While The Rest Of Us Die 2x6

1. When we say, "While the Rest of Us Die," the last year has

2. been a great example of how the rest of us have literally died.

3. COVID-19 continues to ravage the country.

4. And while the government told us we were

5. all in this together, the truth is: we are not.

6. We've seen a real tale of two pandemics.

7. We've seen small businesses across the United States,

8. especially those Black owned and Latino owned businesses

9. go into shutters.

10. Meanwhile, we've seen billionaire wealth skyrocket.

11. It's an equal opportunity disease,

12. but it's disproportionately impacting certain communities.

13. Communities that were once the target

14. of immoral medical experimentation...

15. There have been studies focused on

16. Black bodies and African-Americans.

17. Very unethical, egregious experiments were conducted.

18. are now wary of modern efforts to stop the disease.

19. So, as a result, it is a big struggle to convince

20. individuals to take the vaccine.

21. And even as Americans continue to get sick and die

22. from new strains of COVID...

23. We're all in danger from the next, even more deadly pandemic.

24. There are government research labs around the country that

25. have hidden in their vaults some of the most deadly

26. pathogens known to man.

27. For over 70 years, our leaders have told us one thing

28. under the bright lights...

29. The protection of the lives and property of Americans

30. is the responsibility of all public officials.

31. I care, we're trying.

32. We have it so well under control.

33. Help is here and we will not stop working for you.

34. But for decades, America's shadow government and

35. its powerful friends have spent trillions of dollars on

36. an agenda that serves their interests, not ours.

37. You guys paid for all this.

38. So, when the shit really hits the fan, we're on our own.

39. This is not science fiction.

40. This is reality in America right now.

41. The truth is, the rich and powerful will do

42. whatever it takes to save themselves...

43. While The Rest of Us Die.

44. Fire, fire!

45. July 11th, 2021.

46. Wealthy Brit Richard Branson scores an early victory

47. in the billionaire space race.

48. I'm an adult in a spaceship.

49. With lots of other wonderful adults,

50. looking down to our beautiful, beautiful earth.

51. Nine days later, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gets his turn.

52. The price tag: an estimated $5.5 billion.

53. After the flight, Bezos thanks the people who made

54. his childhood dream a reality.

55. I want to thank every Amazon employee and every

56. Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this.

57. - So, seriously, for every

58. When I saw Bezos on TV thanking the customers and the workers

59. for his for fulfilling his dream to go into space,

60. I wanted to scream...

61. because it was almost like he was mocking us.

62. As the pandemic continues to upend our lives,

63. one thing is becoming clearer by the day:

64. We're not only increasingly losing friends and family,

65. but we're seeing an increasing divide between

66. the haves and the have-nots.

67. It's a fabulous America.

68. More than 300,000 enterprises of the kind

69. you see from time to time.

70. Some are one-man shops, others corporations

71. with nearly a half million employees.

72. Each was small to begin with, each grew as America grew.

73. That's the unparalleled system that brings Americans

74. the good things of life.

75. A lot has changed in the United States

76. in the years after World War II.

77. But small business, and the entrepreneurial spirit,

78. remain at the heart of the American economy,

79. and the American dream.

80. More than half of American workers today

81. are employed by small businesses.

82. And iconic American corporate giants from Ford to Amazon

83. all started out as small ventures.

84. I'm Jeff Bezos.

85. And what is your claim to fame?

86. I'm the founder of Amazon.com.

87. By the 21st Century, these once small, now large corporations,

88. have started to squeeze the life out of small businesses.

89. And with them, entire American communities.

90. When Wal-Mart comes to a town, you know,

91. first what they do is they bankrupt

92. all the other businesses in the town.

93. They use their huge war chest of money to sell their goods

94. below cost, so no one else can compete with them.

95. Then once everybody else is out of business,

96. they can raise their costs to the right amount.

97. And they're not only the sole seller in the community,

98. they become the sole employer in the community.

99. We've seen some companies that have been able to

100. consolidate power in particular sectors.

