You know what sucks? Agreeing with conspiracy theorists.

Dead to rights: The CIA hid the entire clandestine overflight program of the 50s and 60s in "little green men" hysteria, and the whole of the stealth program in Hangar 18 bullshit. All this "UAP" bullshit flying around right now is clearly and obviously hiding something else because when you say "it's aliens" nobody pays any attention to what 'it' is.

Dead to rights: The KGB hid their entire chemical warfare program against Afghanistan in rumors that the CIA created AIDS. The word is disinformatsiya and it's been the number one go-to of Russia since the CheKa or before. The advantage of living in an unfree society is you can lie all you want since nobody believes you anyway. Live in a democracy? You lose your credibility you lose your authority you lose your government.

Dead to rights: the CIA and state department discredited Sinovax purely for purposes of geopolitics. We could have worked together. We didn't.

And ultimately, what this means is that everyone - including the US Government - was laboring like crazy to ensure that nobody would trust the US government when they needed trust the most.

A lot of that was foreign influence. But a lot of that was own-goals. I suspect that if we'd actually had that pandemic response team that the Trump administration dissolved on Day 1? We'd be in much better shape. But instead it was every agency for itself and the CIA will do dumb shit like use polio vaccination drives to hunt for bin Laden.

People have never been good at assessing risk. That's what rules are for. That's what governments are for. That's what police are for. I was out for a walk last week and a cop stopped me and said "careful walking there, buddy, that's a grounded high tension wire." And I looked to my left and huh! 15kV power line! Do I have familiarity with grounded power lines? Nope! But I was careful walking! Does the cop? nope! But he passed along his instructions! Had the power company been watching I'm sure they would have said HOLY SHIT WHY ARE YOU LETTING THIS ASSHOLE ON THE SIDEWALK" (because my other choice would have been to step out into 50mph traffic) but ultimately, the idea was communicated and I'm here to tell the tale.

The tragedy of Covid is everyone went "I'ma do my own research" which is exactly what Putin wants.*

And I fucking hate how tinfoil that makes me look.