>Some will nevertheless hesitate to accept the entirety of Senger’s view that “Everything is Fake” (the title of his sixth chapter)
I was quite receptive to these arguments back in 2020, but I think this view has steadily grown less credible over time, especially now that China has again locked millions of people up in their homes.
Rather, I wish to repeat what I've argued a few times recently: Whether SARS-COV-2 is a uniquely dangerous virus and whether or not lockdowns work to stop it from spreading are ultimately red herrings. The more important point is that it should not be the job of our government to stop viruses from spreading by rationing social interaction among healthy people.
This is not a question we had to ask ourselves in the past, because we've only known how viruses spread since the discovery of germ theory and only relatively recently developed the ability to do most desk jobs without leaving our homes.
However, it's a question that will merely grow more important in the future, as there are two factors we're not about to run out of:
-New viruses that jump into our species
-Immunocompromised people
And so when the argument against the lockdowns becomes some esoteric theory like "Covid has been around since 2018", "most of the deaths were caused by the ventilators" or "the herd immunity threshold lies around 25%", we risk simply replaying March 2020 when the next virus shows up.
It's similarly strategically useful that the lockdowns had no meaningful impact on the spread of SARS-COV-2, as it helped mobilize the critical mass that was necessary to make these lockdowns a form of political suicide, but it won't be enough to cast the whole concept into the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Rather, we should see the idea of locking healthy people up in their homes to stop viruses from spreading as the epidemiological equivalent of eugenics: Government infringing on inalienable human rights under the excuse of promoting human health. That's how you slay this dragon.
Nobody argues over whether eugenics could improve population's IQ, cut down on genetic disorders or help us grow the economy. The whole concept is so outrageous, so unthinkable to most people nowadays, such a fundamental clash with their value orientation, that it fundamentally doesn't matter to most people in the Western world whether it works or not.
And lockdowns, along with the whole social distancing concept, needs to be seen in similar terms. It's an outgrowth of an alien culture with a fundamentally different value orientation than our Western civilization.
Any opposition to what happened in March 2020 based on pragmatic terms risks maneuvering itself into a dead alley when the next virus mysteriously pops up a stone toss away from a BSL-4 lab, that happens to have a higher IFR, a longer incubation period, or some other variable that will resurrect the whole concept of endowing a technocratic cabal with the responsibility to ration social interaction.
I see very few people in the US standing for inalienable human rights or having such deep convictions. This is not just about the fake crisis of the last two years alone but in other equally important spheres of liberty such as free speech.
Americans especially those living in Democrat run cities fell all over themselves trying to dial the panic to eleventy and shaming anyone expressing dissident views on Covid containment.
American public institutions including the NIH, CDC etc exposed themselves to be nothing more than corrupt political tools who worked for the benefit of Big pharma.
There is no doubt in my mind that many American people would readily welcome the next lockdown
However, the practice of eugenics is widespread with “Planned Parenthood” eliminating the infants of black and lower-middle-class white America. Healthy babies, gone in a heartbeat. Slippery slope. We just refuse to see.
Also the practice of physician 'assisted suicide' for those who are mentally troubled and or the elderly within our communities. A very slippery slope indeed.
Lockdowns do work to contain a pathogen. But that is for a small area where the in/out can be strongly controlled. Lockdowns on the scale demanded by China are impossible in less repressive places. Even in China they find it impossible to provide adequate services thus ensure that some will die. It's even remarkable that they are willing to collapse their economy to do a lockdown. The lockdowns may very well reflect a way to deflect blame on some other cause than the incompetence of central planning. In a free nation extended large scale lockdowns are quite impractical as we have witnessed. They simply can't work if we value life.
We had a politician in Canada who used the phrase "Short term pain for long term gain." Respect and admiration to the late John Crosbie. The government fell after his sensible budget, long before Jagmeet Singh joined the WEF and NDP.
The Chinese CCP is observably willing to impose a little "Short term pain (on their citizenry) for long term gain (for the polity.) " It's actually a win-win arrangement for the party. This is far more destructive for the "liberal western democracies" and the American hegemony than an engineered virus.
It becomes a little more difficult to untangle the relationship between Li and the WEF, or Putin ( apparently a former "Young Global Leader") and the WEF; the WHO is obviously compromised as noted above (the Wuhan lab was completely controlled at the supposed audit) and through Bill Gates' funding.
Not sure what you mean. If a contagion can be stopped via isolation then isolation by definition works. What does stopping a contagion mean? Isolating those with the infection until it no longer is infectious. Ipso facto. Where it fails is when isolation through the period of infection cannot be achieved, as with the SARS-2 outbreak.
Not surprising that when biosafety is ignored we get trouble. But Wade insists that SARS-2 escaped from level 2 where the strict precautions were relaxed.
I see very few people in the US standing for inalienable human rights or having such deep convictions. This is not just about the fake crisis of the last two years alone but in other equally important spheres of liberty such as free speech.
Americans especially those living in Democrat run cities fell all over themselves trying to dial the panic to eleventy and shaming anyone expressing dissident views on Covid containment.
American public institutions including the NIH, CDC etc exposed themselves to be nothing more than corrupt political tools who worked for the benefit of Big pharma.
There is no doubt in my mind that many American people would readily welcome the next lockdown
Eugenics carried to full madness could turn humans into all kinds of diverse and bizarre creations: look what selective breeding has done to dog breeds.
Nobody argues over whether eugenics could improve population's IQ, cut down on genetic disorders or help us grow the economy. The whole concept is so outrageous, so unthinkable to most people nowadays, such a fundamental clash with their value orientation, that it fundamentally doesn't matter to most people in the Western world whether it works or not"¨
so what do you suggest that we must consinder eugenics to "improve" population's IQ and grow the economy?
Couldn't we take a more simplistic view that C19 evolved through a progressive process that was briefly usurped by other viruses, say, something akin to the flu (just using flu as a proxy)? Maybe these "proxies" simply outcompeted highly transmisable coronaviruses' for a geologically short period of time since the discovery of modern germ theory? Seems possible to me that we may just be experiencing punctuated equilibrium. In other words, a return to "normal". Maybe our aperture is drawn to tight by humanities hubris. Perhaps the furin cleavage has been the predominant strategy for viruses for millenia. Pondering this and allowing discovery along these lines could help how we ended up getting stuck on stupid.
-->** "the first time in history we quarantined healthy people." ** Bingo!
Govt restraining you against your will for your own good, as govt assumes for themselves the role of philosopher-king. They DO NOT have that authority, but they assumed that power.
If locking down for three or four months eradicated the virus, don't you think it would have been worth it? The problem with lockdowns is that they don't work.
I agree with you, and I also think that something that's obviously in one's own best interest (not playing with fire or knives) is something most people will choose on their own--and if they don't (like eating chemical-laden, high-sugar "foods"), then they deal with the consequences, as we all do for every choice we make.
The lockdowns would have had more legitimacy if they had been enacted by representative legislative bodies after public discussion, but even then, they would not have been "worth it."
Great article, but I think that you're giving the Chinese too much credit (or maybe not enough). We know it was a complete psyop because of the completely faked videos of people dropping dead on the streets and in the grocery store.
lockdowns weren’t on the table until after 24 February with the WHO report. at that point the videos were old news. the chronology here is very important
Respectfully completely disagree. The videos were what scared the world into submission. The WHO report might have been the trigger, but the groundwork was laid by the completely fake psyop of people dropping dead (conveniently in the middle of the frame)
the videos were discounted and relegated to tabloids and (right wing) social media. it’s not that they didn’t matter, but most normies didn’t even see them. you have key epidemiological authorities calling Corona a cold all through February. *some* Euro news outlets start running scare stories in mid- to late-Feb, but it is 24 Feb that opens floodgates.