101. They've been able to excrete more and more profits...

102. before the pandemic, but even more so during the pandemic.

103. Local news stations told the story of one small business

104. after another going under.

105. One in six restaurants will not survive the pandemic.

106. Zero.

107. To support these small businesses, in March 2020,

108. the government created the Paycheck Protection Program,

109. known as PPP.

110. This $350 billion relief program allowed applicants to

111. apply for a low-interest loan to cover their payroll.

112. We tried to stay open.

113. We used the PPP money we received from the government.

114. And, after that was extinguished,

115. there's nothing else we can do.

116. What we saw, especially at the beginning, was...

117. instead of the government working directly with

118. small businesses, the government decided that they would

119. funnel the money through big banks and

120. let the big banks decide...

121. where that money would go and why.

122. The money went out.

123. The banks were sitting there waiting on it.

124. And what did they do? They did what bankers would do.

125. They shared that money with their customers first.

126. The result?

127. Well over half of the $350 billion originally allocated

128. for the PPP went to large or publicly traded companies

129. instead of small businesses.

130. A lot of those companies that didn't receive support

131. are out of business.

132. $10,000, $30,000, $50,000

133. that could have kept them afloat and

134. gotten them to the other side of this pandemic,

135. just wasn't there.

136. It was taken to companies that don't really need it,

137. that never really needed it.

138. And just who owned some of those companies that

139. didn't need the money? Our elected leaders.

140. Our investigation found that over 2 dozen members of

141. Congress received tens of millions of dollars in

142. PPP loans, that are likely to be forgiven.

143. For their privately held businesses.

144. These members of Congress were often already among

145. the richest members of Congress.

146. David Moore is a journalist and co-founder of the

147. investigative news site Sludge.

148. In addition to holding stock in individual companies,

149. members of Congress are allowed to hold private companies.

150. These companies range from everything from the

151. pharmaceutical industry, to the real estate industry,

152. to fossil fuel investments.

153. And these members of Congress, many of them voted against

154. increasing the stimulus checks that went to working people.

155. But many of them received funding for their

156. privately held businesses.

157. We need to put Americans back to work.

158. Make America tired again.

159. Oklahoma Representative Kevin Hern did just that

160. making his low waged employees "tired again"

161. by keeping his numerous McDonalds franchises

162. open during the pandemic.

163. Oh, he also received a million-dollar PPP loan.

164. Indiana Congressman, Greg Pence,

165. the multi-millionaire older brother of the then

166. Vice President, received almost $80,000 for two malls

167. he and his wife own valued between $5 and $25 million.

168. And then went on TV to complain about other people

169. getting government money.

170. Bailing out states that have been irresponsible and

171. imprudent with taxpayers' money doesn't make any sense to me.

172. Another recipient of PPP loans was a company that's affiliated

173. with the household of former Senate Majority Leader,

174. Mitch McConnell.

175. A company belonging to his wife's family received

176. a PPP loan of over $400,000.

177. Sludge's investigation uncovered 28 members of

178. Congress who received over 27 million in COVID relief loans

179. for companies in which they or their family hold positions

180. while one in three small businesses

181. went under due to the pandemic.

182. They receive this PPP funding, which is likely to be

183. forgivable loans, while many businesses in lower income

184. areas struggled to access the program.

185. That pot of funding was vital for businesses.

186. And they weren't able to get at it.

187. If members of Congress could have been more responsive to

188. every one of their constituents,

189. including the ones who had trouble accessing the funding,

190. they might have saved jobs and recovered more easily

191. from the pandemic.

192. If you look at your main street in most of...

193. medium-sized towns across the United States,

194. a lot of companies that were there

195. before the pandemic are gone now.

196. Struggling businesses make headlines across the country.

197. Many people are thrown into unemployment, into poverty.

198. And I think as importantly, those business owners,

199. now have been pushed out of the middle class.

200. And, instead of owning businesses are looking for jobs

201. at the kind of super profitable companies.

202. It's like war, right?

203. You have people who are on the receiving end,

204. who suffer great harm.

