How Action in China Lead the World Into the Selfmade Lockdown Trap and Initiated the First Modern Panhysteria
Es gibt eine deutsche Fassung dieses Textes. [20811]
A man is trapped in a room if the door is unlocked, opens to the inside, but it does not occur to him to pull rather than to push. [Ludwig Wittgenstein]
It is the first epidemic in history which is accompanied by another epidemic — the virus of the social networks. These new media have brainwashed entire populations. What you get is fear and anxiety, and an inability to look at real data. And therefore you have all the ingredients for monstrous hysteria.
It is what is known in science as positive feedback or a snowball effect. The government is afraid of its constituents. Therefore, it implements draconian measures. The constituents look at the draconian measures and become even more hysterical. They feed each other and the snowball becomes larger and larger until you reach irrational territory. This is nothing more than a flu epidemic if you care to look at the numbers and the data, but people who are in a state of anxiety are blind. [Yoram Lass]
The best hypothesis is the simplest one to explain all available information. (Ockham’s razor)
August 2020 — In Wuhan the youth celebrates a techno party in a swimming pool. [CTV] Nobody keeps distance or wears face mask. There is outrage in social media around the world. It is irresponsible to do this in that city. Wuhan was the city where a dangerous corona virus broke out in December 2019, sending much of the world in economic and social disarray in 2020. Others counter, Wuhan is a successful winner over the virus and has all right to celebrate. This is the current narrative of the Wuhan virus story.
What if this is not true and the Wuhan measures the world saw in the media were just a real life spectacle, enacted by China to confound the Western world by taking up a role assigned to it in some simulation games by Western experts, thereby sending their societies into a trap they had digged themselves?
The present text invites the reader to step out of agonistic questions like face masks good or bad, or whether a lockdown is a meaningful measure against the spread of a respiratory virus. Try to enter territory above these questions, look at the Wuhan pictures again and ask: do we really see plausible action against the virus we now know very well? The class of bioobjects to which the virus belongs was known from the beginning, namely, that it is a corona virus. Corona viruses are cold viruses whose epidemiology is well understood. (Rushworth, private mail)
Sebastian Rushworth, an emergency doctor in a hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, explains what we know about the virus by the end of October. [How deadly is covid-19?] Infection fatality rate (IFR) is somewhere between 0.1 to 0.3%, depending on the population. Rushworth estimates 0.12% for Sweden. The “official” global value is 0.23%, established by John Ioannidis for the World Health Organization (WHO). Mortality profile is that of the average population. Most people who die have a severe ongoing illness and are very old. Obesity is another risk. [Ballenger Report] There was a peak of people dying in spring because the virus was new and the immune systems of the population had not dealt with it, so there was no “herd immunity” to slow down the spread.
In all, the virus compares to an ordinary to severe flu or influenza. In summer, Rushworth estimated that Sweden had reached herd immunity by July, after four months. The rise of hospitalizations since October, however, indicates that the virus may have strong seasonal incidence and that the general immunity was lower than estimated. [Nov 14] (The alternative explanation we see the usual seasonal increase and due to mass testing a fraction of them is tested positive — a casedemic, see below.) In any case, the virus is now endemic, that is, one of the ordinary respiratory viruses. [A history of the Swedish covid response]
Those who prefer videos to learn about the state of knowledge, may watch the conference of a well prepared Governor of Florida who systematically goes through the relevant topics with three experts. [DeSantis] Or watch the relevant videos by Ivor Cummins. [Fat Emperor]
I heavily refer to Rushworth in this text, “Rushworths’ Blog and the Swedish Covid Doctrine” explains why. [20820]
Chinese authorities probably knew all this early in the year if not already in December.
There is an “Early epidemiological assessment of the transmission potential and virulence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan City: China, January-February, 2020” by Kenji Mizumoto, Katsushi Kagaya, and Gerardo Chowell which was uploaded to the preprint server February 12 and finally published July 15. [MedRxiv] The early assessment is likely free from data manipulation which may compromise later publications. The early assessment calculates an IFR of 0.12%, exactly the same Rushworth does for Sweden.
There were more deaths to come in February and in his study for WHO, Ioannidis gives IFR values 0.31%, 0.38%, and 0.41% respectively for Wuhan. For other places in China the values are much lower, 0.04% and less. The province Hubei outside Wuhan has an IFR of 0.01%, which is 30 times lower than in the capital of the province. “The main explanation is that the pandemic hit Wuhan first and there were many deaths from nosocomial (hospital) infections and from poor management. The non-Wuhan areas could largely avoid those.” (Ioannidis, private mail) It was the novelty of the virus that caused trouble not a specific disease called “covid-19.”