That is correct. When I was telling coworkers about the videos of authorities welding citizens in their homes, none of them knew what I was talking about.
Lockdowns were in Event 201 pandemic plan so they were on the table well in advance of the virus.. if we're doing an accurate timeline it's preplanned.
The lockdown plan goes back at least to 2010, which is when the Rockefeller Foundation published its "Lockstep Scenario." To say that this scenario strongly resembles events 10 years later would be an understatement. In that report it was called a "mandatory quarantine for all citizens." If there is a difference between this and a lockdown, it's not apparent. Unsurprisingly Mr. Senger professes complete ignorance of this little piece of history. Perhaps one day he will assert that at the time Xi Jinping was doing ghostwriting work for the Rockefeller Foundation.
This hypothesis was a real "aha" moment for me when I first read it from you. The problem with most of the conspiratorial thinking in the West is that it always assumed that the CCP is not only nefarious, but omnipotent, in addition to being completely immune from political or popular sentiments of Chinese civilians. Thus, one has to assume that they were playing the long game the entire time, that they are a real life Keyser Söze pulling all the strings. This is, upon reflection, silly. It seems far more likely that they are hysterical and stupid just like our leaders, and they needed to cover their ass after they overreacted to the coof.
Or you can go with the Unz theory that the United States spread the disease in China and Iran, and that the Chinese (I guess) were simply getting back at us with the lockdown stuff.
The PSYOP started when the "experts" claimed your mask protected others. That's exactly why I moved from Kansas City to Florida. Both my wife and I have launched pharmaceuticals and sat on boards that use this very technique. That's why we moved in April of 2020. It was an easy call for us, despite owning a profitable biz for 25 years.
I haven't read it in full yet, but I'll tell ya' all one thing: I was pretty convinced for 2 years that this was at least partially a Chinese ruse to weaken the West.
Cui bono? very much suggested just this.
After Shanghai, I am not so sure about that anymore.
I decided it had been too convenient for China, the Western response too consistently awful to be purely incompetence but I just don't know anymore. Watching Europe and America destroy itself by blindly following US policy over Russia and the Ukraine is confirming these people really are that dumb, I just had no idea how truly idiotic, ideological and ignorant of reality these people are.
As long as any threat assessment accounts for DJIA boyz sizable stake in China. Every transnational titan has Chinese ops & factories that exploit nominal environmental restrictions & lack of labor protections to churn out toxic plastics and cheap clothing to grow the landfills with "durable goods" that turn to trash faster than bananas.
But wouldn't the Shanghai lockdowns be the exact thing the CCP would do if they wanted to continue the ruse and double down on it? If you are a western politician/advisor in search of reasons to support the Covid regime, Shanghai comes at the exact right moment to justify further restrictions.
Just as countries are letting go of lockdowns, there is now a new wave of fearporn, to justify further political actions. "Chinese people collapsing" worked well the first time and it is already happening again.
And, wouldn't the CCP be exactly *the* organization capable of making the ruthless decision to make their population suffer for another shot at their enemies committing economic suicide?
Ding ding ding!!! We all know these midterms need some SERIOUS fortification. Another round of covid mania leading to mail-in ballot rules is just what the DNC needs.
True, but they ca be dreadfully inefficient and incompetent in many ways despite the control. The corruption also involves skimming the funding for everything as it makes its way down to say - the labs, factories, provincial governments. When it arrives, they can't afford the supplies they need, raw materials, to pay workers and end up turning out "product" that is inferior but hits the expected numbers. Parents bring their children to work, the labs can't follow all the protocols so, leaks, etc. WIV loved the US $ because that came more directly, and they had to account for it; Americans were in and out a lot, we see Daszak, Lipkin. CDC people traveling all the time there. There were big problems noticed by the State Dept. and reported, but the main actors sure didn't care. The published research trail (evidence trail) tells much. I can buy into SARS2 stuff being around in 2018 too, there's some serology picked up on it.
Baric did a lot of work with a hemorrhagic rabbit corona virus that trashes their hearts if they survive. Interesting that there is a "national epidemic" of it now, but I only learned of it from an article about a vet who got "special permits" to administer it to pet bunnies in FL. The bunnies given the vax have to be chipped and it' $100/rabbit. I'm fearing a "crossover" outbreak.
I digress again - The literature shows many suspicious outbreaks of localized quickly contained bat-blamed nasties all over Indonesia, there was a Nipah outbreak that wiped out a racetrack in Australia, then another track in the Philippines, so many more in more isolated places. SARS and MERS I believe were lab created with what tch was available at their times - they were too lethal. It is a wonder they were contained so quickly. How is it that fauXi managed to get their sequences patented and under the control of NIH/NIAID?
Except that the ultra harsh lockdown will prove unequivocally that lockdowns cannot stop a virus. All I can think is the CCP is trying to see how far they can push their own people before riots start in the street. My only other theory is that this is all part of a WEF plot to further damage the economies of the West and China cares so little for its people they would rather stop exports via mass suffering and death than mobilize a military.
I'm torn on this issue as everyone else. I was going to post something similar until I read your post Ichnobates. I vacillate between the common sense of your post , while at the same time fear we are overlooking a counterintuitive variable.
I keep going back and forth on this as well. The Chinese government is first and foremost concerned with maintaining control over its citizens. Their tactics are validated in their own people’s eyes if they can convince western governments to act similarly. The 2020 lockdowns seemed to me like an effort to exert control over the Chinese population. Scaring the rest of the West into shutting down was collateral damage, but perhaps not the ultimate goal of the CCP.
The 2022 lockdowns seem to be enacted because the Chinese government fell for its own propaganda.
Shanghai is China's way to re-freakout the west again as the west tries to go back to normal (hello Philly). Yes and also a reason to show communism at its grandest to its own people.
Ever since the Shanghai shenanigans began I've held that it is nothing more than a second round of Chinese COVID theater meant to keep the West in a state of fear and thus fan the flames of the already well-along self-destruction. This was the point of the CCP's 2020 measures regardless of whither there was a lab leak of not. But did the ChiComs know the West would behave the way they did? Perhaps they knew they would have help in high places in the west, those "leaders" who were placed by the WEF over several decades. And perhaps all of them knew a vast number of their constituents, coddled in the pleasant west and schooled in igorance and obedience by our corrupt education establishment (also influenced by the Chinese), would be easily led into slavery. Will the second round of theater work as well? With the U.S. midterms approaching, I' don't doubt many are counting on it.
Yes, I believe that is possible. It certainly sounds irrational but the COVID responses of most countries and institutions have been irrational. Governments, media outlets, and medical groups have all sacrificed their reputations and harmed people over the last two years. They can't all be simply stupid. At the top, there is a purpose behind it, however irrational it might be. That we can't fathom those depths doesn't mean it can't happen.
Watching a movie about the Holocaust one tells oneself that couldn't happen, but it did. Years ago I read a book called "Stillwell And The American Experience In China" and one thing it Left me with was how little regard the Chinese had for human life. The same thing came through when reading another great book, "Son Of The Revolution".
