In 2020 the government waged war on a virus relying on unreliable evidence. Sound familiar?
UK government like most Western Governments is gearing up to build, back better, a great post-war reset.
But to reset and build back better, first raze the economy, get rid of old normal and replace with a “new normal”.
And what’s more, there’s plenty of infrastructure money to build back better available via China Communist Party’s [CCP] Belt and Road initiative.
Johnson called the virus the gravest threat since World War 2.
99% of us have a functioning immune system which defeats this virus as the first line of defence. That inconvenient truth has been obscured by the fog of war.
In 2020 Boris Johnson conscripted us all to lockdown, to mask up, to socially distance, to take part to defeat “the enemy.”
Lord Melchitt style, Johnson sent many over the top to die for the cause.
The cost of life from lockdown alone by the Government’s own assessment will be 200,000 dead, that’s before the loss of longevity caused by a recession.
Many have died at home from a treatable heart attack. They answered the wartime call to “stay home, save lives, protect the NHS.”
Those who sacrificed their lives, their well-being, their jobs, their businesses, their savings, their mental health to lockdown to “squeeze the disease” are forgotten. Their sacrifices are unacknowledged. Their memorial the blue and white face nappies littering our public realm, choking our oceans.
The elites need cannon fodder when they go to war.
Every war needs a shortage. Particularly PPE sourced from the CCP. And a war hero walking around his garden.
And the odd part of this war was that no one has really questioned where this enemy, the virus, has come from. Strange huh? Given how much havoc it has caused.
It’s an odd zoonotic virus, this novel coronavirus. Unlike every zoonotic virus known to science, this novel coronavirus has only a 93% rather than 100% match to the equivalent virus found in the source, pangolins and horseshoe bats. It’s not as if horseshoe bats are native to Hubei or Wuhan. And no one’s made it a priority to ask or investigate. Weird, no?
Where did that 7% gain of function come from? That 7% are the hooks on the surface of the protein spike that attach to the ACE receptors in the host, us. That’s what makes the virus different. It latches on and gets a free ride on our ACE receptors to wreak havoc with our cells.
The spike protein comes from a bat and the receptor-binding motif comes from a pangolin, with the insertion of four amino acids. Neat design eh? What a mash-up! Banging!
And if this chimaera virus had previously been created in the Wuhan laboratory then the creator must have changed its name on the bioinformatics data which stored the genetic sequence of the virus list. The Wuhan lab might have left a big clue there.
But we are not allowed to talk about that elephant in the room.
The official line is the virus came from those pesky animal markets in Wuhan where a major international centre for viral research happens to be located.
Let’s ignore the fact that this spike protein is the active ingredient in the Pfizer vaccine BNT 162b2 which has a genetic sequence number MN908437.3 and that genetic sequence was man-made according to the whistle blower working at the Wuhan Laboratory.
Even if the Chinese whistle blower’s whistle becomes louder, let’s ignore that.
Who’d want to launch a bio-weapon which would destroy much of the World economy, curtailing freedom and creating a vaccine demand for the active ingredient?
And the other really odd thing about this war, this public health crisis, this mortal enemy.
Strange kind of war where very little time, money or effort has been spent at any of the daily press conferences on the first, second and third line of defences:
If you were in charge of these press conferences surely some time would have been spent on these topics:
1. How to build up our immune system.
2. How to manage stress to avoid the immune system being compromised.
3. How to look after our mental health.
4. Year on year comparisons on deaths from flu-like illnesses.
5. Graphs on how many people have committed suicide.
It’s a very strange lens for public health when only one illness is looked at. Most bizarre.
How did our political class manage to wage this war so successfully? Closing pubs without there being widespread civil disturbances is quite an achievement.
Well, the government deployed the three weapons of modern warfare borrowed from the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]: public opinion warfare, psychological warfare and legal warfare.
In this three part post we will look at the deployment of each weapon:
1. Public opinion warfare:
This part looked very difficult. For example who in their right minds would agree to pubs being shut? Or Schools?
For years we were told that our bodies were sovereign. John Stuart Mill started it in On Liberty:
“Over one’s mind and over one’s body the individual is sovereign”
No one had any right to mandate any form of preventative or therapeutic medical treatment on us, except in court ordered special circumstances.
UN Declarations were signed.
That was our legal right. If we wanted to have treatment, we could. If we wanted to take the risk, we were free to do so. Our choice.
2020 was year the government made our decisions for us, collectively and communally.
Similar to CCP’s mandated one child policy.
The UK government uniquely and illegally determined what preventative health measures we each had to follow.
With a nod to CCP China, our right to refuse to consent was taken away. Our individual sovereignty was crushed. Ironical eh? In Brexit year.
Until 2020, people decided what to do if they were ill with a flu like virus. Most stayed home. The obligation not to spread a virus up to 2020 has been a very effective social norm. If ill, limit contact with others and stay off work until you were better. Easy. In 2020 norms were replaced with laws.
Public opinion looked like a hard one to win over. But it was a quick win. That ground was soon taken. The public demanded to be locked down. How did that happen?
When the pandemic was declared we were told that there was a new virus called Novel Coronavirus which caused a disease called COVID-19. The marketing people at WHO must have anguished for hours what to call this new virus and disease. Branding is key at launch.
In the past when a new type of respiratory virus has been found the WHO has named it after the place it was first identified.
For example a new strain of flu virus was named by the WHO after Wuhan in 2005 having been found in 1995.
The new strain was called A/Wuhan/359/95(H3N2).
So the new virus and disease was found and named and a pandemic or war was declared on the virus by the WHO.
As there was said to have been no known therapeutic for this disease WHO advised we would have to rely on non-pharmaceutical interventions [NPI] to stem the spread.
The CCP led the NPI way by locking down.
Lockdown started in CCP China.