205. And then you have people who profit.

206. What I would call the pandemic profiteers are affiliated with

207. companies that have reaped windfalls

208. because of the pandemic.

209. They have benefited from the adverse tragic situation that

210. most people have felt.

211. $100 billion more was made during the pandemic by the

212. 33 most profitable companies, than before.

213. 98 to 100% on average of those companies' earnings or profits

214. are going to shareholders, many of those shareholders

215. being the billionaire class.

216. And while the wealthy are making a fortune from the

217. Pandemic, it came at a significant cost to workers

218. at companies like Amazon.

219. Every day, I come here to JFK 8 in Staten Island for Amazon.

220. I stand on my feet for ten hours.

221. There was a time where I vomited my lunch because

222. I didn't have I don't have enough time

223. to really digest my food.

224. It happened quite a few times actually,

225. and there was nothing anybody did.

226. Instead, warehouse workers like Rina Cummings say what Amazon

227. did was leave its employees dangerously overworked and

228. under-protected even as the pandemic led to record profit.

229. There was no supplies at my station.

230. Nobody was social distancing.

231. While Amazon says it did everything it could to protect

232. its workers during this unprecedented time,

233. it was reported company employees were urinating

234. in bottles and having miscarriages.

235. And some even dying of COVID, all to ensure customers

236. got their hand sanitizer shipped on time.

237. When Amazon workers sought protection by joining a union

238. the company allegedly spied on the organizers,

239. and spread disinformation.

240. All designed to crush the movement.

241. We are not anti-union, but we are not neutral either.

242. We have very good communications

243. with our employees.

244. So, we don't believe we need a union to be

245. an intermediary between us and our employees.

246. I have a quota.

247. I have to do 1,800 packages an hour.

248. It's one package every two seconds,

249. in order to make my quota.

250. We do not believe unions are in the best interest of

251. our customers, our shareholders,

252. or most importantly, our associates.

253. And if I don't make my quota, I could be written up.

254. And, after the third write up, I will be fired.

255. Of course, at the end of the day,

256. it's always the employees' choice.

257. Jeff Bezos increased his wealth during the course

258. of the pandemic by $85 billion.

259. If you split it up amongst that 1.3 million workers,

260. could have provided a $67,000 bonus to every single

261. Amazon employee, and still be just as rich as

262. he was when the pandemic began.

263. The pandemic just really exposed what I already knew.

264. That it was all about profit and

265. they don't give a damn about the workers.

266. Jeff Bezos made $80 billion,

267. retired and went into space,

268. while the rest of us have to stay here and work every day

269. like a slave.

270. I'm not asking for a trip to space.

271. I just want to have better working conditions.

272. And I want to get paid for my work, my fair share.

273. But Bezos isn't the only billionaire to profit from the

274. pandemic at HIS workers' expense.

275. My mom is a 60-year-old Black woman.

276. Has a number of different conditions that

277. put her in the high - risk category.

278. But also, had to show up to work every day.

279. Wal-Mart offered a onetime bonus payment.

280. It wouldn't have been enough to allow her to take real time off.

281. So, she had to put herself at risk,

282. like so many other people,

283. just to be able to survive during this time.

284. As thousands of Walmart workers caught COVID,

285. the retail giant's owners made a fortune.

286. The Walton family are the descendants of Sam Walton,

287. the founder of Wal-Mart. In 1983,

288. Sam Walton had an estimated $6 billion

289. in wealth in today's dollars.

290. Today, the Walton family has over $250 billion.

291. So, their wealth has gone up over 4000%.

292. Since the lockdown in March 2020,

293. the wealth of US billionaires has gone up $1.6 trillion.

294. These billionaire wealth gains have happened at the same time

295. that almost 600,000 people have lost their lives.

296. The racial wealth divide has grown.

297. People have lost their savings.

298. They've lost their health, if they got COVID,

299. but they're still alive, they are worse off.

300. COVID pandemic in and of itself really does sort of highlight

301. who's more likely to profit from a pandemic,

302. versus those who can't.

