Attacking China Rebounds On America’s Little Helpers

Anna Chen – 13 December 2024, Trump on China

The Shanghai skyline at night

US Allies Learn A FAFO Lesson In Geopolitics

This article might contain chickens – and not just our leaders

The list of nations who did US bidding and are now in trouble looks alarming.

Who’d have thought that ganging up on China, our global lifeboat and growth engine that hasn’t had a war in over four decades, would have consequences? It’s almost as if there’s a cosmic rule we might term “FAFO” — F**K around and Find Out. A matched pair with “Honi soit qui mal y pense” — evil to those who evil think — going to the dark side is proving costly.

And this time, China might not save us the way it did after America’s 2008 Great Financial Crash. So play nice.

Karma’s Naughty Step Round-Up: The Master Race

USA: Joker’s in the White House once more, this time bringing all his friends. Not only won’t the mighty US be immune from polio if the quacks get their way, it won’t be immune from any recession created by Donald Trump’s coming tariff binge either. China’s trade and tech ascendence looks inexorable no matter what the fading hegemon throws at it.

With self-reliance now an existential imperative, China finally responded to years of a one-sided protectionist trade war with a $690 Billion cut to US imports, ending America’s privileged role as a key supplier. US agriculture is already reeling from the self-inflicted gut punch, losing its biggest buyer of soybeans — down to 18 percent this year and falling. Other industries are following suit.

Cry for the US people but not for its elites who are doing fine, thank you.

GERMANY: From cock of the Euro roost in one of the three dominant global blocs to chicken dinner not a winner. Chancellor Olaf Scholz swerved Germany from its prosperous China trade trajectory to aiding the rival US bloc in NATO’s war in Europe.

Not one inch eastwards, keep Ukraine neutral and don’t get involved with the 2014 coup: that’s all you had to do. Instead, replacing cheap Russian gas with America’s expensive LNG has wrecked Germany’s industry. And now you’re sailing warships through one-China’s Taiwan Strait?

War ‘n’ poverty, huh!, who is it good for? Absolutely no-one. The electorate knows this, lost confidence in Scholz and is about to punish him at the ballot box.

FRANCE: Similarly with President Emmanuel Macron, whose newly-appointed Prime Minister Michel Barnier has been ousted in a vote of no confidence, replaced by Francois Bayrou. Wants to continue EU tariffs on China where Scholz saw the light but too late to stave off disaster. A tough guy Sophie’s choice – who to please? Macron promises to continue war against Russia if Trump commits coitus interruptus and pulls out, but can the French afford it?

CANADA: Justin Trudeau’s constant stream of China invective can only ingratiate and deflect from Canada’s dire economy for so long, especially now that the “friendly” US is about to rack up trade tariffs on its neighbour to the north. Trump actually told him: 25 percent tariffs or become America’s 51st state. “Governor” Trudeau’s limp trade tariff retaliation and Ontario energy threat against the 300 pound bully is fooling no-one. One of America’s Viking war party. Another white settler nation that climbed aboard the USS Titanic to its own detriment.

AUSTRALIA: After the UK’s spectacular Brexit self-harm, the next US ally to reverse its own fortunes was Australia. This is, after all, the home of the boomerang. Perfectly placed to prosper from its Asia locale, Oz folded like origami under pressure from that other, bigger white settler colony that wiped out its native peoples. Right on cue in April 2020, ministers Peter Dutton and Marise Payne blamed China for Covid. China. Their biggest trading partner buying a third of their produce and putting two jet-skis and multiple cars in every Australian driveway when the global economy was melting down in the US Great Crash. That China.

Never mind, the trade was picked up by the US whose farmers were delighted to have a huge new market vacated by Oz. AUKUS is a similarly painful stitch-up costing billions and making them a target in any proxy war America might have out East.

UNITED KINGDOM: Now fully morphed into US Airstrip One. May enter recession soon. A tiny island excrescence off the arse end of the Eurasia landmass from which we could have prospered had we not done the dirty and splintered the EU bloc in service to the US. It is the monkey most likely to be used to teach the other monkeys a lesson.

Farewell, post-war liberal order. Hello, Oligarchy.

Karma’s Naughty Step Round-Up: Pacific Rimmers

SOUTH KOREA: President Yoon Suk-yeol makes Dracula’s Renfield look like a model of independence and rectitude. Yoon crooned embarrassingly to American Pie for Joe Biden in the White House, literally and figuratively. His constant drone of anti-China drivel may have pleased his masters, but he over-reached when he attempted a coup back home and declared martial law.

The US didn’t leap to his aid, quelle surprise. Horrified mass protests not seen in the country for decades put him back in his box within a few days. Under threat of impeachment he suddenly blames China for his actions. Kids, do not grow up to be like this.

JAPAN: Occupied by America since the end of the Second World War, and stagnating since the 1980s Plaza Accord hobbled its economy, Japan is in no position to buck orders. October’s snap election lost the ruling coalition its parliamentary majority. Shigeru Ishiba, Prime Minister since October, is not having an easy time.