CCP China acted as a template for the rest of the world. CCP China that role model state where millions of Uighur Muslims are detained in concentration camps, the inmate’s bodies used for organ harvesting and medical experimentation.
CCP China had a key role in influencing the West to go into lockdown.
Here’s a forensic analysis conducted by US Attorney Michael Senger showing CCP’s use of social media in the West to achieve lockdown first in Italy and then the UK.
That disinformation campaign included 43% of tweets in favour of a UK lockdown emanating from CCP China together with Facebook advertising.
“In March, Chinese state media bought numerous Facebook ads extolling China’s pandemic response; all of them ran without Facebook’s required political disclaimer.”
Many of those advocating lockdown on social media were bots from both CCP and Russia. State deployed bad actors to manipulate an emotional response to achieve lockdown.
Initially Boris Johnson’s response was to remain neutral in the war, he played his tried and tested, century’s old, herd immunity card, rather than the NPI joker.
Psychologically primed to see herd immunity as the equivalent of genocide, the media and public bayed for lockdown.
Then what happened?
In February Mr Johnson agreed to stand shoulder to shoulder with the CCP stating that he loves China.
Boris folded. He locked down. Strings pulled?
It’s not as if the CCP did not cut ties with those countries not playing lockdown ball.
Declare an emergency, announce extraordinary measures, forecast implausibly high number of deaths. Colour code the messaging. Trigger emotions. Fear overcomes reason.
Agree via Ofcom that all media had to tow the line and not carry any “harmful disinformation.”
Manufacture consent. Deploy yougov.
Carpet bomb with data. Rain data down hard on their heads. Day in day out. Pound them with data. Wear them down with data. Pie chart facepalms. Weaponise graphs. Load powerpoint. Shock and awe percentages. Blindside with statistical confidence intervals. Camouflage the truth.
The assumption being the public won’t wade through the weeds to analyse the data.
Job done.
And let’s face it the government was pushing at an open door with the British public. We will make sacrifices when asked to do so for the public good. UK has a long and proud tradition of charity and voluntary work. The public accept and trust civil service advisers.
We are a tribal lot. If our newspaper, our social media influencer, our political party are all getting behind the government’s actions we will follow suit.
We trust our tribe. The left trust the Labour party and the Guardian. The right trust the Telegraph and the Tory party. All sang their support for lockdown loudly.
Finally most of the developed West followed a similar template of lockdowns and masks. Comfort in numbers.
They can’t all be CCP wrong ‘uns can they?
Let’s ignore that some of the West have been marching in lockstep with CCP China.
Belt and road Jacinda.
Or easy to compromise, money worries, belt and road Boris.
Or belt and road king of lockdowns Daniels.
Or belt and road Macron.
Or belt and road Merkel
Or belt and road Trudeau.
Or belt and road Italy.
Nor Dr Tendros, he of genocide and WHO fame.
President Trump being the outlier.
All these people must be acting with integrity, mustn’t they?
All clean as a whistle. No?
It’s not as if there are allegations being made in the USA about politicians being compromised sexually and financially by a CCP spy. Appropriately enough called Ms Fang Fang.
If this was a health emeregency rather than a political game surely the WHO would want to learn from CCP’s arch enemy Taiwan?
Getting the Mainstream Media [MSM] onside during this war has been easy. The MSM has been supine, unquestioning and uncritical.
They have acted as cowed mouthpieces of government not even daring to ask whether Ferguson’s model had been “sexed up” or a man accused of genocide, Dr Tendros, is the right person to lead the WHO response. Perhaps fearing what Mr Epstein might expose?
Many people’s opinions are formed by their newspaper, and as most newspapers have accepted the policy of lockdown and masks uncritically then this was a quick win.
Social Media has followed suit. Algorithms have been manipulated to ensure that harmful “disinformation” such as upping vitamin D intake, or considering HCQ and zinc, questioning lockdown or masks, has been censored. Even the OffGuardian website has been branded as “unsafe.”
The political parties have offered no opposition to lockdown. All of the established power organisations are behind the government measures.
Our universities have for the most part offered uncritical support for lockdowns, masks and social distancing.
And of course who better than Boris Johnson to use the NHS as an opinion forming tool. He has form after all.
Every Department of Health graphic during covid has been accompanied by the NHS logo. The public instinctively trusts the NHS, it is part of the UK’s furniture to such an extent we had a whole section glorifying the NHS at the London Olympic opening and closing ceremonies.
The NHS’s reputation stands or falls by how effective or harmful the non-pharmaceutical interventions are considered to be. The NHS has played a large part in shaping opinion to accept these NPIs during covid.
This Professor suggesting blood on the hands of non-mask wearers?
But the same Professor also set up his own medical equipment supplies business on 3 January 2020, Panthair Limited.
Prescient eh?
Those who opposed the need for the warfare or the carpet bombing approach, no matter how distinguished, have been marginalised, derided and the one person who has forensically gone through the data and statistics, Carl Heneghan, has been called an “outlier” by our Health Secretary. I’m sure that won’t worry him.
So shaping public opinion has been the easy part.
All the movers and shakers for forming and shaping public opinion have been cheerleaders for the government’s actions.
The real thought leaders, those examining the data closely, those offering alternative options, those querying the graphs have been cancelled, de-platformed and been name called. Par for our political discourse.
As ever in warfare it takes courage to put your head above the parapet. Keeping your head below parapet has always been the safer and more cowardly option.
It’s useful when you are in a battle for the public’s opinion to have a derogatory name ready for those who disagree with the “consensus”.
The term covidiots was born and applied liberally to anyone who for example might think that cloth masks were useless.
It’s not as if masks were used at Guantanamo bay to humilate detainees during the Iraq War.
An excellent summary of how the UK has earned the nickname Prison Island.