This week, on GrokTALK, I take on the mind-virus culture that elevates otherwise meaningless outbreaks into potential pandemics. We look at real numbers and add valuable context that frames the problem in its proper perspective while pointing out what the greater threat is to human health and flourishing.
00:00 Introduction
01:49 Fear-Mongering and Government Control
03:31 Bird Flu: A Case Study in Panic
06:58 Hantavirus: Understanding the Real Threat
08:46 Ebola: The Latest Scare Tactic
12:05 Contextualizing Viral Threats
15:41 The Ongoing Cycle of Fear
18:20 Conclusion and Future Predictions
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” – Gustav Mahler
Watch on the ‘Grok Rumble Channel if the embedded video does not load.
Link(s):
- https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/former-cdc-director-warns-ebola-outbreak-could-be-second-largest-in-history-6041094
- https://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/data-research/cases/index.html
- https://granitegrok.com/national/2025/10/macdonald-flu-shot-increased-risk-of-flu-by-almost-30
Authors’ and Speakers’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of GraniteGrok.com’s sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers.
Transcript [Lightly Edited]:
Steve MacDonald (00:00)
Welcome to another installment of Grok Talk, brought to you by GraniteGrok.com and Grok Media LLC and our donors and supporters. And please become one of those to keep the content coming. Hey, on a side note, it’s June 1st.
And I gotta tell ya how much I like having to wear winter clothing to take my dog out. In the morning. I really, really would like to see some of that global warming. I know one day doesn’t really; it’s been cold all weekend. my god. When’s it gonna get it warm? Where is summer? Well, we’ve had some really warm summers. Maybe we’re due for a not so warm summer. That’s just how the world works. It’s four billion years old. It’s been hotter, it’s been colder.
And gee, you know, while we’re on the subject, some of the same people are like, all this global warming, which we’re not having, is causing all these viral spreads and they’re getting worse and blah blah blah blah blah, which has created a a very wide and deep culture, especially on the left, in an effort to influence people in the middle and some not so bright people on the right, that, all these virus things that come up, like, well, of course, you remember COVID. That was kind of crazy. But anyway, they’re looking for a repeat. You know, they’re hoping to bring the band back together. They’d like to, you know, rekindle that relationship between fear-mongering and tyrannical government control. And recent examples include bird flu, hantavirus, and now Ebola. Ebola. We’re gonna talk about those things.
And hopefully not for too terribly long, but we’re gonna provide a little detail and context, which is what we like to do when grok talk starts in less than sixty seconds.
During the Biden years, they freaked out about bird flu. And of course, bird flu is to form a flu. How dangerous is it to people? Almost not dangerous at all. In fact, there have only been a few deaths ever. When you compare that to all the other things that could happen to a human being in America in the twenty-first century, you’re more likely to get hit by a non-English-speaking illegal alien truck driver than to die from bird flu.
But just to be cautious, very cautious, the Biden administration authorized the execution of over 170 million birds, almost all of them chickens. And something really strange happened. Well, not strange at all. The price of chicken went up. The price of eggs went way up, and we were still suffering from Biden inflation. And
It got bad. Your eggs were like an investment. You could spend five, six, seven bucks a dozen on eggs. The Trump administration came in, the USDA, the FDA, the Department of Health and Human Services, and said, Look, we don’t see where the fire is. There’s been maybe one or two fatalities total. The risk is extremely low. Stop killing the chickens. Beginning this year, you could buy a dozen eggs for ninety-nine cents, and I’d just
Paid that the other day. Sometimes it’s a dollar nineteen. Sometimes you can get eighteen for a buck twenty-nine. Anyway, it’s amazing what can happen when you really care more about everybody than you do about how the government can use fear to manipulate human beings and change their behavior. I’m not sure why you don’t think that’s some form of fascism, because the entire Democrat agenda is based on changing the playing field until you do what they want. Anyway, we’ll start with bird flu. We’re gonna talk about bird flu. We’re gonna t visit hantavirus and then the new Ebola outbreak. That’s our subject matter for today. So bird flu has been around for a little while.
Since 2022, we’ve killed over 168 million birds, which, of course, as I noted earlier, stopped. But the reason it stopped was because human infections with bird flu are really, really rare. There have been only 70 cases since March of 2024. Keep that number in your head because context matters here. Mostly among individuals with direct contact with infected poultry or dairy herds.
They could wear a mask, right? That wouldn’t help, but you know what I mean. And as of September 2025, there was one confirmed human death in the US due to H5N1 in Louisiana in January 2025. Tragic. Absolutely. We don’t want anybody to die. But again, mathematically, more people die from other things every day that nobody’s trying to scare you to death over to try to manipulate your behavior. And that’s really the focus here. So,
Of course, the fear that has been sold is that it will mutate into some human-decimating virus, COVID-19 level. Well, COVID-19 level bullshit is what it is. They just are trying to manipulate you.