In any case, that the Wuhan virus is a relatively ordinary corona virus could have been calculated from Wuhan data mid February. If foreign researchers can do these calculations then Chinese authorities can do them too, of course. They are on-site, have additional internal data, and could see the mortality profile. It is conceivable that China knew about this already in late December. That would mean that the warning not to create a panic to the doctor, who informed social media December 30 about the virus, was justified.
Certainly, by mid January it must have been clear to Chinese authorities that there would be no mass dying of the ordinary population. There was no need for measures to stop the spread. Indeed, it would not have been possible anyway.
The early assessment estimates the 6-day R value to 3.49, which is about 4 for one week, or 500 for one month. The assessment estimates 2 million infected in the beginning of February. If we take the number of deaths in Wuhan, roughly 4000, and the high IFR in Ioannidis of 0.4% then we get 1 million who must have been infected at some point. The case curve had its maximum mid February, so it is likely that the maximum of infections was in the beginning of February, say the first. Lockdown was on January 23. Calculating back from 1 million we get roughly 200,000 infected at that day.
The Spring Festival is celebrated at Chinese New Year, which in 2020 was on January 25, only 2 days after lockdown. There is a huge travel season around Chinese New Year. [Chunyun] The official season began January 10. With the early assessment, we get more than 10,000 infected by that date. On January 22 the Chinese news agency reported 760 million travels in the first 10 days of Chunyun until January 19. [Xinhua] There is no indication of travel restrictions in the report.
The report shows a picture of a train station from January 16. There are similar pictures from January 10. [Jan 10, Jan 13] Everywhere the halls are packed with people. In Wuhan it must have looked like this too. With the early assessment we calculate that there must have been more then 40,000 infected on Jan 16.
There must have been 1 billion travels by January 23 in all of China. One 140th of the population of China of 1.4 billion lives in Wuhan. If this is also the fraction of 1 billion travels then there were 7 million travels into, out of, and through Wuhan. There were likely many more because Wuhan is a traffic hub in Central China. If there were 1% infected among 7 million travel parties until lockdown then that would amount to 70,000. They would infect many others in packed stations, trains, buses, airports, planes, and so on.
Most carriers of the virus are asymptomatic. If there are symptoms they are those of the common cold. Untested people cannot be recognized as carriers. China reported the first cases on January 17. With the early assessment, we calculate more than 50,000 infected by that day.
If there were 70,000 infected traveling throughout China until January 23, the infection would have spread to more than 1 billion by mid March, effectively the entire population of the country.
It is not possible to prevent the spread across the country if one starts testing on January 17, and takes measures only two days before Chinese New Year.
If the spread was never stopped where are the dead?
China has reported less than 5000 deaths. Almost 4000 are from Wuhan, but Wuhan is the only place were systematic research throughout the epidemic was made.
In May, a mass test of the Wuhan population was made, 10 million PCR tests in only 3 weeks. The result was presented June 3: “Wuhan is now safe, and Wuhan people are safe.” [Xinhua] (Strangely at the presentation conference all wear face mask even though the city is declared safe.) The scientific results of the mass testing were published on Nov 20. [Nature] Only 300 cases were found of which 110 are likely false positives. Initially one would think this is impossible because the false positive rate (FPR) of the test is much higher. But the FPR can be reduced by double testing and not doing to many polymerase cycles. Indeed this is what the testing protocol says.
With IFR = 0.01% and half of 1.4 billion Chinese infected we get more than 50,000 who would have have died with the virus. This is 10 times more deaths than reported. But without the test the deaths are invisible as covid deaths. The severe health condition most had can be assumed as cause of death by the doctor.
It is possible that in some places of China hospitals were overrun, but the highly controlled media did not report about it. China might have assumed it to be natural that mortally ill people eventually die, as all of the world did before 2020. Therefore, it considered a warning unnecessary before mid January. The lockdown just two days before New Year made it possible that most had the opportunity to celebrate a perhaps last Spring Festival together with their relatives and friends.
It is conceivable that there was already a great population immunity against the new virus in China. In any case the country must have reached herd immunity by mid March. It fits that the government declared the epidemic over end of March. [Zeit]
If China never attempted to stop the spread of a new but flu-like virus then what kind of measures were made in Wuhan?
China could not do anything against the spread of the real virus. That it did not do anything actual against the real virus can be seen on the pictures of the measures.
The virus spreads like all respiratory viruses by extended close personal contact, such as living together in a household or traveling together. There is no evidence that the spread can be stopped or even substantially slowed down with face masks, contact tracing, social distancing, hygiene. [EbM] The same holds for “lockdowns.” [Rushworth] Only strict quarantine for all, which is impossible to maintain in a society for a long time, would actually slow down the spread.