Stillwell is an amazing book. One of Tuchman's other books is relevatory now as well- A Distant Mirror, about the 14th century and it's devastating wars, plagues and political upheavals.
Bully of Asia by Steven Mosher is a fascinating and very enlightening history of China, and very revealing of why they think and act as they do. A great read, and you realize how greatly China's entire history influences their behavior today. Psychological conditioning across the centuries.
I got halfway through A Distant Mirror years ago and never finished it. It's still on my shelf and only a few weeks ago I thought it might be time to dust it off.
Jordan Schachtel called it the sale of the Zombie apocalypse. Remember those bogus videos of Chinese people dropping dead in the street? As for motive, consider this. Trump was bringing China to its knees economically. We already know Fauci used Eco Health as a front for finding illegal GOF research. The Dems and WEF wanted Trump out, so did the Chinese. Aligned interests.
Great article. It's genuinely difficult to know what's really going on in China, and I think many of the factors Jordan Schachtel wrote on The Dossier may come into play. There are some potentially complex phenomena here.
I saw this happen in New Zealand once covid arrived, so I am partial to his germophobe explanation. I am an American expat who was living in NZ for 7 years. I got out before the first big lockdown happened over ONE CASE. (!) New Zealanders have lost their minds over the past 9 months. I've also seen libertarians in New Zealand become complete totalitarians over this. I'm pretty sure they aren't privy to any information that China has about the virus, so in some sense this extreme authoritarian behavior in Australia, NZ, Canada is self-reinforcing because of insularity and mass psychosis.
There's one more possibility to add to the list. I saw a fascinating comment on Mathew Crawford's substack Rounding the Earth today re: China.
"If you study the long history of China you will discover periods where the entire country seems to be quite insane. The Cultural Revolution is just one example, and the system breakdown over COVID is another. Often the cause has been flooding or earthquakes or famine, but when the people see the omens they know that the Emperor has lost the Mandate of Heaven. The Emperor knows, too. I think the CCP may fear losing the Mandate of Heaven and they imagine that the only solution is to impose absolute, mindless and fearsome tyranny to keep it. That worked in Tian An Men square. No Chinese teenager has ever heard of the massacre, but this will be harder to hide."
Agree. If you study the long history of China you will see that every single time China is on the verge of conquering the world, their rulers destroy the possibility. Every, single, time.
This is a great article and discussing why China does what it does, and did what it did, is of utmost importance because the virus originated, presumably but not certainly, in China.
And thinking in conspiratorial terms is also very important, especially dealing with Covid, which is totally dominated by various conspiracies, from its origins, to lockdowns, to vaccines appearing before official recognizance of Covid19, to scam vaccines promoted worldwide by strangely similar means, suppression of effective antivirals, to censorship and suppression of free thought, etc.
I have no doubt that Michael Senger is right, and you and I seem to both agree in that many things that happened, could not happen but for sinister motives of some players.
I have little doubt also that China used the pandemic to strengthen its insane control of its citizens.
On the other hand, it is always important to seek disconfirming evidence, or evidence that things might not be the way they seem to us. Only by looking, and not finding such contrary evidence can we become sure that we are correct.
To me, this disconfirming evidence is the current insanity of Chinese lockdowns, long after they made sense as a ploy, a way to frighten the West, a show. Two years into the pandemic, 25 million of residents of Shanghai are starving, desperate, welded into buildings, because their Communist government wants them to. Why does their government insist on that NOW? Surely not to frighten the West, which no longer cares and it totally infected.
Does China literally destroy its economy, livelihood of its citizens, starves tens of millions, paralyze its most important sea port, etc over a COMMON COLD, when the rest of the world abandoned containment? Does China know anything about Covid we do not know?
What if Covid is NOT a common cold?
Does common cold have gp120 HIV inserts that play crucial role in binding to T cells and to monocytes via same LFA-1 receptors as HIV? Does common cold cause heart attacks, lung fibrosis and blood clotting?
Our epidemiological situation is terrifyingly complicated due to vaccinated people who are unable to develop proper immunity, and are reinfected endlessly. Those who walk without symptoms, and yet carry a virus, actually represent immune system failure to mount strong resistance, like the sick people with fevers do. That covid seems to be "mild", keeps returning, and takes down immune systems, especially of the already vulnerable vaccinated people, is very worrying to me personally.
I am not advocating for lockdowns, masks etc -- none of that works, it does not even work in China. But we should not bury our heads in the same, this is an out of control lab chimera and we need to face it openly.
Great point about the virus and vax damage to immunity, and the specter of chronic covid. Do you think mass use of preventative measures (ivermectin, D3, zinc, Quercetin, gargling, etc) would make a difference?
Senger just goes too far, in my not so humble opinion. I think the facts are pretty clear- the virus did originate at the Wuhan Institute, the Chinese knew that from the start, and simply panicked because it was SARS-1 related research, appeared to be much more easily transmitted through the air. The lockdowns in the Chinese case were inevitable- they didn't know any more than we did how unspecial SARS-2 really was. I think they did know that later in the Spring of 2020, but then so did everyone else. We are still to blame for shooting ourselves in the head.
Aside from the fact that the dictator of China chose to shut down Wuhan—the city with the lab in it—what is your evidence for the assertion that the virus clearly originated there? I can assure you that the evidence in my book of Chinese influence on the world's response to COVID-19 is far more direct, compelling, and irrefutable than any evidence that has ever been presented for the lab leak theory, despite all the hype surrounding it.
I think the Chinese influence amounted to what it did precisely because it looked like locking down Hubei worked. I don't think their influence really had an effect outside of that initial success, illusionary or not. Every action the Chinese took in December 2019-February 2020 looks like complete panic to my eyes. Our leaders were just stupid and thought they could replicate that success.
I think that is a way to simplistic idea that leaders in the West panicked. There already was pandemic responses in place that had been well planned in advance, and yet, the people and infrastructure to support a response that the virus presented, was abandoned, no questions asked. Why was years, time, money, people, resources, just turfed? Then the Great Barrington Declaration was 100% against lockdowns and the fine scientists behind that mocked and shamed. As if their years of expertise was nothing at all. And where, just where was the scientific evidence that lockdowns worked? All of the responses to the virus caused a huge amount of harm and suffering. Who benefited from all of this? Big pharma, for sure, big tech re: roll-out of digital id's corporates, WEF and their buddies etc and who lost? What was lost? There is so much more that I could add, but your idea that our leaders are stupid doesn't sit well with me. They were DRUNK with power, and are not ready to relinquish any of it. Why extension of Emergency Health Orders? No this whole sham is a grab for totalitarian control. The whole thing is anti-life, just shutting down on the joys of life. I have had to come to terms how money corrupts and that is never a good thing.
Great piece and reminds me that I REALLY need to read Senger's book, which I've had for a while on my Kindle "shelf." I was suspicious early on that the lockdowns and virus hysteria were perhaps a response from CCP and Xi to the growing Hong Kong protests, which of course disappeared entirely. I've also read a bit of Chinese history, enough to know about their long long history of crushing rebellions, real and suspected, including the very brutal crackdown on alleged White Lotus coup plotters many centuries ago. Power corrupts...
Why did the world defer to Ferguson and his doomsday modelling projecting untold deaths? What did he know about the virus? Who did he consult with? And why only Ferguson? Why not others? That was always a red flag to me that the world listened only to him. Who set Ferguson up? Why did he get a platform so easily?