They don’t care about people. I can’t stop saying this enough. Democrats don’t give a shit about human beings. They care about power and money. They are socialists. They are Marxists, communists. Democrat socialists are just socialists looking to become communists. It’s all about power and control. They don’t care about people. I’ve written about this recently and often. Look what they did to the black community. Look what they’re doing to women. They don’t care. Although I did observe earlier this week that
In a unique contradiction. Feminazis hate men. That’s pretty much their thing now. Men suck. They don’t need men. Men are horrible. Men have no contribution. Men are useless unless they’re pretending to be women. And then we all have to go, isn’t that beautiful? That’s a virus too. It’s a mind virus. That’s the problem.
Bird flu- haven’t heard much about bird flu lately, have we? All of a sudden we stop killing chickens, eggs get cheaper, chicken gets cheaper. The craziness over bird flu just kind of disappeared from the media landscape. You’re not hearing a whole much about it. And I guess that got the media really worried. They didn’t have anything to scare people with other than Trump is a fascist, which of course is absolutely not true, because if he was, you wouldn’t be able to say Trump is a fascist; you wouldn’t be able to have no Kings rallies.
You wouldn’t see ICE protesters everywhere. Literally, if he was a fascist, he would have used the federal government to take over local police departments the way Barack Obama did, and they would be using typical Nazi tactics to suppress all resistance. And they’re not doing any. What they’re doing is making fun of people who are pretending, making fun of people who are saying that we’re all a bunch of fascists.
So that’s bird flu. Bird flu, bird flu kind of disappeared. Bird flu will come back if it becomes politically expedient to scare people about it. So let’s move on to Hantavirus. Of course, the cruise ship, you know, a bunch of people trapped in enclosed spaces. Of course, you’re gonna have a higher probability of spread. But
Let’s look at the real numbers. Since 1993, when they really kind of started paying attention to this, there have been a total of 890 laboratory-confirmed cases. Okay. That’s over 30 years, less than 900 cases. The case fatality rate is 35%. So you are going to have some people die from this, and it does happen. In 2023 in the US, there were 26 cases and seven deaths. 2024, there were 20 cases.
And eight confirmed deaths. That’s pretty much what it’s like annually. There’s actually a CDC has a map. And it you can go to the website, I’ll share the link, and you can see where Hantavirus happens: New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, California, Texas, just about all the cases are west of the Mississippi River. it is not going to be a massive epidemic.
It isn’t as likely to spread as they want you to believe. And we know this is true. We know this is true because all of a sudden they stopped talking about it. About a month ago, it suddenly became, within the last month, not the popular blonde on the virus world pandemic block. Now it’s Ebola. Remember Ebola? Remember Ricola?
Every time I hear the word Ebola, I – that’s just the way my head works. So Ebola has now become the thing. Oh my god, Ebola. And why would I even care? Well, I the Epoch Times dropped this in my inbox. Here’s the headline. Former CDC director warns Ebola outbreak could be second largest in history. Former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Robert Redfield said that the ongoing Ebola.
Ebola virus outbreak in Africa, become one of the largest in history. It’s already the third largest outbreak of Ebola in the world, Redfield said. Well, let’s start with the first problem. Former CDC director. That means very likely deep state globalist Stoooooge; he’s one of those assholes. And so I’m like, well, all right, you know, let’s be fair. Let’s go look up what
What the other instances are. Of course, Ebola was discovered in 1976. You decide what that means, but it’s probably been around a lot longer than that. Most of almost all major outbreaks in 76. Sudan, 284 cases, 151 deaths. Zaire, 318 cases, 280 deaths. That’s also in 76. 79 in Sudan. 34 cases, 22 deaths; 95 in the DRC, 315 cases, 254 deaths; 96 to 97 in Gabon, 91 cases, 66 deaths. And then it starts getting interesting, like somebody jumpstarted something. 2000 to 2001, Uganda, 425 cases, 224 deaths. 2001 to 2003, Gabon in the Republic of Congo, 302 cases, 254 deaths. We’ll skip to 2014 to 2016. West Africa, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone. This one you might remember. Over 28,000 cases, over 11,000 deaths.
I mean, I recall writing about it. We’ve got content and GraniteGrok about that, and then the 2018 and 2020 outbreaks.
But that’s the biggest one. And that was ten years ago. And we didn’t shut the world down. And the media probably talked about it a lot, but you know, this was Obama years. There was, you know, a modicum of fear-mongering, but you know, generally we’re like, we’re okay. Twenty eighteen, twenty twenty, 3,470 cases, over 2,280 deaths. Again in 2020, 21, 22, 25, and now 26. Close to a thousand cases so far, including suspected cases. This is in the DRC in Uganda, just like all the other incidences, two hundred and forty-one.
