20260429 How we all fell into the surveillance and control trap.
It’s December 2019 and the world doesn’t know it yet but in a matter of days, everything will change.
A deadly virus, that we now know was already out in the world but not recognised, was identified in concentration in Wuhan in China. Working fast, the virus was isolated. Classified as a novel coronavirus and reported to the World Health Organisation.
And it was named: CoVid-19. In South East Asia, this caused concern across the region: a previous Coronavirus, known as SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory System, had caused deep concern as it spread rapidly, resulting in the deaths of almost 800 people. It was not the number of deaths, per se, that caused the concern: it was that the mortality rate was around 10% of those infected and that, for the elderly, about 50%. CoVid-19 was officially SARS-CoV2.
The SARS outbreak lasted two years – 2002-4 – and the worst affected were China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
It was not the only such virus. Middle East Respiratory Virus or MERS. MERS was first identified in 2012 in Saudi Arabia. It is officially revered to as MERS-CoV. Unlike SARS and CoVid-19, where bats are regarded as a probable host from which the viri jump to humans, the primary reservoir of MERS is dromedary camels. MERS patients are often asymptomatic; at the other end of the scale are those with severe symptoms and death.
It is MERS that gives us the piece of information that most concerns us in this article: according to The World Health Organisation, most of the asymptomatic cases have been “detected following aggressive contact tracing of a laboratory-confirmed case”.
In early 2020, contact tracing was done manually: literally taking e.g. airline records and telephoning people. Why? Because in the late 1990s, many countries had ceased the use of arrival cards. What do you do with tens of thousands of manual records handed in every day? The answer is store them but don’t process them. This, more than anything else, provided the impetus for the growth of technology at borders and beyond which we would see developed before the pandemic was over.
In the Middle East, “12 countries (Bahrain, Egypt, Islamic Republic of Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen) have so far reported laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS. Amongst these countries, imported cases that were associated with travel were reported from Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia and Yemen.”
Of those, it’s Bahrain, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia that caused unease : three out of four are major international air hubs and an outbreak of anything contagious can spread across the world in the time a plane takes to fly. As aircraft reach longer and longer journeys, a single plane can fly from Australia to the East Coast of the USA with a pit stop in the UAE. In the case of Saudi Arabia, there is a very specific issue: Mecca is in Saudi Arabia. Every year, millions of pilgrims visit Mecca and at Haj, then the crowds are at their height, they live, cheek by jowl, often in scruffy, cramped conditions that are akin to a giant backpacker’s hostel.
Then they go home. Any infectious disease has the ideal conditions to spread far, wide and very, very fast.
MERS has not seen “sustained human-to-human transmission” but it has happened in several countries with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and – in the centre of the SARS outbreak – South Korea being the largest. These have been attributed to unprotected contact with an infected person, often during medical care.
The WHO says “There is no specific antiviral treatment recommended for MERS-CoV infection and no vaccine currently available.” And by currently, it means now, in 2026. The figures for 2025 show that the incidence is actually quite low: laboratory-confirmed cases since April 2012 is 2628 and deaths related to MERS are 948. It has been found in 27 countries around the world of which 12 are in the Middle East. The infection rate is low: in August 2025, one new case was reported – that in Saudi Arabia. Even so, countries with significant Muslim populations routinely monitor arrivals for any indication of flu-like symptoms.
But what the low infection figures do not show is that, of those patients that are symptomatic, the mortality rate of MERS is startling, especially when compared with SARS and CoVid-19.
A paper published in June 2020 by Pormohammad et al in the Review of Medical Virology reviewed “the literature”. This is an academic technique where no new research is undertaken but published material is read and re-assessed, usually on a comparative basis. This paper (link below) is described by its authors, of which there were 9, as “large‐scale study.” Cutting through the academic language on methodology (we can summarise it as “we did a search, found papers on relevant topics, read them and tabulated data we considered relevant”) we find this: “We searched all relevant literature published up to February 28, 2020.”
