Reactions of governments hiding the truth about the seriousness of this disease have given me all the information I needed. This virus is really bad and China specifically has not come out and directly said so. The illness is far worse in the way it shows symptoms (or doesn't) and infects people.
It is far worse when one is sick with it than they are telling people. And, the mortality rate is worse and HEALTHY people who should be able to weather it are DYING. The coverup is so the very rich can move their assets to safety as much as possible before panic sets in and all hell breaks loose. The record lows on Treasury bond yields (very few understand what that means) and the sharp uptick in the price of gold tell me all I need to know about that. Batten down the hatches. It's going to be a rough ride.
[Reactions of governments hiding the truth about the seriousness of this disease have given me all the information I needed. This virus is really bad and China specifically has not come out and directly said so.]
Once they lay their hands on the emperor (or his designated heir), the narrative would evolve. After a suitable interlude during which they held the emperor hostage in all but name, the emperor would abdicate (or disappear), handing over the reins of power to the new regime. The emperor’s and principal courtiers’ kin and acquaintances would be erased from the gene pool, with a body count rising to the tens or hundreds of thousands. That is the worst-case scenario, but a specter that faces Communist Party bigwigs if a latter day rebel strikes at the throne again, and prevails.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fang_Xiaoru
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_familial_exterminations
Individual revolts generally don’t have a huge chance of success. But China’s history isn’t of individual revolts. It’s of one large-scale failed revolt after another, each hammering away at the resources and loyalties of the regime’s supporters, while offering opportunities for advancement at the expense of the regime. Until the regime runs out of resources and loyal supporters, at which point it is toppled and its adherents and their kin are wiped out in a bloodbath.
The potential for a new cycle of revolts followed by regime collapse is why Xi Jinping worries about this disease, the way he worries about every aspect of Chinese society that might threaten his rule. Whether the rest of the world should be as worried is an open question.
* Prior to the last 2 or 3 centuries, it’s hard to think of any regime outside of China where peasants upended existing regimes. In China, it occurred 2200 years ago, with the establishment of Liu Bang as emperor and the founder of the Han dynasty. Spartacus’s revolt, over a century later, consisted of little more than rabble fighting the organized formations of the Roman army. Liu’s involved hundreds of thousands of trained men in armor going up against the ancien regime’s front line troops. He wasn’t only a charismatic leader - he co-opted large numbers of regime stalwarts to his side during the ebbs and flows of his campaigns throughout the empire. And then made them hand over their personal armies or crushed their revolts once he won power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Gaozu_of_Han#Birth_and_early_life
Sounds a lot like the pandemic of 1918.