I have never before seen a situation in which all newspaper front pages continually feature the same topic for such a long time. Of course, this topic is the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). For instance, the Sankei Shimbun has been reporting on this disease for the past few weeks. The top headline on April 25’s front page was, “Request to Extend Golden Week: Government Asks Citizens to Reduce Contact by 80%.” April 26 was, “267 COVID-19 Deaths in North Korea: True Situation Concealed, All Treated as ‘Suspected Cases.” April 27 was, “20% of Olympic Sponsors Withdraw.” April 28 was, “Bank of Japan Supports Economic Measures: Unlimited Government Bond Buying.” April 29 was, “Infection Continues in Seven Prefectures: Four Times the Deaths, No Predictions Can be Made.” April 30 was, “Prime Minister Says Lifting State of Emergency Will be Difficult: Proposal for Roughly One-month Extension.” May 1 was, “State of Emergency Likely to Be Extended to End of May: Stimulus Payment Revised to 100,000 Yen.” May 2 was, “Nationwide State of Emergency Extended About One Month.” May 3 was, “Remdesivir Approval: First COVID-19 Drug in Around One Week.” May 4 was, “State of Emergency Until May 31, Expanded to Entire Nation Today.” May 5 was, “New Normal to Prevent Infection: State of Emergency Extended Until May 31” May 6 was, “Tokyo Provides Additional Aid to Closed Businesses: Metropolitan Schools Closed Until End of Month.” Over the past two weeks alone, the front pages have printed articles on COVID-19 or related topics every single day. This has never happened before. If the human race were to go extinct, the most likely cause is a pandemic caused by an unknown bacteria or virus, rather than a massive volcanic eruption, major earthquake, or nuclear war.
The May 6 issue of Yukan Fuji contained a column entitled, “Urgent Recommendations to Defeat COVID-19.” Written by nonfiction author Keiko Kawasoe, the article was entitled, “The Chinese Government and WHO Caused This Pandemic.” It read:
At a press conference on March 13, American President Donald Trump invited laughter by stating that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping know where the virus came from.
We can surmise that this statement was a composed counterattack against Zhao Lijian, deputy director of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who said on his Twitter the previous day that the United States military may have brought the virus to Wuhan.
Worthy of attention is a report by American news outlet CNN one month later on April 13. The important points of the article, entitled “Beijing tightens grip over coronavirus research, amid US-China row on virus origin,” are as follows:
1. On April 10, a Chinese government notice was posted on the website of Fudan University in Shanghai, saying that all COVID-19-related academic papers will be subject to inspection by government authorities before publication. Papers cannot be published without approval.
2. When CNN called the contact number on the notice, it was told the notice is an “internal document.” The notice was removed from the website several hours later. It was also removed from the website of the China University of Geoscience in Wuhan.
3. This notice was released according to instructions from a May 25 meeting by the Chinese State Council’s task force on preventing and controlling COVID-19.
The CNN article revealed that the Communist Party of China is making efforts not only related to propaganda, but also trying to thoroughly control science (the common language of the world) through government.
According to this report, an anonymous medical expert from Hong Kong, who published a clinical analysis of COVID-19 cases in an international medical journal together with Chinese researchers, said there was no inspection by government authorities in February.
If this is true, it is highly possible that papers published by Chinese researchers in international medical journals until late March were based on scientific knowledge.
One of these is “The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus,” an English-language report published on ResearchGate (a global information sharing platform for scientists) on February 6.
The lead author, Xiao Botao, is a professor at South China University of Technology in Guangzhou. His fields of expertise include physiology, biophysics, medical biology, biological data, biochemistry, molecular biology, and microbiology. He was affiliated with Boston Children’s Hospital (Harvard Medical School) until 2013, and was a professor and vice president at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology’s School of Physics in Wuhan until 2017.
