COVID-19: Conspiracy, Opportunism or Both?
Kevan James
January 3, 2022.
COVID-19…an affliction that raises the emotions somewhat, doesn’t it? And the hackles as well, whatever side of the divide you are on, or even if you straddle the fence and see which way the wind blows. What almost everybody can agree on however is that COVID-19 has become the biggest issue the world has faced since the 1930s and 1940s.
Above - Prime Minister Boris Johnson greets US President Joe Biden at COP 26
US Embassy
More correctly, government response to COVID-19 has become the big issue. Whether the disease is real or not, the reaction to it of those who lead us has been questioned, first by those who demand more and more restrictions, second by those who want the opposite. At the heart of this is the reality of the condition and how deadly it may be or may not be.
In any review or commentary, it is probably best to start at the beginning and look there before doing anything else. COVID-19 is real. I know, I know, that goes directly against those who say it is a hoax. Nevertheless, it is a real disease. What it is not is a virus. It is a disease caused by a virus.
I am repeating myself here but let’s go over it again (especially for those politicians who consistently – through factual ignorance or deliberate mis-speaking - keep banging on about ‘this virus’. For goodness sake politicos! Get it right!)
The virus is SARS-CoV-2 and it can have minimal or no effect or it can cause a disease – COVID-19.
For many people, contracting a virus of any kind can have no effect at all as the body’s own immune system handles it rather well. If it didn’t we as a species would be long gone. For others any virus can lead to more serious conditions. Some suffer mildly, others more drastically. For some unfortunate souls, the end game is contracting a disease. And some diseases can be fatal.
That’s the bare bones. Again let’s try to be as objective as possible and keep things as simple as possible (most definitely for politicians!). We are talking about one specific virus, SARS-CoV-2 and one specific result of that virus, the disease COVID-19.
From the start of all the hoo-hah, there has been one consistent message; that most people badly affected by COVID-19 are those of more mature years and those who are known to already have a variety of other medical conditions which are exacerbated by COVID-19. In both instances the body’s immune system is affected so natural resistance is low, hence the possibility of deterioration and death.
For the majority of people however, COVID-19 is not fatal and can be similar in effect to a cold (which it isn’t – just similar). Either a bad one or a mild one; it varies and does so because we as people are all different.
Why then, the hysteria? Why the global lock-and-shutdowns?
This is where it can get a little more complicated. There are two schools of thought; the first is that it’s all a hoax and a deliberate course of action on the part of the global super-elite to put in place the so-called ‘Great Reset’. The second is that what’s been happening around the world is nothing more than panic and the need by politicians to be seen to be doing something, to be seen as ‘strong and decisive’.
Or could it be something else? Or even a combination of the two? I can only offer my own opinion here and readers can, and will, form their own. You can agree or disagree as you please but for what it may be worth, here it comes:
Bill Gates, seen by some as a prime mover behind an elaborate hoax over COVID-19
Russell Watkins/DFID
First a factual reminder, the hoax part; COVID-19 is not a hoax. It is a real disease caused by a real virus. And as I have written before elsewhere (as well as in this article above), it won’t kill anybody. What COVID-19 will do is trigger something else, like those underlying conditions we know about.
It can also trigger conditions we don’t know about and it is both these that kill, rather than COVID-19 itself. However, COVID-19 is highly contagious – it spreads very rapidly and remarkably large numbers of people can get it. Then again, so does the common cold and so does Flu. But remember, the three are different, even though the symptoms – the runny noses, sneezes, coughs, sore throats, clogged chests and so on – are alike.
It is also worth reminding ourselves that there are a host of other conditions that can trigger further illnesses that can kill. Flu is, once again, an obvious one and if as a result, one contracts pneumonia, one can die - and untold numbers of people have. But none of the myriad of other illnesses, no matter how fatal, has resulted in what we have seen since early 2020, with freedoms routinely removed and orders from the state to cover our faces.
So if the disease itself is not a hoax and is not – by itself – fatal, what’s brought the seemingly never-ending rounds of restrictions? Restrictions never before seen outside of armed conflict and imposed without much in the way of democratic debate?
Let’s look at the global conspiracy part first. This, the current situation worldwide is not - at least not yet.
That said it is entirely understandable that many believe otherwise and it is a somewhat complex area. Those who subscribe to the conspiracy theory do so because of the global similarity in actions taken by governments. Many think what is being done now is the end result of decades or more of careful planning by the conspirators. The aim is to subjugate the globe, and it’s previously (and mostly) free peoples, into a new world order.
