Danger! Escaped Virus: The Kleptogarchy part 27

Danger! Escaped Virus

COVID-19 had been rampaging around the world for over two years when this was written early in 2022. Worldometers[1] reported that at 11.16 am on January 21^st, there had been 343,519,703 cases and 5,595,019 people had died, a mortality rate of 1.63%. Covid-19 is not over, but even so, the rapid development of vaccines should hold the death rate below that of the ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic of 1918-1920. That virus infected about 500 million people, roughly one-third of the world’s population at that time, and resulted in the deaths of 50 million, a mortality rate of 10%.[2] The figures are estimates, because at the time casualty reporting was less comprehensive than today, but it’s thought that the mortality rate from Spanish flu – so called because the first published reports of the malady were in Spain – was over six times higher than from Covid-19. Put another way, between 1918 and 1920 the flu killed 2.78 people in every hundred, while Covid-19 has claimed, so far, just over seven in every TEN THOUSAND. The Spanish flu was around 42 times more lethal than Covid-19 has been so far. The comparison is not intended to minimise the danger from Covid, but to draw attention to changed attitudes to death. As a species, we tend to expect technologies, including medicine, to save us from premature demise, and when a disease shows signs of outwitting restorative measures, people become scared and anxious, states of mind probably exacerbated by the decline in religious beliefs. In China, the Communist Party overdosed on power when in spring 2022 Shanghai authorities locked the 25 MILLION residents in their homes and apartment towers in a bid to stop the spread of Covid. People who tested positive were removed to quarantine centres, at least some of which were unhygienic, uncomfortable and even in the open. Soon videos were circulating of locked-in residents yelling, shouting, screaming, from their windows. They were hungry, lacking medication, terrified of indefinite lockdown without any support. A fire in any of the myriad towers would be catastrophic, far more so than Covid, because in many cases the residents would be prevented from escaping. Authorities were even erecting high metal fences at the base of apartment blocks, to stop people from exiting from doors or windows. The Communist Party appeared not at all concerned about the damaging impacts on residents’ physical or mental health. It was as if the functionaries were given a task, to stop people passing Covid to each other, and decided upon extreme lockdowns regardless of all consequences, several of which could be worse than Covid itself.

Other misfortunes are looming ominously on the horizon, yet until Russia started bombing Ukraine in February 2022, Covid attracted more headlines. It was already with us, after all. We tend to worry less about major catastrophes that are probable but have not happened yet, than about less universally fatal events that are with us right now. The inherent uncertainty of the future is one reason. You might escape a disaster, the disaster might not happen anyway, or if it does you might be dead already. When the question is framed as ‘what is the risk to me personally?’ the answer is probably very different from ‘what is the risk to life on this planet’? If we start with universal risks and make personal risks contingent upon that body of information, our own assessments should be more realistic. 

The refusal of kleptogarchic potentates to reign back their activities in the interests of the planet as a whole has damaging impacts on the health of plants and animals including humans, including the loss of good health as the biosphere sickens. A 2020 study in BMJ Open, investigating through a literature review the effects of climate change on human health, cautions:

“However, the health framing of climate change information is still underused in climate communications, and researchers suggest we should be doing more to make the link between human health and climate change more explicit to increase engagement with the climate crisis.”[3]

The study proposes that

“…future studies should investigate in greater depth the impacts of climate change on mental and broader social well-being. Indeed, some reviews suggested that climate change impacts psychological and social well-being, via broader consequences, such as political instability, health system capacity, migration, and crime, thus illustrating how our personal health is determined not only by biological and environmental factors but also by social and health systems. The importance of expanding our scope of health in this field is also recognised in the most recent Lancet report, which states that future reports will include a new mental health indicator.”

The potentates may conclude that there will always be somewhere safe for them, some unaffected corner of the globe where lives of luxury will still be possible, but like everyone else they are still susceptible to ill health resulting from global heating. The BMJ Open study found that:

“…most reviews suggest an association between climate change and the deterioration of health in various ways, illustrating the interdependence of our health and well-being with the well-being of our environment. This interdependence may be direct (e.g. heat’s impact on dehydration and exhaustion) or indirect (e.g. via behaviour change due to heat.) The most frequently explored and consistently supported associations include an association between temperature and humidity with infectious diseases, mortality and adverse respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological outcomes. Other less frequently studied but consistent associations include associations between climate impacts and increased use of healthcare services, some adverse mental health outcomes, adverse nutritional outcomes and adverse occupational health outcomes.

The term ‘adverse occupational health outcomes’ refers to the serious situation of impaired capacity, physical and mental, to carry out normal day to day activities, including the work of maintaining economies and societies, and indeed of repairing economies to outlaw kleptocratic, super-extractive tendencies.

What happens when heat distress is allied to debilitating conditions such as Long Covid? The UK’s Office for National Statistics reported on May 6^th 2022 that 2.8% of the population appeared to be suffering from Long Covid.[4] They self-reported, with major symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath, loss of sense of smell, and lack of concentration. We do not know the length of time that Long Covid can persist, or whether other symptoms will emerge. Could Long Covid be an example of ‘gain of function’, the processes by which scientists aim to make viruses into biological weapons? Did Covid-19 really emerge from a live animal market in Wuhan, China, or maybe from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?[5] Have the Chinese authorities imposed such harsh lockdowns because they are worried about gain of function weakening their own population? I cannot answer these questions, but the knowledge that several nations including the USA, UK and Russia have biological weapon programmes raises the prospect of future accidental and deliberate use.

Even if Covid-19 has not been ‘enhanced’, even if it has spread naturally from one species to another, we do now know that the variants of Covid are easily transmitted, and that global travel increases the speed of transmission. We can expect additional epidemics. Monkeypox, a zoonosis, was first identified in humans in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1970. At the time of writing, monkeypox was spreading in North America, Australia, and several countries of Western Europe. Humans piling pressure on the natural world, and the heating world imposing stress on all habitats, are potential health emergencies – even before considering the appalling threats of biological weapons.

---

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/. Worldometers is owned by data company Dadax Ltd.

[2] ‘COVID-19: a Comparison to the 1918 Influenza and How we can Defeat It’, by Shu Ting Liang, Lin Ting Liang and Joseph M Rosen, Postgraduate Medical Journal Vol 97 Issue 1147, 2020, https://pmj.bmj.com/content/97/1147/273.

[3] ‘Health Effects of Climate Change: an Overview of Systematic Reviews’ by Rhea J Rocque, Caroline Beaudoin, Ruth Ndjaboue, Laura Cameron, Louann Poirier Bergeron, Rose-Alice Poulin-Rheault, Catherine Fallon, Andrea C Tricco and Holly O Witteman, BMJ Open Vol.11 No. 6, https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/6/e046333, accessed March 29^th 2022.

[4] ‘Prevalence of Ongoing Symptoms Following Coronavirus (Covid-19) Infection in the UK’, Office for National Statistics, May 6^th 2022.

[5] ‘Coronavirus is a Biological Warfare Weapon’ by Robert Skopec, HSOA Journal of Clinical Studies and Medical Case Reports, December 31^st 2020. https://www.heraldopenaccess.us/openaccess/coronavirus-is-a-biological-warfare-weapon, accessed May 26^th 2022.

---