At the time of the measures in January and February in Wuhan, some of them were known to be useless or even advised against. [Face masks: Rushworth; contact tracing: WHO] In any case, the research on the effectiveness of the measures during the corona year could not play a role for China early in the year.
Many measures seen on the pictures, such as full protective overalls, disinfecting streets with road tankers, or wearing a mask when walking alone through empty bamboo landscape, are ridiculous against the spread of corona viruses. [Reuters, NYT, WEF, Xinhua, BI, China Daily]
Pictures from China rarely show social distancing which is considered the most effective measure in the Western world. [NYT, CBS, Xinhua]
Quickly erected hospitals remained empty. [Guardian] This is to be expected if the virus affects those most who are already under medical treatment and create no additional problem to the health care system.
The Wuhan pictures show a monstrously ridiculous action which is virtually useless against the real virus we know. However, the pictures do match the imagination of a fantastic “killer virus” [Püschel] breezing through surreal territory.
So why did China do this if not against a real virus?
Peter Mayer of Vienna already in June assumed the Wuhan action to be a “pandemic media event set off by the government of China.” [Jun 22] Later he wrote: “Seen from today the pictures of January and February from Wuhan appear to be an enactment on a vast stage.” [Aug 27]
Mayer considers the lockdown to be a trick: “On a small part of its territory China pioneered a never seen before and medically nonsensical radical lockdown. Almost all countries followed and, like lemmings, went over the cliff of partial destruction of their economy.” He sees this in the context of China wanting to beat America economically.
Mayer does not explain why the world could think that the apparent measures on the pictures from Wuhan should be reasonable measures against a real virus.
In his book “Chronik einer angekündigten Krise” [Chronicle of an Announced Crisis] Paul Schreyer describes a series of simulation games played by executives of mostly Western countries and businesses since the 1990s with names such as “Dark Winter,” “Atlantic Storm,” or “Event 201.” Since about 2010 many scenarios dealt with executive action against dangerous viruses.
Some critics see these simulations as part of the project of a global power elite to tighten its rule over the world population to an unprecedented extent. But they can also be seen just as excercises of executives to assess public dangers, which would be normal. Indeed, constituents would expect responsible executives to regularly assess public dangers. Whatever their purpose, the simulations are in no way secret activities, participants are known, results are published and proudly presented.
I am interested in this question: did the makers of the simulations ever check how realistic their scenarios were? Do dangerous viruses exist? Or is the interaction of viruses and immune system maybe more complex so that especially respiratory pathogens are fought off without any damage in most cases? [Rushworth] All pandemics declared by the WHO since 2009 had a much lower death toll than initially expected. In this sense they were all false alarms. Is standard epidemiological knowledge built into the models? Did the makers check empirically if the simulated measures can have an actual effect in reality? The fact that there is no evidence for any of them, now after almost a year of research, suggests they never did.
And there is the question of collateral damage. Reality is complex, but models tend to be simplistic and concentrate on the aspects of interest. It is easy for the players to loose sight of the complex world if one trains too simplistic models too often. Eventually, the identity units wander on unreal territory.
There was some low intensity participation by China in some of the simulations. In a simulation called “Lock-Step” of 2010, China is attributed the role of a country that can take most effective action against a pandemic due to its authoritarian regime. [Rockefeller]
The “Event 201” was played November 2019, its results were presented at the World Economic Forum 2020. The simulation postulates that “the next severe pandemic will not only cause great illness and loss of life but could also trigger major cascading economic and societal consequences that could contribute greatly to global impact and suffering.” [CHS] (The autors say that epidemiologically there is no relation of their simulation and the Wuhan virus pandemic.)
There were already news about the Wuhan virus before Davos, but they got no attention. According to Schreyer, only after the presentation of “Event 201” mass media went off to spread the virus news. It is possible that this was the coincidence: the term “severe pandemic” got mixed with the news about the new virus and blew up the latter in the imagination.
At Davos the West was represented by the respective political Number One of each state. [WEF] China was represented only by Number Seven, the Vicepremier, the lowest rank possible of the highest body of Chinese government, the Standing Commitee of the Politburo with seven hierarchically ordered members. Diplomatically this is one level above non-participation. Number Seven was the contact unit of China at Davos.
Number Seven knew that there would be no mass dying in Wuhan, knew that the virus had already spead through the country with Chunyun, knew that a “severe pandemic” would not materialize in reality. It may be assumed that Number Seven saw the “Event 201” presentation, and listened to politicians and managers talk about a severe pandemic and measures to be taken.
