One explanation I found intriguing is that some illnesses are body cleanup processes. If your friends or family take ill, you yourself take ill as well, starting the cleanup in response to theirs. Kind of like throwing up, where the smell of vomit makes other people more likely to throw up. The smell of vomit is a non-verbal way to spread a warning about bad food.
Two other tentative lessons might be mentioned, but data are still lacking:
1) The vaccines deployed in China (Sinovac, Sinopharm) did not seem to protect Chinese from getting infected with Omicron; however, the government has published no comparative data. Nor is there any data examining whether or not the vaccines had any measurable effect on the severity of illness.
2) Three years of energetic containment measures apparently led to a highly susceptible population. The result was an Omicron tsunami which washed across China, infecting hundreds of millions of people at record speed and resulting in the death of large numbers of elderly. Would fewer people have died if Covid-19 had not been held at bay for so long? The answer is not clear, but it is without a doubt a key question.
Hi, thanks for your articles. I have a question about this statement:
"in Shanghai the cremation backlog is so severe that as a rule, multiple corpses are now being cremated together, thus commingling the ashes."
I've never seen any credible evidence from any country that health services, including crematoria, really were overwhelmed. It was clear to me that backlogs, bed shortages etc. were due to the treatment of Covid-19 differently to other infectious agents i.e. obsessive quaranting, cleaning, bureaucratically-imposed staff absences and PPE practices. Do you know if this could be a factor in Shanghai?
PS I note in one of your answers to another comment on this article that lockdowns may have caused a kind of backlog of elderly deaths brought on by respiratory illness. My understanding is that much of China was not in extended lockdown throughout the pandemic? I had the misfortune to live in one of the lockdown centres of the world, the state of Victoria in Australia. Before Covid really took hold here in early 2022, we experienced waves of other respiratory infections like the flu, other colds and RSV each time we came out of a 4 month lockdown.
Great analysis! Just a couple of thoughts below w/r to China.
How do we know that folks in China actually ran PCR-tests??? WE DON'T. WE CAN'T.
And, given that tens of thousands of swabs (or more) were taken daily in each city, for months on end, how could it be ensured that all samples even arrived at testing centers, were tested, tested properly and accurately, equipment properly maintained, instrumentation properly calibrated for each run, everything sufficiently stocked on time as needed, and all test results accurately matched back to the samples??? THAT'S MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE/IMPROBABLE. (Check with Dr. Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park fame.)
Therefore, it's most likely that tests WERE run, though quite likely not as many as samples collected, but that "results" were most likely randomly selected. And, folks were notified of their test "results" via phone. How easy would that be to pull off??? VERY.
All the city (ward?) managers (sorry, I forget the exact term) were tyrants and incredibly inhumane to residents (having them welded into their apartment blocks, for example), and "cheated" and lied (like busing sick folks to other cities/wards), in order to be able to tell those above them that their city is compliant with Xi's demands of "zero COVID". What wouldn't they stoop to in order to keep up that narrative in order to not displease Xi??? NOTHING. NADA. BUTKUS.
I'm curious about what the basis is for this statement: "Without a shred of a doubt, transmission of some illness-causing factor is taking place. This can happen by direct human to human contact but also within buildings, especially between households above or below each other. From what was observed in southern Chinese border cities, it is hard to avoid concluding that some kind of infectious genetic matter was literally blowing across borders."
My interpretation of 'success' of Chinese lockdown is not like yours. Quarantine of the young and healthy only delayed what turned out to be worse in terms of infectiousness and spread, and I believe the emotional impact of isolation, being deprived of effective treatment and comfort, love, and care from loved ones, killed far more medically vulnerable and frail elderly than would otherwise have happened. Isolation breaks the transmission line while you are isolated, but you are unable to get any normal pathogen challenges to maintain general up-to-date resistance and memory immunity, and no coronavirus exposures that can provide some cross-immunity, and then when isolation ends you're a sitting duck for Omicron or whatever else they manufactured without your political consent when it became clear that the original man-made strain wasn't infectious or deadly enough to achieve what was intended. Don't the case numbers show exactly that?
“statistically speaking the correlation with the PCR test results was extremely high, a result some Western observers find very difficult to accept”. Thank you for this compelling case. In Australia, the virus/infectious agent was successfully contained for long periods of time via strict geographic isolation, and lockdowns when deemed necessary by the authorities. Nevertheless, and despite continued widespread and frenetic testing, resisters in Australia still overwhelmingly claimed the PCR test had something like a 1% positivity rate. I couldn’t find anyone here who would consider that our experience in Australia simply did not bear out the claim… It seemed they would prefer to latch onto any opposing idea to the official narrative instead of deal with the challenges that come with consistent rigour.
This report confirms most of what I already knew, and confirmation bias is what trolls will call it!
Lockdowns are disastrous, at best all they do is delay the inevitable.
All lifeforms on earth do indeed shed toxins, and they are many methods of transmission, as toxicology often parallels virology.
Also, the testing likely isn't what they tell us, at best it shows DNA damage, or antibody activity, nothing more!
You write: "Without a shred of a doubt, transmission of some illness-causing factor is taking place."
