The Catastrophe of the Pandemic and a Path Forward

(Minghui.org) The coronavirus pandemic has been ravaging the world since 2020, and many people are worried about their futures. I would like to share some data and thoughts on how we might look at this situation from a different perspective and secure a better future for ourselves.

The Pandemic Is Out of Control

I collected and analyzed the published data on coronavirus cases and here are my key findings.

The number of new cases globally is continuing to increase. For example, there were over 10 million cases in the first half of 2020 and over 70 million in the second half. In the first half of 2021 alone, however, there were about 99 million cases, which exceeded the total number of 83 million in 2020.

It took more than 180 days (from December 2019 to June 28, 2020) to reach the first 10 million confirmed cases globally and an additional 43 days (June 29 to August 10, 2020) to reach the second 10 million cases.

The cases further increased by 13 million in the next 49 days (August 11 to September 28, 2020), averaging 37.69 (=49/13) days needed to reach each additional 10 million cases. From September 29 to December 31, 2020 (94 days), there was an increase of 5.01 million cases, averaging 18.76 (=94/5.01) days needed to reach each additional 10 million cases.

A total of 98,921,930 cases were recorded in the first six months of 2021 (181 days in total), averaging 18.3 (=181/9.892193) days needed to reach each additional 10 million cases.

This indicates that it is taking less and less time to reach each additional 10 million confirmed cases. We’ve also observed a similar trend with death cases. While it took 9 months (from December 2019 to September 2020) for the first million people to die, it only took 4 months (from September 2020 to January 2021) for the second million, 3 months (January to April 2021) for the third million, and less than three months (from April to July 2021) to hit four million this July. More specifically, the first half of 2021 alone recorded 2,129,715 coronavirus deaths, 1.175 times the total number (1.821 million) in all of 2020.

Below is a more detailed timeline:

According to data collected by John Hopkins University (JHU), the cumulative confirmed cases reached 10 million by June 28, 2020, and reached 20 million by August 10, 2020 (Note: Evidence has shown that China significantly underreported cases, so the real numbers could be much higher.)

By September 28, 2020, there had been 33 million cases of the virus and one million deaths.

By November 8, 2020, the number of cases had reached 50 million.

According to real-time data from Worldometer, as of December 31, 2020, there were 83.1 million cases with a death toll of 1.812 million; 58.89 million patients were able to make a full recovery.

According to JHU data, the number of deaths reached two million by January 15, 2021.

As of January 26, 2021, the total number of confirmed cases exceeded 100 million, with a death toll of 2,149,818.

Total deaths were above three million as of April 17, 2021.

On April 30, the confirmed cases reached 150 million, meaning one out of every 50 people in the world had been infected, less than 13 months after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic.

A total of 1,884,146 people lost their lives to coronavirus in the first half of 2021 (between January 1 and June 10) alone, when the total death toll in 2020 was 1,880,510. In other words, the virus killed more people in half the time than last year.

As of July 7, the total deaths exceeded 4 million, which is more than half of Hong Kong’s population, or close to half of New York City’s population. Peace Research Institute Oslo estimated that this number is equal to all war deaths globally since 1982. By the end of July 2021, there were more than 197 million cases and more than 4.2 million deaths.

New Variants

When the number of deaths reached 4 million on July 7, experts said that the situation had changed and that it was now a battle between vaccines and highly infectious variants such as Delta.

Such concerns came from the sudden increase in cases beginning in late June 2021. Israel, for example, found that 90% of its new cases were the Delta variant. To make things worse, about 50% of the newly-infected adults had been fully vaccinated. Among the 9.3 million people in the country, about 55% had received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, including children between 12 and 15 years old.

A similar situation was seen elsewhere. “As the Delta variant of the coronavirus surges through the U.K., almost half of the country’s recent Covid-19 deaths are of people who have been vaccinated,” reported The Wall Street Journal on July 2 in an article titled, “Some Vaccinated People Are Dying of Covid-19. Here’s Why Scientists Aren’t Surprised.”

In fact, on July 6, the U.K. reported the greatest number of new cases (28,773) in a single day since January 29, 2021. It also had the highest number of deaths (37) since April 23, 2021. This is puzzling from the perspective of herd immunity, which requires 60-70% of the population to be either vaccinated or have been exposed to the virus, because 86.2% of British adults had at least one dose of vaccine and 64.3% had two doses.

With daily new cases soaring to a staggering 500,000 worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on July 15 that new, potentially dangerous, variants might emerge in the future. “The pandemic is nowhere near finished,” remarked Didier Houssin of WHO.

Such a concern is supported by the increasing spread of the disease. Data shows that 15.03 million new cases were recorded in July 2021 alone, many more than in June 2021.

So far, four variants have been dominating the coronavirus pandemic, including Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. After emerging in India in October 2020, the Delta variant has now spread to over 130 countries.

“Delta is a warning that this virus is evolving, but it is also a call to action before more dangerous variants emerge,” warned Michael Ryan, Executive Director of WHO Health Emergencies, on July 30.

The Pandemic and Traditional Values

The past year and a half has been a chaotic time. Medical professionals and governments are trying hard to contain the virus and control its spread. But their efforts have been limited. It may be time to take a step back and evaluate this issue holistically.

In ancient times, especially in China, people in general believed in the harmony of heaven, earth, and mankind. When moral values were ignored and society was corrupt, plagues and other disasters often occurred.

Limitations of Current Measures

Looking back at plagues in the past, very often they were beyond people’s control. Despite modern technologies, people can still be caught off guard when certain disasters, such as tsunamis and wars, strike. The ongoing pandemic is another example.