I don’t want to be cynical but we all laughed when ChatGPT produced results based on six months’ old data: here we have an influential academic paper based on data that was published four months earlier and given that that data had to be collected, collated and analysed could not have been up to date when it was published.
And yet, the June 2020 paper said with confidence “Overall 114 articles included in this study; 52 251 COVID‐19 confirmed patients (20 studies), 10 037 SARS (51 studies), and 8139 MERS patients (43 studies) were included. The most common symptom was fever; COVID‐19 (85.6%, P < .001), SARS (96%, P < .001), and MERS (74%, P < .001), respectively. Analysis showed that 84% of Covid‐19 patients, 86% of SARS patients, and 74.7% of MERS patients had an abnormal chest X‐ray. The mortality rate in COVID‐19 (5.6%, P < .001) was lower than SARS (13%, P < .001) and MERS (35%, P < .001) between all confirmed patients.”
These figures were put in context by another paper, published in August 2020 by Hu et al. Also based on published information, this one showed a very different picture. It didn’t focus on the mortality rate: it concentrated on the numbers. The authors, all medics in China, said
“As of 19 May 2020, a total of 4,731,458 individuals were reported as infected with SARS-CoV-2 among 213 countries, areas or territories with recorded cases, and the overall case-fatality rate was 6.6% (316,169 deaths among 4,731,458 recorded cases), according to the World Health Organization. Studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 is notably similar to (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus) SARS-CoV that emerged in 2002–2003 and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) that spread during 2012, and these viruses all contributed to global pandemics. The ability of SARS-CoV-2 to rapidly spread a pneumonia-like disease from Hubei Province, China, throughout the world has provoked widespread concern. The main symptoms of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) include fever, cough, myalgia, fatigue and lower respiratory signs.”
So, while the mortality percentages remained broadly similar to those in the earlier paper, Hu et al drew attention to the speed of transmission and the numbers of reported infections were startlingly different.
So, while the mortality percentages remained broadly similar to those in the earlier paper, Hu et al drew attention to the speed of transmission and the numbers of reported infections were startlingly different.
But the tone was set for academic commentary on CoVid-19 with rapidly produced papers relying on data that was at best formative.
In February 2020, even in South East Asia, there was only mild concern. In Malaysia, our airports were still open, we were advised to wear masks but we were free to go anywhere, with anyone, for any purpose and but we were seeing significant reductions in the number of tourists from China.
In February 2020, the Philippines kept its airport open but heavily restricted travel within the country. I was en route to the airport in Malaysia when I heard the news and turned back. Not much point in flying into a country to be, basically, confined to the airport or, if I was lucky, a hotel for an unspecified period.
Countries began to separate their information into domestic and imported cases. Panicky rumours started including that the virus was transmitted on packages shipped from China. China was the primary source of masks and “PPE” or personal protective material. In fact, the biggest risks were fraud – either goods were not delivered or they did not meet medical standards but even this was a tiny part of the goods shipped, before countries closed their ports, leaving goods stranded within sight of their destination.
As 2020 unfolded, maps showed concentrations of CoVid-19 and transmission routes. There was one common factor: a single person on a single aircraft could start a concentration of infection within days of landing. And the more people in close proximity (a term that later became hijacked but is here used in its usual sense) the greater the spread of the virus.
But a decision to allow a religious gathering to take place could put infected persons on flights, on buses and in private vehicles where after a short incubation period, the virus would spread rapidly.
Worse: evidence as to the manner of spreading was largely guesswork but based upon standard virology because everything has to start somewhere.
Physical contact, direct or indirect (i.e. through the handrails on escalators or the handles on shopping baskets or trolleys) resulted in changes in behaviour – anti-social distancing, elbow bumps and food deliveries left at a pick up point, reminiscent of the stories about the village of Eyam in Derbyshire during the Black Death plague in the mid 17th Century.
Perhaps the biggest lesson from history was how countries dealt with the plague and the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918.
The same fundamental tactics were used in relation to SARS and CoVid-19. There wasn’t a medicinal approach, the approach was to protect society against the spread of the virus or disease.