PHILIPPINES: In 2022, the young country elected Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, son of the famed kleptocrats with all the shoes, gallon bottles of Chanel and bullet-proof bras financed by America. After the US cooled off collecting the $3.9 billion tax owed on his late father’s plundered funds since he took office, Bongbong undid the stable relations with the regional superpower and pinned a target on the island nation by extending it as a US base. A growing economy that could easily be curtailed by war.

Chief talent: stirring conflict in the South China Sea. The US is not a member or upholder of UNCLOS.

Who’s Still Kissing The Ring?

So. NATO, under threat of defenestration by the incoming Trump administration, finds itself another project now that Ukraine is likely off the menu: getting that Viking raiding party together. Blaming China for its own messy losses to Russia, NATO has conveniently discovered China’s “strategic competitor” status from 2017 now that Donald Trump has been reelected and everyone knows what he wants.

Oh no, says a face-palming Mark Rutte. We picked a fight with a sleeping dragon that can build munitions faster and better than we ever dreamed. Better kick it some more.

Don’t say: What’s China got to do with the North Atlantic?

Do say: Give us more impossible tasks to perform. Where do I kiss?

When China Was Our Global Lifeboat

It’s amazing to remember that only eight or so years ago the world was enjoying relative stability as China’s productive economies of scale kept inflation near zero; there were few flashpoints, and the global south was headed economically north. The Great Crash was over, thanks to China’s intervention. Wall Street was happy. We were all friends.

However, America’s best days were over. The Crash had exposed its weaknesses and, although China saved it, no good deed goes unpunished when you are supposed to be king of the heap. Seeing America’s green-eyed monster squaring up to the dragon, the IMF’s Christine Lagarde pointed out we were at last emerging from the USA’s Great Financial Crash of 2008 in sync, so don’t f**k it up!

Did they listen? Heck, President Trump doubled down on Obama’s Pivot to Asia and began his mobster move on the rising superpower, threatening to turn the Golden Goose into a dead duck.

What was Donald Trump’s trade war REALLY about? (Anna Chen 2018)

When Trump’s trade war failed to bring China to its knees, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) backed riots in Hong Kong. The protest leaders were treated like movie stars in Washington and mentored by the old imperialists. Nancy and Joshua in a tree. K. I. S. S. I. N. G.

Hong Kong’s last colonial governor and BBC Trust chair, Chris Patten, even wrote the foreword to their figurehead’s manifesto because Chris wants his Empire back and no steenkin’ Joint Declaration signed by Britain and China is gonna stop him. Even though the last six words of the pertinent clause promises Hong Kong will enjoy full autonomy, “except in Foreign and Defence Affairs“. Six little words that are always left out. Funny that.

China exercised its right to a National Security law in Hong Kong, just like everyone else in the world, and drew the former Opium Wars colony into the bosom of the motherland.

Under the West’s relentless pressure, China’s growth plummeted … to 5 percent. And it still outstripped the covetous band of declining nations now lining up to pillage the rising superpower like a bunch of Dark Age Berserkers drunk on bull’s blood, testosterone and memories of when they were the Master Race.

(EDIT: And don’t even get me started on Covid …)

China And Its Inventions: Anna Chen On The Radio 2014

Anna Chen – 4 November 2024, China and its inventions

YOUTUBE, Pt 1, Episode 15: Anna Chen presents Chinese Can’t Innovate Says Boris Johnson, ResonanceFM 2014

China Takes The Space Exploration Baton And Flies With It

In the week that Shenzhou-19 transports three fresh taikonauts to the Tiangong Space Station and the Shenzhou-18 crew return safely to the Gobi desert in Inner Mongolia, China’s space marvel remains largely ignored by the media.

True, we don’t get to see that much of the International Space Station, either. But whether this is due to embarrassment that two astronauts have been stuck there for months thanks to Boeing, or the crumbling state of the space station, or plain old ennui, we can only guess.

It should be noted that the fading glory of NASA’s space programme is fondly remembered by many of us who were transfixed by the early missions proudly broadcast by the richest country on planet Earth.

What adds to China’s accomplishments is that, as a developing nation also having to take costs into account, it’s taken the baton and is rocketing with it. This seems as good a time as any to revisit what they’ve been up against and how far they’ve come.

Shenzhou-18 lands in the Gobi Desert, 3 November 2024, carrying 3 taikonauts from the Tiangong Space Station. 35 year old Li Cong is Shenzhou-18 lands in the Gobi Desert 3 November 2024, carrying 3 taikonauts from the Tiangong Space Station. 35 year old taikonaut Li Cong is shortlisted for future moon missions.

Entering The High-Tech Era

The first decade and a half of the 21st century was an information vacuum in the UK when it came to China matters. We were aware that the nation brought in from the cold by Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and Mao Zedong in the 1970s was chuntering along nicely, making the affordable goods that allowed us to live beyond our means. Inflation was at an all time low of near zero and we were busy buying lots of stuff.

I’d managed to write and present a raft of programmes with a wide range of unexplored themes for the BBC. In 2010 I broke through the Great Wall of Silence and made “China, Britain and the Nunzilla Conundrum” for BBC Radio 4, pointing out that China was about to leave its suicide factories making our tat far behind as it propelled itself into a new phase of its modern era. Not only was Chinese industry on course for making high-end tech, but lots of it utilising their vast economies of scale in production. Few believed it.