There are a number of flaws with this however. Two of the most obvious are firstly, who thought it all up to begin with? For such a conspiracy to succeed would indeed have meant very long-term planning, to the point where the originators would, by now, be long dead of old age. There are of course, plenty of examples of people passing down legacies of some kind, with each succeeding generation eager to carry the baton onwards.
On this scale however - a worldwide ‘new order’? At some point, somebody, somewhere, would have wanted to make a name for themselves and blown the whistle. Having done so and proved the existence of this conspiracy, along with the names of those behind it, such a person (or persons) would have become instant freedom heroes and human nature being what it is, the temptation to grab such acclaim would prove irresistible. And there is ample historical precedent to demonstrate that whistle blowers have always been on hand.
The second part to this is the question of who leads a new world order. Again human nature comes into play. People aspire to become Presidents and Prime Ministers for many different reasons, some good, some less so. To reach the top in anything requires a lot of supreme self-confidence, a little arrogance and most of all, a big ego. So if a new world order was put in place, who would be in charge? Who would be number one?
You could probably include many of the world’s current national leaders in a list and every single one would want the top job – and that includes some former leaders as well. Throw into the mix organisations like the EU, whose leadership is not elected in the truest sense, as well as those with huge amounts of personal (and company) wealth – the movers and shakers of world trade, people who run the biggest global corporations. None have ever been elected to run a country but do carry big influence. Add yet again another factor – the differences in political and cultural philosophy between left and right, between one political system and another.
And all would be squabbling over the rights to be in charge. Who gets to be leader – Xi of China or Gates of the USA, Blair of the UK or Von der Leyen of the EU? What about Putin of Russia or Ali Khamenei of Iran? Or for that matter Schwab of the World Economic Forum? It would be impossible to form a ‘world government’ from such a disparate group of people, all of whom share only their huge egocentricity – and in some cases a desire for power.
It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realised we could.
- PROFESSOR NEIL FERGUSON, THE TIMES
So if one discounts a credible, workable, long-standing conspiracy, and I will come back to the concept later in this article, there is realistically only the idea of opportunism to think about. Take a look at what the UK’s Professor Neil Ferguson said when he gave an extraordinary interview to Tom Whipple at The Times newspaper, in which he confirmed the degree to which he believed that imitating China’s lockdown policies at the start of 2020 changed the parameters of what Western societies considered acceptable:
“I think people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March,” Professor Ferguson said. “When SAGE observed the ‘innovative intervention’ out of China, of locking entire communities down and not permitting them to leave their homes, they initially presumed it would not be an available option in a liberal Western democracy:
“It’s a communist one party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought… and then Italy did it. And we realised we could.”
Ferguson seemed almost at pains to emphasise the Chinese derivation of the lockdown concept, returning to it later in the interview:
“These days, lockdown feels inevitable.” It was, he continued, anything but. “If China had not done it,” he said, “the year would have been very different.”
One should also add Italy’s imposition of the idea – had Italy not done so, nobody else in the west would have.
Neville Chamberlain returns to the UK in 1938 with his piece of paper
IWM Collections
What comes into play now is yet again, human nature. All Presidents and Prime Ministers want to be seen as strong. None like the label of being seen as weak, and with good reason. A lesson from history; when then UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to London after meeting Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler on September 30, 1938, he was photographed by the aircraft after landing and said, “I have in my hand a piece of paper…” holding it aloft. It was an agreement Chamberlain had made with Hitler over non-aggression and meant, as the PM put it, “Peace in our time.”
Many in the UK disagreed and Chamberlain was indeed seen as weak, not only in this country but also by Germany. A year later, the two countries were at war and Chamberlain’s time as Prime Minster ended.
So leaders do not like the tag – leaders want to lead. They may also like to be loved (as Boris Johnson undoubtedly does) but they can live without that, as long as they are considered strong and decisive. Leaders of all kinds – not just politicians – also like control. Human nature once more but the greater degree of control and thus power a leader has, the more they feel able to lead effectively. There have usually been checks and balances, mostly fairly robust, against somebody having too much power however, usually in the form of elections but this of course has been thrown into doubt recently.
One of the things overlooked in early 2020 was Italy’s links to China. The two had been working closely, with the European country