System Of A Down bassist Shavo Odadjian has talked about the coronavirus. He also describes the panic surrounding the coronavirus and says “I think it’s the stupidest thing.”

All the musicians concerned about coronavirus and growing panic for that. On March 15th, System Of A Down member Shavo Odadjian join the “The Jasta Show” podcast. He just appeared on the latest episode of the show. In this interview, he also comments on the skepticism about the threat posed by the coronavirus outbreak. He says “this is just a regular cold” with a death rate that is lower than that from seasonal flu.

SOAD bassist Shavo Odadjian answers some questions from Jamey Jasta and replied:

“I think it’s the stupidest thing… I think it’s lame. It’s just a regular cold, bro, at this point. I saw a doctor yesterday for just a checkup,” he continued. “He owns the floor; it’s his. Anyway, he was telling me how he was upset at how media’s only focusing on one thing, and that’s putting fear in you, which is what’s going on — it’s like control by fear. But he’s, like, the actual virus has actually diminished in power and strength since it started with all the deaths that have been happening.”

Then Odadjian continued:

“He’s, like, we have 50 times more people contaminated with it, but we have 30 times fewer deaths. Where before there was a certain amount that got contaminated and this many died from it — like maybe 20 percent, 10 percent. And now it’s, like, 0.01 percent, and it’s mostly people in convalescent homes in their 80s and 90s or people that have weak immune systems. It’s people that would die from the flu or anything else that would happen, which happens, like, 27,000 to 57,000 a year in America alone — people die from the flu and no one talks about it… I’ve been doing research, ’cause I’m, like, ‘Dude, why are these important things getting canceled, like South By Southwest, just for a cold?'”

“I know it’s scary — it’s scary to have this new thing, but every two years we have something new, man. We went from Zika to the fucking swine flu to SARS to Ebola, back to this, back to that… And it’s, like, every time they don’t have something, they’re gonna bring something else back and say, ‘Oh, remember this? Wasn’t it scary? Well, it’s back. We have two new cases.’ Ooh, the world panics, bro…”

We also want to remind you that COVID-19 (coronavirus) has killed around 12,700 people worldwide and around 285 in the USA. You can listen to the System Of A Down bassist Shavo Odadjian full interview here.