High blood pressure during pregnancy remains a major cause of maternal and fetal pregnancy-related complications and death, and it increases women's short- and long-term risks for cardiovascular disease. Emerging data from clinical trials and observational research support the benefits and safety of blood pressure treatment during pregnancy. Continued investigation is critical to determine which blood pressure levels, during- and post-pregnancy, both for starting therapy and as treatment goals, are beneficial for the mother and safe and beneficial for the fetus.
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N-acetylcysteine (NAC) is a powerful antioxidant that was approved as a drug in September 1963.1 Since that time it’s been used as a nutritional supplement that is not found in natural sources.2 NAC contains the amino acid cysteine, which is a precursor to glutathione, also called “the master antioxidant.”3
Glutathione is made of three amino acids — glutamic acid, glycine and cysteine.4 However, NAC is only available in supplement form. The precursors to NAC can be found in foods that are high in cysteine, which include pork, beef, chicken, eggs, dates and sunflower seeds.5
NAC is used in prescription form as an antidote for acetaminophen-induced hepatotoxicity.6 It is also a powerful mucolytic agent for use in upper respiratory conditions. Memorial Sloan-Kettering7 also lists uses in the treatment of depression, precancers, HIV and AIDS, and to alleviate cancer treatment side effects.
In 2020, NAC made the news when the FDA decided over-the-counter sales of this compound, which at that time had been available for 57 years, should require a physician's prescription going forward. The FDA issued warning letters8 to seven companies the agency said were illegally selling hangover products. By May 2021, Amazon, which also owns Whole Foods, decided to remove any supplements containing NAC.9
FDA Requests More Information on NAC
As Natural Products Insider reports, the letters warned that NAC could not be “lawfully marketed in dietary supplements because it was first studied as a drug in 1963.”10 The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) sent a letter in December 2020 to the FDA’s Office of Dietary Supplement Programs describing the position as “legally invalid.”11
The CRN and the Natural Products Association (NPA) filed separate citizen petitions with the FDA. The CRN letter in December 2020 challenged the FDA’s determination that NAC should be precluded from supplementary use.12 They then filed a citizen position petition June 1, 2021, requesting the FDA reverse their position and outlining why this sudden policy change is “legally invalid on multiple grounds.”13
The NPA filed a separate citizen petition with the FDA14 requesting that the agency not exclude NAC as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issue a regulation finding NAC is lawful in supplements. While the HHS has the authority, it has not been used in the 27 years since the law giving the HHS such power was enacted in 1994.
November 24, 2021, the FDA announced they were requesting more information about how NAC has been marketed as a dietary supplement.15 Natural Products Insider reports that this was encouraging to some in the industry as it signaled the FDA was open to the idea of issuing the regulation that NAC is a lawful ingredient in supplements.16 The FDA called this:17
“… tentative responses to both citizen petitions, requesting additional information from the petitioners ... and noting that the agency needs additional time to carefully and thoroughly review the complex questions posed in these petitions.”
The FDA18 also requested information and data on the date that NAC was first marketed as a dietary supplement, reports of adverse events and details on how the products are marketed and sold. The data are requested by January 25, 2022. Steve Mister, president and CEO of CRN said in a statement:19
“The provisions of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) may not be interpreted retroactively to remove ingredients that were lawfully marketed in 1994 and have enjoyed a long history of safe use since then. The delay in clearing up the status of NAC by asking for more data and refusing to admit its error disregards the law and disserves consumers who use NAC.
This is not a complicated determination for the FDA to make. DSHEA makes clear that ingredients in use as dietary supplement ingredients prior to its enactment are grandfathered into the supplement marketplace. Thus, pharmaceutical manufacturers could not have had any expectation of exclusivity in the years prior to the creation of this provision of the law.
Given the long history of safe use of NAC, FDA cannot now try to establish a safety concern in order to award this ingredient exclusively to drug makers.”
FDA First Used Legally Questionable Drug Exclusion Provision
U.S. code Title 21,20 specifically defines what a dietary supplement is and is not. According to experts, the actions of the FDA in banning the sale of NAC and finding it a “medication” is illegal under the law. Attorney Stan Soper21 writes that under Title 21 §321 paragraph (ff)(3)(b)10 the actions of the FDA do not meet the Drug Exclusion Provision.
