Klaus Schwab Covid-19: The Great Reset
World Economic Forum, 2020 279 pages
Elaine Dewar On the Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years
Biblioasis, 2021 470 pages
Michael Lewis The Premonition: A pandemic story
WW Norton Company, 2021 301 pages
As the pandemic fades and other disasters overtake us, we can expect a tidal wave of books delving into what exactly happened and why. And who might be to blame. These three, written during the pandemic by a European academic, a Canadian journalist and an American master, are among the first of the lot. However, The Great Pandemic Book is yet to be written. I wrote this edit in case you feel that the last thing you want to do is read about the pandemic, but are curious anyway.
Let’s get Covid-19-The Great Reset out of the way. When I first heard about this book, it was always in the context of OMG, these people are setting up the next dystopian autocracy, it’s a huge conspiracy of the oligarchs and now what do we do?
‘These people’ are The World Economic Forum, famously chaired by old Klaus himself. They brought us globalization, which took a wrecking ball to American industry, and thus spawned Trump. So maybe we should listen to what they are thinking. But just like Santa, Klaus doesn’t always deliver what you expected. Far from being the sinister, Machiavellian read I could happily rip apart, the book is just a laundry list of possibilities. Neither clever nor brilliant enough to beguile and bamboozle people, it is a workmanlike attempt at delineating what the post Covid future might look like. And it does so with all the charm that a professor of economics and engineering can muster, which is to say, none. Written in a style beloved of technocrats, devoid of emotion or wit, and bristling with high level abstractions. Covering everything from Macro to Microeconomics to the social contract and Zoom fatigue, Schwab and his co-author, Thierry Malleret, summarize their intentions thus:
‘The book’s main objective is to help understand what’s coming in a multitude of domains….it is a hybrid between a contemporary essay and an academic snapshot of a crucial moment in history. It includes theory and practical examples, but it is chiefly explanatory, containing many conjectures and ideas about what the post pandemic work might, and perhaps should, look like.’ The objective of this book is to offer some coherent and conceptually sound guidelines…
So, right at the start, they make a careful distinction between description and prescription. They do not wish to do the latter, but then again, being technocrats, economists, and experts, they do just that. And I believe that is why so many people took umbrage. Still, the book is well organized and pursues a consistent, central thesis: CHANGES ARE COMING, GET READY! The implication is that we, the great unwashed, simply have to endure them. The technocratic elites know what they are about, period. So, no wonder Joe Average suspects an agenda. But maybe Klaus is smarter than he appears. When it comes to the most frightening aspect of all the changes we’re suffering, surely the spectre of living in a digital surveillance state is top of mind. Done under the guise of keeping us ‘healthy and safe’, the State is increasingly monitoring and controlling our bodies as well as our minds, while facial recognition is the ‘new normal’. China’s social surveillance system is the model, and panicked western governments are taking note. But on this topic, Klaus speaks with forked tongue. While lauding the wonders of e-Medicine, Smart Homes, and self- learning algorithms, he also quotes the Israeli historian, Yuval Noah Harari, who has consistently warned about buying into this digital Utopia:
Surveillance technology is developing at breakneck speed; and what seemed science fiction 10 years ago is today old news. As a thought experiment, consider a hypothetical government that demands that every citizen wears a biometric bracelet that monitors body temperature and hart-rate 24 hours a day. The resulting data is hoarded and analysed by government algorithms, the algorithms will know that you are sick even before you know it, and they will also know where you have been, and who have met. The chains of infection could be drastically shortened, and even cut altogether. Such a system could arguably stop the epidemic in its tracks within days. Sounds, wonderful, right? The downside is, of course, that this would give legitimacy toa terrifying new surveillance system. If you know, for example, that I clicked on a Fox News link rather than CNN, that can teach you something about my political views and perhaps even my personality. But if you can monitor what happens to my body temperature, blood pressure and heart rate as I watch the video clip, you can learn what makes me laugh, what makes me cry, and what makes me really really angry. It is crucial to remember that anger, joy boredom and love are biological phenomena just like fever and a cough, the same technology that identifies coughs could also identify laughs. If corporations and governments start harvesting our biometric data en masse, they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves, and they cannot just predict our feeling but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want—be it a product or a politician.