303. So, the ripple effect of the Black small businesses closing

304. in this community is the difference

305. between life and death.

306. The COVID-19 pandemic has upended most lives.

307. But in some communities, it has transformed challenges

308. into something potentially deadly.

309. When I heard the title, "While the Rest of Us Die,"

310. I immediately thought to myself, that is

311. truly analogous to what's happening here.

312. That's one small step for man...

313. One giant leap for mankind.

314. In 1970, Gil Scott Heron sang, "Whitey On The Moon",

315. which captured the experience of many Black Americans

316. oppressed and living in poverty,

317. watching the Apollo astronauts triumphantly plant the

318. American flag on the lunar surface.

319. The pandemic has shown the timelessness of the song.

320. I just two minutes, there we go.

321. I lost 49 friends...

322. as a result of COVID, in a short window.

323. It seemed like every time the phone rang,

324. it was someone telling me about someone who was either

325. in the hospital, or who had died.

326. My sister right now is battling COVID.

327. Um...

328. Oh, that was a tough one. I'm sorry.

329. I've done more funerals than what I would ever want

330. to do in my lifetime, as a pastor.

331. To get a handle on the pandemic,

332. the government told people that staying home

333. would help save lives.

334. But for essential workers, that wasn't an option.

335. The pandemic revealed how expansive and vital

336. "essential workers" are. Yet, at the same time,

337. those essential workers were sent

338. into harm's way with crappy wages,

339. shitty healthcare and not even enough PPE.

340. Remember when the pandemic broke out,

341. in places like New York, firefighters and cops who were

342. going in to get the bodies of people who died,

343. couldn't get face masks, couldn't get PPE.

344. It's important to understand during the pandemic,

345. that the most vulnerable front line workers were

346. disproportionately women, disproportionately

347. People of Color, who were kind of dispatched into the

348. viral line of fire, sometimes against their own choice,

349. against their own will.

350. It's very difficult to social distance

351. when you have to go to work. And then you're coming home.

352. And African-Americans are more likely than other racial and

353. ethnic groups to live in multigenerational households,

354. in extended family households.

355. And so, there's a higher rate of exposure.

356. COVID is an equal opportunity disease,

357. but it's disproportionately impacting certain communities.

358. When it came to minority communities,

359. it was catastrophic.

360. In the first few months of the pandemic,

361. Black Americans were contracting COVID at

362. three times the rate of white Americans,

363. another painful reminder that America remains

364. a divided society.

365. There's an old aphorism: When America catches a cold,

366. Black America catches pneumonia.

367. And if that pneumonia sends you to the hospital,

368. you could discover another way Americans

369. differ from each other...

370. Black Americans are more likely to die there.

371. It didn't make a difference to what their ages were.

372. And it didn't make a difference what their health issues were.

373. Many could not figure out,

374. why are our people dying in hospitals?

375. And then when you think about that, in the hospitals,

376. they were not put in rooms, they were in the hallways.

377. At the height of the pandemic, health care workers like this

378. nurse in New York began posting videos claiming Black COVID

379. patients were dying as a result of unequal care.

380. I am literally telling you that they're murdering these people.

381. And, nobody will listen to me.

382. They all know what's happening. They all agree with me.

383. And they all just shake their heads.

384. And I'm like, am I the only one who is not a sociopath?

385. COVID has a, has ravaged our community.

386. Dennis Talbert is a community activist in the

387. Brightmoor neighborhood of Detroit.

388. Nicknamed "Blightmoor", the 4-square mile neighbourhood

389. located 11 miles northwest of downtown Detroit is one of the

390. poorest communities in the United States.

391. Like many similar communities, Brightmoor was hit hard by the

392. COVID related closings of Black owned, small businesses.

393. The stress that it put on the community,

394. I don't know that we will fully understand for years to come,

395. talking about a fragile system from the beginning.

396. Most people lost their jobs.

397. Most of my friends and family lost their jobs at the

398. beginning of the pandemic.

399. My niece, who has four children,

400. she struggled to feed her children.