According to Soper,22 the exclusion provision has only been invoked a few times, specifically when used to keep red yeast rice, vitamin B6 and cannabidiol (CBD) from being sold as supplements. In each of these cases there was a potential pharmaceutical financial loss that triggered the assertion the supplement was illegal.
In the case of red yeast rice, it contains a naturally occurring substance that acts in a similar manner to Lovastatin, a statin medication.23 In 2005, drug manufacturer Biostratum filed an investigational new drug (IND) application with the FDA to use vitamin B6 in the treatment of diabetic kidney disease.
Their argument was there was “no evidence that it was marketed as a dietary supplement or food prior to its IND and Phase II investigations.”24 In 2009 the FDA declared vitamin B6 was not a dietary supplement despite documentation that it had been sold as such before the IND application.
The FDA has also invoked the Drug Exclusion Provision against CBD, warning that it is not a legal dietary supplement since there was no meaningful evidence it was marketed as such before drug investigations were approved for Sativex and Epidiolex, which are drugs that contain CBD.
After the 2018 Farm Bill was signed legalizing hemp, then-FDA secretary Dr. Scott Gottlieb made the statement that it was illegal to introduce CBD into the food supply or market it as a supplement.25 Soper postulates26 that the use of the Drug Exclusion Provision against CBD may have opened the door for the FDA to use it against NAC.
Why Take Aim at NAC?
In the citizen petition27 sent to the FDA June 1, 2021, CRN argued that the FDA failed to sufficiently explain this sudden change in policy on NAC, thus “rendering it arbitrary and capricious.” According to CRN, before the seven warning letters in July 2020, “it was FDA’s longstanding policy to permit the marketing of dietary supplements containing NAC.”
Even though the agency had reviewed more than 100 notification structure/function claims for NAC-containing supplements over the years, they never raised the drug exclusion clause. In one response to a petition for a qualified health claim, the FDA had even stated that NAC was considered a dietary supplement.
While the Drug Exclusion Provision on CBD may have opened the door, it still raises the question of why the FDA chose now to target NAC. Historically the provision was used inappropriately to protect the finances of pharmaceutical companies. That is also likely the root of the motivation to ban NAC as a supplement.
As pulmonologist Dr. Roger Seheult succinctly explains in the MedCram video below, NAC is a crucial chemical compound necessary to reduce the oxidative stress associated with severe COVID-19 infections and thus may significantly impact the sales of antiviral drugs. And, as I and other health experts have pointed out in the past, without severe disease, is there truly a need for a vaccine?
Glutathione Depletion Worsens COVID-19 Outcomes
Researchers have been studying NAC since it was discovered. In 2010,28 researchers found that it could inhibit the expression of proinflammatory cytokines in cells that were infected with highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza virus. These same proinflammatory cytokines play a crucial role in severe COVID-19.
Researchers have confirmed that in severe cases, cytokine levels are elevated and once they reach excessive levels it triggers a cytokine storm.29 This causes significant tissue damage that NAC may be able to inhibit. In one 2020 paper,30 the authors describe a case of COVID-19 in a patient with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency.
This is a genetic disorder that can lead to hemolytic anemia31 and depletes glutathione,32 increasing the risk for human coronavirus infections such as the common cold. NAC was given to the G6PD-deficient patient and nine other COVID patients on ventilators. The NAC “elicited clinical improvement and markedly reduced CRP in all patients.”33
Other published papers have since demonstrated there is a potential use of NAC in the treatment of COVID-19.34,35,36 One 2021 study37 compared consecutive patients hospitalized with moderate or severe COVID-19 pneumonia.
One group received only standard care and the other group received 600 mg of NAC twice daily for 14 days. There were 42 in the NAC group and 40 in the control group. Treatment with NAC led to lower rates of severe respiratory failure and significantly lower mortality rates.
Early at Home Treatment Is Crucial
NAC is only one in a line of treatment modalities that have proven to be successful but have been vilified by governmental agencies. Since the start of this pandemic, it seems global and national health authorities have done everything in their power to discourage and prevent people from accessing treatments, such as ivermectin38,39,40 and hydroxychloroquine,41,42,43,44 that compete with the COVID jab.