Studies that have looked for transmission have found none. If you take 10 people with flu and 100 without them, scientists have not found a way to get the 100 to pick up flu. They made them breathe in each other's face for minutes, fed them coughed-up slime, and even injected blood into their veins. https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/spread-of-spanish-flu-was-never-experimentally-confirmed-9f91b37c4dd8
One explanation I found intriguing is that some illnesses are body cleanup processes. If your friends or family take ill, you yourself take ill as well, starting the cleanup in response to theirs. Kind of like throwing up, where the smell of vomit makes other people more likely to throw up. The smell of vomit is a non-verbal way to spread a warning about bad food.
Two other tentative lessons might be mentioned, but data are still lacking:
1) The vaccines deployed in China (Sinovac, Sinopharm) did not seem to protect Chinese from getting infected with Omicron; however, the government has published no comparative data. Nor is there any data examining whether or not the vaccines had any measurable effect on the severity of illness.
2) Three years of energetic containment measures apparently led to a highly susceptible population. The result was an Omicron tsunami which washed across China, infecting hundreds of millions of people at record speed and resulting in the death of large numbers of elderly. Would fewer people have died if Covid-19 had not been held at bay for so long? The answer is not clear, but it is without a doubt a key question.
Lets look at the bright side - check out all the clean nostrils!
Mask science
https://geoffpain.substack.com/p/how-masks-capture-your-exhaled-covid19
Hi, thanks for your articles. I have a question about this statement:
"in Shanghai the cremation backlog is so severe that as a rule, multiple corpses are now being cremated together, thus commingling the ashes."
I've never seen any credible evidence from any country that health services, including crematoria, really were overwhelmed. It was clear to me that backlogs, bed shortages etc. were due to the treatment of Covid-19 differently to other infectious agents i.e. obsessive quaranting, cleaning, bureaucratically-imposed staff absences and PPE practices. Do you know if this could be a factor in Shanghai?
PS I note in one of your answers to another comment on this article that lockdowns may have caused a kind of backlog of elderly deaths brought on by respiratory illness. My understanding is that much of China was not in extended lockdown throughout the pandemic? I had the misfortune to live in one of the lockdown centres of the world, the state of Victoria in Australia. Before Covid really took hold here in early 2022, we experienced waves of other respiratory infections like the flu, other colds and RSV each time we came out of a 4 month lockdown.
Great analysis! Just a couple of thoughts below w/r to China.
How do we know that folks in China actually ran PCR-tests??? WE DON'T. WE CAN'T.
And, given that tens of thousands of swabs (or more) were taken daily in each city, for months on end, how could it be ensured that all samples even arrived at testing centers, were tested, tested properly and accurately, equipment properly maintained, instrumentation properly calibrated for each run, everything sufficiently stocked on time as needed, and all test results accurately matched back to the samples??? THAT'S MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE/IMPROBABLE. (Check with Dr. Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park fame.)
Therefore, it's most likely that tests WERE run, though quite likely not as many as samples collected, but that "results" were most likely randomly selected. And, folks were notified of their test "results" via phone. How easy would that be to pull off??? VERY.
All the city (ward?) managers (sorry, I forget the exact term) were tyrants and incredibly inhumane to residents (having them welded into their apartment blocks, for example), and "cheated" and lied (like busing sick folks to other cities/wards), in order to be able to tell those above them that their city is compliant with Xi's demands of "zero COVID". What wouldn't they stoop to in order to keep up that narrative in order to not displease Xi??? NOTHING. NADA. BUTKUS.
I'm curious about what the basis is for this statement: "Without a shred of a doubt, transmission of some illness-causing factor is taking place. This can happen by direct human to human contact but also within buildings, especially between households above or below each other. From what was observed in southern Chinese border cities, it is hard to avoid concluding that some kind of infectious genetic matter was literally blowing across borders."
Can you elaborate?
The biggest problem with the data from China is that much of it simply makes no sense.
To take the Chinese data at face value, we have to ponder why COVID-19 is so much worse inside China than outside.
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/the-continuing-epic-fail-corporate
Unless we address that reliance on China’s COVID data is simply unwise.
My interpretation of 'success' of Chinese lockdown is not like yours. Quarantine of the young and healthy only delayed what turned out to be worse in terms of infectiousness and spread, and I believe the emotional impact of isolation, being deprived of effective treatment and comfort, love, and care from loved ones, killed far more medically vulnerable and frail elderly than would otherwise have happened. Isolation breaks the transmission line while you are isolated, but you are unable to get any normal pathogen challenges to maintain general up-to-date resistance and memory immunity, and no coronavirus exposures that can provide some cross-immunity, and then when isolation ends you're a sitting duck for Omicron or whatever else they manufactured without your political consent when it became clear that the original man-made strain wasn't infectious or deadly enough to achieve what was intended. Don't the case numbers show exactly that?
There is only one lesson to be learned from the Chinese Covid experiment. Do not trust any information coming out of the CCP ruled country.
“statistically speaking the correlation with the PCR test results was extremely high, a result some Western observers find very difficult to accept”. Thank you for this compelling case. In Australia, the virus/infectious agent was successfully contained for long periods of time via strict geographic isolation, and lockdowns when deemed necessary by the authorities. Nevertheless, and despite continued widespread and frenetic testing, resisters in Australia still overwhelmingly claimed the PCR test had something like a 1% positivity rate. I couldn’t find anyone here who would consider that our experience in Australia simply did not bear out the claim… It seemed they would prefer to latch onto any opposing idea to the official narrative instead of deal with the challenges that come with consistent rigour.