Ferguson I think is downstream from the central event, which is late-Feb. mass testing in northern Italy, followed by the Italian nationwide lockdown. that was the first domino, it emboldened public health authorities across Europe and slightly later in the US try the same thing, it's why Ferguson produced his crazy models.
If China said 'jump', Italy would say 'how high'. Did Xi use his economic influence via BRI to make Italy the poster child for lockdowns? Neil Ferguson seems to think yes: '“I think people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March,” Professor Ferguson says. When SAGE observed the “innovative intervention” out of China, of locking entire communities down and not permitting them to leave their homes, they initially presumed it would not be an available option in a liberal Western democracy:
"It’s a communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realized we could." - PROFESSOR NEIL FERGUSON, THE TIMES' https://unherd.com/thepost/neil-ferguson-interview-china-changed-what-was-possible/ Ferguson was on the SAGE Committee and recommended lockdowns. Didnt he already know about the emergency responses that were already in place?
So I can see how the CCP's hand was behind all of this. Again, why was Ferguson trotted out ( and a supporter of CCP lockdowns) and what did he really know about the virus, short of reported deaths? Why did he ignore established emergency pandemic protocols?
Spain flipped in a single week. 8 March there was a giant feminist march in central Madrid. Despite pressure to cancel it, the socialist-left coalition Govt didn't just allow it, they sent a minister to front it.
And yet exactly one week later the same Govt imposed a draconian national lockdown. What changed??
IIRC he had a similar stellar career predicting bird flu and hoof and mouth disease predicating the slaughter of many healthy animals. He pretty much seems to be the idiot they drag out when they want to kill a group and blame it on disease.
Yes, the term fangkong (防控 - from 防止 prevent and 控制 control) came to prominence in the original SARS outbreak and was dusted off again in 2020. I always translated it as "prevention through control" as it better reflects the CCP's conception of its own invincibility against all challenges of nature and man, that any and every problem can be subjected to the will of the Party, that it's just a matter of having a resolve of pure steel (steel, the root of "Stalin").
Two days ago you replied "Senger" when I asked what book you were going to review (I guessed Viral), and I typed into Amazon "Senger Novel" and got nothing for Snake Oil. (I almost ordered "Islands in the Void" by Robert Senger, thinking this SciFi book must have some tenuous connection to humanity's response, but I passed). Thanks for nothing Amazon! (I don't use Twitter so never heard of this guy, which is surprising considering the vast number of people I subscribe to SubStack... I wonder who else I am missing out on?)
Now I found the book, but I'm a stickler for hardcovers so now have to wait 2-3 weeks to read. My starting position is to be skeptical (big surprise) that there was this level of planning involved, but I will give the argument a fair shot.
I do, however, wonder how the premise of this book holds up in light of what China is currently doing in Shanghai - perhaps I am completely misunderstanding their goals, but if they knew this was a bad policy and just wanted to dupe the west into repeating this psyop, why would they embrace this nonsense so hard 2 years later?
I think it really is that the Chinese blundered into lockdowns, and surely faked a lot of success during 2020. The rest is almost surely all on the incompetence of western leaders at the national and local levels in trying to copy the Chinese "success" without the complete intellectual corruption necessary to fake the same success. And, let's suppose the Chinese didn't fake that success- the western leaders are still incompetent in copying such processes without the totalitarian tools to mimic it. This was my point back in March of 2020- even if the Chinese lockdowns worked in China, they would never work in the western world, and that they wouldn't work in China in the long term.
This is such a good review. I read the book and I completely agree with everything you say. I just would like to know more about the early videos out of China. Who produced and distributed them and why? Also, the current phase of the pseudodemic in China - posterior to Senger’s book - invites to a revision of their reaction and motivations, unless, of course, also that is staged. But I’m decently convinced it isn’t. Just, maybe, influenced to some degree by a desire to keep the global panic going.
The ophthalmologist would have gotten potentially massive viral loads from his practice. I don’t find his demise impossible. The heroic backstory doesn’t seem neutral though. That one is straight from the Soviet playbook.
I had a whole section on the videos that I deleted, because I thought nobody would care! Now many commenters bring up videos, I should have kept it in.
I think the videos were clearly intended for western audiences. Too many of them are repurposed footage that you'd expect Chinese to recognise (because it's from a Chinese movie, or in the wrong city, etc.).
It's hard to say, but a simple thesis would be they were an effort to communicate the necessity of locking down to the West. Western media btw sidelined these videos fairly relentlessly.
Agreed that Shanghai changes a lot of this, and suggests more sincerity/ stupidity on the part of China. I leave that out here, I don't know how Senger evaluates it. If he responds and takes it into account, of course I'll post again.
My wife and I were watching the videos in early Jan 2020 and all the 'insider baseball' commentary from folks at the Epoch Times. They did much to explain Chinese culture and what the scenes meant, in a scary way. By February I was convinced this was a fraud, or worse. So I canceled my subscription, and concluded that the Epoch Times was 1) in on the fraud or 2) gullibly fooled into going along with it or 3) were somehow threated by the CCP to be a compliant purveyor of the lie. By March it was clear to me that the US forces that had already taken over the US (just not openly, yet) were using this to move their takeover forward and prepare for cleanup operations later. We have ignored it all, including all the rules, maskes etc. and run our business as usual. This book review has gotten my attention however, so I may have to buy it. I found the title a bit ironic given the news from Dr. Ardis about the preliminary evidence showing that COVID may in fact be an ailment from venom, not virus.
>Some will nevertheless hesitate to accept the entirety of Senger’s view that “Everything is Fake” (the title of his sixth chapter)
I was quite receptive to these arguments back in 2020, but I think this view has steadily grown less credible over time, especially now that China has again locked millions of people up in their homes.
Rather, I wish to repeat what I've argued a few times recently: Whether SARS-COV-2 is a uniquely dangerous virus and whether or not lockdowns work to stop it from spreading are ultimately red herrings. The more important point is that it should not be the job of our government to stop viruses from spreading by rationing social interaction among healthy people.
This is not a question we had to ask ourselves in the past, because we've only known how viruses spread since the discovery of germ theory and only relatively recently developed the ability to do most desk jobs without leaving our homes.
However, it's a question that will merely grow more important in the future, as there are two factors we're not about to run out of:
-New viruses that jump into our species
-Immunocompromised people
And so when the argument against the lockdowns becomes some esoteric theory like "Covid has been around since 2018", "most of the deaths were caused by the ventilators" or "the herd immunity threshold lies around 25%", we risk simply replaying March 2020 when the next virus shows up.
It's similarly strategically useful that the lockdowns had no meaningful impact on the spread of SARS-COV-2, as it helped mobilize the critical mass that was necessary to make these lockdowns a form of political suicide, but it won't be enough to cast the whole concept into the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Rather, we should see the idea of locking healthy people up in their homes to stop viruses from spreading as the epidemiological equivalent of eugenics: Government infringing on inalienable human rights under the excuse of promoting human health. That's how you slay this dragon.
Nobody argues over whether eugenics could improve population's IQ, cut down on genetic disorders or help us grow the economy. The whole concept is so outrageous, so unthinkable to most people nowadays, such a fundamental clash with their value orientation, that it fundamentally doesn't matter to most people in the Western world whether it works or not.
And lockdowns, along with the whole social distancing concept, needs to be seen in similar terms. It's an outgrowth of an alien culture with a fundamentally different value orientation than our Western civilization.