The actions around NAC appear to be yet another shameful attempt to prevent patients from helping themselves. By limiting access to nutritional supplements that have demonstrated the capability of reducing severity of the infection, agencies are essentially boosting the risk that infections progress into more serious cases.
Should you come down with symptoms of COVID-19, early treatment is crucial. Not only can it significantly reduce the length of time that you’re sick, but early treatment will also minimize your risk of long-hauler syndrome,45 which can include symptoms that last much longer than the original infection.46 This can include cough, body aches, difficulty sleeping, headaches and brain fog.
There is also scientific evidence that NAC can improve a variety of lung problems, including pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), common characteristics of COVID-19. For example:
Research47 published in 2018 found NAC reduces oxidative and inflammatory damage in patients with community-acquired pneumonia.
Another 2018 study48 found NAC improves postoperative lung function in patients undergoing liver transplantation.
A 2017 meta-analysis49 found a significant reduction in ICU stays among ARDS patients treated with NAC.
NAC is also a well-known mucolytic used to help clear mucus out of the airways of cystic fibrosis patients.50 Some studies also suggest NAC can help reduce symptoms of COPD and prevent exacerbation of the condition.51
Just in time for one of the most joyous times of year, when families and friends tend to gather and celebrate, the globalists working on their (not so) covert takeover roll out yet another SARS-CoV-2 variant. Despite a scary-sounding name, the Omicron variant really appears to be a nothing-burger. As noted by The Hill’s “Rising” reporter Kim Iversen (see video above),1 the panic around Omicron doesn’t make any sense.
The symptoms, according to Dr. Angelique Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association, who discovered the Omicron variant, amount to little more than a couple of days of fatigue and malaise.
No serious illness has thus far been reported anywhere in the world. No Omicron patient has thus far required oxygen or even hospitalization for any of their symptoms. In other words, Omicron appears to be nothing more than a hyped-up cold. In a recent interview, Coetzee said:2
“Looking at the mildness of the symptoms that we are seeing — apparently, there’s no reason for panicking as we don’t see severely ill patients…
The most predominant complaint is severe fatigue for one or two days, with headache, body aches and pain. Some will have a scratchy throat and some will have a dry cough [that] comes and goes. Those are more or less the big symptoms we have seen.”
Dramatic Overreaction Designed to Drum Up Fear
Despite that, countries are going all-out again, closing borders and locking down their residents. Without any evidence whatsoever, chairman of the global physicians' society of the World Medical Association, Dr. Frank Ulrich Montgomery, told German reporters he believes Omicron could be as dangerous as the Ebola virus, and called for the closure of Christmas markets nationwide.3
The U.S., the U.K., Canada and the European Union have specifically banned travelers from southern Africa, even though the variant has been detected in several other countries already.
In fact, some reports claim Omicron emerged in The Netherlands before it was found in South Africa.4 It’s also been found in Australia,5 even though Australia’s borders have been closed to the unvaccinated since March 2020.6 So, how did Omicron get there?
The variant is also, as expected, blamed on the unvaccinated — and the “under-vaccinated.” Indeed, having just one or two doses of the COVID gene therapy will now leave you vulnerable to the same illogical attacks as having none at all.
People around the world are now finding that partial compliance is no compliance. You’re either all-in, or you’re out. You either do as you’re told, every time, or you’re a science-denying domestic terrorist, along with all those who saw through this game and said no from the start.
For a dose of the insanity we’re up against, just listen to Australian premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews’ rant in the video above. In short, regardless of how many COVID shots you’ve submitted to, if you refuse the next, or if you speak out against mandates in any way, you are an anti-vaxxer and will be treated accordingly.
(On a side note, Andrews now stands accused of covert acts of treason and fraud and has been summoned for a court appearance December 17, 2021. In summary, he’s accused of enacting a law in 2004 that removed the British Queen from the Australian constitution, and deliberately concealing that material fact.7)
Vaccination Rates Have No Correlation to Caseloads
The fact that Africa’s low vaccination rate is now being blamed for the emergence of Omicron is particularly irrational considering the continent has extremely low levels of infection compared to the U.S., Canada and Europe, for example.
