How Long Before There’s A New “China Variant?”
Episode 9: Is China ramping up a new “variant” to help Davos Man with his lockdown forever, Covid-Zero policy? Meanwhile, after a car crash, a new Double Plus hobbles to life.
“Ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen and ladies,” as one of my favorite YouTubers, Officer Tatum, introes his videos. I have been out of commission for nearly two months. There’s been a shake-up of life and within my source list on China. They’ve gone dark.
And there was a car crash. Personal injury lawyers are involved. Car is totaled. Yadda yadda yadda…we are alive; one of us is in some pain. For this reason, I’ve been AWOL.
I’m going to approach Double Plus in a new way now to see if I can get more insights out into the marketplace on China. Smarty Pants was censored and fired from the Faculty Lounge, so he will only appear on occasion as he licks his wounds.
Some of the posts will be short. Others a bit longer. I’m looking at power plays that stem from China, or use China as the variable to crank up the dial on Western-style authoritarianism. Or, as I call it, CCP-Lite with Diversity & Inclusion. (Others, like professor Michael Lind, would call it a “new class war”)
As I see it, the Davos Universe needs more control. More power. More holding you hostage until you submit to shoving a broomstick up your ass as they order it. It’s all because their scientists tell you the aliens are afraid of broomsticks. And, oh, they’re coming! They’re hovering just over the moon. Let alone that there are MIT astronomers and a Swedish astrological center that says there is no spaceship hovering near the moon. Trust us, ya dummies. It’s there! Now go get your broomstick. (It will be imported from China and sold on Amazon.)
Double Plus thought for the day: What happens when China decides it’s going into lockdown again because of a new “variant”?
If you don’t think that the CCP can literally make up a virus, tell all of its people to fear it, film them all running gleefully to get a vaccine for it (which probably doesn’t even work), then you are not living in the real world.
I believe there is a real risk of China using the Never-Ending Pandemic as a means to shut its ports temporarily to screw with American supply chains. Inflation would rise. Economies would suffer again. Like the Wuhan virus of 2019-20, it’ll be another hammer to the West that “China will fix” when it turns the lights back on.
Oh, wait, what’s this?
Yantian, one of the busiest ports in the world, has been shut for the past week because of a COVID-19 outbreak among port staff, Lori Ann LaRocco, a columnist for American Shipper said on Tuesday. This is going to impact the supply chain in the coming weeks.
China does not believe for one second that big corporations will remap their supply chains out of China. At this point, it doesn’t matter because China also has control of many southeast Asian economies. Their solar makers, for example, are in Vietnam and Malaysia.
Yantian packs and ships 100 cargo vessels per week. The big, European multinational carriers like Maersk said they are not going to Yantian until the end of this week. Maersk, which is one of the big shippers that is shipping empty containers back to China to load them up with Made in China E-commerce goods instead of American made product (mostly commodities) bound for Asia, is saying the situation is “continuing to deteriorate” because of some new Covid cases in Shenzhen, the city where the Yantian and Shekou ports are located.
The partial closure of the port has caused containers to pile up at the Yantian International Container Terminal, LaRocco reports. It is not fully closed, but it is operating at just around 30% of its normal capacity.
If you are noticing your widgets on Amazon and Walmart going up in price, or no longer in stock…port congestion and China are probably to blame.
Also great for Maersk, the slowdown of vessels will increase vessel rates as the demand for space is already hitting high rates.
Maersk CEO Soren Skou…is a Davos Man. He is totally on board with their net-zero CO2 agenda and thinks the shipping industry can get there in like 20 years.
So what’s the problem with a shutdown of ports if it drives up prices? Good for the planet because less shipping means less CO2! And good for Maersk pricing, to boot.
Maersk’s stock is up 196% in the last 12 months. The Dow and the Nasdaq are up around 40%. Over the last six months, since all the port chaos has ensued out of China, the stock is up 41%. Tesla is up 10%.
Suck it, bitches!
China will be fine with unleashing a new variant. What does the CCP care? Its people will have no choice but to obey. Many of our leaders – the politicians, the bureaucrats, their scientists – wish for the same. You are the only thing standing in their way. We are Double Plus annoying.
I hope I am wrong about a Never-Ending Pandemic and upcoming China variants this fall. But if China scares the wimpy simpy West into submission with another Made in China pathogen, the Davos crowd will bathe themselves in ‘we told you so’. The media — the little wandering minstrels most of them are — will say something as pseudo-scientific as: ‘it’s all the fault of the unvaccinated’. The experts will say, ‘our experts need more control!’
The masses will be shamed to back down on their protests against lockdown forever and Covid-Zero, right at the time when they are realizing the PTSD they’ve been put through.
The question for the ages will be: will people really stand for another bout of CCP-style lockdowns when the Never-Ending Pandemic is imported from Shenzhen?
Unless there are literally people dying in the streets, giving them reason for pause, then if they bow down again, score another round for the CCP’s besties in the Davos Universe.
Recommended Reading:
Read it in The Tablet magazine, the best new magazine around for current affairs.
Closing Credits:
“You can fool some people sometimes/but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”