In discussing the rising superpower, you were constantly faced with the age-old obstacles of invisibility and degrading depictions as untermenschen, and character-assassinating demonisation if they got too uppity. Devoid of a balanced approach to a potential equal, the West took a schizoid view; wanting their cheap goods and massive investment but hating them for our dependence.

Some politicians and commentators coped with the decline by reviving degrading tropes about Chinese that I’d hoped were gone for good. Bubbling away in the background, the whole gamut was run from theft, dirt and cruelty to subhumanity, And yet it was these comic book villains who saved the world from the crippling US Great Financial Crash of 2008.

Attitudes remind me of the 1870s America economic downturn when the Chinese became the scapegoat for America’s ills, leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

In 2014, fed up with the constant bleating denigrating China, our global growth engine, I devoted Episode 15 of my Resonance FM radio series to China’s phenomenal abilities.

Up until Britain forced narcotics onto China in the 19th century Opium Wars, China had been the most technically advanced country on the planet. They invented the seed drill 2,000 years before Jethro Tull did in 18th century England. Metal stirrups allowed Ghenghis Kahn to conquer half the Eurasia landmass up to Europe. They had astronomy, and invented the first plastic in lacquer, the compass, paper money and gunpowder.

Here’s your chance to catch up with an early discussion about China’s innovations, recorded at Resonance 104.4 FM in London as part of my pioneering Madam Miaow’s Culture Lounge series.

RADIO MINI SERIES Parts 1-5, Episode 15, 15 April 2014: China’s Innovations On YouTube And TikTok
RADIO MINI-SERIES Part 1 (above): “Chinese are incapable of original thought,” said the London mayor in 2005. Now look what they’ve achieved. Anna Chen presents Part 1 of the Madam Miaow’s Culture Lounge ResonanceFM104.4 radio series, Episode 15: China’s Scientific and Cultural Innovations and the Opium Wars. The 2008 Beijing Olympics debuts China’s technological advances in a stunning opening ceremony and shows the world how far it has come. Live broadcast London, 15 April 2014.

Part 2: China’s Scientific and Cultural Innovations from the seed drill to the metal stirrup and the first plastic.

YOUTUBE Ep15 Pt2 China’s Scientific & Cultural Innovations – Anna Chen 2014

RADIO MINI-SERIES: Anna Chen asks How did Europe get to dominate the world after China’s spectacular early technological success for nearly two millennia?

RADIO MINI-SERIES: Anna Chen asks How did Europe get to dominate the world after China’s spectacular early technological success for nearly two millennia?

Anna Chen presents The Opium Wars, Part 4 of Episode 15: China’s Scientific and Cultural Innovations. Madam Miaow’s Culture Lounge at ResonanceFM104.4

YOUTUBE Anna Chen presents The Taiping Rebellion (Revolution or Civil War), Part 5 of Episode 15: China’s Scientific and Cultural Innovations.

RADIO SERIES – FULL EPISODE: Anna Chen Presents MADAM MIAOW’S CULTURE LOUNGE, Episode 15: China’s Scientific and Cultural Innovations – at ResonanceFM, 15 April 2014. Includes a rare, early discussion on the Opium Wars. Groundbreaking series recorded 2013-2014.

YOUTUBE FULL EPISODE 15: China’s Scientific and Cultural Innovations – Anna Chen Resonance FM, 2014

The West Is Freaking Out About BRICS Summit 2024

Anna Chen – 25 October 2024, BRICS

BRICS Summit, Kazan 22-24 October 2024

BRICS Context For The Detractors

Schadenfreude and Karma had a baby and you can hear it squealing halfway around the globe following yesterday’s positive news about the BRICS summit in Kazan. The young trade organisation may have overtaken the US economy in 2020 and doubled its membership in a year but I’ve seen a blizzard of articles and social media throwing up every imaginable objection to its success. Thar be dragons!

So to put BRICS in context, here goes …

China saved the world from USA’s 2008 Great Crash that threatened global depression. Their cheap goods kept inflation near zero. Despite this, when they caught up with the US, the West unloaded all its propaganda resources against them in a character assassination blitz. Now the West wants war.

Bitter BRICS bleaters currently shrieking all over social media about how it ain’t gonna work should have a rethink about who’s saying this and why.

Spanked By Dollar Supremacy

How many BRICS members have been sanctioned or had their money confiscated by western banks? How many have had their resources pillaged by Empire? How many are excluded from SWIFT, the international payment system?

The US overplayed its hand so this is where we are.

Since the US appropriated most of the world’s gold during World War II, resulting in the Bretton Woods dollar reserve system, it has abused its dominance with increasing ferocity. It ditched gold in 1971 for paper money which it prints on a whim. It’s now $36 Trillion in debt.

BRICS not only has most of the world’s gold, at least one core member, China, has been buying up gold at a tear. So BRICS is backed by actual gold, material resources and huge economies of scale in production of affordable goods. The US relies on world resources. Which is why all it has left is conquest.

Dollar Not So Good For Americans

If you think the US intends being kind to the global south currently flocking to BRICS, you should check how the US exploits its own population. The only growth you can see is homelessness, poverty, rotting infrastructure, despair and drug addiction.

How is this possible in what was the world’s largest economy?

