Conspiracy theory

"Comments are disabled." I'm not sure how many people feel frustrated when they read this message on a video or article. The content of the item should be the most important thing, yet I feel my eyes drawn to the bottom to gauge the response, or a preview of a key point. And sometimes there's that pang of annoyance that there is no village square. In western media articles tend not to have comments but in China pretty much everything is up for everyone from Einstein to Rainman, to the village idiot to opine. Just as in YouTube videos, comments to videos can seem at time dominated by trolls, "bots" or China's own innovation, "the Five Mao party" (those employed en masse by the government to comment a particular way to media, Mao being a unity of currency, half a yuan, that they would be paid per comment).   

I like the comments section and in China I felt that it was a good resource for learning crude expressions, Chinese memes and general language. It wasn't long into the outbreak that the nationalistic comments came out that Covid-19 was "definitely" a biological weapon from the United States. I interpreted this as a reaction from the perceived shame of a disease of this magnitude, again, coming from China. The racism against China in the wake of the outbreak has been widely reported, and China historically still has a rather large chip on its shoulder. The patriotic response is to say that the virus was the doing of outside forces. There was a touch of this in the pointing to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic with faulty numbers and to the US 2019-2020 flu season (which was heavier than normal), something which became an obsession for some, probably because they were house-bound and had nothing better to do. I even had a discussion with a trusted friend where it was clear he had both in mind that the US had done nothing to stop it (2009 outbreak, killed millions but with a low mortality rate), and it was killing lots of people (not much more than 0.1% of those infected but still had a death toll higher than the covid-19 deaths). The kind of discussion where apple and orange distinctions might be nuanced and interesting if it weren't for the baby watermelon growing nearby.

Then Zhong Nanshan, China's most reputed epidemiologist suggested at a press conference that covid-19 did not necessarily originate in China. He's appointed by the Chinese government but a very trusted figure. It could be that he was intending for the animal-to-animal transmission might be complicated considering there are all sorts of bat->pangolin->human routes that could have arisen anywhere before Wuhan became the world-famous Wuhan. In another article interpreting the comment it focussed on this reading that understanding the source of the virus helps consider the cures and treatments. 

But the other reading meshed with the others, that the virus was not Chinese (Zhong's word "necessarily" was dropped); America has been suffering a bad flu season, which has been actually covid-19 without any testing. And America now are finding patients with no contact with people from China, Italy or Iran. Thus it's not a Chinese shame but an American hoax, that China has defeated while Americans mock and ostracise Chinese. 

The conspiracy theory doesn't hold much water though. Firstly, there haven't been any hospitals (yet) in America with throngs of sick people. There were in Wuhan because it went into the human population there. If the 2019-2020 flu season was actually covid-19, at least a million US citizens would have already died. (Despite the facts that flu strain testing is fairly simple these days. And the US system is not one cohesive department so covering up an outbreak is more difficult.) And finally almost all covid-19 cases in China have Wuhan-traced origins. If it were Americans who were spreading it, you'd presume that Shanghai and Beijing would get the first cases, or at least a barrage. Almost all initial foreign covid-19 cases can be traced by chains to China, and now even now, the new cases in New Zealand, for example, are traceable to outbreaks in another country that comes from China. 

The origination of the covid-19, or any virus, should mean nothing to your sense of national dignity. If the theorists truly resent the racism upon China, they shouldn't show the same statist thinking or racist thoughts that breed the racism. One nice thing that I saw on the media sources for covid-19 information in China is that they regularly had announcements to "eliminate rumours". Though "rumours" can be code-word in China for truths that the government doesn't want out, these announcements generally did what they should: address foolish ideas people get and share. Like re-using face masks, gargling with bleach, whole village died from covid-19 etc. But there was no elimination of the conspiracy theory, despite its wide usage. Probably because it suits the state's needs.

Anyway, less than 12 hours since my predictions in my last blog, Italy will make a fool of me for the wrong reasons. In a single day reporting 49 deaths (essentially raising their total by a third) and 778 new cases (up by 20%) doesn't make any sense. Deaths should only rise more than new cases toward the end of an outbreak. But the rise in new cases doesn't match an outbreak slowing down. The approximate daily rises in confirmed cases there since Monday is: 300 new cases, 500 new cases, 500 new cases, 700 new cases, 700 new cases. The only real understanding of this is a lack of testing kits or the delay in getting results. Or, they are retrospectively counting previous fatalities now as covid-19. It's grim for sure. Also as an ominous post script: France's cases increased by 53% (deaths from 7 to 9).