401. She didn't have daycare, child care.

402. Food was an issue. And, of course, money.

403. And then the big things were unemployment that

404. people faced as well.

405. So, the ripple effect of the black small businesses closing

406. in this community is the difference between life and

407. death, because most of the families and community here,

408. they're working in the local small businesses,

409. which may be the local restaurants, the local bars.

410. My husband actually was laid off immediately as soon as

411. the pandemic started.

412. I was working two jobs and I was laid off from my second job.

413. Somewhere around half of the businesses that went out of

414. business in the first six months of the pandemic

415. were Black owned.

416. And you see that those companies in particular were

417. serving communities that don't get served otherwise with

418. products that may not be available otherwise,

419. hiring folks that may not be of interest for others to hire.

420. This pantry sees over 3000 families.

421. Normally they would shop and they would go through the

422. aisles and leave with between 100 to 125 pounds of food.

423. The pandemic hit, we went from 9,000 to 48,000 pounds

424. in one week. When I heard the title,

425. "While the Rest of Us Die," I immediately thought

426. to myself, that is truly analogous to

427. what's happening here.

428. I've seen families who've been fighting and struggling on the

429. margins for so long, and this just upended them totally.

430. It is extremely hard to see people every day

431. just trying to make it.

432. State government, federal government, they've let us down.

433. There's been virtually no help to our communities.

434. There's been no assistance whatsoever.

435. In those low-income communities where people don't have the

436. resources, they get the short end of the stick.

437. Including not having easy access to COVID-related

438. programs, like eviction moratoriums...

439. made necessary by the COVID-forced closings of

440. many neighborhood businesses.

441. An estimated 13.4 million adults living in

442. rental housing today, nearly one in five renters,

443. were not caught up on rent.

444. No work, no pay, no evictions any day!

445. This community that you're in...

446. also has one of the highest population of home evictions.

447. Landlords filed at least 43,500 evictions in 17 major cities

448. from March until September.

449. - What do we want? - Justice!

450. - When do we want it? - Now!

451. And I need people to understand,

452. if they don't get anything else.

453. It's always about removing people and

454. displacing people from their homes.

455. One of my former roles as chairman of the Brightmoor

456. Community Center and Chairman of the Brightmoor Alliance,

457. I entertain offers to buy major acreage,

458. to build million dollar homes. What?

459. You want to build million dollar homes?

460. Where will the folks who currently live

461. in this neighborhood go?

462. We're about to move the poor out,

463. so that the millionaires can come in.

464. So, when I hear people say, "Well,

465. this country's not racist,

466. there's not a class system, there's no inequity,

467. if you just pull yourself up by the bootstraps".

468. Well, if you ain't got no boots, that don't work that way.

469. There is something that our young people have learned,

470. that is, do not trust government...

471. with your health.

472. There have been studies where very unethical,

473. egregious types of experiments were conducted,

474. and there have been several since Tuskegee.

475. In 2020 and 2021, the American government tested

476. hydroxy-chloroquine on American veterans.

477. Trump's magical cure for the coronavirus that was found to

478. have no scientific value was tested on an unknown number of

479. dying American veterans.

480. We still don't know how many were tested.

481. We still don't know how many died,

482. and we still don't know if any of them ever even signed off on

483. allowing themselves to be used as guinea pigs.

484. Some wealthy Americans are maneuvering to get the

485. COVID vaccine before others.

486. Taking an appointment away from someone who lives in a high

487. transmission area makes the pandemic harder to fight.

488. Early on in the vaccination process here in Los Angeles,

489. it was very difficult to get an appointment.

490. At sites that are located in African-American neighborhoods,

491. all the appointments were taken up by people

492. who didn't live in that neighborhood.

493. The vaccine is not reaching those who are Black and Brown.

494. Those neighborhoods are still going through the higher

495. infection rates, still dying at rates that are

496. disproportionate to the national numbers.

497. But low levels of vaccination in many Black communities

498. isn't just about access.

499. The people in the city were skeptical.

500. And, the people who were encouraging them to get

501. vaccinated didn't look like them.

