China’s role in the current global meltdown
Wuhan, China. First government reported cases of what we now know to be Covid 19. The report, in the South China Morning Post, said Chinese authorities had identified at least 266 people who contracted the virus last year and who came under medical surveillance, and the earliest case was 17 November – weeks before authorities announced the emergence of the new virus. The Chinese government was widely criticised over attempts to cover up the outbreak in the early weeks, including crackdowns on doctors who tried to warn colleagues about a new Sars-like virus which was emerging in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province. Fast forward to January 14th 2020 and The World Health Organisation Tweet:
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China
January 14th The WHO and China declared there was no evidence of human transmission despite there being overwhelming evidence, both visual and documented that China indeed had a problem. In February, the UK is one of the first countries to ban parallel export of two COVID-19 treatment candidates (Opinavir + Ritonavir and Chloroquine Phosphate (Hydroxy Chloroquine) to protect national supply. In May 2020, Hydroxy Chloroquine was ‘discredited’ with a widely publicised but fraudulent report by Surgisphere published in The Lancet (retracted in June 2020).
January 31st 2020: Despite the opposing narratives from WHO and China, Trump closed the borders to international flights from China (the origin of the virus) despite fierce criticism from the Democrats , most notably Joe Biden who accused Trump of being ‘xenophobic’. By March 13th 2020 the USA’s ‘covid figures’ were climbing & Trump was accused of ignoring WHO warnings from January 2020.
Censorship?
By May 2020, selective censorship was in full swing across social media, most notably led by Youtube (owned by Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company). Amongst the inevitable wild conspiracy theories, opposing scientific narratives were deemed to be violating codes of conduct. Social Media platforms started to exploit the fact they were not subject to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996. Section 230 generally provides immunity for website publishers from third-party content. In other words, they aren’t liable for any content published on their site specifically because they do not engage in editing or censorship of legal 3rd party material. This loophole also indemnifies Youtube from prosecution in the event users upload and share copyrighted material, enabling Youtube to financially benefit from content it neither owns or has a right to exploit. Youtube’s censorship is therefore not regulated and is based on Youtube’s opinion rather than agreed and documented legalities. Facebook and Twitter are also exempt from Section 230. In other words, these mutli-billion dollar privately held companies can do what they want without US government interference, whether factual or otherwise.
Majority Shareholders
In the USA, all mainstream media (MSN) have two private investment companies holding the majority of their shares and thus control: BlackRock Inc (NYC) and Vanguard Inc. (Pennsylvania). BlackRock’s biggest holder is Vanguard and visa versa. Between them they hold $12.6 TRILLION USD of investments. These investments include:
Pfizer
Facebook Group (Whatsapp, Instagram)
Alphabet/Google/Youtube
Twitter
Comcast (MSNBC, NBC, NBCUniversal)
AT&T (CNN, CCN WORLDWIDE, WarnerMedia)
Newscorp (Fox, Sky News, Australian News Channel, TalkRadio, Virgin)
Microsoft
Amazon (AWS, The Washington Post)
Despite being banned in China, the CCP annually invests nearly $7 BILLION USD (2018) on ‘advertising’ on Facebook. CCN February 10th 2019.
Yuri Borisovich Milner is an Israeli-Russian entrepreneur, venture capitalist and physicist. Milner is Russia's most influential information technology investor. He is a cofounder and former chairperson of Internet company Mail.Ru Group and a founder of investment firm DST Global. Milner is also Facebook’s 4th largest private shareholder (apart from the founding 3). Milner owns 5.4% – $5.4 Billion USD.
Microsoft own $1.3 BILLION USD of shares in Facebook, putting them at No.8
China-born 92 year old Li Ka Shing (the world’s 32nd most richest man) owns just under a billion dollars worth of Facebook shares. Li Ka Shing is a long-time supporter of the Chinese Communist Party.
President Xi Jinping of China greeting Li Ka-shing, left, during a visit to Hong Kong in 2017. Mr. Li was once well known for his political acumen with the mainland government.
Is China Buying BlackRock?
