Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late-night series Real Time with Bill Maher.

Forced are officials underplaying the global economic consequences of the coronavirus.

Oh, coronavirus.

I think most generally people don't know where it's going right now.

And I think it's probably fair to say it's likely to get worse, at least on the basis of what we're looking at now.

See, the Chinese have been very good at dealing with all the technical aspects of the problem.

They started out slowly because they were trying to deny it in sort of very typical of a dictatorship.

They initially, even on bad news, doesn't travel. But then they got on it.

They built two hospitals in a week. You know, only in China can you do something about that.

Well, you say hospitals. A big room with beds.

Well, that's not a hospital.

I grew up in India, you know, that'll count for...

I mean, they were...

They're trying to quarantine a lot of people.

The challenge, I think, is what do you do about the psychological, the political ramifications of what's happening?

So now there is this whole movement mostly on the net of people saying why did the doctor who alerted everyone to the virus get punished.

You know, so the Chinese are stuck between two impulses.

On the one hand, they don't like bad news getting out.

They want to punish people for spreading bad news.

On the other hand, they want to solve the problem.

And the two are coming into conflict right now.

But so far, it does look like, again, it's looking at least as bad as SARS.

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