In a nutshell: greed. Beyond the nutshell, we could look at the capitalist cycle of shrinking profitability, late capitalism and capitalism being its own gravedigger. All Illustrated nicely for us when the elites appropriated the national wealth in tax cuts & short-term profiteering without investing anything back into its people.

The richest nation on the planet doesn’t even have proper High Speed Rail. The few miles that have been belatedly built cut dangerously across roads, unlike China which invests in tunnels and raised sections where needed.

America’s top 0.1 percent owns 13.6 percent of total wealth. The top 1 percent own 27 percent. The bottom half hold only 6 percent. The carve-up hasn’t been this unfair since 1989.

Not satisfied with sucking everything dry, Western elites have regressed, mustering Viking war parties for pillage across the globe but especially intended for the Golden Goose: China. Which hasn’t had a war for 40 years.

To See The Future Look To The Past

This has scared everyone off America.

Look what they did to the Native Americans. To African slaves. That’s the world’s fate if we don’t protect ourselves.

Why would the global south not take defensive measures against economic onslaught and destabilisation? Why would they not see hope in what BRICS has to offer? If we were smart, we would too.

What does China have to offer the UK?

Before poison was dripped and pressure applied by the US, China’s Huawai was building our 5G infrastructure, China was building our nuclear power stations, investing in the North and offering to build our High Speed Rail on a par with their own at lower cost than the ballooning figures that scuppered the project.

We now have none of that.

FURTHER READING: BRICS now the biggest trade bloc on the planet

BRICS Investments Include High Speed Rail

China High Speed Rail on the Fujian side of the Taiwan Strait: Shanghai Eye

China builds the world’s best High Speed Rail: DW Planet

Brightline’s Miami to Orlando High Speed Rail in Florida

BRICS Now The Biggest Trade Bloc On The Planet

UK In Danger Of Being Left Behind by BRICS

Anna Chen – 24 October 2024, BRICS

The dogs bark but the caravan moves on. BRICS is now officially the world’s biggest trade bloc. Saudi Arabia and others are joining the stampede into the core alignment of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which overtook the G7 in GDP in 2020.

The 16th BRICS summit has just taken place in Kazan, Russia, attended for the first time by Iran, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia.

The UK could have been part of this, as promised when we were mis-sold Brexit. At the opposite end of the Eurasia landmass, we enjoyed a strategic advantage. Pole position! The choice with which we were presented was: Go down with the USS Titanic? Or thrive in the new world?

Against the public interest, both Tory and Labour governments have decided to keep us on the sidelines lobbing grenades.

According to Statista:

The BRICS countries overtook the G7 countries share of the world’s total gross domestic product (GDP) in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) in 2018. By 2024, the difference had increased even further, the BRICS now holding a total 35 percent of the world’s GDP compared to 30 percent held by the G7 countries.

Saudi Arabia’s arrival in BRICS dealt a death sentence to the exclusivity of the petrodollar. China and India in the same bloc with GDP growth of 4.8 and 7 percent while the US lingers at less than 3 percent? Game over for the former Masters of the Universe, who really ought to read the writing on the wall and get on board.

Instead, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin imperiously demands a WRITTEN guarantee that BRICS won’t expand an inch westwards. Which should be taken as seriously as when the NATO MILITARY bloc promised not to advance an inch eastwards.

I can’t hear the BRICS reply through the cacophony of raspberries being blown, but we can guess what it is.

The US is still a major power. It will most likely eventually change course when Europe is rubble, and be welcomed with open arms by BRICS, leaving the UK in its dust as it did with Germany when it wrecked their cheap energy supply from Russia. Not forgetting dragging Australia into the AUKUS nuclear submarine debacle targeting its biggest trade partner, China. And then picking up the lost trade. Ouch!

YouTube:Prof Richard Wolff on the 16th BRICS summit: “The most important economic bloc in the world”

BRICS Makes The Dollar An Also-Ran

Declining sharply under the force of geopolitical gravity, the US dollar has been knocked off its perch as the international reserve currency, and is no longer the only game in town. Bretton Woods is toast.

All that “printer go brrrr” racket, piling up $35 trillion dollars in debt and rising fast, is an increasingly precarious option for an imploding hegemon with nothing to back it up except raw aggression. Yo in danger, gurl. Markets aren’t the economy; they’re lipstick on a pig, concealing the peril you’re in. Or “Yellow Peril,” as you so often insist.

We are collectively suspended in the seconds after Wile E Coyote runs off the cliff edge and no-one’s looking down. But the suspense is killing us and we can’t defy gravity forever.

Where are the economic pundits pointing this out? Where are the politicians finding solutions? Where are the trade unions protecting their members?

Remember when the first train carrying goods from China arrived at Barking in East London in 2017? What a gloriously optimistic moment that was. Less than ten years after China saved the global economy from the USA’s 2008 Great Crash that threatened world recession, it signalled emergence from the crisis and the UK’s special place in the new prosperity.

Unfortunately, Starmer (rhymes with self-harmer) and his cohort would rather follow the Tories and drag us into poverty and war than join the real world out there. Here we are, nailed to the USS Titanic and firing torpedoes at our global lifeboat, growth engine and the new BRICS world.

