In the summer of 2019, before China’s vast detection network spotted the virus, we experienced an increasing number of unexplained deaths. EVALI (confined to the US, and unconnected to vaping, according to the Mayo Clinic) followed by a rash of nursing and rest home deaths. All showed classic Covid symptoms. Yet the NIH has adamantly refused to revisit those cases and to share broncholavage samples with researchers.
When the CDC announced that 1% – 4% of archived Red Cross blood samples from December, 2019 were Covid seropositive, our media looked away. And when the CDC claimed the world’s first Covid death, (Kansas, Jan. 9, 2020), the media ignored the news with the same indifference they demonstrated about Covid in Europe and Latin America before it reached China. (Covid and the media)
I suspect that the outbreak was discovered in the US in early 2019 and the White House (having presciently withdrawn the sole American CDC researcher working on disease control in Beijing), quietly embraced herd immunity while waiting for the virus to reach China. Hence Covid, China, and the media.
It appears that Chinese researchers at American teaching universities became aware of the outbreak and warned Beijing, for I received an interesting note from a WHO microbiologist then in Beijing:
I actually find the response by the Chinese government to be extremely interesting. It seems like it’s overblowing the matter on purpose.
Considering the low number of cases (compared to China’s population) and low death rates, it feels like the Chinese government is overblowing fears on purpose, with maps filled with dark areas and shutting down everything everywhere (and this is during China’s most important holiday season).
I suspect it’s practicing for when a Really serious disease breaks out, the sort with people dying like flies.
So I find all this fuss quite interesting. We’ve been warned about a potential superbug outbreak for years, and now we can see how the response will look like. No doubt the Chinese government is busy taking notes on what it could have done better.
Not to mention, I don’t think most Westerners realize just how big Wuhan is, just how significant Chinese New Year is in terms of people moving around and just how many people go in and out of those wet markets every day. That’s like, tens of thousands of people leaving the wet markets, taking public transport then going home to expose all their visiting relatives, and all those people in turn going to all sorts of crowded areas too. With a high enough contagion rate, we’d easily be at 1 million infected. The fact that we haven’t reached such numbers means that this virus isn’t That bad.
China’s homework paid off. In 2020, China’s GDP grew 2.2%, while America’s shrank 3.4%. In 2021, China’s GDP grew 8.1%. US, 5.7%. In 2022: China grows 3%. US, 1.3%. By 2023, after three years of dueling Covid policies, China’s economy will be 13.8% bigger, and ours will have grown 3.4%.
Besides that, China has 6,834 Covid deaths and 38,000 Long Covid invalids. The US Census Bureau says 2-4 million Americans are out of work due to long Covid, resulting in lost wages of $170 billion annually, impacts which stand to worsen over time “if the United States does not take the necessary policy actions”.
