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Comment by streetfighter64

6 hours ago

> means, motives and who benefits are important

I agree, which is why it's important to realize that the means for the US administration to cause this are very remote, and the potential benefits of this situation (particularly on the elections as you mention) are even more obscure.

I'm not saying the US hasn't done its fair share of shady and immoral operations, probably more than any other country in the world, but the scenario you propose is more akin to a Rube Goldberg machine than any realistic covert operation.

Once again, this is hypothetical- only if this is not contained, i.e., what ever safety precautions to prevent this were broken.

Your lack of belief in how covert operations work shows a lack of history. I obviously have no secret knowledge about his, but even reading one or two historical accounts about intelligence services (and others) would prove you wrong

  • This disease is generally highly treatable. Your conspiracy theory hinges on a belief that a treatable disease in a foreign country will be used to do something with the ongoing (ballots are already going out) US midterm elections, when in 2020 the US still held regular elections despite the ongoing, and far less treatable at the time, COVID pandemic.

    Your hypothetical is not based in reality.

    • My original comment is flagged, so I will assume you didn’t read it and don’t understand my hypothetical. Here it is: if this is used as a pretext to prevent the US mid-term elections, then I will assume that it was intentional (accepting that it might have merely just been taken advantage of), because this is an unknowable situation for me (and you), and this administration does not deserve the benefit of the doubt in anything it does anymore

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  • A lack of history? Don't make me laugh. Show me one historical example of such an operation as you suggest. While the CIA and others in the US government have often engaged in absurd and sometimes downright ridiculous plots, such as Operation Northwoods, Castro assassination attempts, and MKUltra, your suggested scenario is at least ten times more far fetched.

    I'm not sure if I'm demonstrating a lack of belief in how covert operations work (whatever that means), but you sure are demonstrating a lack of common sense about what covert operations are even possible.

    You don't think there's an easier way of manipulating domestic elections than sneaking into a hostile country across the world and infecting a random scientist with the plague?

    • Well, I'm laughing at you then, because the planned or actual use of plague as an overt or covert weapon has an extremely long history from the siege of Caffa (1346) to the proposed Japanese operation to spread plague in the US during WWII. Other diseases have equally extensive overt and covert planned or actual use. Overturning governments and preventing elections also has an equally long and storied past. The fact that you think it is more absurd that a pathogen might be used to prevent an election, than any of the plots to kill Castro, or the proposed Operation Northwoods where the US Joint Chiefs of Staff approved bombing its own population as a pretext to invade Cuba shocks me.

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    • And like I said in my comments, if this was a serious attempt by the CIA to disrupt midterms, they started too late. And COVID was a worse pandemic than this non-pandemic (presently) and we still held our national elections. It's an extremely absurd theory.