Comment by streetfighter64
5 hours ago
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.
So let me get this straight, in order to prevent an election, they used plague as a weapon, against a lab that's coincidentally studying plagues, that's located 8000 km away from where the election takes place, on the day of the start of the election? Genius plan!
You still haven't given any historical example of such an operation (unless you're suggesting the Japanese planned to spread plague in the US during WWII in order to influence domestic Japanese politics. That'd probably be a less ridiculous story then whatever you're actually claiming though). Maybe instead you can try to answer how exactly this advances the claimed goal, how you even suppose they practically did it, and why there was no simpler method of achieving the goal?
You seem to be forgetting that diseases can travel fast, and do not stop at the border, especially respiratory ones. You also seem to be forgetting that governments go into lockdowns during the onset of pandemics (or fears of one).
Another commenter pointed out that we had elections during covid, but that was several months after the initial onset, and after shelter-in-place orders were lifted. It is true that it took three weeks from the first reported case in China until we had the first reported case in the US, and then another eight weeks until the first lockdowns. It would have to be an accelerated timeline for the US to use it as a pretext to stop elections, but we are also much more sensitive to the threat of respiratory pandemics, having just gone through the first one in living history. If a US case is reported within the next three weeks, it is possible that it could be used as a pretext; especially because it would benefit the group who last time were the biggest opponents of the lockdowns.
But once again, I am not arguing for this. I am only explaining my hypothetical: if this is used as a pretext to disrupt the elections, I will assume it was intentional (until proven otherwise).
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.