Sunday, February 23, 2020

Covid-19

In this post I will depart a mite from the standard purpose of discussing issues that relate to human liberty directly and touch upon one that could strike deeply, however obliquely, to the same issue.

There is much debate over whether covid19, the so-called "corona virus" of Chinese origin, is a weapon.  If you know the basics of that which drives bioweapon design, the confusion should subside at least in good part, though your unease may not.

There are a few holy grails after which the designers seek:

1: long latency (incubation) period.  Thus far it is confirmed the latency is at least 14 days with some reports claiming as much as 24.  This is quite long, so here we have a mark in favor of this being a weapon, and a rather suspicious one at that.  Think of how far and how many people may travel from a single place in two weeks' time in this age of air travel.  China with its billion and a half people could have thousands of individuals in every nation on earth in much less time than that.  Thousands of highly contagious people could spread the virus to such an extent that there comes with it effectively zero hope of containment on any mass scale.

1a: And what if the actual latency varies between individuals such that in some people the agent incubates at intervals counted in months?  Highly varying latency between individuals reduces predictability, which leaves people in a state of relative uncertainty not only as to the nature of the bug, but diagnostically, and also in terms of how human organizations such as "government" tend to respond.  The less predictable the bug, the more difficult becomes our decision-making processes, diagnostics, etc.  The longer a bug has to spread and the less telltale the outbreak pattern, the better for the wielder of the weapon.

2: Sudden onset.  The virus appears to bring on symptoms rather suddenly.  Mark the second, if a less convincing one.

3: High contagion during latency.  It seems clear that the covi19 virus is at least very contagious during the latency period, if not wildly so.  Mark the third.

4: High lethality.  Because the numbers reported are not to be trusted, especially those offered later in the reporting cycle, it becomes very difficult to determine the rate of lethality.  The possibly less-massaged numbers from January suggest a lethality of around 30-35%, which is very high.  Those figures may not be representative of the truth, but then again the same may be said for those reported later on, which suggest far lower danger.  Therefore, we remain in limbo on the question of the kill rate.  But if perchance lethality is that high and this bug goes pandemic, which it now looks like it may, we are talking about nearly three billion dead at the speculated rate.  Let us hope it proves less lethal.  We cannot quite issue mark the fourth due almost certainly to the lies of the Chinese government.


5. A vaccine exists.  If a vaccine already exists, and thus far there is no way of knowing, then the likelihood that covid19 is a weapon comes to perhaps 95% or greater.  No mark in favor due simply to a lack of data.

We see three of five elements are marked in speculative favor of the covid19 virus being the product of willful human endeavor pursuant to the goal of developing a weapon.  Sixty percent is not quite damning, but it gives great reason for pause.  If this proves to be a weaponized organism, nobody should be surprised.

With this issue arise potentially great implications for human freedom as this is the precise sort of chaotic circumstance that permits for enormous force behind a tyrant's moves to gather ever greater power and false authority into his hands at the cost of individual liberty.  In this sense, a pandemic of a highly lethal biological agent is functionally no different than that of a more conventional "terrorist" attack.  It is, in fact, far greater a threat for any of several reasons, not the least of which is that the parties responsible always hold some plausible deniability.  If there is no positively identified enemy beyond "mother nature", then there is nobody against whom to train one's weapons, further meaning there could possibly be no secure victory against the instrument of one's destruction.  This is the brand of chaos that could be employed as the justification for utter usurpation of all power, whether by design from the get-go or by the pure opportunity of happenstance.

The justification of public health and national survival, when couched in the context of a general terror of a deadly plague, stands to meet with near-universal public acceptance.  Frighten people sufficiently and they will surrender to you anything you might demand, if you can convince them even for a brief moment that you and only you are capable of delivering them from catastrophe.

Whatever the truth, I would advise one and all to keep their eyes on this issue to see how "government" ultimately responds.  My tendency is to expect further claims to power with commensurate denigration of the individual prerogative.

Let us hope this does not prove out in the worst way imaginable, but be prepared for it in any case.

Be careful out there, and as always please accept my best wishes.

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