virus usually always fades out. This one is going higher and higher. It's giving you more mutations it's becoming stronger. Now we have the vaccines preventive vaccines that we had they're going to fall ineffective. Now we are going to need booster doses. What about the effect of booster doses on your head? Can you take three vaccines and wait for something to strike you? That vaccine is going to have an effect on you. So you have to understand that they have to find effective solutions for this even the vaccine on the other side the vaccine industry has to find effective solutions to this. Till that time there is no choice to the world except to follow COVID protocols. Social distancing your mask has to be on they can't be half mask and they can't be you can't bump into people and that has to stop. It is reality of today that you have to social distance yourself you have to follow COVID protocol you have to you have to quarantine yourself if you're infected try home remedies go to the hospital use that now a plus point of this Omicron is that normally has required the oxygen requirements as the previous variant Delta. So we don't have hospitalizations for oxygen that was so basic J. We were searching for oxygen in the Delta virus. So we don't have that as yet but nobody in the world can predict the path of this virus how it will affect us what what adverse effects it will have on ahead and what is going to happen. We have so many complications of health we have diabetic people we have heart complications we have how is this virus going to affect these people is a different way from what happened in Delta. Any vaccine to be one thing that has struck me about this is that Delta seems to have replaced supplanted the original COVID. In other words before you know you saw COVID spreading around the world and then next time you look it was Delta spreading around the world and COVID itself seemed to have declined and and and and you know I just wonder if that's the way these things work and and if that's so do you think we might see Omicron this place the Delta variant is that the way these viruses can work and is that the way they are working? Yes Jay you absolutely point one because we started with the beta then the Delta Delta had more transmissibility but within two weeks we have the Omicron virus covering the entire now reach of the Delta in South Africa it is right now the most dominant strain in South Africa the Omicron one has displaced the Delta so we have these three variants of the same SARS-CoV-2 SARS-CoV-2 is got the same genome sequence so we we call them as the variants of the SARS-CoV-2 but this variant is now more transmissible so it will it's evolved species of evolved variation of the previous one so it is definitely going to like you said going to become the dominant this if now there is a very there's a very clear cut picture given by the WHO and saying that if it becomes a mild variant that is dominant we may see the end of the pen okay that was my next question to you you know it's sort of like you know some of the technology on malaria and mosquitoes you neutralize the mosquitoes you know so that they don't reproduce the mosquitoes die they don't spread the malaria or whatever else they're spreading and then after a while you don't have malaria anymore so if you take let's assume for this discussion that the Omicron it may be very highly contagious but it's less lethal okay you implied that a minute ago we don't know yet and we're going to find out if it's as lethal or more lethal than Delta let's assume for a moment it's highly contagious we we can see that on the map you had but it's less lethal in the numbers okay that suggests that if a if a high tech laboratory found a way to make a virus that would supplant a lethal virus with a not so lethal virus just as you said a minute ago Rukmani then we could replace a lethal virus with one that's not so lethal and thus end the pandemic is that what you're saying because that's a very provocative idea that's hitting the nail on the head isn't it because that is true that is true it has the pandemic will end if we have a milder dominant version it's all over it's milder and that is the time that the technical department of our global village has to get into action and find an effective vaccine against this virus we have to find the vaccine once you take it it stops we can't have this preventive vaccine going on for our lifetimes it has to be and they have to get into mode not tweaking the vaccine or boost the doses they have to get into picture to find a completely different vaccination vaccine which will be effective against this you have to isolate the genome sequence and and you you see in in cricket or in any sport you predict or in tennis you predict what your opponent is going to do they have to use that anticipation to understand what your opponent might be doing maybe this might happen maybe this might happen so they did not expect these 50 mutations to happen in the delta in the omicron virus but we have a good chance now because this is a mild one you just have a scratchy throat and severe exhaustion for any age it's only these are the two symptoms that are identified in these so we are at a better stage than the delta one where we were gasping for oxygen so we can take advantage of the situation and the department can get into action well you know you're talking about a technology that is far advanced about you know beyond the vaccines we developed over the past year which is you know on the one hand we should be proud that we developed vaccines over the past year at all there was a crisis it's less of a crisis well the crisis is really a social political crisis which i would like to talk to you about if we have time but you know you you implied a moment ago though that that if we are going to have a smarter vaccine a vaccine that anticipates the moves of the virus that would be something and and i suggest that we do have the technology to do that we have the the vision to do it and we can do it but it's not going to be short it's not going to be six months well three months or a hundred days it's going to be significantly longer to develop a vaccine that is so smart that it can anticipate the virus as it goes through evolution after mutation after revolution so this means that yes we can do it but in the meantime we're going to have to suffer suffer and suffer and make it a way of your life forward protocol is a way of life that's the only way they dealt with the with pandemics that's the only way