Real-world data analyses8 have repeatedly shown that vaccination rates have nothing to do with rates of infection. If anything, areas with the highest COVID jab uptake rates have higher case rates than areas with the lowest “vaccine” uptake, and this case is no different. Africa is “just not a hotspot for spread,” Iversen says.
She also points out the curious timing of Omicron’s emergence. Just days before the World Health Organization declared Omicron a variant of concern, South Africa had requested that COVID shot deliveries be delayed, as they have too many doses already. Nobody wants them.
By the end of November 2021, only 6% of the adult population in Africa had been “fully jabbed” against COVID.9 Worry about new variants and COVID in general is also very low. One poll found 77% of respondents in five African countries said they believe COVID will not be a serious problem over the next six months.10
Then, all of a sudden, Omicron is announced, and the world closes its borders to South Africans and blames the variant on their vaccine refusal. Coincidence? Meanwhile, the first four Omicron cases identified in Botswana were in fact fully jabbed.
Overall, all the evidence points to the COVID shots being ineffective and vaccine passports useless for preventing spread. As noted by Iversen, a plane with some 600 passengers was diverted for testing when the news about Omicron broke, and 10% of the passengers were found to have COVID; 13 of the 61 positive passengers had Omicron, while the rest had Delta or some previous strain.
So, while most intercontinental travel requires proof of vaccination, it’s clearly not doing anything to prevent spread of the virus. Fully “vaccinated” people are just as likely to carry and transmit the virus as the unvaccinated.
Australia Proposes New Digital ID System
While Omicron is making headlines around the world, Australia, a clear forerunner and test ground for this totalitarian takeover, is quietly trying to pass legislation to expand the digital identity system that currently allows Australians to access government services. As reported by The Conversation:11
“After asking around among major stakeholders, it seems this piece of legislation has largely slipped under the radar since it was unveiled on October 1, [2021] ...
The government’s proposed Digital Identity system promises a “safe, secure and convenient way to prove who you are online every time you access government services”. In other words, it aims to streamline your experience by avoiding the need to repeatedly identify yourself when accessing a range of government services.
Currently, you can create a digital identity using a “myGovID” to access 80 government services. This allows you to link your data across services such as Medicare, Centrelink and the Australian Tax Office.
The new legislation proposes an expansion of powers to outsource the process of identity verification to approved Australian businesses. Presumably, this could lead to an expansion of acceptance of the digital ID system so it can be used more widely than just to access government services ...
But this goes against all the standard advice about not linking all of your personal information, such as tax history and medical history, as it can lead to mass analytics, behaviour profiling, targeted advertising, and more (as we saw in the Cambridge Analytica scandal) ...
The government says the proposed digital identity system will be entirely voluntary, and that the system is not designed to replace identification documents such as your birth certificate, visa, driver’s licence or passport.
It also says the system will not be used to access or record COVID vaccinations, and that the information collected will not be used for purposes such as consumer profiling or marketing. Of course, Australians who opt to use the system are being asked to put their trust in the government to share their data with “verified” identity providers.”
Australia Is ‘Ground Zero for Chinese Influence’
Well, what can I say? This was predicted. And note how, to start, this system is “voluntary.” That’s how they get the populating to agree with what will eventually become unacceptable. It’s a trap.
It’s entirely likely that it will not remain voluntary because this is precisely the kind of system that the technocrats want to implement around the world — with the power to control it all being centralized with an as-yet unidentified group of unelected leaders.
Many have been surprised at the speed and intensity at which Australia is being turned into a dystopian nightmare, free of any semblance of democracy or individual liberties. At the end of November 2021, the Australian army began forcibly removing residents in the Northern Territories to a quarantine camp in Darwin (another “conspiracy theory” that has become reality), and that’s in addition to hard lockdowns.12
But perhaps we should not be surprised. Australia (and New Zealand) are “ground zero for Chinese influence,” according to NPR international correspondent Rob Schmitz, who detailed that influence in an October 2, 2018, article.13
The Chinese embassy is located in the same compound as the Australian Security Intelligence Organization and Australia’s federal police, and the CCP has infiltrated most of Australia’s society, including universities, think tanks, scholarly associations, media and religious organizations.
In previous articles, I’ve discussed how the technocratic totalitarianism that’s coming for every country is modeled after the Chinese Communist Party’s style of authoritarian rule, and the digital surveillance apparatus that allows the CCP to reach into the homes and lives of every resident.