In all fairness, Klaus is trying to show us both sides of an increasingly frightening public sphere, what with ‘vaccine mandates’ sweeping away democratic freedoms and personal choice. We have been warned and warned again. Overall, The Great Reset is not a great read, but it is a useful guide to what our global masters are thinking. And that is, I believe, rather important. Ignorance is not bliss, and the smart money is on keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. I would call ‘these people’ frenemies, and they are not quite as demonic as advertised.
The Takeaway: a useful overview of the post pandemic landscape; already out of date
Let’s move on to Biblioasis, publisher of the ponderously entitled and shabbily bound On the Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years. With this frustrating book, they have failed the public and also the author, Elaine Dewar, one of Canada’s best investigative journalists. At the very least, she deserved a strong editor who could have offered much needed advice on how to tell a really complicated story with a clear narrative thrust. This didn’t happen, and that’s a crying shame, because what she discovered concerns us all.
Dewar has a fluid style as well as the terrier like commitment to get at the truth. Unfortunately, she also has a habit of putting herself centre stage, obscuring the main story in the process. The journalist-as-hero trope doesn’t work with a twisted tale of such global importance. Here she is, at her best, describing how the media made a 180 turn in how the origin of the virus story was framed:
Reading the stories online as expert after expert reversed their previous pronouncements on how a lab-leak origin was conspiratorial nonsense was like watching a synchronized swimming team rise in perfect unison from the depths of the pool, legs together, toes pointed to the sky. …Anthony Fauci told Fox News that he was now ‘not convinced’ that SARS Covid-19 developed naturally and wanted an investigation into its origins.
She then unpacks the behind-the-scenes manipulations and deceptions that led to the false Wet Market in Wuhan narrative in the first place. Clearly, this information should have introduced the book and set the stage; Instead, it’s near the end.
As for the grisly story of how gain-of-function ‘research’ is very likely responsible for the pandemic, that is the best part and also the most complex. Again, Dewar makes the reader work too hard: she could have summarized her findings and ‘translated’ the scientific jargon, which to my mind is actually the job of a good science writer.
If you stick it out, Dewar does dig up a lot of fascinating information:
Gain-of-function research is a global activity, ringed with the sorts of ‘accidents’ that make nuclear war look rather benign in comparison. It’s also a nice euphemism for biological weapons research in which viruses are manipulated and made more lethal just in case that should happen in nature. That is the ‘official’ reason. It takes place in Level 4 Labs, where researchers have to wear full protective suits, the air is sucked out and the wastewater carefully monitored for bad stuff.
This kind of ‘research’ was temporarily banned in the US, so they off -shored it to China, notably to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Disagreement about its desirability and just how much the public should know about this abound, especially since the pandemic struck. After this book was published, Anthony Fauci lied to Congress about the US connection to the WIV repeatedly, but apart from that scandal, there is almost no discussion in the MMM. The only reliable information is available via scientific journals like Nature:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00210-5
Gain-of-function is the basis of bioweapons manufacture, passing for ‘research’. The military in both the US and China has a strong interest in these labs. One of the most disturbing facts is that the Chinese military has gone on record that gain-of-function research. once known as ‘germ warfare’, is a key component of Chinese military strategy. One of their most respected Coronavirus researchers, Chen Wei, is a major general in the Chinese Liberation Army, who tested her Ebola vaccine in Canada’s level 4 lab and was decorated by Xi Jinping for her efforts to find treatments for SARS-Cov-2.
And that’s not all. Canada’s only Level4 lab, the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, was infiltrated by two Chinese scientists/spies, using it for the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party. This went on for years, right under the noses of Canada’s Intelligence Agency and the RCMP, who are supposed to protect us against this kind of thing. But due to misplaced love of China and in the name of international scientific cooperation, this didn’t happen until early in 2021, when the scientists in question were ushered out of the lab. And eventually, fired. Why this happened has never been satisfactorily explained by the Trudeau government. When a law suit was launched to get at the truth, Trudeau conveniently called an election. Even the determined Dewar’s numerous FOI requests went unanswered or were basically redacted to the point of idiocy. She wanted to know the details behind the firings, and also, how many accidents did that lab report over the years? That would take 8000 pages to review and redact and copy and sorry, but that might take a long time, she was told. Apparently, she is still waiting for answers. As is the nation of Canada and the rest of the world.