they dealt with viruses from the Spanish flu from 1915 they're doing the same thing so why should be any different let's you know you have to social distance put your mask properly sanitize your hands don't touch your nose eyes eyes and lips so you have to do these things and people who are getting frustrated with this saying that it's been so long and now the pandemic has ended and it's all in your hand the virus is still mutating we're still finding vaccines so these things have to be accepted as a way of life we can one thing you mentioned that i also i'm swimming around in my head on this you know we have been it has been suggested to us to all of us that if you have people who don't wear masks if you have people that don't take any steps and and are anti-vaxxers and all that and you have concentration of the virus in a given population the the risk of mutation is that much greater and i think that that has a message that has been repeated over and over again but is that is that really is that really true because you know so i mean it only takes one viral particle to develop the 50 mutations why do i have to have a population of 300 million people to develop the 50 mutations it only takes one particle is it really a function of how many people are infected or is it something else no what you're saying is absolutely right it started in a country where the vaccination rate is so low so that says that vaccines are necessary isn't it only 28 percent of South Africa is vaccinated so the mutations are much higher like you said 24 percent correct me but you know 50 million 50 50 50 crore people in India are vaccinated with the first dose and now next four years they will vaccinate the entire country with two doses America 50 million people are vaccinated so we have a significantly vaccinated population so we don't have the severity as we would have had if the people had population had not been vaccinated so what comes to me on this is that is that the one particle that goes to 50 mutations is not in a vacuum what's happening is the virus is mutating all the time into thousands of different kinds of mutations and when the cdc says omicron is a virus of of concern it means that well there's thousands of them that are not of concern um and you can't get to omicron unless you've been through thousands and then bingo out of those thousands one of them turns about turns out to be you know worse and meaner and more lethal and infectious and so forth so maybe there's something to say about having a population with a lot of disease because they are generating lots of mutations most of which have no effect on us but just a few come out of that absolutely right it's absolutely right because like we said it goes into if the virus enters a body it mutates a point it acts in that way and then it leaves or it dies or whatever when it transfers from asymptomatic patients it can go as a different version so this is what we are talking about it's a very uh dynamic vaccine created in a lab it certainly has taken a huge toll i mean it's not naturally occurring virus is the jay they always always paid out we don't have the Spanish flow still raging but uh two years three years of modern life we are still facing a crumpling uh pandemic which is just this halted the entire system global system you have stock markets crashing you have people not being able to go to work you have work from home uh cubicles uh everywhere you know so that is brought into a sense still now unless this virus was uh that evolving or that hurtful we would not have had this situation if it was a normal disease we could have had a vaccine made if it was a virus which could not be effective we would have had something like a HIV or Ebola you would have had preventive remedies for that but as soon as we have oxygen therapy for the delta variant now we have a Omicron variant which we do not know what are its effects or after effects in humans so what it will ask for from us we don't know now we are stucked up with oxygen concentrators ventilator beds isolation but now we don't know what is going to be the effect of this Omicron and like you said if it mutates into something different it's going to have different effects and different remedies to ask for so we have to just be prevent prevent prevent unless it seems like a problem because we you know we know what's in the toolkit masks are in the toolkit we have vaccines that you know that were pretty effective at least at the outset to the original COVID not so clear about the delta and less clear about the Omicron and and anything else that will follow because this continues to mutate until we get that smart vaccine you were talking about and so the question is you know in a lot of a lot of including Dr. Fauci you know are saying well just use what we've been recommending all this time just do the same thing but you know I'm not sure that there's really any evidence to support that notion it could be that masks maybe don't make that much difference it could be that the therapeutics that we have so far and a little pill the morning after pill pardon me you know it may not all be all that effective so I mean I think the medical establishment is saying well do what we told you to do and we are we have been trying to get you guys to do the vaccine for months now this is just another reason we can't tell you exactly what the medical analysis is but we're telling you you should take your vaccine finally now I'm not sure that that is actually what's going to happen here you know we may find that there's something else we may find that that we have to move on and as you said figure out another kind of vaccine going forward so it's really shooting in the dark right now as to what we can do but it seems to me that taking the old vaccine is going to limit your exposure it may not solve the problem it may not stop the pandemic but it will limit your personal exposure furthermore it will limit the exposure of your family and the people you associate with and so my question to you and this is a political question if you will you know what should the United States do right now the Republicans in the Senate are saying they are not going to fund the government as required on December 1st until Joe Biden stops forcing people to take vaccines until he until he stops funding vaccines from the federal government which to me is akin to madness but that's what they're saying they don't want to take any steps because because you know freedom means not having to take the vaccine but if I were president or