The report says the people of Wuhan do not eat bats, and that no bats are sold at the seafood wholesale market. It states that bats (for research purposes) were brought to the Wuhan Center for Disease Control & Prevention (WHCDC) in the past two years from Hubei Province (155 bats) and Zhejiang Province (450 bats). It says that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) or its derivative could escape from the laboratory.
The WHCDC is geographically close to the Central Hospital of Wuhan, Wuhan Union Hospital, and Hubei Aerospace Hospital, where healthcare systems quickly collapsed. The Central Hospital of Wuhan is where Dr. Li Wenliang died (this ophthalmologist in Wuhan was the first to sound an alarm about the novel coronavirus).
The report by Xiao and his co-author has been removed from ResearchGate, and their whereabouts are unknown. Perhaps this was an inconvenient truth for the Chinese authorities.
Another fascinating piece of information is the press conference by the vice president of the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (CDC), as reported by Radio Free Asia on April 15.
In late December 2019, the Taiwanese government told the World Health Organization (WHO) that the pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan might spread from person to person, and that Taiwan would promptly take quarantine measures. The WHO did not respond favorably, but rather countered Taiwan’s claim.
The Chinese government conspired with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and others to conceal the novel coronavirus outbreak. It now seems highly likely that this is how the virus became a pandemic.
Of particular importance is the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 –is man-made, not a natural virus.
According to Worldometer, a website that displays the global population and various data in real time, COVID-19 cases across the world numbered 3,835,193 as of May 7. Of these, 265,245 people have died. Looking at the May 6 data by country, the U.S. had by far the highest numbers of cases (1,257,156) and deaths (74,142). This amounts to 3,798 infections and 224 deaths per million people. Following the U.S., the hardest-hit countries are all white nations in Europe: Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, all of which have large numbers of infections and deaths per million people. The specific numbers are as follows: Spain (5,426 cases/553 deaths per million), Italy (3,547/491), UK (2,962/443), France (2,669/395), and Germany (2,007/87). There are enormous numbers of cases in these white nations, and many people have died in all of them except Germany. These numbers are even more remarkable when compared with the East Asian nations of Japan (121/4), South Korea (71/5), and China (58/3). Including China, the exceedingly small numbers are on a different order of magnitude entirely from Europe. The fatality rate is 10.2% in Spain, 13.8% in Italy, 15.0% in the UK, and 14.8% in France, contrasted with 3.6% in Japan, 2.4% in South Korea, and 5.6% in China. Rates in these East Asian countries are significantly lower than the U.S. and Europe, but why do they vary so greatly by region? Why are there many cases in the affluent, advanced countries of Europe and so few in East Asia and other poor nations? One possible factor is that citizens of most white countries (including Europe) do not receive the bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine for tuberculosis disease. Perhaps the different conditions in these countries are merely due to the BCG vaccine, but one cannot help but wonder if SARS-CoV-2 is a biological weapon engineered to harm these white nations.
“Weapons of mass destruction” refers to nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons. Nuclear and chemical weapons have limited scopes of damage, but biological weapons like germs and viruses can spread across the entire world all at once, which truly makes them weapons of mass destruction. In addition to the WHCDC mentioned in the Yukan Fuji column, Wuhan is also home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WUV). It is possible that a virus developed at this facility mistakenly infected a researcher, who unknowingly brought it out of the lab, where it spread from Wuhan throughout China then to South Korea, Japan, and the rest of the world. If this virus was designed to more easily infect and pose a more severe risk to white people who have not received the BCG vaccine – and if people with the BCG vaccine can more easily resist the virus and avoid serious complications – then this would explain why the numbers of cases and deaths are so wildly different in the U.S./Europe and East Asia. And if a viral weapon of this type was being developed, it makes sense that they would also develop drugs and vaccines to reduce the effects of the virus. Perhaps this explains the low levels of cases and deaths in China.