There is corruption in high places. Money and political pressure are all mixed up with what is supposed to be the pure, objective, and unsullied practice of scientific research into the virus. Even the most august scientific journals are implicated, notably the Lancet. Dewar does a good, if confusing, job of laying out just how science, politics and money comingled to destroy what was, at one time, a system that was trustworthy. And the funding story is incredible. Yes, US public funds were funnelled to The Wuhan Institute of Virology via Fauci himself and one Peter Daszak, a UK born and educated parasitologist, president of a US based charity, the Eco Health Alliance. If you want to engage in international conspiracy theories, here’s your chance. It’s simply irresistible.
Finally, the Covid-19 virus is almost certainly man made, a product of gain-of-function research using a technique called passaging. Perhaps the most convincing argument for it being the lethal product of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is this: SARS Covid-19 arrived on the scene superbly adapted to infect the human body. This is not what natural viruses do: they arrive poorly adapted and have to go through many mutations to figure out how to get into the human hosts. In other words, this virus was ‘spiked’ and perfected before it was either accidentally or deliberately let loose on the global population.
This is an international sci-fi thriller that has yet to be written and turned into the most explosive Netflix series ever. And it is not what you will hear on the nightly news, alas. Indeed, as of this moment, the hot button issues of China’s virus creation and whether gain-of-function ought to be done at all is being systematically swept under the proverbial Chinese carpet. Nobody wants to ignite WWIII.
The Takeaway: an important book, but only for the determined reader
The writer up to the task of writing a dark, compelling tale like this is Michael Lewis, the author of The Premonition: A Pandemic Story. It’s one of the first books written during the beginning of the pandemic and utterly damning.
I admire Lewis as the author of several brilliant bestsellers, notably The Big Short and Moneyball, and a researcher with impeccable credentials. He delivers the goods, again, with a story that lays out how the US government failed when the pandemic hit and why. Lewis also makes it personal by interweaving it with the struggles of a real-life public health official, Dr Charity Dean, waging war against the virus, first at the local level in Santa Barbara and eventually, for the entire State of California.
The premonition in question here is twofold: the doctor’s premonition that ‘something big’ was about to strike the health care system, and the author’s premonition. He asked himself who was tasked with managing existential risks inside the federal government. The result was The Fifth Risk, predating The Premonition but setting the stage for it. In love and publishing, timing is everything, and Lewis got it right. The tale he tells can be summed up like this: In the USA, the public health bodies are stodgy, uncaring bureaucracies who cannot or will not respond in a timely manner to a disaster like Covid-19. But the private medical researchers are world class.
Outstanding for inaction and downright stupidity is the Centre for Disease Control, the CDC. It emerges as the villain of the piece, make no mistake. On the other hand, the private medical researchers are at the opposite end, smart, dedicated and committed to finding and using the best solutions to a galloping health disaster. And finally, there is the personal tale of the aforementioned doctor, which lays bare just how disjointed and corrupt pandemic politics in the US are. For example, Dr Dean was hired by Governor Newsom because of her legendary expertise and outstanding service but then immediately sidelined in favour of a ‘politically correct’ rival who happened to be Latino, unlike Dean, who happened to be blonde and pretty. Too pretty. This woman, who knew nothing about viruses or pandemics, was her boss, and Dean was forced to have secret meetings with experts in the private sector, who understood what was happening, and were willing to take some risks to save some lives. As they say, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
This too is a long book, but it’s a fast moving, easy to read of why and how the USA failed to rise to one of its greatest medical/political challenges in recent history. Of the three books, The Premonition is by far the best though also increasingly, out of date, though it is fascinating to see where we’ve been and how the pandemic road has twisted our lives and revealed the cracks in the system. Meanwhile, I hope that Lewis is working on The Big Pandemic Book. Of these three, he clearly has the required writing chops to make sense of the most important story of our lives.
The Takeaway: Required reading for Americans and also, Canadians, who might learn something about how things do and don’t work, down south.