Remember all those ships full of goods standing off ports ? In the 14th Century, Italy was in the grip of one of the periodic outbreaks of plague. At the time, cities largely ran their own affairs and the city of Venice decided that any inbound ship would have to stand off for a period of forty, quaranta, days. Anyone who hadn’t died could land.
Anyone already in the country who contracted the virus would be isolated – which is what Eyam did to the whole village.
The use of facemasks was long-standing, too. As was washing everything and burning contaminated clothing.
In the USA in 1918, the first case of Spanish Flu in Philadelphia was discovered on 17th September. The equivalent of “social distancing” measures as they later came to be called were taken just two weeks later, on 3 October. By then the disease was killing 40 people in every 100,000. The measures were either too little or too late: two weeks later, the fatality rate had reached 250 people in every 100,000. By contrast, in St. Louis, Missouri, the first case was reported on 5 October and social restrictions imposed two days later. Transmissions and mortality “were kept low” although exactly how low I haven’t found (Guner – April 2020)
In May 2020 – five months after CoVid19 was reported to the World Health Organisation but still at a very early stage in the crisis – indeed at a time the USA wasn’t even considering there was a crsis, Franchini et al published a paper that included the following: “Globally the WHO, on 22.04.2020, communicated 2.471.136 confirmed cases and 169.006 deaths.
Quoting an interview by Guido Bordoni-Uffreduzzi the chief physician of Milan, Francini’s paper set out what he had said were the measures that were most effective against the spread of Spanish Flu in his district.
“Stopping the course of the flu was not possible because of its rapid propagation; the aim was to limit its spread.
“At a population level it was proposed to isolate the sick, avoid crowding, especially in communities, and disinfect the environments.
“At the individual level, it was proposed to avoid contact with the sick and convalescents, unnecessary displacement and travel, trying to maintain daily life habits as much as possible.
“It was recommended to wash hands several times a day and to protect the oropharynx in some way with mildly disinfectant mouthwash.”
At the same time, Francini notes, there were official national statements that it was basically just a flu and not to panic but also “there was a lack of doctors; the reporting of cases was difficult; the mortality rate had risen to 150 cases in one day; burials were hindered by the lack of personnel; there were long queues of people in public offices” all of which were both repeated in Milan during the Covid-19 crisis and reflected across most of the world.
Francini et al wrote:
“To face this epidemic we are not in a different situation than in another period of our history when we had to manage the Spanish flu during the first world war.
“We do not know this virus, the characteristics of its disease, which drugs might give relief to patients and we do not have a vaccine.
“In other words we do not have nothing, we are in the same situation as during the other outbreaks.”
I’m Nigel Morris-Cotterill, a pioneer of financial crime risk and compliance and I’m not happy with how policy, law and regulation are going and the effect it’s having on ordinary people living ordinary lives.
I have written books on financial crime risk and compliance : details are at www.vortexcentrum.com
Actually, we had something that those dealing with the earlier outbreaks did not have: we had mass communications on a scale and with an immediacy they could not have dreamed of and we had the technology, voluntarily carried by millions of people, to identify them and their whereabouts and, even, who else was near to them in real time.
When borders were reopened, electronic arrival cards had been introduced. Arrival cards, a feature of travel for decades, had fallen out of use in the late 1990s. Now, with an imperative to know who was coming into the country, and where they would be staying, an electronic version, coupled with track and trace – especially for those required to go into quarantine – meant that almost everyone carried the technology to locate them even into individual premises.
When electronic arrival cards are displayed in a QR code in an App, the app tracks the user, minute by minute during the visit if data is connected. Pretty much everyone connects data because their communications, through messaging apps, is now dependent upon an always-on app.
We also had a way to remove one of the most obvious ways of passing the virus and bacteria from person to person – cash. Here, we already had a perfectly good solution: payment cards. Many people, myself included, had lived basically cashless lives for years. But a push, starting around 2010, towards “FinTech” increased the prevalence of “e-wallets.” Both cards and ewallets provide detailed records of spending and whereabouts.
Here, public health imperatives suddenly became political tools.
