Chinese gifts to the Philippines: Disease, vaccine, and now maybe war

 StrategyPage has an article about the Philippines, and a lot of it is about Chinese aggression by destroying the ecology by building artificial islands and overfishing by their boats, protected by their "Coast guard"

For example, during the first three months of 2019 China deployed 900 navy, coast guard and naval militia ships around Pagasa Island to block access to fishing areas that Filipinos have been using for centuries. International law makes it clear that these are Filipino waters but the Chinese naval effort, and base constructed on Pagasa, challenge Filipino ownership blatantly and often physically. The Philippines is joining other nations in sending out their own coast guard and navy ships to protect their fishing boats using Chinese tactics. This is leading to more confrontations between mutually hostile warships. Everyone is under orders to not open fire, but everything else is allowed, like physically blocking movement, even at risk of collision. Another threatening tactic is to turn on fire-control radars. Eventually one of these confrontations will accidentally turn lethal. In some parts of the South China Sea and outside the West Pacific, Chinese intruders are met with armed force and the locals open fire. Vietnam has been on the losing end of this sort of thing several times and by the time the Philippines were confronted by Chinese claims, they realized they were even less able that Vietnam to oppose the Chinese with force.

Heh. Even Australia is getting involved.

Duterte, knowing we are a weak country militarily, tried to make nice, but as the article points out: He was cheated. No investment. No jobs for our OFW but lots of Chinese gangsters coming here. more here.

and the Chinese fraud includes their promise to give us their cruddy vaccine:

The most recent backfire was Chinese developed covid19 vaccine that were provided to the Philippines. This backfired when it was discovered that China was charging the Philippines three or more times per dose as other customers in east Asia and Africa were paying. Moreover, the Chinese vaccine turned out to be much less effective than Western vaccines also available to the Philippines. Worse, all these negotiations and delays in Chinese deliveries have meant that the Philippines will be the last nation in the region to receive enough vaccine to suppress the covid19 threat.

western vaccines are coming, however, as is the Russian Sputnik vaccine.

And there is a minor war about Ivermectin: The health officials want a "test"of it's use, cosing money (and lives) while ignoring the experience of other countries. in  the Inquirer the local docs note that widespread use of ivermectin hasn't stopped the outbreak of the new varient in India, and cautioned people from taking the Ivermectin being sold here because no one knows if it's real or a counterfeit medicine (a real problem here is fake, counterfeit, and substandard medicines).

Sigh.

one problem with the Ivermectin is that it is being used in other areas of India than where the present outbreak is killing people, and the study that shows it works is not in a peer reviewed journal. Dr. C summarizes:

and notice few news stories post the obvious: China was the source of the infection that has hurt many countries. That is strange, almost as if the reporter was afraid to mention this obvious fact.

Indeed, I wonder if I will be punished for even mentioning this in my blog. 

How bad is it? I linked a film about pedophilia in Hollywood to kuya, and got a warning that it was forbidden. Apparently toward the end of the film they mentioned Pizza gate so was labeled as fake news. 

Already commenters on the conspiracy sites are wondering if the outbreak in India was helped along by China, but hey, that's just a paranoia, right?

actually it started in Punjab, where a lot of people have relatives working overseas,so yes importation might be a factor, but probably the UK variant that mutated again.

Across the world, several key mutant strains have emerged thanks to ongoing virus replication in humans. Both ability to replicate and transmit, and a better ability to escape our immune systems, led to the variants establishing themselves as dominant strains across geographies and populations. The UK variant (B.1.1.7) is at least 30% more transmissible. At a recent webinar, Indian experts observed the “Indian strain” (B.1.617) is similarly transmissible to the UK variant, but there is little evidence so far of it being more lethal than the original virus.