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

< 1x

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

Sir Patrick Vallance Covid “herd immunity” interview, March 2020

SSir Patrick Vallance urges "herd immunity" on Sky News, 13 March 2020

Covid Pandemic: Government and “Herd Immunity”

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.

TRANSCRIPT: The government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance tells Sky News that about 60% of people will need to become infected with coronavirus in order for the UK to achieve “herd immunity”.

Sky News 13 March 2020

Sky News: the uk’s chief scientific adviser who joins us from Westminster good morning to you. The big question here is why the advice that is being given to our government does seem to be different to the advice being given to many other governments who are taking much more stringent action

0:14
Sir Patrick Vallance: well we’ve got a panel of a very world leading scientists across epidemiology mathematical modelling viral OG clinicians and we’re taking input from leading academics to come try and come up with a plan that actually does what we want it to do and it doesn’t mean that the others are doing something wrong and in fact much of the advice and much of the actions if you look at them they’re trying to achieve the same thing and that is to try to reduce the peak of the epidemic flatten it and broaden it so that you don’t end up with so much intense pressure on healthcare systems at one time so that’s one aim is to reduce transmission try to make sure that we end up with a broader epidemic not a very sharp one that overloads the system and the second of course is to protect the elderly and vulnerable and to make sure that during that peak they are protected as well as you can because that’s the group that stand the biggest chance of having a serious outcome from this

Delaying the spread

1:18
Sky News: many people are asking the question and it has to be legitimate as to why if you’re trying to delay the spread of the virus and people can understand why you would want to do that while we basically seem to be allowing society to continue as normal you know that there’s no lockdowns there’s no shutdowns of schools or education facilities there’s still people going to restaurants and the theater isn’t that actually being gonna be problematic in terms of trying to delay the spread of the virus

1:51

PV: So the UK has actually done a good job of contact tracing and isolating so the first phase of this means that we’ve a little bit behind we in terms of where the outbreak is compared to others and the measures that were announced which is about self isolation even if you’ve got very mild symptoms will mean a large number of people actually at home being isolated because of this infection that’s a very big measure actually it’s going to have quite a big impact across a number of households a number of people so I don’t think that’s a trivial measure it’s all and all the modelling suggests that these sorts of measures and the other two that we discussed yesterday the ones that have the biggest impact there are other things which you’re quite right of things that do have some effect and and come in at the right time and mass gatherings is the one that keeps coming up and mass gatherings of course are a place where you can potentially get infection from somebody but the alternative is also important that if you’re not at the mass gathering you’re at a small gathering
2:52
and most of the transmission of these types of viruses occur in small gatherings not in big gatherings and therefore this concentration on getting people who got symptoms into their house isolated potentially the next step to last households to do it so you contain the whole thing in a household and making sure we protect the vulnerable and elderly are the first three things we need to do doesn’t cause stop the possibility that even relatively soon you need to do more than that but getting this right and making sure that we can monitor the outbreak is absolutely key.

Modelling

3:28
Sky News: you talk about the modelling Jeremy Hunt the former health secretary last night was talking about the modelling saying he would like to see if modelling particularly better behavioral science which he seemed to imply was taking some sort of precedence over the epidemiology

3:42
PV: oh I don’t think that’s correct, I mean I, I think the modelling and the behavioral science and the clinical input come together. It’s not absolutely not the case that behavioral science takes a predominance. But of course it’s an important consideration and it is the case of course that if you completely locked down absolutely everything probably for a period of four months or more then you would suppress this virus. All of the evidence from previous epidemics suggests that when you do that and then you release it it all comes back again so the other part of this is to make sure that we don’t end up with a sudden peak again in the winter which is even larger which causes even more problem.
4:25
so we want to suppress it not get rid of it completely which you can’t do anyway not suppress it so we get the second peak and also allowing us enough of us who are going to get mild illness to become immune to this to help with the sort of whole population response which would protect everybody.

[NOTE: China eradicated the coronavirus by day 43 of their 76-day lockdown that began 23 January 2020, almost two months before this interview]

4:46
Sky News: Yeah I mean that that herd immunity I know you talked about yesterday when you were appearing with the prime minister and in terms of building up a herd immunity within the UK. Well I mean what sort of percentage of people need to have contracted the virus?

5:01
PV: Probably about 60% or so and we think that this virus is likely to be one that comes back year-on-year become like a seasonal virus and communities will become immune to it and that’s going to be an important part of controlling this longer term.

SN: Sixty percent?

PV: Sixty percent is the sort of figure you need to get herd immunity.

Sir Patrick Vallance Telegraph GSK deferred shares

Death rate

5:25
SN: I mean even without even looking at the sort of the best-case scenario and I were talking last week and you were saying you know half of one percent to one percent fatality in something like this that’s an awful lot of people dying in this country.

