Five Insights from Observing the Coronavirus Pandemic
Never has mainstream media (MSM) in the entire world been so dominated by a single burning issue for this long. And the coronavirus pandemic is yet to reach its zenith. But valuable insights can already be gleaned by keen observation.
1) Deep Science, Not Social Distancing, Will Defeat the Pandemic
Social distancing is based on the science of contagion. The spread of an infectious disease is slowed by reducing the number of people a diseased person infects when contagious. This may reduce deaths until deep science arrives with real solutions. It “may,” because economic chaos from forced shutdowns could lead to a higher death toll from existing diseases and mental health consequences. Social distancing also delays herd immunity.
For an elaboration of the concept and strategy of “herd immunity” and of the unseen effects of lockdowns, see our Coronavirus Special Edition.
Nevertheless, we must express our gratitude to the frontline—the doctors, nurses, and staff who will relieve the immediate burden. But even wars are won by the side with the more advanced science and technology, not the more courageous soldiers.
Wars are won by the side with the more advanced science and technology, not the more courageous soldiers.
Ultimately, “deep science”—the development of preventive and curative medicines, of quick, accurate tests for infection and for antibodies, of vaccines, and of understanding the virology (source, mutations, mechanisms of disease and contagion, and immunity levels following a cure), community wastewater examinations (to assess the spread of infection and new outbreaks), and workable disinfectants for confined spaces such as theaters, aircraft, and hospitals—will provide not only medical solutions, but even ethical ones.
How could science and technology make even ethical dilemmas easier? For example, if a quick and 100% accurate test of infection was available, we would hardly walk around as though every other human being posed an existential threat to us. The law could then require only those infected to be quarantined. Governments need not ban airline flights arriving from a particular point of origin.
Progress in any science comes from an affirmation of two fundamentals: the requirement to comprehensively understand reality (in this case, a biological reality), and of the ability of the human mind to master nature. See also Reason—Not Chance—Is Mankind’s Destiny.
2) Regulators Are Yielding to Pressure to Cut Red Tape
The top ten vaccine manufacturers in the world are all large multinational corporations such as GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Pfizer, and CSL. But for developing a vaccine against COVID-19, at least 30 entities are already in the race. Many have already moved to preclinical human trials. That list includes biotech companies (driven by the profit motive), who do not have the wherewithal for mass manufacture and distribution, but can nevertheless be protected by 20-year plus patents to justify the cost of R&D and failure.
However, Wired reports:
Covid-19 might seem like a sure bet [sic] now. But outbreaks are unpredictable. SARS disappeared just four months after it caused a global panic. The companies that had begun developing vaccines against it had to abandon their trials because there just weren’t enough patients.
On the other hand, the declaration by WHO of a “pandemic” auto-triggers a set of government mass-purchase orders for a vaccine. Then if an epidemic dies down, member countries complain of the cost, alleging Big Pharma crony influence.
Meanwhile, of the most-touted promise of a cure, University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine reports:
Several in vitro [laboratory] studies report antiviral activity of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine against SARS-CoV-2. In vivo [living organisms] data, although promising, is currently limited to one study with considerable limitations. On the basis of the weak evidence available to date, treatment guidelines have already incorporated the usage of chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine for certain patients with COVID-19.
This is in stark contrast to several MSM op-eds condemning the practice as dangerous, because it was prematurely tweeted by President Trump. The FDA, nevertheless, using its “emergency powers,” moved forward with an unprecedented emergency-use authorization of the drug’s use.
If the pandemic does not abate, would the FDA even skip a Phase 3 trial (or combine Phases 2 and 3) to let a vaccine get to market within 12 months?
MarketWatch reported that the FDA has also “issued a number of emergency-use authorizations for diagnostic tests and medical devices including ventilators.” Abbott Labs’ quick diagnostic test for infection was approved in record time for general use provided the label “not approved by the FDA” was added. Whether or not the White House is behind it, perhaps for the first time since its inception in 1906, the FDA is feeling the pressure to “get out of the way” of informed arrangements between patient/vaccine volunteers and those whom the volunteers trust.