Any opposition to what happened in March 2020 based on pragmatic terms risks maneuvering itself into a dead alley when the next virus mysteriously pops up a stone toss away from a BSL-4 lab, that happens to have a higher IFR, a longer incubation period, or some other variable that will resurrect the whole concept of endowing a technocratic cabal with the responsibility to ration social interaction.
~rintrah
love your work, thanks for comment.
His covid related articles are excellent. He loses me on the climate change ones, though.
没有实地了解过.就不要乱发信息.根本就没这回事.每个国家的国情不一样，没必要放大坏的方面.去中国实地了解，再来发信息.
I see very few people in the US standing for inalienable human rights or having such deep convictions. This is not just about the fake crisis of the last two years alone but in other equally important spheres of liberty such as free speech.
Americans especially those living in Democrat run cities fell all over themselves trying to dial the panic to eleventy and shaming anyone expressing dissident views on Covid containment.
American public institutions including the NIH, CDC etc exposed themselves to be nothing more than corrupt political tools who worked for the benefit of Big pharma.
There is no doubt in my mind that many American people would readily welcome the next lockdown
This is a really thoughtful and rational comment. Thanks for the wisdom - rare treat these days
However, the practice of eugenics is widespread with “Planned Parenthood” eliminating the infants of black and lower-middle-class white America. Healthy babies, gone in a heartbeat. Slippery slope. We just refuse to see.
Also the practice of physician 'assisted suicide' for those who are mentally troubled and or the elderly within our communities. A very slippery slope indeed.
Lockdowns do work to contain a pathogen. But that is for a small area where the in/out can be strongly controlled. Lockdowns on the scale demanded by China are impossible in less repressive places. Even in China they find it impossible to provide adequate services thus ensure that some will die. It's even remarkable that they are willing to collapse their economy to do a lockdown. The lockdowns may very well reflect a way to deflect blame on some other cause than the incompetence of central planning. In a free nation extended large scale lockdowns are quite impractical as we have witnessed. They simply can't work if we value life.
This is the point.
We had a politician in Canada who used the phrase "Short term pain for long term gain." Respect and admiration to the late John Crosbie. The government fell after his sensible budget, long before Jagmeet Singh joined the WEF and NDP.
The Chinese CCP is observably willing to impose a little "Short term pain (on their citizenry) for long term gain (for the polity.) " It's actually a win-win arrangement for the party. This is far more destructive for the "liberal western democracies" and the American hegemony than an engineered virus.
It becomes a little more difficult to untangle the relationship between Li and the WEF, or Putin ( apparently a former "Young Global Leader") and the WEF; the WHO is obviously compromised as noted above (the Wuhan lab was completely controlled at the supposed audit) and through Bill Gates' funding.
Where is the proof?
Not sure what you mean. If a contagion can be stopped via isolation then isolation by definition works. What does stopping a contagion mean? Isolating those with the infection until it no longer is infectious. Ipso facto. Where it fails is when isolation through the period of infection cannot be achieved, as with the SARS-2 outbreak.
Just look how well the biosafety labs do with containment! *smirk*
Not surprising that when biosafety is ignored we get trouble. But Wade insists that SARS-2 escaped from level 2 where the strict precautions were relaxed.
I see very few people in the US standing for inalienable human rights or having such deep convictions. This is not just about the fake crisis of the last two years alone but in other equally important spheres of liberty such as free speech.
Americans especially those living in Democrat run cities fell all over themselves trying to dial the panic to eleventy and shaming anyone expressing dissident views on Covid containment.
American public institutions including the NIH, CDC etc exposed themselves to be nothing more than corrupt political tools who worked for the benefit of Big pharma.
There is no doubt in my mind that many American people would readily welcome the next lockdown
I agree with 90% of what you're saying - a very strong 90%. Well said.
Freaking genius connection. "Even if eugenics would improve IQ, you simply don't do it". Thanks!
Eugenics carried to full madness could turn humans into all kinds of diverse and bizarre creations: look what selective breeding has done to dog breeds.
You feed the "pandemic"narrative and you rationalize in a way all the insane measures(masks,lockdowns,mRNA injections).
If the virus mania doesn't stop with rational dialogue between the Physicians and scientists, the future will be even darker .
Nobody argues over whether eugenics could improve population's IQ, cut down on genetic disorders or help us grow the economy. The whole concept is so outrageous, so unthinkable to most people nowadays, such a fundamental clash with their value orientation, that it fundamentally doesn't matter to most people in the Western world whether it works or not"¨
so what do you suggest that we must consinder eugenics to "improve" population's IQ and grow the economy?
I agree that “they” wouldn’t do eugenics to help humans. But “they” think they are saving the earth. Would that sway them?
Wow! Brilliant observation. Thanks
This is a concept I've had a very difficult time figuring out how to articulate and you did a fabulous job here. Thank you for sharing.
Do abortion next please.
Couldn't we take a more simplistic view that C19 evolved through a progressive process that was briefly usurped by other viruses, say, something akin to the flu (just using flu as a proxy)? Maybe these "proxies" simply outcompeted highly transmisable coronaviruses' for a geologically short period of time since the discovery of modern germ theory? Seems possible to me that we may just be experiencing punctuated equilibrium. In other words, a return to "normal". Maybe our aperture is drawn to tight by humanities hubris. Perhaps the furin cleavage has been the predominant strategy for viruses for millenia. Pondering this and allowing discovery along these lines could help how we ended up getting stuck on stupid.
-->** "the first time in history we quarantined healthy people." ** Bingo!
Govt restraining you against your will for your own good, as govt assumes for themselves the role of philosopher-king. They DO NOT have that authority, but they assumed that power.
If locking down for three or four months eradicated the virus, don't you think it would have been worth it? The problem with lockdowns is that they don't work.
I agree with you, and I also think that something that's obviously in one's own best interest (not playing with fire or knives) is something most people will choose on their own--and if they don't (like eating chemical-laden, high-sugar "foods"), then they deal with the consequences, as we all do for every choice we make.
The lockdowns would have had more legitimacy if they had been enacted by representative legislative bodies after public discussion, but even then, they would not have been "worth it."
Great article, but I think that you're giving the Chinese too much credit (or maybe not enough). We know it was a complete psyop because of the completely faked videos of people dropping dead on the streets and in the grocery store.
If you want to get a little more in-depth:
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/the-covid-years-werent-terrible-for
as with all this, the purpose of the videos is unclear - perhaps only to provide a justification of the Hubei measures to western audiences.
........to justify western governments locking down their citizens, maybe.
lockdowns weren’t on the table until after 24 February with the WHO report. at that point the videos were old news. the chronology here is very important
Respectfully completely disagree. The videos were what scared the world into submission. The WHO report might have been the trigger, but the groundwork was laid by the completely fake psyop of people dropping dead (conveniently in the middle of the frame)
the videos were discounted and relegated to tabloids and (right wing) social media. it’s not that they didn’t matter, but most normies didn’t even see them. you have key epidemiological authorities calling Corona a cold all through February. *some* Euro news outlets start running scare stories in mid- to late-Feb, but it is 24 Feb that opens floodgates.
That is correct. When I was telling coworkers about the videos of authorities welding citizens in their homes, none of them knew what I was talking about.