5:39
PV: Well I mean of course we do face the prospect of as the Prime Minister said yesterday of an increasing number of people dying that is a real prospect this is a nasty disease
5:50
for most people it’s a mild disease. It’s important to know we don’t know yet nobody knows what proportion of people have this who are completely asymptomatic so the only cases that we’ve really got at the moment are people who’ve had symptoms or largely people who’ve had symptoms …

[NOTE: Vallance ignores China figures nearly two months after the Wuhan lockdown 23 January 2020. China bought us time, western interests frittered it away. Long Covid, damaging our immunity system, is now a sort of HIV in slomo.]

6:07
… that means that even estimating exactly what the death rate is from this is quite difficult because there may be many more people that haven’t been detected yet and that’s why some of the new tests that are being developed now going to be so important so we can really understand how this disease is spreading and we don’t have a handle on that yet.

Response

6:26
SN: In terms of our response so there’s a couple of points I want to put to you one the former Prime Minister of Italy was talking to Sky News yesterday you said yesterday we’re about four weeks behind Italy don’t you want to avoid being like Italy and their former prime-minister saying don’t repeat our mistakes don’t waste time

6:46
PV: yes it

SN: should we not heed some of that advice?

6:49
PV: I think I think my comments about being behind Italy about where we were on the the unmitigated curve of the epidemic we’ve been working on this since the beginning of January so this isn’t something that suddenly groups have come together to think about yesterday this is a group of people that have been working very hard on this giving advice over the whole time what we don’t want to do is to get into knee-jerk reactions where you have to start doing measures at the wrong pace because something’s happened so we’re trying to keep ahead of it we’re trying to lay out the path so people can see what the actions are that are being advised and then of course it’s up to ministers to decide which of those actions are the most appropriate to take so I completely agree with the Prime Minister of Italy you do not want to be caught on the back foot on this.

Prof John Ashton

7:37
SN: Professor John Ashton, who I’m sure you know, former director of public health England for the Northwest region, he said the response so far has been wooden and academic

7:50
PV: Well I think John will have his views on this and they’re perfectly legitimate lots of people have got views on this I think that what we’re trying to do is feed in the most up-to-date and relevant advice we can to enable sensible decisions to be made at the right time and of course during this sort of thing there are lots of people lots of different voices coming from all sorts of angles and if you listen to all of them they are largely mutually incompatible so it’s impossible to keep everybody happy with any response you do and that’s why we’re trying to base it on the best possible advice [!?] and actually the whole point is that this is very practical advice based on the science not something that actually is meant to be an academic exercise at all.

8:32
SN: Oh Sir Patrick you have the advantage of not being a politician although I know you don’t get to have the final say in all of this but are you prepared if this changes if you look back at this in a week and say you know what this hasn’t been the right action how flexible are you prepared to be in changing your position in your advice to the government?

8:52
PV: absolutely I will base it on the evidence and my job as chief scientific advisor is to is to speak scientific truth to power and say it as it is and that’s exactly what I will do

— Sky News transcript ends —

It gets even worse …

POSTSCRIPT 22 August 2024:

In October 2020, “herd immunity” is formalised by the Koch-funded Great Barrington Declaration, opposed by most of the science community. Because the coronavirus mutates faster than, say, chickenpox or measles, on top of the mortality rate, it is impossible to achieve mass immunity when the virus keeps changing. You wouldn’t deliberately expose yourself to cholera or typhoid.

At the start of the pandemic there were two competing strategies, Public Health versus Big Business interests. Various figures such as Lord Sumption have railed against lockdowns as being bad for business, reinforced by the establishment media’s attacks on China’s efforts which were twisted from “China bought us time” to “China lied, people died”.

However, in contrast to the UK and US, China had a clear aim: 1) Containment – Stop the virus transmission and spread; 2) Suppression – Decrease or stop community transmission; 3) Mitigation – Lower and delay the epidemic surge to reduce health-care demand.

China eradicated the virus by day 43 of their 76-day lockdown. They held up for two years but were finally overwhelmed by variants stewed up in the superspreader West and had to reopen.

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

China’s strategy eradicated the virus by day 43 of their 76-day lockdown. They held up for two years but were finally overwhelmed by variants stewed up in the superspreader West and had to reopen.

China had proved eradication was possible but Big Pharma had other aims. The UK and the US had the worst death rate in the world. The powerful, deeply entrenched anti-vaccination, mask and lockdown lobby illustrate the success of the Business strategy — class conflict at its sharpest.