502. And were saying things that didn't exactly

503. instill confidence in the messenger.

504. And then I see the disinfectant,

505. where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute.

506. And is there a way we can do something like that...

507. by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it

508. gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs,

509. so it'd be interesting to check that.

510. Here he was talking about putting disinfectant

511. in your veins.

512. But it sounds, it sounds interesting to me.

513. Then when Donald Trump started talking about...

514. Lysol, and injecting Lysol you know, in the Black community,

515. in the Brown community, they said, "Hell no!"

516. You know, "We're out".

517. "We may not have the PhD in nuclear physics,

518. but we know that we're not taking Lysol".

519. And so, the African-American communities said,

520. "You go first. We will follow your lead.

521. So, let's see what happens".

522. If there is something that our young people have learned,

523. that is, do not trust government...

524. With your health.

525. And that education and distrust dates back to the Fall of 1932.

526. The U. S. Public Health Service offered

527. free blood tests and treatment

528. to Black men in Macon County, Alabama.

529. What none of the 600 hundred volunteers knew was that

530. they had signed up for a secret experiment.

531. There was this belief that African-Americans are

532. biologically different than, than whites.

533. And that the syphilis disease would manifest very differently

534. in Black bodies versus white bodies.

535. So, that was the general premise.

536. The Tuskegee syphilis study

537. was to see how syphilis would behave in a Black body.

538. These African-American men either had syphilis or

539. contracted syphilis over the course of this study,

540. and they were allowed to go untreated...

541. to see how syphilis would manifest in their bodies.

542. The idea was to let them die, and then perform autopsies to

543. see if syphilis behaved differently in their bodies.

544. The Tuskegee Syphilis study ran for 40 years,

545. and 128 of the 600 participants died as a result of

546. not being properly treated.

547. But this was not the only unconscionable study

548. conducted on Black Americans.

549. The Tuskegee study has been identified as the primary

550. reason for vaccine hesitancy among African-Americans.

551. And why there is a generally high mistrust in the healthcare

552. system. And I've argued that that's not necessarily true.

553. There have been studies focused on Black bodies and

554. African-Americans prior to the Tuskegee syphilis study,

555. where very unethical, egregious types of experiments were

556. conducted, and there have been several since Tuskegee.

557. Throughout much of the 20th century tens of thousands of

558. people were forcibly sterilized as part of

559. state-run eugenics boards.

560. Most of the victims were Women of Color.

561. Forced sterilizations of Black people...

562. been around forever.

563. And in Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison between

564. 1951 and 1974, hundreds of mostly Black prisoners

565. were used as human guinea pigs.

566. Dermatologist Dr. Albert Kligman exposed inmates to

567. experimental drugs, dangerous carcinogens,

568. and even radioactive isotopes.

569. The experiments were conducted with the support of an

570. ivy league university, pharmaceutical companies and

571. the US government.

572. We certainly have enough evidence that shows us that

573. certain bodies are valued differently than other bodies.

574. But this dark history of medical experimentation

575. on Americans extends beyond People of Color

576. to the men and women in uniform.

577. The American military has long used its own soldiers and

578. service members as guinea pigs.

579. Every generation, there's an unlucky or courageous group of

580. people who end up on the bad end of this situation,

581. pushed through almost a conveyor belt of

582. biological and medical testing.

583. Between the 1920s and 1970s, US soldiers were used in tests

584. involving mustard gas, nerve weapons,

585. and hallucinogenic drugs as the US government

586. tested their impact on human subjects.

587. I'd like to say this is ancient history,

588. but the history continues to repeat itself in America.

589. From 1998 until 2004, nearly a million members of

590. the armed forces were forced to take an Anthrax vaccine.

591. 85% of those who received the vaccine suffered adverse

592. reactions a small number even dying as a result.

593. The symptoms that I had, they had noted in other

594. service members that had had Anthrax vaccines.