Eight years ago the world was stable, inflation was low, none of you hated China. But then it caught up with the US who unleashed the power of propaganda and now look at you.

EDIT 18:45 24 Oct 2024: A couple of hours after posting the above, I’ve just heard that 159 out of 195 participating countries have agreed to adopt the new payment system currently known as “the BRICS Bridge” to replace the SWIFT system that allows the US to spank anyone defying it. Early days but it promises to be a more just system for the global south and the multipolar world order. Carpe diem – the little guys may get their chance to shine.

I Caught Covid Again: Airborne vs Droplets at the UK Covid Inquiry

Covid Inquiry: modes of transmission denial prolonged the pandemic

First published 14 September 2024

VIDEO: I Caught Covid ... Again! Airborne vs Droplets at the UK Covid Inquiry

Four years shielding and two Covid bouts

I threw up in the night. That makes it five or six times in the past week, over a month since I tested positive for Covid-19 on 4 August.

The exhaustion stopped knocking me out after the first ten days but the persistent nausea and gut disturbance is getting worse. Is this the virus overwhelming my immune system, I ask myself in the light of no spring booster as the government wound down its already pathetic response.

The brain-fog is bad. Balance and coordination all over the place like a drunk. Mostly teetotal, I don’t bump into things this much even after downing my Christmas Baileys. Makes sense when you read, “Cognitive impairments in long COVID are debilitating, at the same magnitude as intoxication at the UK drink driving limit or 10 years of cognitive ageing, and may increase over time … “. (Nature magazine)

Lovely. So I have that to look forward to.

Why is this pandemic still with us after four years?

Airborne vs Droplets paradigm

I hadn’t realised mode of transmission was even in contention. Whether SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted through aerosols or droplets is a rabbit hole I only fell into the other day. It started with a video clip of what I’d assumed was a rare light moment from the WHO’s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus differentiating the word for the aerosol from the US military Airborne (11 February 2020).

But, no, it is an actual, immediate retraction. Only three days after China’s Shanghai press conference informed the world that SARS-CoV-2 is in the air we breathe and requires protection to be stepped-up, Tedros is prompted by Mike Ryan to change his classification from airborne to droplet mode.

And why is this important?

It puts the onus on the individual instead of government and its institutions. It continues use of cheaper, inadequate surgical masks instead of FFP3/2 or N95 masks. It ignores adding ventilation, filters and power-assisted respiratory hoods to the armoury. And it doesn’t protect health-workers, patients or the public.

Hazmat suit clue

Yet, it was obvious in January 2020 that the virus was in the air and required an effective response. We watched China’s healthcare workers struggling in hazmat suits to contain the pandemic. So what was that telling us?

China’s Professor Zhong Nanshan’s confirmation of human-to-human transmission on 20 January was swiftly followed by the Wuhan lockdown on the 23rd. They then warned the world about the airborne nature of the virus in their Shanghai press conference on 8 February.

However, little of this got through to us as our mainstream media were busy throwing dust in our eyes with a vicious China-bashing binge turning our cooperation and understanding into a regular two-minute hate. In scapegoating China, they turned “China bought us time” into “China lied, people died” and buried the management strategy that eradicated the coronavirus by day 43 of a 76-day lockdown. The one that could have saved us.

Down the politicised Covid rabbit hole

So, why, Tedros, why? as many are asking.

The timing of events before and during this pandemic have been startling. So many coincidental dates, such as 18th October 2019 when the annual Military Games opened in Wuhan, the same day as the Event 201 tabletop pandemic exercise launched in New York.

The US 57-page “blame China” manual was published by Mike Pompeo’s Republican allies on 17 April 2020, the same day that Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Marisa Payne did exactly that. Oz Prime Minister Scott Morrison had disappeared a few months earlier during the devastating bush fires for a Christmas break on a US military resort in Hawaii. I wonder what he chatted about with his hosts over Mai Tais. (Hint: he now works for Trump’s former NSA adviser Robert O’Brien in the defence industry as well as with the aforementioned Pompeo in a US venture capital firm.)

And, get this: Tedros made his retraction on 11 February, three days after China’s public announcement that the virus is indeed airborne but only one day after President Trump called for a massive 9 percent $693.3 million reduction in funding for the C.D.C. Which would be hard to do if he’d had the added expense of firefighting a Highly Consequential Infectious Disease (HCID).

Dragging his heels while the stock market ballooned precariously and exploded, it took Trump until 24 February to release a request for $2.5 billion in coronavirus funding. The bill eventually rose to $9 billion.

You’d almost suspect there was some sort of coordination in play.

We know that Trump had pressured the WHO to pin responsibility for the virus on China like everyone else was doing, and deflect from his own mishandling of the pandemic. Trump was threatening to defund the organisation. It should be remembered that Tedros’s home country Ethiopia saw it’s peace broken later in the year. So perhaps the big stick was wielded when the carrot didn’t work.

The Covid Inquiry: Dr Barry Jones

Little did I know at the time of the sharp delineation between droplets and aerosols either side of a 5 micron fulcrum. Neither was I aware of the battle that would cost lives and reputations. But I certainly am now.