If the pandemic does not abate, would the FDA even skip a Phase 3 trial (or combine Phases 2 and 3) to let a vaccine get to market within 12 months? Let’s wait and see.
Unless coronavirus disappears miraculously like SARS or H1N1 (swine flu), in two years we may be doing an ex-post analysis of the efficacy against pandemics of a somewhat-freer market.
3) We are Not in This Together
In Australia, Tasmania and Queensland have closed their borders to other Australians. Regional areas of the state of Victoria are whining that people from Melbourne are unwelcome.
In the U.S., President Trump tweeted about quarantining New York City. Florida is imposing a 14-day self-quarantine rule on travelers from Louisiana, New York State, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Texas has enacted a similar regulation. Alaska and Hawaii have completely isolated their states.
In some countries, visas have been cancelled and “foreigners” asked to leave by the earliest available flight.
During March 2020, from the Bahamas and Florida to Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, and Australia, multiple cruise ships were stranded at sea, and denied entry to ports—a grim reminder of ships carrying Jewish refugees during WWII.
The Guardian has reported anecdotal evidence of paramedics and nurses in the U.K., and doctors, nurses, and maids who work in hospitals in India being evicted by landlords, because frontline workers bear a higher risk of contracting COVID-19.
Almost daily we hear anecdotally of Asians being targets of xenophobic abuse.
Deep science will eventually rescue humanity from this xenophobia with accurate and quick tests, quick and easy cures, vaccines, disinfectants, and personal safety gear.
Today, though, everyone on planet Earth is simultaneously viewed as a low-risk native and a high-risk “foreigner.”
Today, though, everyone on planet Earth is simultaneously viewed as a low-risk native and a high-risk “foreigner.” This reasoning of all state and federal governments viewing all foreigners as high-risk is circular. This collectivism would be downed when science enables individuation.
We know now that an infectious disease pandemic pulls us apart—at every level—country, state, region—borders and tempers rise. I can’t recall a single head of state announcement about a travel ban that was issued with an apology to the vast numbers of the uninfected affected by a balance of probabilities.
4) The Deep State Controls the State
The “Deep State” is the powerful army of bureaucrats and influential “experts” that work for government departments, government-owned organizations and media, influential NGOs, or academic institutions. Postmodernist, neo-Marxist philosophy has long since become entrenched in the Deep State. Their messages are unquestioningly propagated by the MSM. Their actionable policy advice to governments can only be ignored at the government’s peril.
Even conservative parties with a high majority in Parliament have been unable to withstand the Deep State’s policy assault.
This pandemic has revealed that strong-willed leaders of even conservative parties with a high majority in Parliament have been unable to withstand the Deep State’s policy assault.
The narrative control is total. There’s virtually no discussion in the MSM about the aftereffects of ripping the bottom out of a debt-laden, retail-intensive economy, about the tradeoffs, about alternate modeling and its policy implications, about new research, or experimental treatments.
All there is, is the coronavirus body count, the official advice repeated ad nauseam, and the daily news briefings of more initiatives to protect our lives and livelihood.
To gauge how this barrage shapes our minds, see this, from the Mayo Clinic:
X is a potentially serious infectious disease that mainly affects your lungs. The pathogens that cause X are spread from one person to another through tiny droplets released into the air via coughs and sneezes.
What is X? Hint: It’s not coronavirus.
The CDC reports that the U.S. had 8,920 cases of X in 2019. In poor countries, X kills. Across the world, X takes 1.5 million lives every year—27% of those are in India, 9% in China.
If you still can’t guess what X is, read the footnote at the end later.
Meanwhile, the economic master narrative is that the economy is in “controlled hibernation”—the G20 “experts” think the economy is a grizzly bear.
