It was predictable that Foreign Affairs magazine, the official organ of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), would print an article on the Covid-19 pandemic offering solutions with one thing in common — more government, more global government, and more control over the population.
In the January/February 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs, with four authors, the article began with a discussion of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, which killed as many as 100 million people and shortened life expectancy in the United States by more than a decade.
But, the article continued, Americans soon moved on, and as nothing remotely as widespread had occurred in the past century, we began to consider such epidemics as relics of the past. “Over the rest of the twentieth century,” the article noted, “the United States skirted the worst ravages of other pandemics. The 1957-58 Asian flu, the 1968 Hong Kong flu, and the 1977 Russian flu all left the country relatively unscathed.”
Even the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s was — in the words of the authors — “cruelly dismissed by many as only a ‘gay plague’” despite its killing 675,000 people “of all identities in the United States.” It is quite true that AIDS did kill others in addition to male homosexuals, but it is rather misleading to pretend that AIDS was not mostly a disease affecting that population. Almost all of the other victims contracted the disease through blood transfusions (as was the case with tennis great Arthur Ashe) or were drug addicts using dirty needles.
And, Americans “avoided the worst of the outbreaks of SARS in 2002-4, the swine flu in 2009, and MERS in 2012.”
Then, “COVID-19 shocked the entire world out of its complacency,” the authors note, building up to what is apparently the lesson they are trying to convey: Government needs to be more involved, and the population needs to accept the control that comes with it.
What do they see as the “causes” of the pandemic, and, more importantly, what will cause future pandemics, which they view as inevitable?
“The causes are numerous, including population growth, urbanization, greater consumption of meat, and increasing proximity to wildlife. Taken together, these factors increase the risk of animal viruses spilling over to humans.” Then, other factors will cause the viruses to spread beyond their origins. “With the rise of long-distance travel, a pathogen can now transit the globe in hours” through what they dub “super-spreader events.”
Their concern about “greater consumption of meat” should raise an eyebrow or two, considering that elitists like Bill Gates have already begun to advocate the eating of bugs. (I wonder how many bugs Gates eats a week?) The authors do not say that government should somehow limit the population, or the consumption of meat, but we can already predict that there are those who will certainly advocate government policies to do just that, once it becomes so-called settled science that those factors can cause pandemics.
And then there is the predictable inclusion of the negative consequences of “climate change.” The authors argue that climate change has “exacerbated these problems.” How so? “It has generated yet more habitat loss and pushed wild animals from hotter to cooler climates, where they are more likely to mix with new animals and more people. It has led to water shortages and crop failures that have driven humans into dense megacities and migrant camps where pathogens spread easily.”
Of course, it goes without saying, then, that there needs to be increased governmental control — and global government, of course — to combat global climate change.
Whatever did cause the global pandemic of Covid-19, the authors assure the readers of Foreign Affairs that “there is no evidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology held viruses that closely resemble SARS-CoV-2, while bats in the wild have been found to be infected by viruses that do.”
While they concede that another lab, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention — where there is probably an active program for collecting viruses from wildlife, including bats — just 300 yards away, “One can say with confidence that there is no credible evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was genetically engineered.” In short, the virus might have had some connection to a lab, but it was not genetically engineered. Surely the Communists that run China would never do that!
So, what is the solution? “To reduce the risk of lab accidents, governments should establish strong, transparent international standards requiring careful precautions, especially in labs collecting animal specimens.”
Beyond that, “Governments will need to issue and enforce classic public health recommendations: limit travel, isolate, wash your hands, wear a mask, and avoid mass gatherings.” (Emphasis added.) In other words, more of the same, all with government control. Shut down sporting and music events, churches, and political gatherings. Limit the ability of the population to move around freely. While washing one’s hands is always a good idea, just how could anything but a totalitarian government actually enforce such a draconian measure? Do we need to install cameras in restrooms, or perhaps have Hand-Washing Police?
And who should be isolated? Do they really advocate going through all of that again?
Finally, they argue that “the developed world should accept that it must shoulder the burden.” Translation: Taxpayers of the United States, pay up.
None of this is really new. People have already been ordered to stay home, not go to church or work, wear masks, and not travel. This may be a prescription for a loss of liberty, but not for doing anything of substance to fight a pandemic.
One cannot say that these four authors are not sincere in their desire to limit the spread of any future deadly pandemic, but this article’s inclusion in Foreign Affairs certainly fits into the agenda of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations.