So why did China do the the surreal action in Wuhan? One possibility is that due to the virus news and now the imagination of a “severe pandemic” in the social media, even in China, the government decided that some visible action against the “virus of social networks” (Lass) was necessary to show that something is done. I find it also conceivable that China wanted to retaliate for increasingly aggressive Western politics against the country and stage a show “severe pandemic” just to scare Western people a little. The two possibilities do not exclude each other.
Either way, China decided it should assume the role attributed to it in simulations like “Lock-Step.” — Number Seven might have sensed a certain face mask predilection by some Davos participants, so that was added to the mix. [Masks4All] (Almost nobody wears face mask in the packed Chunyun traffic.)
In the Western world people think China is a hightech dictatorship that can realize sophisticated grand scale draconian operations. This may be the case. It is certainly the case that the Party can stage great propaganda shows like party congresses or Olympic games, is able to make great propaganda photography, and has 90 million members who are determined to bring China back on top of the world. Members with all kinds of skills and who can serve as actors. Communication of state media is of course under full control.
Ordinary people will just do what they are being told to do. Many thought something dangerous was around. But also, in Confucian ethics acting “as if it is the case,” without asking if it is real or not, is deemed a high value. [Jäger] (Helmut Jäger, also in June, independently suggested that the Wuhan action is a big show.) Life in China appears to involve a good deal of social play-acting.
And the Chinese State Circus is world famous.
Action in real Wuhan was necessary, because people there are connected to the world via social media. But with Mayer I find it conceivable that much of the social media communication from Wuhan in the first quarter of the year came from comrades — one does not know who an “anonymous whistleblower” is. [Mayer] Face masks, overalls, and disinfection orgies are visible signals of great danger and thus allow impressive pictures to be made by both, officials and with smartphones. [BI: Mar 6] The test can be used to indicate the state of the epidemic if only sick are tested: it went up until mid February and then down to almost zero beginning of March, signifying a successful operation.
A large open-air theater is a lot cheaper than actual hightech measures. Lots of face masks, overalls, medical equipment, spraying canisters, plexiglass, etc.; some tankers, snow cannons, kinder robots, etc. No special effects necessary. The Wuhan action looks more like a low budget sci-fi flick than a blockbuster. (Google “Xinhua” + “Wuhan” + [January] / [February] / [Disinfection])
My favorite picture is “Volunteers from the Blue Sky Rescue team disinfect at the Qintai Grand Theatre in Wuhan.” A dystopic scene. But why do they work in the dark? One could look better into the corners with lights switched on. The action takes place in a theater — the equipment necessary for the picture would be available on-site. [BI: Apr 8]
Another favorite of mine is a video with 12 trucks with snow cannons as dense fleet all spraying. Don’t they need to save valuable disinfectives? Why do they do it at night? The streets in quarantained Wuhan should be empty during the day, too. The commentators all thought either big desaster or hightech China. It occured to nobody that this might be complete nonsense against a respiratory virus. [Luoyang] (I would have chosen a darker musik; like something by Hans Zimmer.)
Mayer highlights a scene where a man in black suit lies straight on the street and is surrounded by two persons in overalls. The man alledgedly just fell dead (but had time to protect his fall with his arm). [Oct 31] We know that people to not die this way from the real virus.
As a stage, Wuhan was probably comparatively empty because many people will have visited their relatives in other places of China for the Spring Festival. The extension of Spring Festival holidays helped to keep the stage clear throughout February.
If true, the virus news from Davos launched the hysteria. China took it up and put a great show on Wuhan stage which looked like the actions in the simulations. This increased the hysteria because in the imagination the apparent monstrosity of the actions must match a real danger. “This is not an ordinary virus!” cried one email to me in March. The constituents took Wuhan for real and demanded similar action by the governments who took them for real too.
Other events increased the hysteria, the initial panic number of 4% IFR, the death of the “whistleblowing” doctor, the pictures from Italy. Then came the high peaks of death in some regions — which may have been in part already caused by the panic, for example by fantasy medication like high-dose HCQ, or the flight of care home personal because of the announced lockdowns. And there was yet another model, the one by Imperial College which predicted a huge death toll which never materialized.
The governments reacted to the panic by acting according to what they saw on the Wuhan pictures which matched the measures they had trained in decades of simulations. And social media served as a massive literal mind blow-up technology. Thus was triggered the snowball effect that carried much of the world onto irrational territory, where some regions remain at the time of writing.
