Biosecurity and the New Normal
Although, for the most part, the question about the willingly unvaccinated among us does not have an official answer yet, there are a number of real-life case studies we can turn to in order to gain a better understanding of where we might be headed. However, we first need to appreciate the relationship between the currently ongoing mass vaccination efforts and the era of the new normal that is being actively marketed to the public by governments, corporations, and organisations like the World Economic Forum.
Firstly, the term new normal, much like build back better, or even The Great Reset for that matter, is a slogan. A marketing ploy. A device designed to get the masses’ stamp of approval on the kind of society that covid is supposedly forcing humanity to morph into. Whereas The Great Reset should really be called The Great Continuation, or The Great Rebranding, a far more appropriate term for new normal is biosecurity, or biosecurity state — which of course, sounds far less attractive to the average person.
“New thinking will be required to adapt to the new normal biosecurity life post Covid-19.”
“We cannot re-write the chapters of history already past, but we can learn from them, evolve, and adapt. The new normal biosecurity state may even be a better normal, certainly a different normal.”
Not quite the same ring.
According to Wikipedia, biosecurity refers to “measures aimed at preventing the introduction and/or spread of harmful organisms to animals and plants in order to minimise the risk of transmission of infectious disease.” The last thirteen months have essentially consisted of a global biosecurity crusade against germs and disease. But while hand sanitisers, masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and all the human intervention that has been mobilised in the fight against covid may well have contributed to preventing its transmission, it has also played a role in the spread of a rather disturbing idea: that human beings are, first and foremost, vectors for disease. It is no understatement to say that many people are now afraid of human contact — which, of course, plays right into the hands of the various interests that have manufactured this crisis and capitalised on the opportunity to further their agenda.
As Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben aptly argued little over a year ago,
“It is evident that, apart from the emergency situation, linked to a certain virus that may be in the future replaced by another, at issue is the design of a paradigm of governance whose efficacy will exceed that of all forms of government known thus far in the political history of the West…It is evident…that so-called “social distancing” will become the model of politics that awaits us, and that…advantage will be taken of the distancing to substitute digital technological apparatuses everywhere in place of human physicality…”
In a sense, biosecurity is only the beginning — a catalyst, if you will. Because ultimately, this is not about a virus. It’s not about stopping the spread. Rather, it’s about implementing the most effective form of governance ever known to mankind, something that could only be achieved and ultimately accepted by the general public in light of an allegedly deadly threat posed by an invisible enemy. As we have recently begun to see, the new looming danger is “variants”, which will provide ample justification for further mass vaccination campaigns and the implementation of digital vaccine certificates. If this incredibly important step in the technocratic plan to take over society is successful, it will represent a critical juncture towards a new paradigm of governance that could be described as nothing less than digital totalitarianism.
Although this might sound like an unreasonable conclusion, think about it this way: if the public is willing to accept digital vaccine certificates — which would imply undergoing an invasive medical procedure in the form of an experimental injection with no long term safety data — there is no reason to believe that whatever new technology tech oligarchs and governments throw our way will be rejected (or that we will be able to reject it, for that matter). Just last week, the pentagon announced the invention of a skin-implanted microchip able to detect covid in the body and extract it from the bloodstream, all before any symptoms begin to show. Back in September, Scripps Research published an article that showed promising results in animal trials for a Covid-19 self-assembling nanoparticle vaccine. This is not the stuff of science fiction, or conspiracy, anymore. A world where these kinds of technologies are the norm is not located in some hypothetical distant future that lies beyond our lifetime. In many ways, it’s already here, and once again, it’s important to understand that this is not just about biosecurity, but about the radical transformation of all aspects of society. In Klaus Schwab’s own words,
“The fourth industrial revolution will impact our lives completely. It will not only change how we communicate, how we produce, how we consume, it will actually change us, our own identity…Smart traffic, Smart government, Smart cities, What we will see is that everything will be integrated into a ecosystem driven by big data, driven particularly by close cooperation by government, business, civil society.”
The most extreme example of this new model of governance is, rather unsurprisingly, China, where blockchain technology, digital IDs, cashless payment apps and the internet of things (IoT) have already become commonplace. Of course, China has been under totalitarian control for a long time now — one of the reasons why the implementation of these kinds of technologies has been relatively smooth and uncontroversial (at least in the eyes of Western observers). This is an important point — much like the Western scientific establishment looked in awe at the manner in which China managed to contain covid and subsequently decided to follow the same authoritarian (and rather unscientific) approach, the Western capitalist class is now looking at China as the model to follow when it comes to governance. This video about buying food with facial recognition in Beijing provides an eerie glimpse into the kind of society that highly advanced technology, centralised blockchains and automation can give rise to. Of course, while China may be the most advanced example of this digital revolution, these kinds of developments are by no means unique. Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, for example, is likely to set the tone for the future of physical retail in the US and Europe; and Amazon One allows users to make contactless payments by simply waving their wrist over a reader that recognises their palm print.
