N E W S B Y T E S Gab's Corner by Gabriel Brunner The Joker Variant Team Reality vs. the Official Narrative often feels like a turn-by-turn strategy game, but like any game, players must offer respect and recognise when their opponent has made a masterful move. The Delta Variant is such a move. Just when we thought we had them up against the ropes (Faucigate), they come up with this. The official reasoning behind the renaming of the “Indian” Variant to “Delta” or more generally speaking, the replacing of “origin” with “greek letter” was to avoid “stigmatizing” certain countries. This was obviously nonsense, as no-one in the WHO or in the US cares about India’s reputation. But just how clever it was, wasn’t immediately apparent. It’s kind of difficult to live in America and be scared of the Indian Variant. That’s… in India, isn’t it? But Delta? That’s good. Delta sounds like war. The Delta Battalion? The Delta Plan? Delta evokes FEAR. It’s almost as good as NERVTAG, the “New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group” from the UK. Now that’s a scary acronym. Delta works everywhere, too, in all languages. Good localization work done there by the masterminds. What’s even better is that the Delta Variant is a real Joker. It can be anything and everything. Too many deaths despite vaccination? The Delta Variant evades the vaccine. Your kids don’t want to get vaccinated? They had better - the Great Unvaccinated produce perilous variants so we’re all in danger. The Delta Variant is your Get Out of Jail Free card. Want to lock down again? The Delta Variant is here. Want to sell top-up vaccines? December’s your vaccine appointment for the new Delta Variant. If you're on the fence about whether we are looking at a conspiracy or an honest mistake, the Delta Variant might change your mind. So, fair play to you, invisible enemy. That was a good move. Now, what does Team Reality have up its sleeve? A Two-Faced Double-Masker named Fauci The United States’ most prominent infectious disease scientist, Anthony Fauci, is in the eye of the storm after two media outlets - using a Freedom of Information Act request - gained access to thousands of his emails from the crucial period from February to April 2020. A lot of things happened then, including Fauci changing his tune quite radically on things like asymptomatic transmission, universal masking, etc. There is a lot of material to analyze and interpret, and new insights into this man’s mind are constantly emerging, but one thing already seems quite clear: February 2020's Anthony Fauci was very much in line with PANDA's opinions: he knew that asymptomatic transmission is not a major cause of spread of these kind of viruses. He knew universal masking is useless. If he said that today, however, he'd be deplatformed by the social networks. A far cry from the double-masking TV personality who has been invading our living rooms this past year. Which begs the question: what happened? Why did he change his mind? What's with all the top-secret meetings with people like Jeremy Farrar, Patrick Valence and Christian Drosten? And what exactly took place at that Wuhan lab? It's the most exciting thing that's happened to internet sleuths since Making A Murderer, and there is no doubt that further bombshell insights are still to come. She Could Do Better (but what about the UK?) Here’s some news best filed under “Didn’t See That Coming”. Matt Hancock, the hapless, vaccine-obsessed UK Secretary of Health, long a figure of ridicule on social media, who’s only redeeming feature has been a kind of unintentional comical talent, has retired. His day of reckoning has come (karma’s a b*tch), but not for unlawfully imprisoning the British public and robbing them of their right to earn a living, no, because of an affair. Apparently Mr Hancock has been having a steamy relationship with his aide, Gina Coladengelo, while he was telling the whole of the UK to “behave like you have the virus” and social distance the hell out of each other. Well, there was no social distancing between those two, as leaked security camera footage clearly shows. The biggest surprise here perhaps isn’t that Mr Hancock broke the rules, as he has shown himself to be a compulsive liar on many occasions. But Ms Coladengelo could do a whole lot better. So could Mr Hancock’s wife. If the quality British tabloids are to be believed, she’s still wearing her wedding ring, but Matt and Gina are apparently moving in together. They are “in love”. The less we know about that, the better. Where does that leave the UK? I’m glad you asked. Mr Hancock’s successor, Sajid Javid, seems qualified to be the Health Secretary, having studied Economics and worked in banking for most of his life. He also has a penchant for Davos, and appears to go about his business without a hint of a sense of humour. Let’s give him a chance, shall we? But don’t get your hopes up. | 