“Lockdown and covid deaths. The authors (of a Lancet study from July) found no correlation whatsoever between severity of lockdown and number of covid deaths. And they didn’t find any correlation between border closures and covid deaths either. And there was no correlation between mass testing and covid deaths either, for that matter. Basically, nothing that various world governments have done to combat covid seems to have had any effect whatsoever on the number of deaths.” [Rushworth]
Lockdown as a system of simulated measures against the spread of respiratory viruses had never been tested before. “It was as if the world went crazy and everything we had discussed seemed completely forgotten. Country after country closed its borders and shut down their communities altogether.” [Tegnell] Lockdowns have proven to be useless during the pandemic. China probably knew this form the beginning and went to see if the world leaders would fall into a trap they had digged for themselves. Which most did and many coninue to do, as in a neurotic compulsive act.
There are two cognitive effects that contribute to keeping the constituents down in the irrational territory of the panic cave.
First. “A number of experimental studies have shown that people rate statements as more valid or true merely because these statements have been repeatedly made as opposed to just once. (Subjectively more valid statements were also shown to be more persuasive.) This effect can even be obtained if the experimenter explicitly emphasizes that the repeated statement is actually false. Processes like this are automatic and unconscious — we cannot resist them by sheer willpower. The effect remains unchanged even if the subjects participating in the experiment knows about it in advance: The more often the subject hears a statement, the more its subjective validity increases. Innumerable examples for this technique can be readily found in daily newspapers — writing about the ‘Greek aversion to economic reforms,’ or calling the recent crisis on the crimea an ‘annexation by the Russian federation.’ Merely re-iterating these statements over and over makes us believe them more.” [Mausfeld]
Watching television has the same effect. Since there is no new information every day old pictures are repeated again and again. [Stallman] The same holds for the repetition of the same stories in social media, especially if there is a strong social enforcement to stick to the official narrative by declaring even any question as “fake news” and censor them out of view. — TV and social media are brainwashing machines.
Second. Once a narrative is established it does not easily change. The believers choose only information that confirms the narrative and makes them blind for anything else. Disconcerting information is either adapted to the accepted narrative, or enirely ignored as “fake news.” (Mausfeld) Virus manias take a life on it own into a “pandemic of delusional psychosis.” [Gyngell] Persons who have deeply fallen into the irrational territory would have to admist that they paniced because of a not particularly dangerous virus. Many will not easily be ready to admit this.
An investor in vaccination programs called this the “first modern pandemic.” [Gates] This is true if the term “pandemic” does not imply danger. The term “epidemic” used to mean the spread of a dangerous pathogene. We certainly experience the first truly global mass hysteria created by modern media, the “Corona Panhysteria.”
Mass hysteria is a common phenomenon in human history. Examples are war enthusiasm and religious awakenings. There is the theory that humans lived in a mental state of permanent psychosis until the beginning of civilization. [Jäger: Neolithische Revolution] Humanity fell into collective psychosis so many times because it is a natural state of mind. To maintain a state of non-psychosis needs constant effort. That civilization is a thin cover over the irrational human psyche is a truism. Although mass hysteria because of a virus is perhaps a bit “unworthy.”
Anxiety is a cognitive capability of mammals to focus attention to an object that may be dangerous. [Jäger: Die Sprache der Gefühle] It was a useful emotion when the environment was dangerous. Anxiety is not necessary in the safe enivronment of civilization. The capacity for anxiety is idle. Mass media and commercials that work with fear-mongering, like catastrophy scenarios, health warnings, horror shows, fill the idleness. Without reflection the cognitive lockdown effects of repetition and narrative fixation turn the media fantasies into possible truths for many.
Anxiety like hysteria is an emotion. Emotions reside in the mid brain. Intelligence and reason are located in the frontal lobe of the brain. If one can say that reason can achieve some mastery over emotions then one can say that the frontal lobe governs the mid brain to some extent because that mastery which is forever fragile.
Hysteria and other emotions are typical for social media communication. Electric social networks of the internet link together biological neural networks of mid brains. Social networks are the collective mid brain of humanity. Unlike in individual brains there is no effective institution that can execise mastery over social media communication, at least not in the Western world. There is no equivalent to a collective frontal lobe.
In China the Party tries to censor social media communication. This is an attempt of external mastery. The goal of communication censorship is to remain master not only of the communication but of the state as a whole. The Party has some success but not full control as the story of the “Grass-Mud Horse” shows. [Chabbi] The Party tries to act as a collective frontal lobe with respect to the collective mid brain of China. The danger of a censorship authority is that it may act against necessary critical debate thus performing selflobotomy which can lead to intellectual encrustation, decling and fall. As it happened to the Eastern bloc or the old Chinese Empire.
Western politicians submit to the communication storm of social media. A Berlin politician earned a “shitstorm” initiated by an “influencer” with 130,000 “followers” because she recommended natural medicine against covid (which is what they do in China too). She took her page off the net. [Pieroth] Irresponsible Western politicians feed the hysteria instead of standing as rock against the strom. Irresponsibility is institutionalized if the authoritize try do do behavior control by “appeal to anxiety.” [BZgA, BMI] The collective fronal lobe increases the midbrain panic instead of getting it under control.