Notably, China has been quite slow with their mass-vaccination rollout, but rest assured that positive vaccination status will inevitably be tied to this rapidly developing digital infrastructure aimed at mining data, maximising corporate profits, and promoting whatever the Chinese Communist Party deems to be “good behaviour”. As this article on the World Economic Forum’s website almost enthusiastically highlights, more than 11 million people in China have been banned from flying and 4 million from accessing trains — all as a result of the country’s social credit system. In the city of Jinang, dog owners have point-based credit scores and have to carry dog licenses at all times when walking their pets. Lose enough points by not following the “correct” behaviour? The government confiscates your dog. Fail to renew your dog-owner’s license? Same outcome. No bother, though, you can always get your pet back by successfully completing a multiple choice exam on “regulations for dogs”. Social engineering 101.
Three-thousand miles away in the United Arab Emirates, the Ministry of Possibilities recently launched the National Programme for Behavioural Rewards, a similar apparatus intended to promote — you guessed it — good behaviour along the three pillars of homeland, society, and family.
In Israel, where the majority of the population has been vaccinated against covid, vaccine certificates in the form of physical QR codes and smartphone apps have become ubiquitous. The European Union is planning to launch a similar system later this summer, which will combine vaccination status, covid test results, and recovery from the disease into one scannable QR code to be used for travel within member states. In New York, the Excelsior Pass developed by IBM, marketed to the public as a way to “fast track” the reopening of the economy, functions in the exact same way. In California, the Los Angeles School District partnered up with Microsoft to implement Daily Pass, a system that integrates multiple “safety measures” such as test results, vaccination status, and a daily health check for students and staff into one QR code. The idea that these new technologies are simply going to go away with the waning of covid is naive at best and dangerous at worst — again, this is not about biosecurity. This is the new normal.
There is an interesting pattern between these examples: in authoritarian countries like China and the UAE, governments simply implement these new technologies at will. But in the free, fair, democraticWest, it is tech conglomerates with strong ties to governments, the military, and banks, who take the initiative. The phrase illusion of choice has rarely seemed more appropriate.
I could go on for much longer here, but I think this is a good place to tie it all back to the vaccination conundrum — what are we going to do about the pesky, “vaccine hesitant” crowd that takes issue with having to undergo an invasive medical procedure in order to participate in society? If you agree with my framing, vaccine certificates represent a critical step towards the kind of digital dystopia that I’ve been attempting to describe, which means that fighting against their implementation is crucial. However, focussing on this issue in isolation is not enough — in case it wasn’t already clear, there is much more at stake here.
Just last week, the Bank of England launched a Central Bank Digital Currency Taskforce aimed at exploring the potential for the use of digital currency in the United Kingdom. Firstly, the idea that this is something that central banks have only just started to consider is ludicrous; but more importantly, the implementation of centralised digital currencies in the context of everything I have presented in this essay should be incredibly alarming for anyone who values privacy and personal freedom.
Bodily autonomy, personal choice, freedom of choice, individual liberty, freedom of speech, privacy — what is the meaning of these supposedly inalienable rights in a world where the free flow of data takes precedence above everything else? What are the implications of being a political dissident, or even a freethinking individual, in a world where governments and corporations have the power to shape and regulate our behaviour?
Conclusion
One of the problems when it comes to understanding the historical moment that is currently unfolding before our eyes has to do with our tendency to look at history as a process from which we, 21st-century civilised beings, are fundamentally detached. This misconception is often exemplified by the kind of thinking that sees the crimes against humanity that took place across the 20th century (and to a large extent, all that came before, so basically the entirety of history) as distant manifestations of the worst aspects of human nature which were ultimately defeated by the rise of democracy, science and liberalism. It is also shown in the thinking of individuals like Edwina Currie, who fail to see any problem with the framing of a particular minority group as “germ spreaders” who don’t belong in the same train carriage as her. As I said at the beginning of this essay, however, she is far from being the only one with this sort of view. Below are just a couple of Twitter replies to an opinion piece recently retweeted by Jennifer Rubin, an American “left-wing” writer at the Washington post with half a million followers, about the need to “stop catering to vaccine holdouts”.
“Those who refuse to get vaccinated should not be covered by insurance if they get covid and require hospitalization.”
“Not a lawyer, but at what point should we be considering a label like bioterrorism? We have intent, there’s a clear agenda, there’s hostility toward the State, incitement to create unrest, damage to financial capital, a clear disregard in spreading a biological agent, etc”
“Can insurance companies put pressure on those who object to vaccines? Can they drop coverage?”
“Documentation of severe vaccine reaction, medical condition preventing vaccination, or proof that a particular religion is against vaccination should be required for anyone not getting the vaccine. What is it they said to us? Fvck your feelings.”
Perhaps the most astounding thing about these responses is that there seems to be a significant overlap between those who have been calling Donald Trump a wannabe fascist dictator for the past 4 years and those who espouse these sorts of perspectives — something else to ponder over.
To conclude, many people seem to believe that contemporary, “democratic” societies are immunised from the kinds of social phenomena that, for example, led 1930s Germany down a path that ultimately resulted in the mass killings of millions of Jews. Whether this huge blindspot is the result of a lack of education (an increasing number of young people don’t know much about the Holocaust), the effects of the age of abundance, or a mix of these and other factors, doesn’t seem to matter that much. It should, of course, but the time for scholarly analysis and research into the causes of this phenomenon is long gone.
What matters now is understanding how we can navigate its potentially catastrophic consequences in a way that we don’t come to a full circle and make the exact same mistakes once again.
What we are currently faced with is one of the most important and consequential crossroads in recent times. We can either wake up and fight against the new normal; or we can continue down the same path towards a new kind of totalitarianism.
Nico