In the event of a nuclear attack, the U.S. has declared it would promptly deduce where the atomic bomb was manufactured by examining its residue, then launch a devastating nuclear counteroffensive against that country. However, in the case of a biological weapon it is difficult to identify which country spread the virus and take prompt measures against it. Maybe this is all a coincidence, yet I cannot help but sense deliberate intentions behind these vastly different circumstances in the white Western countries and the colored countries in Asia and other regions.
Nations around the world are beginning to explore where the outbreak originated in Wuhan. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred on May 3 to the theory that the virus escaped from the WUV. If the upcoming report indicates any conclusive proof, I think Trump will further step up his criticism of China and try to impose some type of punishment such as demanding restitution. If so, the world may become even more unstable. Japan must revise its constitution as soon as possible to withstand risks such as invasions by neighboring countries, major natural disasters, and other pandemics. Maintaining a nuclear balance is particularly essential. If this balance crumbles, we may be subjected to nuclear intimidation and forced to pay huge sums according to unreasonable demands. Today, all of the countries around Japan – including the U.S., Russia, China, and North Korea – are nuclear states.
Japan should amend the constitution, work closely with the U.S., and have an interception system that can handle ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. We should also enter into a nuclear sharing agreement with the U.S. to gain nuclear deterrence. Our nuclear neighbors are certainly researching, developing, and possessing biological and chemical weapons, and Japan must be aware that these could be employed at any time. Without a doubt, biological weapons are more terrifying than nuclear weapons. I believe we should learn from this COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen our defenses against viral outbreaks stemming from all sorts of causes.
For days on end, the newspapers, TV shows, and other media reports have all been focused on the COVID-19 outbreak. Due to the state of emergency declaration, the Golden Week holidays were quite sad and there was no pedestrian traffic on the streets. Roughly 700 Japanese people have died from COVID-19 so far. About 3,000 people die in Japan from seasonal influenza every year, but the news never covers these deaths. This is because we have an influenza vaccine and drugs like Tamiflu to treat it. Remdesivir received special approval on May 7 as the first drug in Japan to treat COVID-19, but it is not clear yet just how effective it is. If future research and development leads to specific COVID-19 medications or a vaccine, we could regard this disease as a type of influenza and banish the worry people feel about it. However, it seems likely this will take some time.
After the lockdown in China was relaxed, 115 million people traveled during the consecutive holidays in early May. Still, China, Europe, and Japan must all prepare for a second or third wave. During the Spanish flu pandemic from 1918 to 1920, what was originally a regular type of influenza mutated as it spread and became more virulent. From 17 to 50 million people around the world died. Thanks to modern medical technology, it seems unlikely that mutations would bring about this many deaths today. However, we live in a global era in which people, things, money, the Internet, and jets all move at fast paces, and stopping any of these causes major impacts. This is why wealth totaling hundreds of trillions to quadrillions of yen has already been lost. Most of this was not caused by COVID-19 cases or deaths, but rather by measures such as lockdowns and stay-at-home orders that stop human activity. We should use calculations of statistical probability to verify the great economic loss caused by the state of emergency, as well as the number of suicides that have resulted. In Japan, 1.3 million people pass away every year, among which roughly 100,000 die from pneumonia. In contrast, only 600 or 700 have died of COVID-19. The truly serious issue is the damage caused by harmful rumors spread by the media in its extreme reporting on COVID-19. This excessive reporting led to the state of emergency declaration.
Taiwan and Vietnam immediately decided to ban travelers from infected countries. They transported COVID-19 patients to hospitals, while people with mild or no symptoms were lodged in accommodation facilities. They also took intense isolation measures to halt the rapid spread of the disease by quarantining families at home. The Japanese government put off its decision to ban Chinese travelers out of consideration for Xi, who had been invited to Japan as a state guest. This had major impacts. The COVID-19 pandemic is causing extensive damage to human life and the economy, and I hope from the bottom of my heart that we will work hard to overcome this crisis as soon as possible.
May 15 (Friday), 6:00 p.m.