If internet corporations censor social media communication this is not an act of outside mastery but like a part of the collective mid brain trying to curb the activity of other parts. And attempts to censor reasonable debate is an attempt of collective lobotomia, it removes small attempts to mastery and adds censorship hysteria to the ongoing panhysteria.
Then there is the “universe of technical images” (Vilém Flusser) produced by smartphones and other decives like that. Nobody knows who has produced them under what conditions. The ever changing formations of the image galaxies that flow through social networks have the logical structure of a dream.
By 2020 social media are ubiquituous. People in the West born after the year 2000 have never left the universe of technical images and social media. Nobody switches their smartphone off anymore.
Draconian measures by governments, concessions to hysteria, censorship, the massive flow of technical images all contributed to the snowball effect that led societies onto irrational territory and keep them there. So does all the face mask wearing which visualizes a danger floating around as a “psychological effect.” [Anschober] And so the panhysteria keeps going until people eventually get exhausted by their own fear.
Because there are currently no institutions which can master social media communication global mass hysteria was to be expected someday. Further panhysterias will come until institutions that can master social media exist. And future panhysterias may be more deadly than the Corona Panhysteria.
For a start, a simple measure to curb down the irrational effects of social media is perhaps to ignore them as irrelevant noise.
The Western world complicates its life by using the PCR test to clarify the epidemic situation. The test has many problems: high rate of false negatives, high rate of false positives when used in populations with low probability of infection (e.g. general population), detects only viral genome not active infections, etc. [Rushworth]
Not only that, the West uses the absolute case count to estimate the public danger and order lockdowns. But due to the problems of the test absolute cases are a rather meaningless number as they have only a weak relation to the actual situation in the health care system.
Simulations that try to estimate the spread, e.g. the size of the “second wave,” are based on PCR test results which creates its own problems. In particular the complexity of the immune system which dampens the waves by orders of magnitude is hard to model an is integrated at best as an ad hoc parameter. [Martin]
Testing the general population can end in a “casedemic.” [Cummins] There is mass testing and because the virus has become endemic there are many positive cases, but there is no critical situation in the health system. If people who come to a hospital are tested with positive result it looks as if the situation becomes more severe if hospitalization rises e.g. in winter. But there need not be difference in hospitalization compared to previous years. The positive test result becomes just a label.
The phenomenon was observed first during the “swine flu” of 2008/09. The medical situation was over in summer but the casedemic continued until spring in the next year when the countries simply stopped testing. In Sweden, “without the PCR test I think the pandemic would firmly have been declared over by now.” (Rushworth, private mail beginning of October)
There are even chances that the entire pandemic was a PCR test casedemic. This would be the case if the excess mortality in a few places were caused not by the corona virus but by the usual problems in some health care systems (notably New York, England, Spain, Lombardy) and due to the virus panic and expecially mistreatment due to that. [Köhnlein, Engelbrecht] In Sweden there was an undermortality in 2019 so the wave of deaths in spring 2020 hit very frail people. [Rushworth] But these might have died around that time from ordinary flu or influenza as well.
The test is not necessary if a state
If only sick are tested the test can be used as a public disease signal: it goes up and down with the disease and no new cases indicate a successful operation. China has reported almost no cases since March.
As long as the anxious attention locks itself onto absolute case numbers, Western societies remain locked down in the casedemic and the panhysteria continues which lets China continue its free run since March, when it effectively stopped reporting numbers.
The foundation of the Western world view is truth monism. Formerly there was one and only one God with His three unified aspects, the Trinity. In modernity nature has replaced God but still all of nature’s aspects shall eventually unite in the Theory of Everything.
The arguments about the assessment of the situation and the measurements seek a Quaternity, the agreement of four aspects:
If it is impossible to unify these aspects because the actual relatively normal flu-like virus does not fit to the imagination of a killervirus the result is a collective obsessional neurosis.
In China there is of course also just one nature.
The Dao of Heaven stands above the Dao of Man (…) Nature will not assimilate to human subjectivity in its self-regulation. [Zhao Tingyang]
But there is not necessarily a unity.
Because the Dao of Heaven manifests itself in the changing constellations of all things and not as their unalterable essence, the metaphysics of the Dao does not attempt to determine the essence of creation. The appearences do not categorially fix a thing but only indicate its possibilities as synonymous for the changing Dao.
