A new article from the Intercept exposes a secret few know about--and for those who do, many vastly underestimate it. App location data is a goldmine for spies in both private sector and government
Trevor Bedford's genetic data shows that both Omicrons BA.1 & BA.2 were branched off of the original SARS-Cov-2 virus. In other words, it did not have any the thousands of mutations that all the other ones (alpha, beta, delta, gamma, etc) have naturally gathered along the way. More telling is that they are both wildly different than anything else ever seen out there -- Both more different from the original virus than Delta was from the original. In fact, the two variants which both were discovered at about the same time in South Africa, though shared a common never seen ancestor were more different enough FROM EACH OTHER than Delta was from the original.
There is zero chance that both of these variants were out in the wild mutating this much with no-one ever coming across any of the multitude of changes that happened along the way. Quite simply the two Omicrons were developed and released.
if you're not familiar with EthicalSkeptic's work, he's been on this for a long time and has done the most thorough analysis I've seen. He's on twitter and at www.theEthicalSkeptic.com
An interesting, plausible theory. I've heard or read others, similar to this. And I'm a believer in the fact, we all need new conspiracies, because ours have all come true. But, I can't get rid of that nagging feeling in the back of my mind, that keeps reminding me of that ST Voyager episode "The Voyager Conspiracy" where 7 overloads on data, and began to piece conspiracies together out of seemingly related events, and before you knew it, she had implicated many members of the crew, in several different conspiracies. But, as crazy as things have been over the last decade or more, I don't automatically discount anything as being possible. Naturally, proving things is a much more difficult task. Thanks for sharing your perspective. As Spock would say, Fascinating!
I may write a followup post on this, but I was thinking about it this way today: I would consider it a significant failure if our bio-defense agencies *did not* have any available and ready-to-deploy contingency plans--including "antidotes" of the kind I suggested. Yes, they would have to be classified, or they could be rendered useless before they were ever used.
When you see how China built 20,000 bed field hospitals in a matter of weeks in Wuhan, it is clear that they did have quite sophisticated contingency plans (even if their use of these things this time was more for posturing and propaganda.) The fact remains they had it ready to go. Having such countermeasures is supposed to be the function of our biodefense agencies, if they have any justifiable function at all.
So: did our agencies NOT have appropriate countermeasures? That's a failure in my book. Did they have some that didn't work? Possible. Did they have effective ones that they simply chose not to deploy? I find that hard to believe. The most likely of these is that there were (somewhat) effective countermeasures and they were deployed. I don't exclude from any of this thinking the possibility that agencies which were developing legitimate countermeasures were also compromised by bad actors who stole or redirected such things for nefarious purposes. Corruption is a constant risk in any system of government, especially when power and money get tangled up with decision making.
I speculated within 1-2 weeks of Omicron's surfacing and the attack on the doctor that stressed it wasn't deadly that a white hat had released it to create herd immunity. Did not think it through enough to realize defensive bioweapons research should have it. Given NIH funded the damn thing released, surely somewhere someone good had the antidote and did the right thing despite the evil in charge.
I agree with most if not all your getting at. However, the Chinese ability to rapidly build anything is not a surprise to me. I've read many articles over the last several years on how they prefabricated large buildings in factories. Sorta like leggo building blocks, on an industrial scale. The problem they are experiencing in building projects now, IMHO is quality control. In their haste, they may make serious mistakes. It looks impressive from a distance, but, up close, you see the flaws. But, I believe you're correct about contingency plans, for any responsible government.
I agree with your point about "impressive from a distance". I happened to be in Wuhan for 10 days in 2018 as part of a Global Insect Conference (I was there with my colleague and angel investor representing our commercial insect company that faltered in the spring of 2020, leaving me unemployed for a time during the lockdown mania.) I saw that haste and incomplete building process up close. They didn't seem to be able to finish things before rushing off to the next building project. It was pretty jarring.
I had some idea of how easily one's entire life could be revealed by sifting geolocation + social media data but I didn't know fully to what extent. YIKES!!
@CognitiveCarbon: What phone do you use and how do you use it to keep your own life more private?
Tom, there's a lot of steps one can take to limit or mitigate some of the intrusive aspects of using a mobile phone. But, you can't completely eliminate tracking, as your carrier & device depends on it to function properly. You can limit some of it though, through many different settings. But, it's a long list. Hit me up on telegram if you want to discuss it further. Same user name.
G.C.'s point is well made. My personal view is the only "safe" technology is no technology. There are reasonable steps you might take, but I'm not certain they're as foolproof as people want to believe. There are people who will sell you on VPNs, things like TOR, etc. But if you put faith in any such solution offered to you without looking at the code yourself and doing packet captures to see what is actually going where, you can only *assume* the people providing such things have "pure intentions". I've long been in the camp that suspects (without proof, admittedly) that most modern encryption algorithms (e.g., those underlying SSL) have an undiscovered backdoor that renders them crackable with "reasonable" computing power by those with the means, and many VPN providers are honeypots. I don't jump to this conclusion lightly; I've seen things that make me suspicious. Difficult situation we are currently in. I think we need stronger encryption and personal revocable and traceable control over *all* data shared by our devices (there are some proposed platforms that begin to offer things in this direction) but that's not what we have today, obviously.