THE NUMBERS – OFFICE OF NATIONAL STATISTICS (ONS): The BBC reports that more than 44 million people in the UK were estimated to have had the virus between April 2020 and February 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Based on the survey, the estimated peak of the pandemic, in cases if not in deaths, was in late March 2022, where at one point about 4.9 million people were thought to have the virus. Just under 227,000 people died in the UK with Covid-19 listed as one of the causes on their death certificate. Since 9 December 2020, nearly 176 million Covid vaccines have been administered in various stages up to May 2023.

A HISTORY OF HERD IMMUNITY – THE LANCET: September 2020, “… any proposed approach to achieve herd immunity through natural infection is not only highly unethical, but also unachievable”. Sceptics raised other concerns, observing that other coronaviruses induce only transient antibody defences. … COVID-19 mortality in the UK and the USA has already taken a disproportionate toll on poor and minority groups, a reflection of systemic racism and poverty.

Herd Immunity to Fight Against COVID-19: January 2023, “… due to repeated mutations of the virus, it is evolving into new strains with more severity. Its consequences on the immune system and response to a vaccine are still a big challenge to overcome … The main barrier to acquiring herd immunity is that SARS-CoV-2 is undergoing frequent mutations in its spike protein, causing changes in its genome sequence and resulting in various modifications in the virus”

Herd immunity and COVID-19: What you need to know: “Herd immunity may not be possible when viruses change a lot in a short time, as with the virus that causes COVID-19. Reaching herd immunity is harder if a disease can be spread by people who catch the virus but don’t have symptoms”

The Government’s official advisory body of scientists including Patrick Vallance, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), is challenged shortly after its “herd immunity” advice by the formation of Independent SAGE, by scientists unaffiliated to government, in May 2020.

Reuters: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic. Well this was obvious. Why only release this information in the run-up to the November election? 14 June 2024

Guardian: Hancock and Hunt failed to prepare UK for pandemic, Covid inquiry finds 18 July 2024 "Health secretaries failed to fix flaws in contingency planning before Covid killed more than 230,000 in UK." No-deal Brexit took priority.  Well, I did warn that geopolitical strategy to maintain western hegemony went: Brexit > Covid pandemic and now a nice war to divert attention and pillage the wealth of our global lifeboat and growth-engine. 18 July 2024

The Covid Pandemic: how coronavirus was weaponised. Covid pandemic timeline, commentary and research by Anna Chen as it happened

Originally posted at Anna Chen's website Covid Pandemic pages

Suzy Wrong at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival - 30th anniversary

Suzy Wrong, Stereotype Slayer, hits the Edinburgh Fringe Festval

Thirty years ago today, I took my show, Suzy Wrong Human Cannon, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a historic first by a Chinese Brit.

It was a ground-breaking challenge thrown down to the degrading stereotypes embedded deeply in western culture, and it succeeded in making visible the pernicious way in which these representations thrive. And it was done by a Chinese woman, not a distanced academic with no skin in the game.

Yellow Peril tropes of vacuous Lotus Blossoms and evil Dragon Ladies had been around ever since the 19th century Opium Wars demanded subjugation of Chinese through dehumanisation as well as military conquest. When the target group is no longer recognised as human, Empire can perform all sorts of dog-whistle tricks to manipulate its own population into morally reprehensible behaviour from exploitation to outright war. This is particularly effective and serves a dual purpose if the domestic population is also directly suffering from its ruling classes' predations, but doesn't know who's doing it. Now you see it, now you don't. Hey, blame this group, instead.

In 1994, I'd half suspected my show might not be necessary. After all, surely we were all sophisticated enough to recognise the stereotypes of evil, dishonest, cheating, Fu Manchu creatures and reject them. The screening of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, at the same festival I was playing, disabused me of that optimism.

Sadly, the wave of character assassination in the Western media regarding the Chinese Olympians at Paris 2024 confirms what I've been warning for several years. They are back with a vengeance and being served up to a beleaguered home population in search of scapegoats for the social and economic wreckage wrought by successively savage rounds of government.

Crude scapegoating started in earnest after Obama's Pivot to Asia with Trump's Trade War. It was closely followed by US NED colour revolution attempts and the klaxon-horn accusations of the Covid pandemic as public health was weaponised.

So what's changed for Suzy Wrong?

So what's changed in 30 years? What would Suzy Wrong see that's different in our brave new world order since trailblazing her view at the Pleasance Theatre in Edinburgh in 1994?

First, there's over 800 million raised out of absolute poverty, a growing middle-class of 550 million, nearly twice the size of the US, a 97% satisfaction with the governing Communist Party of China, according to Harvard/Pew research. Pollution is on the wane as China gets to grips with renewables and blue skies are now the norm.

Their economy was motoring ahead until the US decided to put the boot in and then pretend that slow-downs have somehow happened organically, rather than resulting from wave after wave of hate-fuelled sabotage. China's phenomenal success engenders jealousy and they now have to contend with an Opium Wars 2 shaping up as the declining western nations seek the bludgeoning success of old Empires, now that they have little creative left to offer.