Lockdowns were in Event 201 pandemic plan so they were on the table well in advance of the virus.. if we're doing an accurate timeline it's preplanned.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200122093208/https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/recommendations.html
lockdowns weren’t in event 201. the participants didn’t even want to stop travel.
The lockdown plan goes back at least to 2010, which is when the Rockefeller Foundation published its "Lockstep Scenario." To say that this scenario strongly resembles events 10 years later would be an understatement. In that report it was called a "mandatory quarantine for all citizens." If there is a difference between this and a lockdown, it's not apparent. Unsurprisingly Mr. Senger professes complete ignorance of this little piece of history. Perhaps one day he will assert that at the time Xi Jinping was doing ghostwriting work for the Rockefeller Foundation.
This hypothesis was a real "aha" moment for me when I first read it from you. The problem with most of the conspiratorial thinking in the West is that it always assumed that the CCP is not only nefarious, but omnipotent, in addition to being completely immune from political or popular sentiments of Chinese civilians. Thus, one has to assume that they were playing the long game the entire time, that they are a real life Keyser Söze pulling all the strings. This is, upon reflection, silly. It seems far more likely that they are hysterical and stupid just like our leaders, and they needed to cover their ass after they overreacted to the coof.
Or you can go with the Unz theory that the United States spread the disease in China and Iran, and that the Chinese (I guess) were simply getting back at us with the lockdown stuff.
Who is Unz? That's an interesting theory
Ron Unz at unz.com - great website for alternative voices
The PSYOP started when the "experts" claimed your mask protected others. That's exactly why I moved from Kansas City to Florida. Both my wife and I have launched pharmaceuticals and sat on boards that use this very technique. That's why we moved in April of 2020. It was an easy call for us, despite owning a profitable biz for 25 years.
Another part of the psy-op was to convince the gullible populace that asymptomatic people are potentially dangerous. Hence the need for masks.
My aunt for example would not allow anyone into her home, friends and family included, unless they were masked.
Good for you and your family, getting to a relatively free state! 👏🏻
Cynthia - that is very true. It seemed like those two events were virtually simultaneous. Thanks for pointing that out
The two month delay from lockdowns in China, to tepid lockdowns in the west, make the latter actions ludicrous.
I haven't read it in full yet, but I'll tell ya' all one thing: I was pretty convinced for 2 years that this was at least partially a Chinese ruse to weaken the West.
Cui bono? very much suggested just this.
After Shanghai, I am not so sure about that anymore.
economic warfare is certainly possible and should be taken seriously as a thesis
I decided it had been too convenient for China, the Western response too consistently awful to be purely incompetence but I just don't know anymore. Watching Europe and America destroy itself by blindly following US policy over Russia and the Ukraine is confirming these people really are that dumb, I just had no idea how truly idiotic, ideological and ignorant of reality these people are.
like
As long as any threat assessment accounts for DJIA boyz sizable stake in China. Every transnational titan has Chinese ops & factories that exploit nominal environmental restrictions & lack of labor protections to churn out toxic plastics and cheap clothing to grow the landfills with "durable goods" that turn to trash faster than bananas.
But wouldn't the Shanghai lockdowns be the exact thing the CCP would do if they wanted to continue the ruse and double down on it? If you are a western politician/advisor in search of reasons to support the Covid regime, Shanghai comes at the exact right moment to justify further restrictions.
Just as countries are letting go of lockdowns, there is now a new wave of fearporn, to justify further political actions. "Chinese people collapsing" worked well the first time and it is already happening again.
And, wouldn't the CCP be exactly *the* organization capable of making the ruthless decision to make their population suffer for another shot at their enemies committing economic suicide?
Ding ding ding!!! We all know these midterms need some SERIOUS fortification. Another round of covid mania leading to mail-in ballot rules is just what the DNC needs.
True, but they ca be dreadfully inefficient and incompetent in many ways despite the control. The corruption also involves skimming the funding for everything as it makes its way down to say - the labs, factories, provincial governments. When it arrives, they can't afford the supplies they need, raw materials, to pay workers and end up turning out "product" that is inferior but hits the expected numbers. Parents bring their children to work, the labs can't follow all the protocols so, leaks, etc. WIV loved the US $ because that came more directly, and they had to account for it; Americans were in and out a lot, we see Daszak, Lipkin. CDC people traveling all the time there. There were big problems noticed by the State Dept. and reported, but the main actors sure didn't care. The published research trail (evidence trail) tells much. I can buy into SARS2 stuff being around in 2018 too, there's some serology picked up on it.
Baric did a lot of work with a hemorrhagic rabbit corona virus that trashes their hearts if they survive. Interesting that there is a "national epidemic" of it now, but I only learned of it from an article about a vet who got "special permits" to administer it to pet bunnies in FL. The bunnies given the vax have to be chipped and it' $100/rabbit. I'm fearing a "crossover" outbreak.
I digress again - The literature shows many suspicious outbreaks of localized quickly contained bat-blamed nasties all over Indonesia, there was a Nipah outbreak that wiped out a racetrack in Australia, then another track in the Philippines, so many more in more isolated places. SARS and MERS I believe were lab created with what tch was available at their times - they were too lethal. It is a wonder they were contained so quickly. How is it that fauXi managed to get their sequences patented and under the control of NIH/NIAID?
Except that the ultra harsh lockdown will prove unequivocally that lockdowns cannot stop a virus. All I can think is the CCP is trying to see how far they can push their own people before riots start in the street. My only other theory is that this is all part of a WEF plot to further damage the economies of the West and China cares so little for its people they would rather stop exports via mass suffering and death than mobilize a military.
Could be!! There is quite a bit of jockeying among the EF member countries as to who will be on top.
I'm torn on this issue as everyone else. I was going to post something similar until I read your post Ichnobates. I vacillate between the common sense of your post , while at the same time fear we are overlooking a counterintuitive variable.
I keep going back and forth on this as well. The Chinese government is first and foremost concerned with maintaining control over its citizens. Their tactics are validated in their own people’s eyes if they can convince western governments to act similarly. The 2020 lockdowns seemed to me like an effort to exert control over the Chinese population. Scaring the rest of the West into shutting down was collateral damage, but perhaps not the ultimate goal of the CCP.
The 2022 lockdowns seem to be enacted because the Chinese government fell for its own propaganda.
Shanghai is China's way to re-freakout the west again as the west tries to go back to normal (hello Philly). Yes and also a reason to show communism at its grandest to its own people.
What else is "in the pipe?"
Placing the blame on "The Chinese" allows the actual perps off the hook.
Those at the head of the snake have no national allegiance.
Including the Chinese government
The Hydra seems to be displeased with the Chinese snake head.
Ever since the Shanghai shenanigans began I've held that it is nothing more than a second round of Chinese COVID theater meant to keep the West in a state of fear and thus fan the flames of the already well-along self-destruction. This was the point of the CCP's 2020 measures regardless of whither there was a lab leak of not. But did the ChiComs know the West would behave the way they did? Perhaps they knew they would have help in high places in the west, those "leaders" who were placed by the WEF over several decades. And perhaps all of them knew a vast number of their constituents, coddled in the pleasant west and schooled in igorance and obedience by our corrupt education establishment (also influenced by the Chinese), would be easily led into slavery. Will the second round of theater work as well? With the U.S. midterms approaching, I' don't doubt many are counting on it.
Please correct me if I’m (probably) wrong:
The CCP is currently instituting a new wave of even more draconian lockdowns that are damaging to their credibility both inside and outside China…
Because they want to get the West to ape these draconian lockdowns in order to hurt the West?