Actual virus, imagined danger, case number, and measures are changing constellations whose relation can be organized according to the goal of the operation. If if the imagined virus of the social network shall go away with the acual virus then one may test mainly persons who are ill. The cases are then synonymous with the changing Dao of the actual virus and vanish with it just as the imagined danger. And then one has to stop testing and avoid mass testing. The measures are not categorially fixed, they only have to appear to the social networks as possibly effective. A real mass test can be made after enough time has elapsed so that practically no cases exist anymore to clear any remainder of the imagined danger. And in the end the operation is successful, “Wuhan is now safe, and Wuhan people are safe,” and so they can celebrate a techno party in the swimming pool.
China did not assimilate the virus to human subjectivity and let it go self-regulated through the population to develop herd immunity. With herd immunity Chinese are safe. This allows China to play any game in the pandemic. It is the precondition to win each of them.
When China declared the end of the epidemic it said the virus is no longer found in the country. So it does “border control” and “contact tracing,” and quarantines persons to prevent “outbreaks.” If the pandemic ends with the virus going away, China opens its border and has successfully contained the spread in its country as the simulations want it to have. — Outbreaks do not happen with herd immunity either.
In some countries “the pandemic ends if there is a vaccine.” [PI News] What about China? On one hand, “trials usually require tens of thousands of participants, and with the outbreak in China largely under control, companies are having to test their vaccines elsewhere….” On the other hand, “China has offered employees intending to travel overseas the opportunity to be inoculated with one of two COVID vaccines being developed by China National Biotec.” No possibility to develop a vaccine but already two vaccines available to travellers? “However, there is not a lot of other information available at this time.” (Remark until Nov 1, information has not changed since July.) [JPMorgan: Covid drug development] — For those with natural immunity, an isotonic saline solution would be a sufficient placebo and it has no short or long term side effects.
If it turns out that the story presented here is true, can one say China is responsible for having sent the world over the cliff of partial destruction of their economy?
China will say it is not its business to clarify a public health situation in other states and act rationally. Sweden and Florida can do it, so any country can be expected to be able to do it. That politicians in many countries chose to bypass persons or bodies responsible for the assessment of public dangers, thereby putting intitutions aside which had the potential to curb down the anxious communication of the collective mid brains, is their own business. [Examples: AT, CH, DE, DK] China never intrudes into internal business of other countries.
That executives and constituents are drowned in social media and simulacra, believe in dangerous viruses, and take science fiction scenarios for real, thus live on irrational territory even without a monstrous hysteria, is not the fault of China. And due to the negative image of China, an all-clear signal would have been interpreted as a lie anyway, so no communication of a false alarm was possible.
China is ready for any conceivable outcome of the panhysteria and will be a successful nation.
Chinese New Year 2020 started the “Year of the Metal Rat.” “In Chinese Taoist thought, Metal attributes are considered to be firmness, rigidity, persistence, strength, and determination.” [WP] If it becomes clear that Wuhan was just a spectacle on vast territory, the advantages for China would actually be greater than if not.
The advantage for China as a political economy is in any case obvious. Inexpensive action at only a few places for a short time. No damage to virtually the entire country. Only one negative quarter, recession is defined as two in a row. In the rest of the world the governments have sent their societies into recession, some continue to do so during the turn of the year 2020/21. [Mayer] — Research to investigate the differential advantage of China-controlled capital compared the that of the Western world would be of great interest. [CasP]
The West tells the rest of the world that its people are oriented toward liberal values and wants to bring “freedom and democracy” to the world. In the pandemic anxiety, people demanded all freedom canceled for measures they thought were protective. Protective against a virus as dangerous as the “regular old influenza, which no-one is the least bit frightened of, and which we don’t shut down our societies for.” [Rushworth] What value does freedom have if you give it up for nothing just because you are anxious and lack the will or ability to clarify a danger rationally?
The societies of the world went into a state of mass hysteria obsessively damaging themselves both economically and psychologically. In China, the Mao era was an era almost of continuous psychosis. So China has some experience with such a state of society. The societies of the world must have made themselves great subjects to psychological analysis. Important knowledge in eventual future conflicts.
Many countries have closed venues of education, culture and gastronomy where people meet and exchange ideas to create new ones. The anxious attention focus on the viral situation blocks the mind of many for other thoughts. And many will need a while to eventually get the virus mania out of their head. There may even be those who will never exit the cave. Lockdown countries have lost a year or more of creativity, China has lost nothing. Another net gain for China.
It is possible that the corona year has cleared away a good amount of resistance to a possible Chinese world politics of a “just and inclusive globalization.” [Rügemer] The philosophical concept behind this is a “New Tianxia,” “All Under Heaven,” a world system “which guarantees general security and participatory benefit for all of humanity. It is not a new system of domination but a system for the protection of an inclusive world.” (Zhao) If only a fraction of China’s political world view is like this it may already be the better offer for many countries than the West’s.