Cultural scar tissue

Although China is finding ways around these obstacles, this still leaves scar tissue. Culturally, there's a new colonialism rising as this stuff mutates and adapts. It's disappointing to see that China still hasn't thrown off its adoration of the white man from nearly two centuries of being beaten down. Andrew Tate only has to say something nice about China for uncritical Chinese media to lose their minds and fawn. Mediocre latecomers shove facts around a narrow bandwidth and middle-level bureaucrats throw their weight behind them as they're dragged into bad habits; mostly reactive, unable to project ahead or discuss principles and anything in the abstract.

And, of course, nothing is true unless a white or non-Chinese person says it is true. This takes us full-circle back to the 1870s downturn in the American economy when it took ten "Chinamen" to equal the voice of one white man and a "Chinaman's chance" meant no chance at all.

The harder the West attacks China, the more a significant strand seems to retreat into the old feudal thinking that the OG communists worked so hard to yank them out of. The effects of the psyops are sad to see.

Stuck at Technocrat Level

China has thrived, surpassing the west as technocrats. It has reached the highest levels in the face of unremitting hostility from the declining superpower. The ironies of hostile American policies boomeranging and propelling China to new standards of technological excellence are a pleasure to watch, proving necessity is the Mother of Invention.

However, the same pressures show signs of forcing a contraction of the recent explosion of China's renewed consciousness into old patterns of racial self-doubt and sexism. The West's efforts to contain China are not simply about economics and warfare — they've set their sights on China's cultural and psychological development into its new modern era, of which only 50 years have passed, a mere blip in history.

Have women peaked with former ambassador to the UK Fu Ying (2007-9) and the wonderfully womanly Liu Xin in the Chinese media? Both of whom I wish I'd had as role-models when I was growing up. Tiny girl-women put through elfin filters set to max with high tinkling voices now seems to be what pleases men.

Watching developments, I'm hoping this is just two steps forward and one step back, not a full stop. I'm reminded of the virtual reality game in Three Body Problem where civilisation gets so far and then is lost on the surprise turn of a star.

Raise your game, China. Don't lose the fight at the Technocrat level.

More about Anna Chen

New poetry videos and a cultural feast from Anna Chen

Anna Chen's poetry and politics at TikTok

Culture and politics converge in Anna Chen’s video surge

I’m delighted to announce I’m adding more videos to my long form writing as found extensively on this website. I’ll be spreading the love to TikTok and YouTube.

My TikTok page got off to a promising start with POE, my funny poem about Edgar Allan Poe, garnering 218K likes in a week. Oh, now 219.3K. Yup, who knew the dark story-lord had so many fans? I’m going to keep this up. It’s not like I’m short of material, heh! Please bookmark the pages and follow.

Political and cultural commentary feature as it’s my contention that they are not separate but inextricably linked in service to power. It’s just that the West is so much better at it. That’s not a surprise considering that the US poured so much money into its cultural domination wars.

Culture wars always and everywhere

For example, spearheading the international art world with its wave of modern art. Francis Stonor Saunders explains this brilliantly in her book, Who Pays the Piper? I bought this when it was published around 2000, having been told about this corner of the culture war as a yoot by British artist and critic Patrick Heron in my home-from-home in St Ives, Cornwall.

Hollywood is well known as operating as the main arm of the US propaganda machine with many books and articles now available about the role of the CIA and the Office of Strategic Affairs in its movies. Whoah! Did you know that Hollywood suppressed the Weinstein revelations under the influence of Certain Parties?

One reason America is so good at concealing its mass manipulation is that it’s had decades of practise in its advertising industry. Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders is the classic text on this subject.

America has an army of psychologists with nothing better to do than researching new and more effective ways to twist your melon completely out of shape. This has added to the the already existing Yellow Peril tropes embedded deeply in Western culture ever since the 19th century Opium Wars and the eight-nation alliance of murderous bandit powers that maimed and pillaged China for a hundred years.

I’ve been investigating this geopolitical friction from Empire for 30 years, ever since I took Suzy Wrong – Human Cannon to the Edinburgh Fringe festival in 1994 — a first for a Chinese Brit. See my various writings on this such as Yellowface: the erasure of a race, Sinophobia and the political roots of racism, and A Permanent Reservoir of Scapegoats and many more.

Poetry videos and radio series

In addition to my culture and poetry videos, and having the perfect face for radio, I’m going to be uploading 16 episodes of my pioneering ResonanceFM series from 2013 and 2014, Madam Miaow’s Culture Lounge. I’m aiming to get these up on YouTube and at this website over the rest of the year. So do have a listen to what someone straddling two major cultures since birth has to say about them.

Boomers poem at TikTok

The Diss Persists poem at TikTok