Not a single expression of dissent goes unnoticed (and typically not unpunished), as the CCP’s automated eyes and ears are everywhere, analyzing every written word and physical action. A digital ID system is part and parcel of that control structure.
We Need to Reclaim Our Lives From the Panic-Mongers
The purpose of the COVID countermeasures is quite clear. It has nothing to do with protecting us from a deadly virus. No. The pandemic is an excuse used to implement a series of sweeping societal changes that will bring us into a dystopian anti-human civilization from which we will not be able to extricate ourselves.
Our only hope is to reject any and all proposals that add, in any way, to the control structure being erected, because we are the ones building what will become our prison. More often than not, we’re being deceived into acquiescing, but that’s no excuse.
At this point, the plan is clear enough for most rational people to grasp, and once grasped, we must act. We’re building our prison when we go along with plans that strengthen or expand surveillance, data collection, data sharing and integration.
We’re building our prison when we go along with anything that limits or restricts our freedom. So, we must stop going along, saying “It’s just a mask;” “It’s just an injection;” “If it makes others feel safe, it’s worth it;” “I have nothing to hide so I don’t care about surveillance.”
We must reject all of these arguments and become laser focused on the end goal, which is to stop the march of tyranny and reassert our God-given rights and liberties. As Andrews so clearly demonstrates, we’re in an all-or-nothing situation.
There’s no middle ground anymore. We either resign ourselves to give up everything, or we refuse to give up even the tiniest bit of freedom, because they are intent on incrementally taking everything from everyone. As noted by Juliet Samuel in a November 26, 2021, Telegraph article:14
“The question of when exactly we plan to return to a normal level of risk appetite goes unasked, let alone answered ... We don’t know much about the latest variant ... There are some things we do know, however. We know that new variants are now a permanent fact of life ...
What we cannot accept, however, is that our basic freedoms are now just loans that can be called in at any time. Free societies do not require their citizens to get new vaccines every year in order to live a normal life. They do not allow teachers to shut down schools at the drop of a hat.
They do not suspend Christmas or close offices or ban drinking every time something unusual pops up in a laboratory somewhere. Last year, as the [U.K.] entered its third and most depressing lockdown over Christmas, politicians supporting the restrictions promised us that liberation was just around the corner.
‘Let’s not fall at the last hurdle,’ they said. ‘The vaccine is here!’ they said. ‘Just wait for the rollout and then enjoy your freedoms.’ Well, the rollout has happened. The virus is still out there, evolving, and it’s going to keep evolving forever.
This is as good as it’s going to get. So, we need to know when and how we will switch from ‘COVID mode’ back to ‘normal life.’ With so many panic-mongers resisting the change, it won’t happen without a fight.”
If there is an injury to the central nervous system such as after a stroke, the brain needs to compensate for this by reorganising itself. To do this, a dense network of molecules between the nerve cells -- known as the extracellular matrix -- must loosen. This is the job of a wide variety of enzymes that ultimately regulate how plastic or how stable the brain is. Researchers studied what happens when certain enzymes are blocked in mice. Depending on whether the brain is healthy or diseased, the inhibition had opposite effects.
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As emissions fell over a decade, the number of deaths attributable to air pollution dropped by thousands, yielding billions of dollars in societal benefits.
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Researchers have solved a major mystery in cancer research: How cancer cells remain dormant for years after they leave a tumor and travel to other parts of the body, before awakening to create metastatic cancer.
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In Bannons War Room interview above, Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA and DNA vaccine core platform technology,1 reviews what we know so far about the so-called Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.
As noted by Malone, the latest media hype actually began with reports of Africa having far lower case rates than the rest of the world, despite its comparatively low COVID jab rate. That was followed by reports in the local press that South Africa was asking Pfizer to halt its shipments of the shots, as they still had plenty and most adults were refusing to take it.
The very next day, “we suddenly had this huge kerfuffle about this new virus strain, and the press was announcing it was coming out of South Africa,” Malone says. The U.K. almost immediately responded by shutting its borders to most of South Africa.