As a result of the systematic cover-up and misinformation perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the virus quickly spread to other countries. In March 2020, Italy announced it was locking down cities and implementing quarantine policies, but it was still hit hard by the virus. After a variant was identified in the U.K. in December 2020, the county immediately started strict isolation measures. But new cases kept increasing over the next few weeks, and both the daily new cases and daily deaths broke records in January. In the U.S., California, which had the strictest policies, also had the highest number of cases and deaths.

“Across this round of the study we’ve seen that the number of infected people has remained high and we have no good evidence that infections are falling in England,” remarked Steven Riley, Professor of Infectious Disease Dynamics at Imperial College in London, “We are working to better understand why we are seeing these trends when the country is in lockdown, including studying the new variant, so that policy-makers can respond urgently to help bring infections down and save lives.”

Some members of the White House economic team also found the strict lockdown did not contain the virus and sometimes made it worse. Nonetheless, many countries, including China, have continued the lockdown policy, as the number of new cases increases dramatically in many places.

Now it is time to rethink the situation. For example, the U.K. government lifted all COVID-19 restrictions on July 19, including social distancing and mask requirements. But the number of new cases continued to drop over the next 7 days. This may offer us some ideas of alternative ways to handle the pandemic.

Another related topic is vaccination. Under the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), several vaccines were quickly approved and saw the first group of people (mainly in developed countries) getting jabbed at the end of 2020.

The pandemic remains abated in 2021, resulting in more cases and deaths. Even after many more people get the shots, the virus is still spreading far and wide, dashing people’s hopes for a quick victory over the virus by way of vaccination.

Plagues Have an Eye

The pandemic is similar to a torrential rain in that it is violent one moment but less so in another moment. When floods follow downpours, people rush to implement short-term measures to lessen the impact of flooding, similar to quarantines and lockdowns in the case of the pandemic. As the downpours turned to drizzle or even stop temporarily, people celebrate the “success” of flood control and go back to enjoy everyday life as usual. Similarly, when the pandemic cases fell momentarily, people forgot about the pain and resumed their normal lives.

But because the fundamental causes remain unchecked, such catastrophes return and again. Throughout history, floods came and went, as did plagues such as smallpox, the Bubonic plague, the Black Death, SARs, and now Covid-19.

Across cultures, there is a belief since ancient times that plagues come for a reason and they serve as a warning (or punishment) for people’s wrongdoings. In fact, there are many indications that good people will be blessed and are less likely to get infected during plagues.

One example is the ancient Roman Empire, which was inundated by waves of plagues. At that time, several emperors and many soldiers who persecuted Christians lost their lives to the plagues. In contrast, Christians in general were immune and very few were infected. Apparently, the disease came because of the suppression of Christians. After a few centuries, plagues disappeared mysteriously when the Roman Empire came to an end.

A similar situation happened in the late Ming Dynasty in China. A plague broke out that infected only Ming Dynasty soldiers but not the Manchu army. When the Shunzhi Emperor declared the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, however, the plague disappeared mysteriously.

The ongoing pandemic does not seem to infect people randomly, either. Data shows that the virus goes to places that are heavily influenced by the CCP. In the past few decades, many Western countries embraced the CCP for economic reasons while ignoring the CCP’s deplorable human rights violations. Most of these countries were hit hard during the pandemic. In contrast, both the infection and death rates in Taiwan were extremely low even though it is so close to mainland China. In fact, both officials and ordinary citizens in Taiwan are wary of the CCP’s infiltration. They have also taken concrete measures against it.

Such a trend was also seen inside China. From the lists circulated online of several employers, the death rate of CCP members from the virus was much higher than ordinary citizens. Although CCP members are only 6.4% of the Chinese population, their death rates are as high as 64% to 88%.

The Mind-Body Connection

Back in the days of the ancient Roman Empire, many people were surprised to see Christians were less likely to be infected with the plagues. After thinking it through, they became receptive to the Christian teachings and repented their wrongdoings, and many people miraculously recovered from the disease.

Huangdi Neijing (Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor), one of the earliest and best known Chinese medicine classics, wrote, “When a person has righteous qi (energy) residing inside, no viciousness is able to invade.”

Right now, the CCP is the single largest threat to the world. The regime’s systematic cover-up and misinformation allowed the virus to quickly spread throughout the world. That is why many people call the pathogen the CCP virus.

Inside China, Falun Gong is the largest group suppressed by the CCP. About 100 million practitioners have been persecuted by the regime since 1999 for their belief in the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance. There have been many cases reported by Minghui in which people were blessed with health and safety by keeping in mind the phrases “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.”

Pay Attention to Warnings

Many examples in history have shown that, when a society’s morals are corrupt, it could face danger. One example is Pompeii and its degenerate culture, which was buried in the ashes of a volcano.

Abhigya Anand, a child astrologer in India, made many predictions about the pandemic, many of which came true. He said that the pandemic was related to poor moral values and that vaccines would not solve all the problems. In fact, too much reliance on medicine and vaccines might make the disease even worse. He said that the only proper solution was awakening people’s hearts, such as returning to faith.

Anand also predicted that the pandemic could get worse. Other prophecies, such as one by Liu Bowen in China’s Ming Dynasty, also predicted the pandemic.

Summary

Since seizing power in 1949, the CCP has killed tens of millions of innocent people during its political campaigns. The Great Chinese Famine (1959–1961) alone took the lives of at least 45 million. Through economic incentives and ideological infiltration, however, the regime has actively pushed through its communist agenda around the world.

The coronavirus pandemic is probably a warning. The CCP not only spread the virus to the world but also hid the real numbers and boasted about its “success” while selling its vaccines globally. Although these vaccines have failed to control infections, the CCP nonetheless portrays itself as a “savior” of the world.

Since the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party was published in 2004, more than 380 million Chinese have quit the CCP organizations. By rejecting the CCP, both Chinese and people in other countries will be blessed with a safer future.