Thursday’s UK Covid Inquiry Module 3 shone a cleansing spotlight into one of the dark corners of the science establishment and brought it into public view. I spent last night reading the transcript of Dr Barry Jones’s evidence to the Covid Inquiry. It is truly a shocker on the scale of the government’s care homes “decisions” fatal strategic flaws” that killed so many elderly people and their care workers early in the pandemic. (See also Professor Clive Beggs’ testimony from Wednesday.)

The strategy pushed by the government’s hastily mobilised IPC might well have killed many more and helped shift the pandemic’s trajectory into a malign multiverse I’d rather not belong to.

VIDEO: Dr Barry Jones gives evidence at the UK Covid Inquiry, 12 September 2024

The Precautionary Principle

Did you know that something called the Precautionary Principle is enshrined legally in UN, WHO and SAGE documents as well as Health and Safety legislation? Dr Jones explained at the Inquiry what this means.

As, by their own admission, the IPC cell didn’t understand everything, they were under a legal obligation to choose the safest approach they could take that would protect the greatest number of healthcare workers, their patients and the public as a whole. If there could be a risk, you should take steps to mitigate that risk. “If you think asbestos is in the building, you don’t think about it. You put on a mask.”

It wasn’t needed pre 13 March because SARS-C0V-2 was already classified as airborne by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) since its arrival in the UK. MERS and SARS-1 were already ascertained as airborne Highly Consequential Infectious Diseases (HCID). In the case of a respiratory pathogen like SARS-CoV-2 one has to assume it is transmitted by the airborne route like TB and measles and previous coronavirus epidemics.

Jones emphasised that the aerosol route was understood but even if not, would be categorised as “scientific uncertainty” so the precautionary principle should be invoked as a fail safe.

The hastily appointed Infection, Prevention and Control (IPC) cell that was supposed to write the guidance mysteriously changed that and downgraded the HCID status of SARS-CoV-2 mid-March on no evidence, an action beyond their remit. “It’s not for the IPC chair to reinterpret but that’s what she (Lisa Ritchie) did.”

As a result, the wrong PPE — surgical masks — were advised. These only prevent droplets that act “ballistically,” moving under the force of gravity alone, not aerosols that float suspended as fine particles in the air. Aerosols over the 5 micron distinction can enter and escape around the sides of surgical masks.

This rendered all IPC guidance null and void.

IPC cell a law unto themselves

Creating guidance for a new threat, as was the IPC cell’s job, it’s important to impose that precautionary principle fail-safe early on. “Guidelines should have stayed in place until scientific evidence proved credibly there was no aerosol transmission.”

Dr Jones gave an example that proved pivotal in our collective fate. Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Jonathan Van-Tam emailed that Covid was airborne until proven otherwise. There was no evidence for the droplet route.

But Health and Safety legal procedures were abandoned for Prevention and Control. The IPC specialists who dictated guidance made statements not based on evidence: “You could even call them dishonest statements”. They did not take the precautionary principle in the face of scientific uncertainty.

They didn’t even include natural aerosol generators in the official Aerosol Generating Procedures (AGPs) such as coughing, sneezing and even breathing.

They ignored advice on 14 April from SAGE’s Environmental Modelling Group that the pandemic was likely transmitted by aerosols. Public Health England, essentially one of the IPC cell’s bosses, asked several times over 2020 and 2021 for widened use of respiratory protection but were ignored.

Dr Jones noted that the Guidance authors demanded very high level definitive evidence to prove the airborne route was dominant whilst having no evidence whatsoever to justify the droplet one then or since. “It’s not scientific, it’s a reflection of the culture.”

Aerosols should have been protected against from the outset

Not only the IPC cell but also the WHO initially categorised SARS-C0V-2 as airborne, and then contradicted itself on Twitter and across social media, saying that that “Covid is not airborne. It’s droplets and surgical masks are fine”. Their claim they were following the science is untrue. Neither did they offer any scientific evidence.

The Precautionary Principle was removed from IPC Guidance in mid-March 2020 without evidence, at the same time as HCID declassification.

There are only two categories of HCID: airborne and contact.

IPC Guidance came in on 16 March 2020: “Routes of Transmission – Covid-19 — Similar to 2003 SARS-C0V outbreak”. Despite SARS-1 being designated as an airborne HCID from the start, the guidelines say SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted by respiratory droplets. Again, there’s no evidence for this.

Designated airborne HCID requires standard PPE to include FFP3 masks, not just surgical. So downgrading HCID from airborne to droplet transmitted “except for aerosol-generated procedures” resulted in the only protection afforded being against droplets for all non-AGP situations — the majority of healthcare in hospitals.

No IPC minutes were ever published

Despite advice urging caution, that the disease was airborne with aerosols going up to 100 microns, well above the 5 micron threshold, there were no changes to guidance. SAGE reverted to 5 microns in their June report.

The IPC was still disregarding the Precautionary Principle in December 2020 in a discussion about new variants: “… wary of recommending FFP3 masks,” and “Should look for new evidence first.” “Difficult …. until the evidence is generated.”

Even more ghastly, after all the raging media hostility against China for supposedly denying human-to-human transmission when Professor Zhong Nanshan had announced this very thing on 20 January 2020 after medical staff were infected, prompting the unprecedented lockdown on 23 January, the December IPC notes say: “minimal evidence of patient to staff transmission …” None at home in the UK? What happened to the mountain of evidence from Italy’s experience?