According to media reports, the Omicron variant was discovered in Botswana, in four fully “vaccinated” individuals. Physicians in South Africa responded saying that while the variant has been detected, they are not seeing significant illness from it. All cases so far have been mild and none has required hospitalization.
Coordinated Fear Porn Campaign
In rapid succession, news articles were published proposing the virus evolved in an AIDS patient and appears to spread far easier than previous variants. Calls for concern and the need for new restrictions flooded the airways. As noted by Malone, the press was talking about “everything except for the obvious, which is that this is a ‘vaccine’-escaped mutant.”
Indeed, the variant appears highly resistant to the COVID shots, which is a sign of it having mutated within one or more COVID-jabbed individuals, not in someone with no antibodies at all to attack it.
Remember, viruses mutate primarily in response to insufficient immune responses. Yet among the first recommendations from the mental giants in charge of COVID responses was to push COVID booster shots, which is as irrational as it is unscientific.
“The boosters are a perfect way to bias our immune system so we’re LESS able to respond to this new variant,” Malone explains. “This is [like] jabbing everybody with a flu vaccine from three seasons ago and expecting it to have effects against the current [flu strains].”
Is Omicron Another Lab Creation?
As for the nature and origin of Omicron, Malone says:
“It has the hallmark of a viral agent under tight genetic selection for evolution to escape the ‘vaccine’ responses against the receptor bonding domain. The question that is outstanding right now is — because this is so different from the other strains that are being tracked; it’s in its own separate little evolutionary branch — how did this happen? Why did this suddenly pop up with all these new mutations?”
The mainstream press is pushing the narrative that Omicron’s mutations are due to the low COVID jab rate in South Africa, possibly in combination with it mutating within someone with AIDS. The solution, we’re told, is to blanket Africa with COVID shots, even though the continent has enjoyed a phenomenally low case rate and mortality rate without the jabs. So, clearly, this narrative is trying to achieve an end that simply isn’t warranted by the real-world data.
Aside from shaming South Africa into getting more COVID shots, another potential reason for this narrative is that they want to hide that it’s another lab created virus. As noted by Malone, we have “the looming specter of this being further engineered in some way.”
In all, Omicron is said to have some 50 mutations from the original Alpha strain, many of which specifically allow it to circumvent COVID shot-induced antibody defenses.
While Malone admits he is not closely tracking the mutations of the virus, and is not qualified to speculate on its evolution, he points out there is a subset of experts who believe it may have undergone lab modification because, genetically, it “doesn’t look like it’s part of the prior evolutionary process that we’re seeing with many other strains.”
Until and unless we end up with conclusive proof of its origin, we need to keep all options open, Malone says, and that includes the possibility of Omicron being cooked up in a lab from a previous strain.
Omicron Cases Double in Less Than Five Days
So far, we know as little about Omicron as we did the original SARS-CoV-2 virus when it first emerged. What we do know is that it appears highly infectious, doubling in a median time of 4.8 days, and has significant “vaccine” evasion capabilities.2
According to the Economist,3 which cites data from South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Omicron “appears to have rapidly outcompeted Delta” in South Africa, as of the first week of December 2021 accounting for nearly all positive cases.
One particularly odd feature of Omicron is that the closest genetic sequences date back to mid-2020. It doesn’t seem to belong to any of the evolutionary branches that have emerged since. As noted by professor Trevor Bedford, a computational virologist interviewed by NPR, “This is very rare to see.”4
In a Twitter post, a user named Chief Nerd, shows a time-lapse graphic5 he created that illustrates the genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 from the original strain until now, using data from nextstrain.org.6
It’s a great illustration of just how odd an unnatural Omicron’s emergence really is. As the time-lapse gets toward the end of 2021, suddenly there’s Omicron, emerging like a straight line from a mid-2020 strain, having no semblance to any of the other strains.
There’s no precedent for this oddity occurring in nature. There is, however, precedent for this in lab-leaked pandemics, such as the 1977 Russian influenza, caused by an H1N1 flu strain that strongly resembled a strain in circulation between 1946 and 1957. There have been persistent rumors that the Russian flu might have been the result of a live-vaccine trial escape.7
Omicron, also known by the designation B.1.1.529., has a ratio of nonsynonymous to synonymous mutations of 25 to 1. According to molecular biologist and cancer geneticist Philip Buckhaults, Ph.D.,8 Omicron has 25 nonsynonymous and only one synonymous spike mutation compared to its most recent common ancestor, AV.1. Were it a natural occurrence, that ratio ought to be somewhere between 25 to 50 and 25 to 100.
