Almost 3 years ago, on Feb. 10, 2020, I published my first note on Covid, or nCov2019 as it was called then. That note was Body Count, and it was about the fake numbers that China was reporting (and WHO was breathlessly lapping up like the dutiful CCP lapdog that they are) on the very first Covid outbreak in Wuhan.

Basically, the Chinese government made up simple formulas to describe cases and deaths, formulas that would show Progress in the War against Coronavirus! ^TM, even though they had absolutely no relationship whatsoever to the actual number of people getting sick and dying from the virus.

Let’s imagine, for example, that you’re President Xi, and you’d like to show that you are Winning the War™ against nCov2019. You can’t just say that the epidemic is over and the disease is cured, because you’ve got more than 100 MILLION people in a military quarantine, and it’s kinda obvious that the disease is anything but cured. But you want to showprogressin Winning the War™.

So maybe you come up with a rough formula that goes something like this …

Yesterday we told everyone that 500 people have died since the outbreak. That’s a made-up number, of course, but that’s what we told everyone. Today let’s tell everyone that an additional 15% of that number died yesterday, so 75 new deaths for 575 total dead. And tomorrow let’s tell everyone that 14% of that total number died, and the day after 13%, and then 12% and then 11%. Clear progress! Got it, my loyal cadres?

In fact, China reported a total of 491 cumulative deaths from nCov2019 through Feb. 5th. If you applied my incredibly rough and cartoonish model, then, of 15% new deaths on Feb. 6th, and 14% new deaths on Feb. 7th, and so forth and so on, you’d end up with the following daily data points on new and cumulative deaths:

Feb. 6 — 74 new deaths — 565 cumulative deaths
Feb. 7 — 79 new deaths — 643 cumulative deaths
Feb. 8 — 83 new deaths — 720 cumulative deaths
Feb. 9 — 87 new deaths — 810 cumulative deaths
Feb. 10 — 89 new deaths — 901 cumulative deaths

And now here’s what China and the WHO actually reported:

Feb. 6 — 73 new deaths — 564 cumulative deaths
Feb. 7 — 73 new deaths — 637 cumulative deaths
Feb. 8 — 86 new deaths — 723 cumulative deaths
Feb. 9 — 89 new deaths — 812 cumulative deaths
Feb. 10 — 96 new deaths — 908 cumulative deaths

I mean … c’mon, man.

I just gave you a ridiculously naive and idiotic model of “Progress in the War against Coronavirus!”, and it’s incredibly predictive for the reported data ON A DAILY BASIS for a nation of 1.4 BILLION people in the throes of an unimaginable public health crisis.

I titled the note Body Count because what China did was exactly what the United States did in reporting casualties in the Vietnam War, where every night ... EVERY NIGHT ... we were told exactly how many American and South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese soldiers had been killed that day.

It’s what the Best and the Brightest always do … they convince themselves that the people can’t handle the truth, particularly if the truth ain’t such good news. They convince themselves that they can buy enough time to win the real-world war by designing and employing a carefully constructed “communication strategy” to win the narrative-world war.

Yesterday, the Chinese government reported no new Covid deaths, even as already swamped Shanghai hospitals sent internal messages to staff telling them to prepare for a "tragic battle" as they expect 12 million infections in the city by the end of NEXT WEEK.

China reported no new Covid deaths the day before yesterday, either.

LOL. They're not even pretending anymore. They're not even making up right-sounding formulas. It's all 2 + 2 = 5, all the time.

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.

And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right.

George Orwell, 1984

I said it then, and I'll say it again, three years later.

Covid is China's Vietnam War

You remember what happened to the American narrative of Winning the War in Vietnam! ™, right?

This happened. The Tet Offensive happened.

In real-world, the Tet Offensive was a disaster for the Viet Cong and the NVA regulars. In narrative-world, though, it changed everything. North Vietnam wasn’t on the “verge of surrender”. We weren’t “winning the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people. The answer to 2 + 2 wasn't 5. The answer was 4. No one's behavior or beliefs were constrained any longer by the possibility that the US government might be right when they told us that 2 + 2 = 5. They were self-evidently wrong.

The Tet Offensive changed Common Knowledge - what everyone knew that everyone knew - about the US government's competence and trustworthiness, not just in regards to the Vietnam War, but in regards to everything. The American relationship between governed and government was never the same after the Tet Offensive, because now everyone knew that everyone knew that the US government was not just a liar, but an incompetent, failed liar.

The current Covid outbreak is China's Tet Offensive, the reality that gives the lie to 2 + 2 = 5.

The current Covid outbreak will change Common Knowledge - what everyone knows that everyone knows - about the Chinese government's competence and trustworthiness.

The current Covid outbreak will fundamentally weaken the Chinese government, because now every Chinese citizen knows that every Chinese citizen knows that the CCP is not just a liar, but an incompetent, failed liar.

Tsk-tsk.

Ain't it awful.

Man, I can't believe that Xi and the Chinese government thought they could get away with this. It's really terrible how they've failed the Chinese people for all of these years.

Yeah.

As I write this note, American hospitals are overwhelmed with patients seeking treatment for respiratory illnesses. It's Covid, yes, but even more so it's influenza and RSV. It's the elderly, yes, but more than ever it's also children. It's hospitalization yes, but it's also intensive care.

What if I told you that the last few months have seen the highest non-Covid use of ICU beds in the United States than at any point since Johns Hopkins began tracking the data in 2020?

What if I told you that there was a nationwide shortage of not just cold medicines for infants and children, but also a nationwide shortage of basic antibiotics for children?

Now ask yourself, why aren't these three facts - we are in the middle of a raging epidemic of respiratory illnesses, we have fewer open ICU beds than at any point other than peak-Covid, and we have a nationwide shortage of medicine for our children, ffs - leading the nightly news and social media trend lists?

I can promise you this, if Donald Trump were still in the White House, you'd be hearing about this morning, noon and night. But with a Democrat in the Oval Office and with every Republican governor married to a know-nothing, vax-skeptical, mask-derisive, it's-just-a-cold, historical-revisionist set of public health talking points and policies, we hear nothing. It's crickets from every politician and every media Renfield, both Democrat and Republican, on these most basic issues of the public good, on these most basic reasons for why we have a government in the first place.

So yes, we should all read the news coming out of China and recognize that their political leaders are incompetent, failed liars who treated the health of their elderly parents and their young children as just another political totem.

Yes, we should.

And then we should look homeward, as well.