Estimated deaths connected to Ebola. So Ebola is now the thing. Oh my God, Ebola. What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? How are we gonna survive? Well, I think probably the same way we always do. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I think that even though these numbers are rather large, and Ebola is a very scary virus and a horrible way to die.
We should compare it to other things in the world. Yeah, we should be cautious. We should limit travel. We should not go there ourselves. We should, you know, do all the things that normal, clear-headed thinking human beings would do to, you know, limit the amount of exposure if you can, but without going crazy. We don’t shut down the economy. We don’t tell everybody to do stupid things that are bad for them. We don’t tell people to do things that make absolutely no sense and have absolutely no public health benefit whatsoever, like social distancing. You know, and again, it’s entirely up to you. I mean, we still have people wearing masks since COVID. And they’ve never taken them off. And I can only think that if they weren’t ugly wearing those fucking things on their face every day, sometimes for six, eight, ten, twelve hours a day, like they do at work, makes them ugly. I think that if you’re walking around with a mask on your face, you’re kind of a fool. Even if you have, I mean, it, they’re useless. They don’t do anything to prevent viral spread. All you’re doing is constricting your airway, which is more dangerous to people at high risk. But you do you do you, which is my point. You be who you are if it makes you feel better.
By all means, please do. The rest of us will just titter quietly to ourselves behind our hands and not say anything. You should be polite to people, even people who are idiots. I’m serious. That’s just how it goes. So anyway, I said all that. Just to say this. Influenza. Influenza is the plague of every year. The flu, the regular flu, not the pretend flu, not the COVID flu, just the flu, kills lots of people every year and always has. It basically is a planetary cleansing agent. It takes out the sick. It’s the lion that calls the herd. I’m not trying to be crass. I know I mean I’ve known lots of people who have died, none of them from flu, but it happens, and it’s sad. And at least these days, if your loved one passes away, you can comfort them and attend their funeral and celebrate their life without the government interfering with your right to honor those who have passed and their lives. Anyway, so CDC again, take it for what it’s worth: typical range, symptomatic illness, nine to fifty-one million cases in the US every year.
Million. Medical visits, anywhere from 4 to 18 million. Hospitalizations, anywhere from 120,000 to 700,000. Deaths, anywhere between 6,000 and 52,000 people die. 2024, 2025, anywhere from 40, anywhere from 50 to 80 million illnesses reported, 21 million medical visits. Anywhere from 610,000 to 1.3 million hospitalizations; the numbers are preliminary, tens of thousands of deaths. 2023, 2024: 34 to 75 million illnesses, 15 to 33 million visits, up to 900,000 hospitalizations, and up to 100,000 deaths. 22, 23, 35 million illnesses. You see where I’m going with this? 21,000 deaths.
This is every year. Now let’s go back to bird flu. What two deaths? Hantavirus? A couple dozen a year, maybe. Ebola. We had that one instance, that one year, where it was really high, twenty-eight thousand. And of course it was restricted to West Africa, so context, people, context.
Right? It matters. Every year people die of the flu and almost everybody, you know, gets it, right? They go out, and they give you this, especially if they get the flu vaccine. Remember that report from last year? Cleveland Clinic. Thousands of subjects, employees, medical professionals. They checked everybody who got the shot compared to people who didn’t. And if you got the flu shot, it lived up to its name.
You were 30% more likely to get the flu. So they don’t really know what they’re doing. Medical science has advanced to accomplish amazing things, and I’m sure it will continue to do so. Sadly, there is a financial component, and the get some attention component to allowing the media to basically say hyperbolic things and lie to people.
In pursuit of clicks and views and the resulting ad dollars that follow. And that’s not going to stop, nor should it, to be honest with you. But as long as we have the opportunity to do what they wouldn’t let us do during COVID, which is to share alternate information, to share details, to find and dig for facts, to plumb for truths, to bring up subjects and debate topics and ask questions that allow people
Mostly normal, everyday Americans who have at least a reasonable amount of intellectual agility to look at both sides and decide for themselves. Bird flu was the next big thing until it wasn’t. Hantavirus was the next big thing until it wasn’t. Now we’ve got Ebola. What I’m wondering is what’s coming after Ebola? ‘Cause you know it’s gotta be something. Ebola
Will rage across Western Central Africa probably through the summer. And so they will continue to talk about it. And we may even find a case in the US. It has happened. It’s not; it’s pretty damn rare, but it’s possible. And they will do their best to try to scare the crap out of you. And to say that so-and-so isn’t doing anything and they’re putting you at risk. Well, if we’re gonna be honest.
What the Democrat Party promises is a bigger virus and a greater risk to human health and flourishing than anything else on planet Earth ever. Even the plague. Okay, that’s it for this week. and yeah, maybe someday we’ll do guests. Who knows? Elections are coming up. We might even find time to
Force me to figure out how to get that to work right again. But until then, that’s it for this week. We’ll talk to you again soon.
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