All predicated on the fact the virus actually exists ....see Dr Tom Cowan...
it exists. the question is when did each "variant" arrive, and from where.
https://theethicalskeptic.com/2021/11/15/chinas-ccp-concealed-sars-cov-2-presence-in-china-as-far-back-as-march-2018/
Trevor Bedford's genetic data shows that both Omicrons BA.1 & BA.2 were branched off of the original SARS-Cov-2 virus. In other words, it did not have any the thousands of mutations that all the other ones (alpha, beta, delta, gamma, etc) have naturally gathered along the way. More telling is that they are both wildly different than anything else ever seen out there -- Both more different from the original virus than Delta was from the original. In fact, the two variants which both were discovered at about the same time in South Africa, though shared a common never seen ancestor were more different enough FROM EACH OTHER than Delta was from the original.
There is zero chance that both of these variants were out in the wild mutating this much with no-one ever coming across any of the multitude of changes that happened along the way. Quite simply the two Omicrons were developed and released.
if you're not familiar with EthicalSkeptic's work, he's been on this for a long time and has done the most thorough analysis I've seen. He's on twitter and at www.theEthicalSkeptic.com
Remember when Putin gave Trump that soccer ball?
yep. I've wondered about that, too.
My guess is Putin knew the globalist plans and that was symbolism for giving Trump Omicron.
An interesting, plausible theory. I've heard or read others, similar to this. And I'm a believer in the fact, we all need new conspiracies, because ours have all come true. But, I can't get rid of that nagging feeling in the back of my mind, that keeps reminding me of that ST Voyager episode "The Voyager Conspiracy" where 7 overloads on data, and began to piece conspiracies together out of seemingly related events, and before you knew it, she had implicated many members of the crew, in several different conspiracies. But, as crazy as things have been over the last decade or more, I don't automatically discount anything as being possible. Naturally, proving things is a much more difficult task. Thanks for sharing your perspective. As Spock would say, Fascinating!
I may write a followup post on this, but I was thinking about it this way today: I would consider it a significant failure if our bio-defense agencies *did not* have any available and ready-to-deploy contingency plans--including "antidotes" of the kind I suggested. Yes, they would have to be classified, or they could be rendered useless before they were ever used.
When you see how China built 20,000 bed field hospitals in a matter of weeks in Wuhan, it is clear that they did have quite sophisticated contingency plans (even if their use of these things this time was more for posturing and propaganda.) The fact remains they had it ready to go. Having such countermeasures is supposed to be the function of our biodefense agencies, if they have any justifiable function at all.
So: did our agencies NOT have appropriate countermeasures? That's a failure in my book. Did they have some that didn't work? Possible. Did they have effective ones that they simply chose not to deploy? I find that hard to believe. The most likely of these is that there were (somewhat) effective countermeasures and they were deployed. I don't exclude from any of this thinking the possibility that agencies which were developing legitimate countermeasures were also compromised by bad actors who stole or redirected such things for nefarious purposes. Corruption is a constant risk in any system of government, especially when power and money get tangled up with decision making.
I speculated within 1-2 weeks of Omicron's surfacing and the attack on the doctor that stressed it wasn't deadly that a white hat had released it to create herd immunity. Did not think it through enough to realize defensive bioweapons research should have it. Given NIH funded the damn thing released, surely somewhere someone good had the antidote and did the right thing despite the evil in charge.
I agree with most if not all your getting at. However, the Chinese ability to rapidly build anything is not a surprise to me. I've read many articles over the last several years on how they prefabricated large buildings in factories. Sorta like leggo building blocks, on an industrial scale. The problem they are experiencing in building projects now, IMHO is quality control. In their haste, they may make serious mistakes. It looks impressive from a distance, but, up close, you see the flaws. But, I believe you're correct about contingency plans, for any responsible government.
I agree with your point about "impressive from a distance". I happened to be in Wuhan for 10 days in 2018 as part of a Global Insect Conference (I was there with my colleague and angel investor representing our commercial insect company that faltered in the spring of 2020, leaving me unemployed for a time during the lockdown mania.) I saw that haste and incomplete building process up close. They didn't seem to be able to finish things before rushing off to the next building project. It was pretty jarring.
Exactly! Jarring, great word choice.
I had some idea of how easily one's entire life could be revealed by sifting geolocation + social media data but I didn't know fully to what extent. YIKES!!
@CognitiveCarbon: What phone do you use and how do you use it to keep your own life more private?
Tom, there's a lot of steps one can take to limit or mitigate some of the intrusive aspects of using a mobile phone. But, you can't completely eliminate tracking, as your carrier & device depends on it to function properly. You can limit some of it though, through many different settings. But, it's a long list. Hit me up on telegram if you want to discuss it further. Same user name.
G.C.'s point is well made. My personal view is the only "safe" technology is no technology. There are reasonable steps you might take, but I'm not certain they're as foolproof as people want to believe. There are people who will sell you on VPNs, things like TOR, etc. But if you put faith in any such solution offered to you without looking at the code yourself and doing packet captures to see what is actually going where, you can only *assume* the people providing such things have "pure intentions". I've long been in the camp that suspects (without proof, admittedly) that most modern encryption algorithms (e.g., those underlying SSL) have an undiscovered backdoor that renders them crackable with "reasonable" computing power by those with the means, and many VPN providers are honeypots. I don't jump to this conclusion lightly; I've seen things that make me suspicious. Difficult situation we are currently in. I think we need stronger encryption and personal revocable and traceable control over *all* data shared by our devices (there are some proposed platforms that begin to offer things in this direction) but that's not what we have today, obviously.
Another extremely thought provoking post Sir. Thank You!