595. And, they just didn't know the remedy, how to fix this.

596. The ultimate feeling of expendability on the part of

597. American service members is when they shoot something in

598. your arm and say, "Don't worry about it 'til 20 years later".

599. Well, 20 years later, you're still fighting the

600. after effects of those health issues.

601. And every generation of Americans faces a situation

602. where they feel like their government doesn't

603. give a shit about them. It's dark and it's nasty,

604. and in many ways, it's basically un-American.

605. As devastating as COVID has been for all but the elite,

606. there are other even more dangerous viruses out there...

607. capable of causing another, even deadlier pandemic.

608. And some are in labs on American soil.

609. Most Americans don't realize that there are government

610. research labs around the country that have,

611. hidden in their vaults, some of the most

612. deadly pathogens known to man.

613. Can you move your head a little? - Oh, yeah.

614. - Hi mom! I love it!

615. Before billionaires fought over whose rocket was bigger,

616. it was the US and the Soviet Union battling in a space race.

617. To get an edge over their rivals,

618. the US launched Operation Paperclip

619. a covert plan to tap the skills of Nazi scientists,

620. including the one celebrated in this Disney film for inventing

621. the rocket that killed thousands of Londoners

622. in World War II.

623. Dr. Wernher von Braun, who is at present the chief of the

624. guided missile division of the army's rocket center

625. at Red Stone Arsenal.

626. He was also overall director of the development of

627. the original V2 rocket.

628. Now here is a model I designed for a four-stage

629. orbital rocket ship.

630. But the US also tapped the skills of another enemy

631. for an even more sinister purpose.

632. Not many people are aware of is that the American biological

633. weapons program was started based on a Japanese program

634. called Unit 731.

635. The atrocities committed by Unit 731 are the

636. types of things that keep people up at night.

637. In carrying out their brutal war against the Chinese,

638. Japanese forces actually dropped bombs full of plague

639. infested fleas, in order to spread disease and pandemics

640. among the population, leading to terrible agonizing deaths.

641. In addition to developing and unleashing biological weapons,

642. Unit 731 experimented on humans.

643. Not just by exposing prisoners...

644. to chemicals and experimenting on them, but actually...

645. cutting them apart while they were alive in order

646. to watch them as they suffered...

647. these strange, completely unethical and unproductive

648. experiments that were based only on exploiting

649. human cruelty and fragility.

650. The unit didn't just have Chinese victims-

651. American servicemen are believed to have

652. fallen into their hands.

653. Yet despite this horrific record,

654. Unit 731 scientists were seen as important enough to

655. America's Cold War defenses to be given immunity

656. in exchange for their services.

657. The use of Japanese research, while at the time, you know,

658. some may have justified, really reveals a very dark and

659. sinister underbelly of how the American government and our

660. national security has often benefited from really heinous,

661. terrible acts committed even by our enemies,

662. whether it's the Nazis or the Japanese.

663. By the 1960s the US government had spent tens of millions of

664. dollars building a biological weapons arsenal that rivaled

665. the nation's nuclear weapons in its capacity to kill every man,

666. woman, and child on the planet.

667. But in 1969, with support for the war in Vietnam falling,

668. and anti-war sentiment rising,

669. an embattled President Richard Nixon

670. ends America's offensive biological weapons program.

671. The United States of America will renounce the use of any

672. form of deadly biological weapons

673. that either kill or incapacitate.

674. But while the United States claims no longer to possess

675. an offensive biological weapons program,

676. the US military still maintains labs with deadly

677. biological agents for defensive purposes.

678. Most Americans don't realize that there are government

679. research labs around the country that have,

680. hidden in their vaults, some of the most

681. deadly pathogens known to man.

682. And frankly, the security and safety track record of many of

683. those labs is not as good as you would want.

684. The culture of laboratory safety needs to improve

685. at some CDC laboratories.

686. The bio labs for the Centers for Disease Control actually

687. in recent years have seen accidents involving pathogens

688. like the Avian Flu, Anthrax and even Ebola.