From RealClearPolitics May 2020:
“China knows that Wall Street is the gateway to America’s central nervous system. Finance controls capital. Wall Street is the conduit of highly valuable information about all sectors of the economy. It has privileged access in the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. And Wall Street can be bought.”
BlackRock’s emerging markets ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) holds only about $300 million, a small fraction of the $7.4 trillion in assets under management that it held at its last year-end. But BlackRock is playing a bigger game. At the 2018 BlackRock investor day, the company identified China as a large and fast-growing market with $3.6 trillion of assets under management and limited foreign access. This year is meant to see the elimination of restrictions on foreign ownership of fund-management firms. BlackRock’s 2018 annual report highlights China as one of its largest growth opportunities, with Asia expected to drive 50% of the firm’s organic growth of assets under management. “China is a market BlackRock has long coveted,” the Wall Street Journal reported last year.
In their book “Red Capitalism,” about China’s banking system, authors Carl Walter and Fraser Howie write of the role of Wall Street and the privatization of China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in selling billions of dollars of shares in initial public offerings that “went off like strings of fire crackers in the global capital markets. All of these companies were imagined up, created, and listed by American investment bankers.” The creation of the new SOEs out of the dross of the old SOEs is the work of Wall Street bankers who provided the “lipstick, the mascara, the pedicure, the hair weave” so that they closely resemble Western corporations and can be sold at high prices, handsomely profiting the party and its friends and, of course, Wall Street banks. As the Indian stockbroker Shankar Sharma has noted, in just one Chinese bank IPO, the government paid Wall Street $200 million. “Research reports by Wall Street banks have always been up for sale to the highest bidder, and nobody knows this better than the Chinese.”
“You need a trusted partner who is not only an expert on China but can apply their knowledge, expertise and judgement in creating portfolios that can deliver the best of Chinese markets to you,” America’s largest asset manager says on the “Why BlackRock for China” page of its website. Noticeably absent is any warning about the lack of oversight and enforcement of U.S. auditing standards that so worries the SEC. Instead, there’s a statement on how the Chinese authorities are making their capital markets “more squarely aligned with international standards.” Pull the other one.
Has China benefited from Covid 19?
Hong Kong (CNN Business) China's economy is picking up steam as the country continues to dig its way out of the turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The world's second largest economy expanded 4.9% in the July-to-September quarter compared to a year ago, according to government statistics released Monday.
The pace was quicker than the 3.2% increase that China recorded in the second quarter, when it managed to avoid the pandemic-fueled recession that has gripped much of the globe. But the growth was also a bit weaker than expected: Analysts polled by Refinitiv predicted that China's economy would expand 5.2%.
"China's economy continued its rapid rebound last quarter, with the recovery broadening out and becoming less reliant on investment-led stimulus," wrote Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist for Capital Economics, in a research note.
China is winning the global economic recovery
As much of the world continues to struggle with the virus, China's recovery has been relatively speedy. The country enforced stringent lockdown and population tracking policies intended to contain the virus, and set aside hundreds of billions of dollars for major infrastructure projects to fuel economic growth.
The positive momentum through the last six months has also helped China's economy recover all of the output it lost after a historically bad first quarter. GDP grew a cumulative 0.7% through the first nine months of 2020, Monday's data showed.
"The Chinese economy remains resilient with great potential. Continued recovery is anticipated, which will benefit the global recovery," said Yi Gang, the governor of the People's Bank of China, on Sunday during an online seminar hosted by the Washington-based Group of Thirty. He said he expects China's economy to grow around 2% this year.
Are China calling the shots in the West?
As the UK enters it’s 3rd lockdown, it is abundantly clear that lockdown’s do not work. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (including the WHO’s own guide lines) , governments globally continue to enforce unlawful lockdowns and other increasingly forceful restrictions on our basic human rights without evidence. Governments are using flawed PCR tests as the basis for determining whether a person is infectious or not. There is a widespread politicisation, “corruption,” and suppression of C19 science as published in the British Medical Journal November 13th 2020.