Is the economy a grizzly bear or a complex, interconnected system of intellectual property, manufacturing, R&D, distribution, and respect for property rights and contracting? No discussion. The bear will wake up fine, we are told.
Rent control—a Marxist article of faith—“landlord bad, renter good”—is now embalmed into the conservative credo. Landlords have been advised to defer rents while the bear hibernates, and laws are being passed to disable eviction. The state has secured sweeping powers to control the lease. See NYC is the U.S. Epicenter of the Coronavirus. What a Coincidence!—an infectious disease epidemic worsens due to taxes and rent control. Aftereffects catch up, decades later.
At first, there was openness. The “flatten the curve” mantra was to hold till hospital bed and ICU capacity was in line with high-end projections—then the herd could go out, bit by bit.
But the Deep State no longer entertains discussions. The narrative becomes a directive. The State obeys. Then it barks orders at us.
The Deep State serves its elite objectives. It treats us like sheep. It will lie when it thinks evasion is in the public interest. CDC and the WHO told us not wear face masks, because “they don’t reduce the risk of infection.” And then they said they do, for healthcare workers. It’s what the Cato Institute called “the noble lie.” The experts were trying to preserve face masks for healthcare workers. But even the Times shuddered at this brazen deceit:
Research shows that during disasters, people can show strikingly altruistic behavior, but interventions by authorities can backfire if they fuel mistrust or treat the public as an adversary rather than people who will step up if treated with respect.
For more on the Deep State effects on culture, see Media Wars: The Battle to Shape Our Minds.
5) China Lied. Was WHO Derelict? But the Far Left Doesn’t Care.
Here’s a timeline from Live Mint, which borrows from Yu and others in How Early Signs of a SARS-Like Virus Were Spotted, Spread, and Throttled:
In the first week of December 2019, doctors in hospitals in Wuhan, China noticed a cluster of unusual cases of pneumonia. By the second week of December, doctors knew they were probably dealing with human to human transmission. As cases grew exponentially, Dr. Li Wenliang became a whistleblower. He was taken to a local police station and fined. Sample testing ceased. Samples were destroyed. On January 6, the Times published a report about an unusual sickness in Wuhan. But China continued denying human to human transmission, even after a Thai national, who had never visited the Wuhan wet meat market, contracted coronavirus on January 13. WHO reiterated China’s findings on January 14, stating them as their own.
And yet, Wuhan city authorities then allowed 40,000 families to gather and share food in a Lunar New Year banquet. Millions of Chinese nationals traveled outbound from, and inbound to, China, perhaps some 30-50 million from mid November 2019 to mid January 2020.
Then, on January 22, a WHO delegation to Wuhan did find human to human transmission and Wuhan soon went into lockdown. But by then, the virus had become global.
The Communist Party may still be covering up. Breitbart reported on March 31 that “WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also recently praised the ‘transparency’ of the Chinese response, even though China has reportedly stopped counting ‘mild coronavirus cases.’”
Yet, globally, only a handful of conservative politicians expressed outrage. Much of the Deep State did not. The Democrats glossed over it in their debates, conserving their repository of hatred to use against Donald Trump—former prosecutor Glenn Kirschner suggested that Trump be held criminally liable for negligent homicide contributing to mass coronavirus deaths.
For the Far Left, a local epidemic that China exacerbated into a global pandemic is only an opportunity to remake the world, as any crisis is.
As for the Far Left, a local epidemic that China exacerbated into a global pandemic is only an opportunity to remake the world, as any crisis is. Cries went out globally to insert caveats in the trillions of dollars of stimuluses—Green New Deal provisions and requirements to abide by new speech norms (to censor social media posts that don’t meet the establishment’s “Fact Check”).
This is nothing new for the neo-Marxists. They would be drooling like hungry wolves to get their hands on the extended-shutdown-delivered economic carcass. With liberties already suspended, it would be just too easy for them to remake industry in their vision.
Above all, we must stop them.
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Footnote: X is tuberculosis.
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About the Author: Vinay Kolhatkar
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