689. And the threat of a deadly pathogen escaping from a secure

690. US government facility is not the stuff of science fiction.

691. In the fall of 2001, letters containing Anthrax were sent to

692. the offices of two US Senators and several major media outlets.

693. Coming only a week after September 11th,

694. the letters were initially thought to be a second wave

695. of attacks by Al-Qaeda.

696. But the attack didn't come from a foreign terrorist.

697. It was homegrown.

698. The FBI's top suspect actually ended up being one of

699. the US government's own biological weapons researchers,

700. Bruce Ivins, working at a military lab,

701. researching these most deadly diseases,

702. and using that knowledge to exert terror nationally.

703. The real threat may be something far more dangerous

704. than a single disgruntled government employee.

705. One of the ground truths is that, ultimately,

706. Mama Nature is the biggest bio-terrorist.

707. Part of what makes the nation's response to the COVID-19

708. pandemic so worrisome to experts is that this was

709. supposed to be the easy one.

710. That, in fact, the next pandemic might actually be worse.

711. This year, the 4th of July, is a day of special celebration

712. for we are emerging from the darkness of years

713. a year of pandemic and isolation, a year of pain,

714. fear and heartbreaking loss.

715. Today, all across this nation, we can say with confidence,

716. America is coming back together.

717. I think Independence Day 2021 is, is powerful.

718. Maybe it's a lot like Independence Day for America in

719. 1776 because we also had to fight the War of 1812.

720. Then we had to fight a Civil War

721. just under a hundred years later.

722. I think the message is, yeah, celebrate Independence Day,

723. but understand that there may be more fights to come,

724. and the fights to come may be more devastating,

725. more divisive and longer and more costly than this first one.

726. It feels like the coronavirus pandemic is starting to recede

727. and there's certainly hope on the horizon,

728. but we still face incredible dangers in the forms of

729. variants that might be cooking up around the world.

730. Folks in the space that I'm talking with say if the

731. Mu variant can evade the protections from vaccines,

732. could we see spread among vaccinated people from Mu?

733. This is just a question we don't know the answer to yet.

734. Right now, the prevalence is extremely low.

735. As we are seeing new variants emerge,

736. it is entirely possible that a variant will emerge that the

737. current vaccinations are either significantly reduced

738. in their effectiveness, or no longer effective.

739. The truth is, though we feel that there is a better tomorrow

740. ahead, we could be looking at further problems,

741. the likes of which that we have yet to really

742. wrap our heads around.

743. And even if we might be seeing the beginning of

744. the end of COVID, the truth is we could be in for

745. another even costlier pandemic.

746. One of the ground truths is that, ultimately,

747. Mama Nature is the biggest bioterrorist. And,

748. the likelihood is that a naturally occurring

749. infectious disease will again, in the future,

750. result in a global pandemic.

751. And rising global temperatures caused by our rapidly

752. changing climate will put us at increased risk

753. from even more lethal pathogens.

754. Climate change is driving the expansion of the areas

755. that certain infectious diseases are found in.

756. And it's also melting the permafrost.

757. In 2016, a small village in Siberia found itself

758. in the grips of a mysterious anthrax outbreak.

759. The disease was eventually linked to Anthrax-infected

760. reindeer that had been buried

761. in the permafrost decades earlier.

762. A sudden heat wave had exposed the bodies,

763. and with them the deadly bacteria.

764. So, bodies that had been buried in the permafrost

765. that have diseases like Anthrax...

766. are melting and causing epidemics.

767. As the planet warms, more dangerous viruses and

768. bacteria buried in the ice will emerge.

769. The 1918 Spanish Flu virus has been discovered in corpses

770. buried in mass graves in Alaska's tundra.

771. And in Siberia, bodies carrying smallpox and the bubonic plague

772. are also believed to lay just beneath the surface.

773. Part of what makes the nation's response to the COVID-19

774. pandemic so worrisome to experts,

775. is that this was supposed to be the easy one.

776. That this is not one of the worst-case scenarios that

777. pandemic planners have been warning about or plotting and

778. planning in recent years.

779. That in fact, the next pandemic might actually be worse.