The PCR cycle threshold (CT) is a semi-quantitative indicator of the concentration of viral genetic material in a patient sample only. A PCR is therefore a measure of virus genetic material present in the body and NOT a test of infectiousness. The higher the amplification of the test (higher ct rate) the more likely hood of finding remnants of non-infectious genetic material from C19 present. Conversely, a low CT combined with a high viral load in the patient would result in the presence of complete and therefore potentially infectious virus material, but even it is still not a measure of infectiousness.
The Lowdown
A typical RT-PCR assay will have a maximum of 40 thermal cycles. The lower the Ct value the higher the quantity of viral genetic material in the sample (as an approximate proxy for viral load). Ct values obtained in this way are semi-quantitative and are able to distinguish between high and low viral load. A 3-point increase in Ct value is roughly equivalent to a 10-fold decrease in the quantity of viral genetic material.
The issues with PCR tests are numerous:
There can be large-scale test kit contamination, as both the US and the UK (and several African countries) discovered during the early phase of the pandemic.
There can be testing site or lab contamination, which has led to countless false positive results, school closures, nursing home quarantines, canceled sports events, and more.
The PCR test can react to other coronaviruses. According to lab examinations, this happens in about 1% to 3% of cases if only one target gene is tested, as is the case in many (but not all) labs and as the WHO itself has recommended to avoid ambiguous positive/negative test results.
The PCR test can detect non-infectious virus fragments weeks after an active infection, or from an infection of a contact person, as the US CDC confirmed.
The PCR test can detect viable virus in quantities too small to be infectious (see below).
If the virus is not widespread in a population, and there is no test kit or lab contamination, and labs test for at least two target genes, the risk of a false-positive result is low. This is why, for instance, New Zealand at times had no positive PCR tests for weeks despite frequent testing. But if there is an ongoing infection wave, or if there has been a recent infection wave, or if labs test only for one gene sequence or struggle with contamination, things get more complicated. A PCR test is amplifying samples through repetitive cycles. The lower the virus concentration in the sample, the more cycles are needed to achieve a positive result. Many US labs work with 35 to 45 cycles, while many European labs work with 30 to 40 cycles.
The research group of French professor Didier Raoult has recently shown that at a cycle threshold (ct) of 25, about 70% of samples remained positive in cell culture (i.e. were infectious); at a ct of 30, 20% of samples remained positive; at a ct of 35, 3% of samples remained positive; and at a ct above 35, no sample remained positive (infectious) in cell culture (see diagram).
This means that if a person gets a “positive” PCR test result at a cycle threshold of 35 or higher (as applied in most US labs and many European labs), the chance that the person is infectious is less than 3%. The chance that the person received a “false positive” result is 97% or higher.
This means that if a person gets a “positive” PCR test result at a cycle threshold of 35 or higher (as applied in most US labs and many European labs), the chance that the person is infectious is less than 3%. The chance that the person received a “false positive” result is 97% or higher.
PCR cycle threshold (11-37) and positive cell culture (black line, 100% to 0%). The colored bars indicate the number of positive cell cultures per ct per week after infection (1 to 3 weeks). (Jafaar/Raoult)
In conclusion, while PCR tests at high-risk places like hospitals, nursing homes and other sensitive locations are vital and undisputed, the benefit of mass PCR testing in the general population, which is costing mid-sized countries billions, may be somewhat more debatable as it alone is not a test for ‘infectiousness’.
References:
The governments have shifted their C19 attention from deaths to ‘cases’. These cases are based on the PCR tests outlined above. These PCR results are the main tool the government is using to implement ever increasing reductions in our freedoms. These reductions include: censorship (outlined above), police enforcement, restricted movements, mass testing, mass surveillance (The WHO’s guide lines for pandemic control strictly advise against track and trace). encouraging neighbour ‘snitching’ as well as destroying SEMs that have survived thus far. This is without taking into account the mental and physical toll to both health and well being. China are already subject to these communist restrictions. Indeed, at the initial outbreak of the virus, the CCP welded people into their homes, they lied to the WHO and they lied to the world about the ‘severity’ of Covid 19. So the question of “are China calling the shots in the West?” seems more and more likely giving their superior economic power and global political reach.