Some Western countries have declared conflict with China in various fields. [Technology, Europe, Military, Huawei] Now they have damaged their own societies by lockdowns. This is like an army that wants to wage war but then sees ghosts, gets crazy, and damages its own weapons in a state of fear because it had the impression that the declared enemy did the same thing. — How will a Chinese politician or business person approach a lockdown politician in the future?
“The domination of the world in the past and present by imperial powers is based on the state and national interest. (…) The imperialist world view sees the world as an object of subjugation, domination, and expropriation and not as a political subject.” (Zhao) It may be that many countries only did lockdowns because the IMF demanded them to do so for further credit. [IWB, Wiesendanger] What if China creates a “Tianxia Bank” which credits “Tianxiabi” (world currency) to any nation without conditions or intrusion into internal affairs but for mutual benefit? What if the dependent states then collectively declare their default in dollars to the IMF? This would render the dollar worthless and might trigger the collapse of Western “super-imperialism.” [Hudson] — Interesting times may be ahead. “May you live in interesting times” is said to be a Chinese curse. So maybe China finds the outlined scenario a bit too interesting and may be interested in negotiating a more gentle road to Tianxia. In any case, mid November on the initiative of China a large East Asian free trade zome was created. [AP] America and Europe are not members, although Oceania is.
China has a great advantage without waging a war. There is few material damage in the world. The economic desaster in some countries was caused by their own politicians, not by China. Most people who have died would likely have done so during the year. In a war people die for whom this is not the case. And they die from violence. — Two essential differences.
If the story here is true, the creators of the Corona Circus Wuhan must have had the entertainment of their life time. People of the world doing mask distance dancing to the cadence of the absolute test case count. The nations of the world are performing a “World Circus Corona” for China.
While there were news from other cities, China mostly sent messages from Wuhan such as a correction of the death count, mass testing, school openings, beginning of normality. [Xinhua: Apr 17, Jun 3; CBS, NYT] Wuhan was like a clown whose appearance in mass and social media triggered a conditial attention reflex each time. The pool party did so for the last time. — The tourism boom in Wuhan in October has not caught international media attention anymore. [Xinhua] The pool party visualized the end of Wuhan as a territory of anxiety.
China continues to publish pictures with people wearing face masks. They make no sense if there is no dangerous virus in the country.
Western people have a general tendency to expect catastrophy, so they tend to fall into panic when a new virus is announced. And they have a twisted view of China, which is more a mirror of their own imagination of futuristic power and empire. Their executives perform unrealistic simulations of non-existent dangers. And through all this run enormous amounts of money that builds up the imagination to global proportions.
“You have to bring them to hell first; only then you can lead them to heaven.”[Jäger] Beginning of October the director of the WHO health emergency programmes estimated 750 million infected worldwide at a time when there were 1 million deaths. This yields an IFR of 0.13%. Did he call the virus alarm off? No. He expected a “hell of a ride” because the “problem is there is more than six billion left. Therein lies our problem.” [Ryan] As if the 6 billion are all mortally ill, old, or obese. Is this curruption, i.e. does he want to keep the pandemic going until a vaccine is ready for salvation? Or just stupidity? Either way, the big boys from Silicon Valley turned global health into their playground and wanted to play the grand game. Then there was Davos, and China came, saw, and made its move. The potential loss was small the potential gain great.
Imagine the character of the Wuhan action as a huge open-air spectacle would have been discovered already in February by looking at the pictures without fear. What would be the story? Authoritarian China organizing a big circus against a flu virus and because they think they can confuse rational freedom-loving people in the West? Ridicoulous! — One would have thought.
Many countries are now in a casedemic. This includes Sweden. (Rushworth, private mail) Many Western countries continue to lock themselves down to a “Great Reset,” a great leap backward. [WEF] — This dim outlook does not appear to be of great concern to the Chinese pool party youth of Wuhan. [BBC]
Acknowledgements. I’d like to thank: Sebastian Rushworth for commenting on the medical and epidemiological reasoning in preparation of this text, be sure to check out his blog [Health and medical information grounded in science]; Helmut Jäger for the exchange about several questions and his website from which I take more information than I acknowledge [Medizinisches Coaching]; the anonymous group Swiss Policy Research for some exchange and their vital collection of covid information [SPR].
The pictures in this text are used for illustrative purposes which I think falls under fair use. If you own a picture and think this is not the case please contact me.
weltexperiment.com・document 20810 (2020-11-06) ・revision 20891 (2020-12-04)・Ulf Martin Mail Telegram