This weekend the Chinese New Year and it's the year of the rat and to celebrate the Chinese have done what they do best, copied things from the West, and have taken the whole rat motif to a new level by having a plague, just like Europe did back in the 14th century with all the rats. Yes, it's not so much Kung Fu so much as Kung Flu, as the coronavirus looks set to kill upwards of a hundred thousand people which are the death numbers you more associate with factory workers at an iPhone factory and there are genuine fears that it could kill millions over the next month or two, a tragedy that would no doubt be blamed on Brexit, even if it happened in mainland China.

In any other week there'd be the Brexit bill or the ongoing Impeachment proceedings in the US to discuss. Presumably in a year's time the hard left will blame Chinese interference in the news cycle for President Trump being reelected which to many would be seen as a greater tragedy than for instance 100m people dying in a mass pandemic. In France though the story has been mentioned after a solitary person became ill proving that the media cares a lot less for thousands of yellow vests than it does for one yellow chest.

In China itself though it really is quite serious with a dozen cities on lockdown, the most well know of which being Wuhan, not to be mistaken for the Kingdom of Bhutan or indeed hiphop group the Wu-Tang Clan. It's a huge city, larger than London, and they are mobilising an army of builders as well as the actual army in order to construct a specialist hospital in just 6 days. Let's just hope they're buying any of the equipment from eBay sites in China because in my experience that takes more like 6-8 weeks.