What if payments could be controlled so that there was no longer any possibility of anonymity? What if access to financial services could be constrained only to certain persons? What if money transfer services were restricted to certain persons? What if ewallets could not be funded from overseas? What if access to bank accounts was tied to a mobile phone with all the identification that entails?
Payments went from an opportunity for people to be free of restrictive and expensive banking arrangements to an opportunity for governments to monitor and control lives.
I’m not aiming to be political or, at least, not overtly so. I will simply say that there are certain ideologies that say that no one should have any form of privacy much less the tools to maintain secrecy. The NY prosecutor who publicly stated that in the 1990s knows who he is. But his was not a novel view: the left and the right, religions and corporations have spent a quarter of a century finding ways to prevent you, me and everyone else having a private life.
The middle ground became a battleground in which ordinary rights and freedoms have been obliterated.
There is almost nothing you can do, from walking down the street in London to booking a meal online where facial recognition is not a mainstream feature.
Your fingerprints, your IRIS scans, your facial characteristics are all routinely stored.
Companies say “We need….” but that is only because they have written policies which said so.
When we look at the development of online surveillance from protecting society against a dangerous virus to monitoring every aspect of everyone’s lives we are already a long way down a dangerous path.
When every payment you make is immediately reported to the government under e.g. e-invoicing, there are countries where the sale of alcohol or cigarettes to a minor is reported. Fine. But what about a middle aged woman who buys a pack of condoms in a country where religious factions say condoms should be banned; what about a woman who crosses a state border in the USA for a medical abortion or to buy the morning after pill following a rape? State Troopers might be waiting for her when she gets home. A person eats in a restaurant with friends of a different religion, perhaps alcohol is served. If he pays his share of the bill, he may get a visit from the religious police.
This is simply the day to day intrusion into the lives of ordinary people doing ordinary things.
When this is extended into the current plans, advanced or in force in some countries, for identification and verification on the internet we have gone beyond any illusion of protection and fully into the realms of control.
It’s taken three decades for politicians to find a way to control the use of the internet. Their chosen tool is authoritarianism writ large and the willingness of large corporations to go along because it suits their business model to increase profits.
The duplicitous current UK government said it would introduce compulsory digital identification; in the face of uproar it said “it will not be compulsory.” Then it began creating a network of functions that must be accessed using a digital identity. Here’s the thing: the one used for Companies House is the easiest one I’ve ever used. It actually worked. Now it’s been done, there is a system, using an authenticator app which never sees the verification data, which means I don’t need to reverify. That could be used for all my interactions with the UK government (the previous similar system seems to have been abandoned). So, there should be no reason for the verification data to be retained by the government. But I fully expect that it is.
The UK has never managed to join up the important bits of its systems: passports and driving licences, for example. I tried to surrender my driving licence but couldn’t find out how to do it. Eventually, I just posted it back to Swansea. Did they get it? No idea. Did they cancel it? No idea.
The tech can be used for good and it can be used sensibly. But that’s not its purpose.
We are far past questions of protection of minors and/or security. We are now into an authoritarian state of the sort imposed by dictators and autocrats.
We are also into a world where our most personal and vital assets – our ability to prove who we are – are in the hands of corporations which, security breach after security breach proves – cannot be trusted with them.
We thought we were being sensible, helping society to reduce the risk of widespread illness and death and we were.
We should have looked below the surface to see who was pulling the strings and why.
And now, regardless of who is telling us we must do what they want, we must feel free to say “No. I am not going to deal with you on those terms.” And we must tell governments and regulators we will not stand for it.
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April 2020, COVID-19: Prevention and control measures in community Guner et al https://journals.tubitak.gov.tr/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1674&context=medical
May 2020, COVID 19 and Spanish flu pandemics: All it changes, nothing changes Franchini, et al
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32420960/
June 2020: Comparison of confirmed COVID‐19 with SARS and MERS cases ‐ Clinical characteristics, laboratory findings, radiographic signs and outcomes: A systematic review and meta‐analysis -
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7300470/
August 2020: A comparison of COVID-19, SARS and MERS https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7443081/