if you were the secretary general I think we would both say yes I think we would both say you've got to take the vaccine we're not kidding about this it's not just for you it's for all of us it's for global humanity what are your thoughts about that Romani what would you do no it's such a dangerous precedent that they're setting in isn't it if they stop funding the vaccines now you can understand that this via this Omicron variant has started in a country which is so minorly vaccinated you need vaccination to prevent more mutations that is the bottom line you cannot you cannot force a president he is doing the right thing he is doing the right thing and it has to be mandatory to take your vaccine vaccines alongside your quarantine your COVID protocol you can't have riots and you can't equate personal liberty to this personal liberty is your right to expression your right to write things and your right to speak everything you want not to not take vaccines because you not taking vaccine will engage your family like you said your community and our village our global village so and because it starts from 1 to 8 billion we have to understand that every person is responsible for this pandemic every time every person is responsible for every mutation you don't have to be you don't have to understand you have to understand that you can't be unvaccinated and expect the government to come to your house and remove the virus from you you have to vaccinate yourself personal responsibility is much more important than personal liberty right now and you can't blame governments for things which are happening in your personal space unless you vaccinate yourself how can you tell the government pay for my health care exactly exactly why should the government why should i as a constituent of the government pay for your health care when you are shooting yourself in the foot let me let me go to one last point before we before we break the money and that is this you know however this got organized in the Wuhan laboratory and whatever mistakes were made there either on the weaponization end of things or on the accidental release of the virus you know into the public the the Chinese have been very draconian that very disciplined about the virus now one of our hosts just spent a better part of seven weeks in China and he said the quarantine was 22 days long he said if you violated any of the rules about you know limiting infection of the punishment was serious and people really had no choice but to abide by whatever the protocols were because the Chinese government understands that if you want to stamp out a pandemic you have got to make everybody toe the line and that goes to a political issue doesn't it the Chinese do know how to get things done because it's a an autocracy in this great country of ours what did the talkfields say it's tumultuous it's tumultuous in congress it's tumultuous with political parties and officials and and they can't seem to get their act together and to a lesser extent i would say in india the same the same thing it's a democracy and although the government can incentivize you and make requirements of you it can't control you the same way that that Xi Jinping can control you it would have been this virus you know the the Xi virus the the the greek alphabet but yes democracy is being taken for granted in a huge way in our in our countries you need to have a forced implementation of these measures because right now China is so effectively able to control the virus in such a populated nation india escaped lucky a little bit because we have i don't know god it's immunity which did not strike the population as was expected that it would just cause mass suffering so it did not cause that as yet but we have to understand that mandatory restrictions in the u.s you the equating this is becoming very meager you know jay the thinking has become very meager like you said freedom in your expression in your choices of life everything keep it keep it over there limited to that not in your vaccine protocols not in things which will affect the personal liberty of somebody else let's go back right to our founding constitution and say that liberty is limited to that space where it is your own not when you enter or endanger the liberty of another person you have to respect the limit lines of freedom of the other person you're not taking a vaccine and giving me a variant which i i i do not deserve is wrong so china you know is these restrictive measures have helped the population they have helped so we can see a clear example where mandatory um forced is used in a good way yeah you're forcing by is wrong you finished your book before omicron ever came out uh even though your book is pretty fresh off the press um but in your book you anticipated there would be an omicron you anticipated there would be other mutations that would come our way um and so first of all i think your book is very interesting it it's an academic study um it's got a lot of data in it and it's very methodical and i wonder is it on is it on amazon yeah it is on amazon and thank you so much for the review j appreciate well i i just uh i want to ask when the next book is coming out the one that wraps around you know these most recent develops in omicron and your thoughts about you know the the fundamental the fundamental approach of a more creative the smarter uh vaccine that would be questioning the entire scientific community right now isn't it they they uh to find the effective vaccine rather than a preventive vaccine but we can also go for preventive remedies isn't it jay we have this ayurveda we have i i told you this turmeric latte that we speak about wilken turmeric uh it's immune for the immune system so uh go back to your home remedies and uh i hope we can find some resolution for my lasting resolution for this virus and a good idea for my book so i knew i could hardly wait for your next book let's plan to circle back uh because this is this thing with um omicron is only starting and i know you're going to follow it and even before that next book comes out i would like to have a further discussion with your observations about how it is affecting not only the scientific community not only this country um but the world i i think we lost sight of that particular we i mean a lot of people in this country and certainly our government lost sight of the fact that everything is interdependent and when you're talking about a global global crisis a global pandemic you're talking about everybody everywhere to never forget that