Big S, aka Barbie Hsu, dies in Japan
But was it COVID related? Also Sunday's show and thoughts about power
On January 29th Taiwanese actress, singer, tv presenter, and tv producer Big S (real name Barbie Hsu) took a trip to Japan from Taiwan and caught the flu. On February 2nd she died. On February 3rd her death was initially reported as pneumonia resulting from complications of the flu. On February 5th Chinese language media in Taiwan changed the cause of death to septic shock arising from complications of pneumonia, with the pneumonia still cited as a complication of inluenza. Because I follow disability activists and influencers and because I have had journalists with specific knowledge of COVID and Long COVID and its complications on my show, I immediately had thoughts.
The biggest was “is this another celebrity COVID death being hidden?”
I had a few reasons for these thoughts, in no particular order. The first is that Taiwan did a very good job of avoiding initial COVID shocks, has generally been better than its Western sponsors when it comes to testing and tracking and tracing, and the illness happened during a trip to Japan. Obviously no one is doing *well* with COVID mitigation now, but masking is pretty normalized in Chinese speaking countries during flu season and so they don’t have the Western cultural problem with mitigation that North America and Europe do. But they do have to bow to the pressures of Western capital on unified messaging.
Second is because of the convoluted way in which people are said to have died “of COVID” or died “with COVID” in the obnoxious language of denialism. As time passes, we have seen COVID go unmentioned in circumstances where we have a good basis for a history of infections.
I was still actually surprised by how convoluted the answer to the question could be, when I asked my colleague Julia Doubleday (freelance journalist specializing in COVID and public health) about the topic. What Julia told me is that it is more likely that it would be a weakened immune system resulting from previous, perhaps repeated infections.
Influenza turning into pneumonia is not common in people under 50, though all COVID related risks increase after 40. Septic shock risks increase with immune system failure because septic shock occurs when an active infection so overwhelms the body that it begins to cause traumatic physical damage to organs due to reduced blood flow. Pneumonia is itself an opportunistic disease that is most common when the body is already being weakened by an existing illness like COVID or influenza, and the increase of serious complications from influenza likely rises as the immune system fails.
Repeated asymptomatic COVID infections have been proven to cause immune system damage even when a patient is unaware of them and Long COVID symptoms can therefore emerge in people who are unaware they have had COVID. This is why you see Leslie Lee III imply Long COVID brain damage whenever someone reports brain fog they have never had before, especially if they have posted about having COVID before. While all of this is speculative, it is speculative precisely because of what we do know and what the media primarily ignores.
This makes drawing logical conclusions and making decisions based on sound speculation important right now. That’s why I feel like it’s worth it to write a speculative piece about a celebrity you have never heard of in a controversial part of the world where the interests of US empire run deep. It could matter, and it particularly matters if you’re still considering a return to mitigation but are afraid of being socially shamed for your weakness. If you submit to the shaming and die, your death will never be properly reported even if you are a celebrity whose death would normally make news. Being ashamed of masking kills.
Big S became famous as the star of popular Taiwanese drama. She left after two seasons to become a singer, realty tv star, and producer. In 2019 she sort of faded away from most of her personal creative work and her last listed credit appears to be a producer credit on another singer’s show in 2021-2022. While there is no reporting to give me more information, one way or another, the time frame for her disappearance from public work fits the framework for repeated COVID infections and possible Long COVID.
This kind of slow disappearance from public life has impacted people I know who are struggling with Long COVID, including colleagues like Julia Doubleday and Justine Barron. It is impacting my wife, who increasingly appears to have Long COVID in addition to complications of diabetes. So when I see it described before a death I pay attention. Please support the Gauntlet, if you don’t already!
Sunday’s show went very well. I was joined by podcaster and political strategist Seth Sturm and by Left Voice Editor Sam Carliner to talk about the sentencing for corruption of former US Senator Bob Menendez (D - NJ) and its context in the broader topic of “draining the swamp” as the current US President once said. This show is now linked on my Patreon, public access, with some contextual links providing more information about Menendez’s trial, mistrial, conviction, and sentencing and a history of the comparable corruption of SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas!
Elon Musk is currently acting as the unelected political strongman of the US government. Legal experts writing in respected publications have called his illegal hijacking of the Treasury Department’s payments system as “a coup.” This is now the second right wing coup attempt against the US government as organized by the US Constitution while Trump has been President. The first was on January 6, 2020.
The good news is that the infrastructure of the deportation system is straining at the gills already only a few days into the Trump presidency and he won’t be able to maintain the ambitious pace he is trying to set. In fact, the strain already put on the system by Biden before Trump took power and Trump’s actions since have put the ICE detention system at about 109% capacity. So the Trump era immigration regime is actually beginning with people being unjustly held by ICE released to make room for new detainees. The system is not actually in place to inflict fascism on people in America at the pace Donald Trump would prefer.
This creates an opportunity for federal employees to stop this coup by refusing to resign and obstructing illegal attempts to intimidate, hijack, or influence the federal government. At least one inspector general is refusing to resign and employees in several federal departments appear prepared to resist or attempt to subvert Trump’s order, which is necessary, but it’s impossible to say if resistance will occur on the necessary level at this point. What is clear is that everyone who can needs to talk about what is happening.
What is happening?
In Los Angeles, mass uprisings in support of immigrants and against ICE are defeating the LAPD. Similar actions are happening in other cities, including a protest against ICE that was supposed start at 6PM PST last night here in Portland. So the people are fighting back against Trump once again, even as the liberal trolls posture about how they won’t resist this time on social media. So it’s very important that we don’t despair and maintain revolutionary optimism despite everything!