Three Hypotheses of Omicron’s Origin
Researchers have tried to explain this phenomenon in a variety of ways. Bedford has suggested the mid-2020 strain might have infected and evolved within some unknown animal population before spilling back into the human population.
It’s an unlikely scenario though, Bedford says, because there ought then to be signs of the animal genetic material in the genome, and we’re not seeing that. Instead, there’s human RNA insertions, which suggests a human host.
Another hypothesis is so-called “cryptic spread” in an unmonitored region. In other words, the mid-2020 strain may have circulated in an area where testing and monitoring of cases were low or absent, allowing it to evolve under the radar, until finally becoming transmissible enough to spread into more monitored regions.
Alas, Bedford finds fault with this explanation as well, “Because it would seem that as [this strain of the virus] was on its path to becoming Omicron and becoming a quite transmissible virus, [the earlier versions] would have started to spread more widely before just now.”9
A third hypothesis involves the incubation in an immunocompromised patient, such as an AIDS patient. If the patient’s immune system was just robust enough to prevent death, but not complete clearance, the virus may have lingered for many months, slowly mutating over time.
The crux here is that the virus ought to have spread from that person earlier. Why did it take well over a year for it to finally be transmitted? Intermediate variants should have emerged, but didn’t. It just suddenly emerged with dozens of mutations already baked in that have no precedent.
Bedford told NPR,10 "That's a good question and a legitimate one. I don't have an obvious answer besides chance." Despite the lack of plausible answers, Bedford believes this scenario may be the most plausible.
Two Elephants in the Room — The Missing Hypotheses
Of course, getting back to Malone’s observation, what’s missing from this list of hypotheses is the most obvious one, which is that the virus mutated in response to the pressure of widespread COVID injections. Also missing is the hypothesis that Omicron was genetically manipulated from a mid-2020 strain, and in one way or another entered into circulation.
Irrationally, Bedford and others are now stressing the importance on ramping up HIV treatment to prevent mutations from occurring in untreated individuals with low immune function, rather than taking a long hard look at how the mass “vaccination” campaign is driving the evolution of this virus and putting COVID jabbed individuals at ever-increasing risk of serious infection.
At present, one of the most plausible theories appears to be that scientists enabled an early SARS-CoV-2 variant to build antibody resistance, possibly by passaging them through human or humanized cell lines in the presence of convalescent plasma.
The Lab in South Africa Experimented on SARS-CoV-2
If Omicron is another lab creation, what lab might be responsible for its creation? A number of internet sleuths have pointed fingers at the biosafety level 3 (BSL3) lab in Durban, South Africa, where research on SARS-CoV-2 was taking place.
A paper titled “Escape of SARS-CoV-2 50IY.V2 from Neutralization by Convalescent Plasma”11 was published in the journal Nature at the end of March 2021. This appears to be just the kind of research that might train the virus to evade COVID antibodies.
The research, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was conducted by a conglomerate of researchers, most from South Africa, but also one American and several with research credentials at both South African and German, British or American research facilities. Affiliates listed include several research facilities in South Africa, as well as research institutes in Israel, the U.K., U.S., Germany and Brazil.
In a series of December 3, 2021, Twitter posts,12 Yuri Deigin, a drug developer and biotech entrepreneur, points out that the initial emergence of Omicron was in Durban, where the BSL3 lab happens to be located, and where that study was done.
As yet, the Omicron lab leak theory is loosely held together, but if recent history is any indication, we’re bound to start seeing more extensive discussions and reviews of the evidence as we go along.
As noted in an October 10, 2021, New York Post editorial,13 the lab leak theory, referring to the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, “is now almost certainly proved” — and according to David Martin, Ph.D., proved beyond all doubt based on the patent trail, dating back two decades14 — but it took well over a year and a half to get to this point.
While the Omicron origin question is likely to grow, our fear of this variant doesn’t have to. So far, all indications are that Omicron is among the mildest of the variants — highly infectious with rapid spread, but very mild in terms of symptoms.
