But the obsession with certain data points is often with ignorance and blindness of others. When I first heard about the idea of a "plandemic" my initial thought was that the usual "conspiracy theory" smell test was failed; that is, it would require too many people to be in on the "plan" for it to work and improbable that no-one would fall out of line. Some world leaders, especially the Trumpy kind, could do at a whim. But that was just a gut feeling. The data point for me that indicated that the virus was very real and there was no "plan" (as the conspiracy theory claims) was China, and to a degree also Iran.
The "plan" would have presumed that China decided to be the sacrificial lamb taking all the risk for a global power play that it was not a master of; it would have it inflicting a savage economical bodyblow upon itself, not to mention the shame that it has accrued through this whole chapter by those who claim it was the China virus. Their government is venal and paranoid and neither of these make sense. Even though there are those who would claim that Western governments might use this pandemic as a further control on their own populations, China does not need to use any artifice to control things further. In its crackdowns, it doesn't expend much creative energy at all, because it doesn't need to. It knew more about the virus sooner than any other country and slammed its own economy shut scrambling to suppress what it knew to be a massive threat. I have heard some speculate that it was an elaborate ruse to get the virus to its economic rivals where it would certainly flourish uncontrolled and crush the US, but there was no certainty that it would successfully get out, or be allowed in. Iran is pretty much the same. It had no realistic reason to play ball but still acted as if the virus was real and that measures had to be taken - probably because it was and they had to be.
The same analysis works for the conspiratorial thinkings around Ivermectin and its predecessor hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is similar. The line was that government and public health officials were in the pay of Pfizer and other vaccine companies, let's just call them Big Pharma even though it's sloppy shorthand, blocking the off-patent cheap drug in favour of the expensive vaccines. In a previous post, I mentioned that this was a logical, plausible thesis - but that doesn't mean that it is actually is true. The invalidating data point is again China, and Iran, and Russia and well any country that does not get its vaccines from Big Pharma of which there are many.
Why do these invalidate the conspiracy theory and, by extension, the belief in these drugs' effectiveness? China's vaccine producer is government-owned and is producing and injecting its citizenry with the vaccine for free, and has expended a lot of resources in incentives for it. There is no profit in this venture. Similar to Oceania, they have very strict controls of people into and out of the country with quarantine facilities, and even recently spent hundreds of millions on bespoke quarantine facilities for international visitors. Which has been a huge capital cost and the system itself is an impediment to commerce and trade. Though domestic tourism is far bigger, the border control has crippled its international tourism industry. This is all significant because if there were an effective therapeutic drug that works as prophylaxis and a treatment, off-patent so could be mass produced in a single super-factory and be given to the masses, it would have saved the state a huge expense and economic disadvantage had there been drugs that worked. In fact, at a time when the United States and Europe are back economically functioning and other crises are on the horizon (fuel shortages, inflation) it would be foolish not to use them if they had tested them. HCQ was tested very early on in China and deemed not to have any significant effect. I am not sure about Ivermectin but chances are that it had been, too. It had no vested interests against what are simple trials to do. China might not have had regular outbreaks in the past but they do now and had plenty of returning Chinese travelers and MIQ staff to implement small scale tests to lead onto larger scale tests. Needless to say Iran and Russia would be no different, and both have had horrendous outbreaks to throw the kitchen sink with, including the "out there" speculative drugs and none of these countries are entangled with Big Pharma like the doubters would have us believe our own public health and government staff have been corrupted.
Anyway. Auckland has endured another tedious week and there is now a simmering dissatisfaction with how elements of society are seen as contributing to the very long tail of this outbreak. I would like to make a standalone blog on this later.
Running has some data points and they have been good of late for me. I ran 30km for the first time in two months today with no niggles or sensations from old injuries. I've run some really fast training sessions which put me on track with some of my 2019 times, and despite the hiccups, I will almost certainly make it to 3000km for the year, which was my goal in the beginning. Of course, I'm running for no real goal now because all the bets are off when there will be another event. Auckland Marathon has been postponed. I have only one registered event that I'm waiting for (Tāmaki Half Marathon) but with my fitness solid and my injuries and niggles silenced I'm probably going to run any one of the events that will be the first to be approved under whatever regime we are under after this Level 3. I'm so glad I got in the Ōrewa half and though it was a disaster, the Onehunga half, before the outbreak.
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