Is that the claim?
Yes, I believe that is possible. It certainly sounds irrational but the COVID responses of most countries and institutions have been irrational. Governments, media outlets, and medical groups have all sacrificed their reputations and harmed people over the last two years. They can't all be simply stupid. At the top, there is a purpose behind it, however irrational it might be. That we can't fathom those depths doesn't mean it can't happen.
Watching a movie about the Holocaust one tells oneself that couldn't happen, but it did. Years ago I read a book called "Stillwell And The American Experience In China" and one thing it Left me with was how little regard the Chinese had for human life. The same thing came through when reading another great book, "Son Of The Revolution".
Stillwell is an amazing book. One of Tuchman's other books is relevatory now as well- A Distant Mirror, about the 14th century and it's devastating wars, plagues and political upheavals.
Bully of Asia by Steven Mosher is a fascinating and very enlightening history of China, and very revealing of why they think and act as they do. A great read, and you realize how greatly China's entire history influences their behavior today. Psychological conditioning across the centuries.
I got halfway through A Distant Mirror years ago and never finished it. It's still on my shelf and only a few weeks ago I thought it might be time to dust it off.
Jordan Schachtel called it the sale of the Zombie apocalypse. Remember those bogus videos of Chinese people dropping dead in the street? As for motive, consider this. Trump was bringing China to its knees economically. We already know Fauci used Eco Health as a front for finding illegal GOF research. The Dems and WEF wanted Trump out, so did the Chinese. Aligned interests.
EXACTLY! As far as I know, nobody in the US government has called out these videos for what they were.
Great article. It's genuinely difficult to know what's really going on in China, and I think many of the factors Jordan Schachtel wrote on The Dossier may come into play. There are some potentially complex phenomena here.
I saw this happen in New Zealand once covid arrived, so I am partial to his germophobe explanation. I am an American expat who was living in NZ for 7 years. I got out before the first big lockdown happened over ONE CASE. (!) New Zealanders have lost their minds over the past 9 months. I've also seen libertarians in New Zealand become complete totalitarians over this. I'm pretty sure they aren't privy to any information that China has about the virus, so in some sense this extreme authoritarian behavior in Australia, NZ, Canada is self-reinforcing because of insularity and mass psychosis.
There's one more possibility to add to the list. I saw a fascinating comment on Mathew Crawford's substack Rounding the Earth today re: China.
"If you study the long history of China you will discover periods where the entire country seems to be quite insane. The Cultural Revolution is just one example, and the system breakdown over COVID is another. Often the cause has been flooding or earthquakes or famine, but when the people see the omens they know that the Emperor has lost the Mandate of Heaven. The Emperor knows, too. I think the CCP may fear losing the Mandate of Heaven and they imagine that the only solution is to impose absolute, mindless and fearsome tyranny to keep it. That worked in Tian An Men square. No Chinese teenager has ever heard of the massacre, but this will be harder to hide."
Link is here: https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/false-pandemic-hegemon/comment/6027774?s=r
Agree. If you study the long history of China you will see that every single time China is on the verge of conquering the world, their rulers destroy the possibility. Every, single, time.
This is a great article and discussing why China does what it does, and did what it did, is of utmost importance because the virus originated, presumably but not certainly, in China.
And thinking in conspiratorial terms is also very important, especially dealing with Covid, which is totally dominated by various conspiracies, from its origins, to lockdowns, to vaccines appearing before official recognizance of Covid19, to scam vaccines promoted worldwide by strangely similar means, suppression of effective antivirals, to censorship and suppression of free thought, etc.
I have no doubt that Michael Senger is right, and you and I seem to both agree in that many things that happened, could not happen but for sinister motives of some players.
I have little doubt also that China used the pandemic to strengthen its insane control of its citizens.
On the other hand, it is always important to seek disconfirming evidence, or evidence that things might not be the way they seem to us. Only by looking, and not finding such contrary evidence can we become sure that we are correct.
To me, this disconfirming evidence is the current insanity of Chinese lockdowns, long after they made sense as a ploy, a way to frighten the West, a show. Two years into the pandemic, 25 million of residents of Shanghai are starving, desperate, welded into buildings, because their Communist government wants them to. Why does their government insist on that NOW? Surely not to frighten the West, which no longer cares and it totally infected.
Does China literally destroy its economy, livelihood of its citizens, starves tens of millions, paralyze its most important sea port, etc over a COMMON COLD, when the rest of the world abandoned containment? Does China know anything about Covid we do not know?
What if Covid is NOT a common cold?
Does common cold have gp120 HIV inserts that play crucial role in binding to T cells and to monocytes via same LFA-1 receptors as HIV? Does common cold cause heart attacks, lung fibrosis and blood clotting?
Our epidemiological situation is terrifyingly complicated due to vaccinated people who are unable to develop proper immunity, and are reinfected endlessly. Those who walk without symptoms, and yet carry a virus, actually represent immune system failure to mount strong resistance, like the sick people with fevers do. That covid seems to be "mild", keeps returning, and takes down immune systems, especially of the already vulnerable vaccinated people, is very worrying to me personally.
I am not advocating for lockdowns, masks etc -- none of that works, it does not even work in China. But we should not bury our heads in the same, this is an out of control lab chimera and we need to face it openly.
Great point about the virus and vax damage to immunity, and the specter of chronic covid. Do you think mass use of preventative measures (ivermectin, D3, zinc, Quercetin, gargling, etc) would make a difference?
It would most definitely make a huge difference.
Senger just goes too far, in my not so humble opinion. I think the facts are pretty clear- the virus did originate at the Wuhan Institute, the Chinese knew that from the start, and simply panicked because it was SARS-1 related research, appeared to be much more easily transmitted through the air. The lockdowns in the Chinese case were inevitable- they didn't know any more than we did how unspecial SARS-2 really was. I think they did know that later in the Spring of 2020, but then so did everyone else. We are still to blame for shooting ourselves in the head.
Aside from the fact that the dictator of China chose to shut down Wuhan—the city with the lab in it—what is your evidence for the assertion that the virus clearly originated there? I can assure you that the evidence in my book of Chinese influence on the world's response to COVID-19 is far more direct, compelling, and irrefutable than any evidence that has ever been presented for the lab leak theory, despite all the hype surrounding it.
I think the Chinese influence amounted to what it did precisely because it looked like locking down Hubei worked. I don't think their influence really had an effect outside of that initial success, illusionary or not. Every action the Chinese took in December 2019-February 2020 looks like complete panic to my eyes. Our leaders were just stupid and thought they could replicate that success.
I think that is a way to simplistic idea that leaders in the West panicked. There already was pandemic responses in place that had been well planned in advance, and yet, the people and infrastructure to support a response that the virus presented, was abandoned, no questions asked. Why was years, time, money, people, resources, just turfed? Then the Great Barrington Declaration was 100% against lockdowns and the fine scientists behind that mocked and shamed. As if their years of expertise was nothing at all. And where, just where was the scientific evidence that lockdowns worked? All of the responses to the virus caused a huge amount of harm and suffering. Who benefited from all of this? Big pharma, for sure, big tech re: roll-out of digital id's corporates, WEF and their buddies etc and who lost? What was lost? There is so much more that I could add, but your idea that our leaders are stupid doesn't sit well with me. They were DRUNK with power, and are not ready to relinquish any of it. Why extension of Emergency Health Orders? No this whole sham is a grab for totalitarian control. The whole thing is anti-life, just shutting down on the joys of life. I have had to come to terms how money corrupts and that is never a good thing.
