First started in September 2021, the CDC's Genomic Surveillance Program was created to track travelers, which the federal agency considers to be "an especially important group to consider when tracking new and emerging infectious disease."
After the program was launched in the fall of 2021 at just three U.S. airports, the expectation in the coming months was that the program would be disbanded since COVID ended. Instead of shutting the program down, the CDC instead expanded it nearly threefold.
The CDC announced that it would be placing "public health professionals" at the eight airports, including John F. Kennedy International in New York; Newark Liberty International in New Jersey; San Francisco International in California; and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International in Georgia.
"We wanted to achieve several things: to get the platform set up at three airports, gauge the level of participation, and determine if we could detect variants using pooled sampling," said Cindy Friedman, chief of the Travelers' Health Branch of the CDC's Genomic Surveillance Program.
"We achieved our goals and showed proof of concept."
In partnership with XpresCheck, an airport-based company that provides COVID "testing," and Concentric by Ginkgo, a network of more than 60 laboratories with genetic sequencing capability, the CDC hopes to continue probing travelers' nasal cavities and other orifices in search of COVID germs.
The CDC did it with the "omicron" (moronic) strain and others, and now believes it can do it with whatever further mutations COVID presents, probably around Election Day.
For now, the program is "voluntary," allowing individual samples to be collected from "participating" travelers who are allowed to remain "anonymous." Precisely what the CDC is doing with the samples after it collects them remains unknown.
"It started voluntary in China, too, until it wasn't," warned someone on X. "Then they welded apartment buildings shut, forced people to get vaccinated at gunpoint, and hauled everyone else into isolation concentration camps where they were only allowed to be released if they paid a bribe. They even killed every pet in Shanghai." ...<<<Read More>>>....
