There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns in this world. I’m not a fan of that last one, but that’s where we stand with the Covid-19 saga unfolding in China right now. Nothing that’s happened over the last month and a half has made any sense and that should concern us all. At this point, I’d say we don’t know what we don’t know.
It started with the angst toward China’s Zero-Covid policy that prompted rare mass protests across the authoritarian nation. When the government inexplicably dropped their restrictions and essentially went to an All-Covid policy, my assumption was they were going to teach the people a lesson by giving them what they asked for before coming back around a couple of weeks later and saying, “See, we told you freedom was overrated. We’re reinstating restrictions now.”
That didn’t happen. Now we’re learning that there is a massive surge of Covid-19 infections to the tune of 900 MILLION with 80% of the cases categorized as “severe.” My reaction to the article by Alex Wu from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times was “What the ****?”
On today’s news clip broadcast for The JD Rucker Show, I walked through the article and offered up theories about how any of this can possibly make sense. Is this really Covid? Is it something completely different, such as the next bioweapon release? Does this all tie into the machinations of the globalist elite cabal as they work against their common enemy, the United States of America?
My conclusion bodes ill for America and the freedoms of our citizens. This all smells like a coordinated effort between the Chinese Communist Party and the globalist elite cabal to launch the triggering event that will justify worldwide adoption of the Pandemic Treaty. I’ll be discussing that possibility in-depth during the live show later today.
Whatever is happening, it’s not what we’re being told… or not being told. It’s conspicuous that a billion people infected with Covid in China isn’t making the national news in the United States. One would think the vaxx-nannies would be screaming about this while the mask tyrants would be calling for more power. The fact that there is mostly radio silence on this issue reinforces my belief that this is all part of a greater globalist plan. Here’s the article I discussed by Alex Wu from The Epoch Times:
Study Estimates 900 Million in China Infected With COVID, Officials Admit 60,000 Deaths in Past Month
About 900 million Chinese are estimated to be infected with COVID-19 in China’s latest outbreak, with nearly 80 percent of them experiencing severe symptoms, according to a study by Peking University. Meanwhile, Chinese health officials have finally reported that China has seen around 60,000 COVID-related deaths at hospitals across the country in the past month following international pressure for transparency and data.
A research group led by Prof. Ma Jingjing at the National School of Development of Peking University estimated in a recent study that as of Jan. 11, 64 percent of China’s 1.4 billion population had been infected with COVID-19, which was about 900 million people, reported mainland Chinese media Economic Observer on Jan. 13.
In terms of regional differences in infection rates, the report said that the highest infection rates for this round the outbreak are in three provinces in the western part of China. Gansu Province ranked the first place with about 91 percent of people being infected, followed by Yunnan Province with an 84 percent infection rate and Qinghai Province with 80 percent.
The model estimates of infection rates in the study were calculated based on search volumes on online platforms for symptoms related to COVID-19 infection, according to Ma. Given the lack of official data, the authors used the number of online searches for symptoms such as “fever” and “cough” as an indication of local infection rates, she said.
China affairs commentator Li Muyang pointed out during his talk show on NTDTV on Jan. 13, that as a result, the study likely didn’t include many elderly Chinese who aren’t accustomed to searching for information online. Re-infection rates are also not likely captured by the estimates from the study. The actual infection rate in China could be higher than 900 million, he said.
The modelling in the report also predicted that this wave of COVID infections across China reached its peak on Dec. 20, 2022. However, other experts believe that infections may continue to increase as the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday approaches.
Peak Yet to Come
Zeng Guang, ex-head of the China’s Center for Disease Control, said at the “Shenzhou Cell New Crown Recombinant Protein Multivalent Vaccine Research and Development Conference” on Jan. 8 that the COVID wave has just begun to reach its peak in some places, and hasn’t yet peaked in rural China, according to mainland Chinese media Caixin. Zeng estimated that the peak of the COVID wave will come sometime between February and March, and that the duration of the peak of severe cases will be longer.
Zeng expressed concern about the situation in China’s rural areas, where many Chinese are expected to visit over the New Year holiday. He said that there are a large number of elderly, young, sick, and disabled in rural areas, and that the medical infrastructure and conditions there are poor.
Earlier this year, Zhang Wenhong, China’s top epidemiologist and director of the China Medical Center for Infectious Diseases, said in a lecture that the infection rate of this wave is very high.
During the Lunar New Year on Jan. 23, the national infection rate may reach 80 percent, which means that more than 1.1 billion people will be infected, he estimated.
Severe Symptoms
The research group at Peking University also surveyed 11,443 COVID patients and 76 percent of them reported that their symptoms were worse than that of the flu.
The report said that most of the infected people interviewed had one or more symptoms of fever, cough and sputum, nasal congestion, runny nose, sore throat, altered sense of taste and smell, and diarrhea. The most common symptom was a fever, with 82 percent of infected respondents developing the symptom, of which 75 percent had a high fever (38.5 degrees C/101.3 degrees F and above), and 47 percent had a fever lasting for three or more days.
As many as 86 percent of the infected used antipyretic drugs.
On Jan. 13, the Peking University report became the most searched item on China’s websites, sparking heated discussions.
One netizen posted, “Didn’t the so-called experts say previously that 90 percent of the infected people are asymptomatic? Now come out and explain.”
Another posted, ”I have a fever. My whole body is sore and I feel weak. I was told that I was a mild case.”
A post read, “The aftereffects of COVID are very serious. I was infected almost a month ago, and I am still weak, and I am out of breath when I move around.”
Major online Chinese news portals such as sina.com soon deleted articles discussing the study.
Nearly 60,000 COVID Deaths in Past Month
On Jan. 14, China’s National Health Commission finally released a report outlining 59,938 COVID-related deaths in China’s hospitals from Dec. 8, 2022, to Jan. 12.
According to the official announcement, the figure is a “through analysis” rather than a “statistic.” The release of the number came following widespread international criticism, including from the World Health Organization, of the Chinese communist regime for underplaying the severity of the outbreak and its lack of transparency.
It immediately became the most searched topic on baidu.com, the Chinese equivalent to Google. Many Chinese are still questioning the accuracy of this official number.
One posted on social media, “Hospitals recorded more than 50,000 deaths, but there are many deaths in urban and rural areas that haven’t occurred during hospitalization and are not recorded!”
Another netizen said, “How many deaths are there in rural areas that are not in the hospital? It should be many times of the death toll in the hospitals.”
One read, “How many died without going to the hospital?”
Feng Chongyi, a China expert and professor at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, told The Epoch Times on Jan. 14 that the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is seriously concealing the truth, and the actual COVID death toll may be much more than what the CCP has reported.
Alternative media source:
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