Great piece and reminds me that I REALLY need to read Senger's book, which I've had for a while on my Kindle "shelf." I was suspicious early on that the lockdowns and virus hysteria were perhaps a response from CCP and Xi to the growing Hong Kong protests, which of course disappeared entirely. I've also read a bit of Chinese history, enough to know about their long long history of crushing rebellions, real and suspected, including the very brutal crackdown on alleged White Lotus coup plotters many centuries ago. Power corrupts...
Why did the world defer to Ferguson and his doomsday modelling projecting untold deaths? What did he know about the virus? Who did he consult with? And why only Ferguson? Why not others? That was always a red flag to me that the world listened only to him. Who set Ferguson up? Why did he get a platform so easily?
Ferguson I think is downstream from the central event, which is late-Feb. mass testing in northern Italy, followed by the Italian nationwide lockdown. that was the first domino, it emboldened public health authorities across Europe and slightly later in the US try the same thing, it's why Ferguson produced his crazy models.
In April 2019 Italy signed onto the CCP Belt and Road Initiative: https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/italy-signs-on-to-belt-and-road-initiative-eu-china-relations-at-crossroads/
If China said 'jump', Italy would say 'how high'. Did Xi use his economic influence via BRI to make Italy the poster child for lockdowns? Neil Ferguson seems to think yes: '“I think people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March,” Professor Ferguson says. When SAGE observed the “innovative intervention” out of China, of locking entire communities down and not permitting them to leave their homes, they initially presumed it would not be an available option in a liberal Western democracy:
"It’s a communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realized we could." - PROFESSOR NEIL FERGUSON, THE TIMES' https://unherd.com/thepost/neil-ferguson-interview-china-changed-what-was-possible/ Ferguson was on the SAGE Committee and recommended lockdowns. Didnt he already know about the emergency responses that were already in place?
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/health/coronavirus/neil-ferguson-scandal-scientist-who-predicted-500000-covid-19-death-toll-forced-resign-after-breaking-lockdown-rules-be-his-lover-2844149
As Michael Senger correctly points out here in Section 2. Imperial College was heavily funded by CCP (just like Italy),
https://ccpgloballockdownfraud.medium.com/the-chinese-communist-partys-global-lockdown-fraud-88e1a7286c2b
So I can see how the CCP's hand was behind all of this. Again, why was Ferguson trotted out ( and a supporter of CCP lockdowns) and what did he really know about the virus, short of reported deaths? Why did he ignore established emergency pandemic protocols?
Followed by Spain ... Spain was also key in my opinion
Spain flipped in a single week. 8 March there was a giant feminist march in central Madrid. Despite pressure to cancel it, the socialist-left coalition Govt didn't just allow it, they sent a minister to front it.
And yet exactly one week later the same Govt imposed a draconian national lockdown. What changed??
IIRC he had a similar stellar career predicting bird flu and hoof and mouth disease predicating the slaughter of many healthy animals. He pretty much seems to be the idiot they drag out when they want to kill a group and blame it on disease.
Ferguson always predicts doom. This is the one time he was believed.
Yes, the term fangkong (防控 - from 防止 prevent and 控制 control) came to prominence in the original SARS outbreak and was dusted off again in 2020. I always translated it as "prevention through control" as it better reflects the CCP's conception of its own invincibility against all challenges of nature and man, that any and every problem can be subjected to the will of the Party, that it's just a matter of having a resolve of pure steel (steel, the root of "Stalin").
Remember Xi stating he was feeling he was a reincarnation of the "Old gods" and "their" goal of TOTAL EMPIRE?
China is doubling down in their attempts to impress us.
Two days ago you replied "Senger" when I asked what book you were going to review (I guessed Viral), and I typed into Amazon "Senger Novel" and got nothing for Snake Oil. (I almost ordered "Islands in the Void" by Robert Senger, thinking this SciFi book must have some tenuous connection to humanity's response, but I passed). Thanks for nothing Amazon! (I don't use Twitter so never heard of this guy, which is surprising considering the vast number of people I subscribe to SubStack... I wonder who else I am missing out on?)
Now I found the book, but I'm a stickler for hardcovers so now have to wait 2-3 weeks to read. My starting position is to be skeptical (big surprise) that there was this level of planning involved, but I will give the argument a fair shot.
I do, however, wonder how the premise of this book holds up in light of what China is currently doing in Shanghai - perhaps I am completely misunderstanding their goals, but if they knew this was a bad policy and just wanted to dupe the west into repeating this psyop, why would they embrace this nonsense so hard 2 years later?
yes, I think the Shanghai situation shows the Chinese were far higher on their own supply than even I imagined
Haha very well put
Or force-fed.
I think it really is that the Chinese blundered into lockdowns, and surely faked a lot of success during 2020. The rest is almost surely all on the incompetence of western leaders at the national and local levels in trying to copy the Chinese "success" without the complete intellectual corruption necessary to fake the same success. And, let's suppose the Chinese didn't fake that success- the western leaders are still incompetent in copying such processes without the totalitarian tools to mimic it. This was my point back in March of 2020- even if the Chinese lockdowns worked in China, they would never work in the western world, and that they wouldn't work in China in the long term.
Galactic incompetence
This is such a good review. I read the book and I completely agree with everything you say. I just would like to know more about the early videos out of China. Who produced and distributed them and why? Also, the current phase of the pseudodemic in China - posterior to Senger’s book - invites to a revision of their reaction and motivations, unless, of course, also that is staged. But I’m decently convinced it isn’t. Just, maybe, influenced to some degree by a desire to keep the global panic going.
The ophthalmologist would have gotten potentially massive viral loads from his practice. I don’t find his demise impossible. The heroic backstory doesn’t seem neutral though. That one is straight from the Soviet playbook.
Thanks so much for kind words.
I had a whole section on the videos that I deleted, because I thought nobody would care! Now many commenters bring up videos, I should have kept it in.
I think the videos were clearly intended for western audiences. Too many of them are repurposed footage that you'd expect Chinese to recognise (because it's from a Chinese movie, or in the wrong city, etc.).
It's hard to say, but a simple thesis would be they were an effort to communicate the necessity of locking down to the West. Western media btw sidelined these videos fairly relentlessly.
Agreed that Shanghai changes a lot of this, and suggests more sincerity/ stupidity on the part of China. I leave that out here, I don't know how Senger evaluates it. If he responds and takes it into account, of course I'll post again.
My wife and I were watching the videos in early Jan 2020 and all the 'insider baseball' commentary from folks at the Epoch Times. They did much to explain Chinese culture and what the scenes meant, in a scary way. By February I was convinced this was a fraud, or worse. So I canceled my subscription, and concluded that the Epoch Times was 1) in on the fraud or 2) gullibly fooled into going along with it or 3) were somehow threated by the CCP to be a compliant purveyor of the lie. By March it was clear to me that the US forces that had already taken over the US (just not openly, yet) were using this to move their takeover forward and prepare for cleanup operations later. We have ignored it all, including all the rules, maskes etc. and run our business as usual. This book review has gotten my attention however, so I may have to buy it. I found the title a bit ironic given the news from Dr. Ardis about the preliminary evidence showing that COVID may in fact be an ailment from venom, not virus.