How did they get away with this? Well, no IPC minutes were ever published.

28 IPC cell members agreed in 2021 that the chair had the final decision. And overrule she did. Requests for precautionary principles to be invoked were denied. A quarter of a million Brits are dead with a lot more maimed by the virus.

IPC chair Lisa Ritchie gives her testimony at the Covid Inquiry tomorrow afternoon, Monday 16 September 2024. You really don’t want to miss this one. Transcript here.

The pandemic is not over. Wear a mask. 

COVID TIMELINE vs DONALD TRUMP: 126 dates to remember

Further Reading

The Covid Pandemic, Page 1: How coronavirus was weaponised – natural disaster, man-made calamity
The Covid Pandemic, Page 2: Sir Patrick Vallance’s Sky News “herd immunity” interview, 13 March 2020. Full transcipt.
The Covid Pandemic, Page 3: How “herd immunity” won and changed humanity’s health forever. Public Health vs Big Business conflict.
The Covid Pandemic, Page 4: Medical journals and videos on damage to the brain and immunity system by SARS-CoV-2
The Covid Pandemic, Page 5: I caught Covid again and it’s not getting any better. Covid Inquiry: denial of Airborne vs Droplets mode of transmission prolonged the pandemic
The Covid Pandemic, Page 6: (This page) Covid Timeline vs Trump spin – 126 dates to remember

Anna Chen - political and cultural analysis of US-China relations

How Covid “Herd Immunity” won and changed humanity’s health forever

First published at Anna Chen's website

Anna Chen – 2 September 2024, herd immunity

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Public Health vs Big Business Interests in Classic Class Conflict

They don’t call it “herd immunity” any more. It’s invisible. The new normal. No name but effectively the same. 

If you want to know what the ruling classes have in store for us, here’s a clue.  Why did the US and UK do so badly in the Covid pandemic? 

And why did Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer elevate GSK’s Sir Patrick Vallance to the House of Lords and to government as the Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation for the United Kingdom as soon as he entered Downing Street in July this year? 

“Sir Patrick Vallance diary testimony exposes government chaos at the UK Covid Inquiry, November 2023:” However, attempts to rehabilitate Big Pharma’s man in the government during the crucial pandemic period are undermined by his March 2020 promotion of “herd immunity” against serious scientific evidence, his deferred bonus of 43,111 shares in GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) worth £600,000 from his time as president (GSK is making MRNA vaccines with CureVac), and his attempts to redact certain pages. Despite this, Keir Starmer installs him as his science minister on 6 July 2024. 
SEE SIR PATRICK VALLANCE “HERD IMMUNITY” INTERVIEW FROM 2020

The right undermines the science

Public Health and Big Business battled it out from the start of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020 in an unadorned class struggle. The poorest and ethnic workers had the highest rates of infection and died. Transport workers, nurses and NHS workers can’t work from home. 

As soon as China’s model of lockdown quarantine was raised, political figures such as Lord Sumption railed against lockdown as “bad for business”: “A refusal to examine the collateral consquences. … No society in history has made itself healthier by making itself poorer”. They were rapidly sidelined by growing public awareness of the dangers, informed by respected scientists in publications such as The Lancet. 

However, business interests soon marshalled their forces. 

The mainstream media soon picked a side and it wasn’t public health. Information that China had eradicated Covid by day 43 of their 76-day lockdown was suppressed. Instead, China’s winning strategy was trashed, and the country was vilified, as were health figures who failed to support the Business narrative, such as the WHO’s Tedros Ghebreyesus and Anthony Fauci.

Trump sets the Covid bar low

President Trump set out his stall in the early months, calling the coronavirus a hoax, stigmatising masks and holding superspreader events, despite being briefed by the Pentagon on the dangers of the pandemic on 28 January 2020. We now see the spread strategy revived in the majority of aggressive social media responses, anti-vax, anti-mask which took Trump’s initial position and blew it up into the dominant narrative. 

On 12 March 2020, the day before Patrick Vallance’s “herd immunity” interviews, Trump was forced by the weight of national sickness and death into abandoning his Cnut denial of the pandemic and changed tack, issuing the first social distancing mandates and deflecting by calling it “Wuhan flu,” “kung flu” and “Chinese virus”. 

His U-turn was closely followed by a White House cable to State Departments launching communications instructions “in relation to China”, and on 17 April with the publication of the Republican 57-page “blame China” memo; a training manual for China hawks to attack the rising superpower and Covid patsy. 

And in October 2020, the billionaire Koch-backed Great Barrington Declaration, pushing the discredited “herd immunity,” was released against all serious scientific knowledge. 

This has been a major gaslighting exercise, aided by decades-long US expertise in advertising and mass manipulation using armies of psychologists. 

Herd immunity in all but name

In Britain, we are currently seeing a Covid surge but figures are no longer kept. The media plays it down. The debilitating effects of Long Covid on the immune system – essentially HIV in slomo – are ignored. In the NHS, few wear masks even around immunity-compromised patients. Childhood ailments are on the rise, everyone is getting sicker. but there’s barely a murmur in the MSM. Perversely, when these issued are raised, vaccines are blamed. 

