Western media attempts listlessly to stir new panic about surging infections in China, studiously ignores what is actually happening there
“China prepares for new wave of Covid cases from XBB variants”, screams the Washington Post. “New Covid variant in China could infect 65 million people a week from June”, proclaims The Independent. “40 Million Infections per Week”, hyperventilates Welt. Even Eric Feigl-Ding has taking a break from disingenuous histrionics about “Asian American hate” (by which he means hatred of, and not by, Asian Americans) to beat the virus panic drums once again.
Happily, aside from that small minority whose minds have been permanently broken by virus propaganda, nobody much cares anymore.
Chinese media sources attribute the wave to mysteriously “weakening immunity” following the winter wave, which we’re supposed to believe infected between 80% and 90% of the entire Chinese population. Of course this is wrong. Nor is it the scary new XBB variant that accounts for Chinese infections, or vaccination rates, or any of the other Covidian chestnuts. Far more explanatory is the collapse of the anomalous, late-Spring Chinese influenza wave:
Viral interference is real, and the antagonism between Covid and influenza is so obvious, you can use it to predict future Covid activity with reasonable confidence. To the extent that influenza is the more dangerous of the two viruses, it’s hard to know how the present Covid surge is a bad thing.
Why the virus panic industry still refuses to acknowledge these screamingly obvious patterns is an enduring mystery.
I can't help wondering how obvious interactions between various viruses through history might have been, had we been as fixated on testing as Covid made us.
When talking to friends my current favorite phrase is "compared to what?". People died of influenza every year. Hospitals were overrun during flu season, but that wasn't news. People would get colds several times a year and that wasn't news.
While it's hardly a catastrophe, it is true that some new Omicron variant has swept through China over the past several weeks. Our entire family got it, as did many friends and colleagues.
For those whose previous infection was back in the spring of 2022, the symptoms (39C fever, nasty sore throat, then coughing) are overall quite similar, though with the addition of diarrhea in many cases. By contrast, those who went through an infection in Dec 2022 have for the most part had no fever and few symptoms.
Today I was in a hospital and there were still plenty of people without masks. From that I think we can deduce that the level of fear is for the most part non-existent.
Of course no doubt many in the West will claim it's just the flu. Yet even if we did not have the antigen test results (whose results are both reliable and reproducible starting approximately 2 days after infection), we would know it isn't "the flu" (感冒). Why? Because flu treatments don't bring any relief, whereas covid-specific treatments (e.g. HCQ/zinc/ivermectin) do.