The UK nearly got Covid to zero in first lockdown before the saboteur lobby clamoured to get Prime Minister Boris Johnson to open up early, leaving a reservoir of the virus in the population. Zero Covid is now a dirty phrase. Johnson’s chief science officer, Sir Patrick Vallance, has thrived.

Johnson had previously mirrored Trump, closing down the UK pandemic team shortly after winning the June 2019 general election, around the same time that Trump closed the Beijing branch of the US CDC which was supposed to monitor disease outbreaks. 

Trump had already closed the White House pandemic team in May 2018, with some original team members absorbed into National Security Council chief John Bolton’s new counterproliferation and biodefense directorate which included a weapons of mass destruction unit along with arms control and nonproliferation, and global health and biodefense. 

Population – that’s us.

Like Trump, Johnson’s own superspreader actions were masked by a clownish ineptitude schtick. Amusing, appalling and effective.

Adding to the eugenecist mindset, Johnson declared the need to get the population down in 2007: “…  a horrifying vision of habitations multiplying and replicating like bacilli in a Petri dish.” His own father, Stanley Johnson, has written extensively on population issues, prioritising per capita GDP growth over the population. He says, “In sheer economic terms, how can you sustain an increase in per capita income when you have rising population without rising economic growth? A declining population, which is what I would aim for.” 

Labour’s history in power indicates it is there to manage the decline of capitalism, not to defend the public that elects them. The appointment of the former chief science officer during one of our darkest hours to the House of Lords and government only reinforces that view.

A word on vaccines – Edit 3 September 2024

“Herd immunity” was always about profits before people. 

After initial fumbles, China identified, sequenced and released the SARS-Cov-2 genome to the world by 11 January, within days of finding the “strange pneumonia.” They then used their huge scales of production to make PPE and vaccinations urgently in bulk for a Global South largely ignored by the West. 

However, instead of working to contain and eradicate the virus with the time bought by China, efforts to quarantine the population from SARS-CoV-2 were constantly resisted in the US and UK by the government. 

In America, President Trump’s MAGA allies including The Washington Times, Fox News and Steve Bannon began to “flood the zone with shit,” starting the Wuhan lab-creation rumour just two days before, we are told, the president learnt from the 28 January NSA Covid pandemic briefing how deadly it was. 

Disinformation grew ever more shrill with each of China’s successes. Meanwhile, Trump sent the CIA to gazump all available PPE. 

The race between traditional and mRNA vaccines

The anti-science, anti-vaccination messaging started out trashing China’s vaccinations such as Sinovac (CoronaVac) and Sinopharm which used the traditional inactivated (dead) whole-virus method of inoculation. The Pentagon even set up a secret operation to denigrate Sinovac that was doing most of the world’s heavy lifting. Russia’s Sputnik vaccine was similarly monstered but also proved safe and effective.

Because Chinese vaccinations used the traditional method, and not the relatively new messenger RNA (mRNA) favoured by the western pharma industry, they were produced reliably, earlier, and cheaper. More tolerance and fewer side effects are seen. They were also much easier to store than the West’s mRNA which required subzero temperatures of -80C, a big ask for hotter Asia, Africa and the central and southern Americas. 

One Singapore study of the elderly indicated that 4 doses of mRNA might be more effective than inactivated whole-virus vaccines. Although mRNA has a slightly higher risk of side effects in young males — heart: myocarditis and pericarditis — these are small compared with the risks of catching the disease itself. 

The coronavirus is incomplete RNA, not complete DNA like bacteria, which means it requires a host to survive and reproduce itself. Lockdown quarantine deprives the virus of a host, not only containing it, but starving it to extinction. 

China’s aim was to eradicate the virus. Vaccinations were never a magic bullet. They wouldn’t stop you catching Covid but they would empower the immune system to minimise the damage and stop health services collapsing while the virus died out. That chance was lost. China was eventually overwhelmed by variants cooked up outside its borders and abandoned its Zero Covid strategy, reopening after two years. 

The geopolitical disinformation backfired into a perpetual need for juicy profitable Covid vaccines which many neither trust nor want. As you’d expect, there’s plenty of fighting over the spoils: watch Moderna try to sue Pfizer and BioNTech for patent infringement. This is the industry, after all, that tried to copyright the human genome. 

Then there is Covid medicine. Pfizer is to charge $1,400 per five-day course of Paxlovid. Do the maths and weep.

The pandemic is not over. Wear a mask.

* * * * *

The Covid Pandemic, Page 1: How coronavirus was weaponised
The Covid Pandemic, Page 2: Sir Patrick Vallance’s Sky News “herd immunity” interview, 13 March 2020. Full transcipt.
The Covid Pandemic, Page 3: THIS PAGE How “herd immunity” won and changed humanity’s health forever. Public Health vs Big Business conflict.
The Covid Pandemic, Page 4: Medical journals and videos on damage to the brain and immunity system by SARS-CoV-2
The Covid Pandemic, Page 5: I caught Covid again and it’s not getting any better. Covid Inquiry: denial of Airborne vs Droplets mode of transmission prolonged the pandemic

Chief science officer Sir Patrick Vallance promotes Covid “herd immunity” on Sky News, March 2020