What Is Up With The Sickness?
When are we going to learn more about the sickness Danielle
claims her team had? Was it real? Is she the sick one?
Is it related to the shots Desmond and Kelvin took, to the injections
Ethan gave pregnant Claire? Were those shots just part of the
stagecraft or were they real?
According to Lostpedia the LOST jigsaw puzzles have a coded
message that "there is no sickness." Is that just Kelvin and
Radzinsky's conclusion with regards to Dharma's quarantine
claim, or does it relate to Danielle's experience as well?
I wish someone would sit Danielle down and ask her about the
symptoms of the sickness. Dull TV? Maybe, but at least
I'd know.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
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16 comments:
Ever since Maternity Leave I'm thinking that the vaccine is a hoax. A manipulation to get people to do what they think is their own idea (like the long con).
Getting Claire to give up her baby by saying there wasn't enough vaccine for both her and Aaron, getting Kelvin to stay in the Swan etc..
I don't know about Danielle and her group - they could have contacted something before coming to the island, or DR is just wacky.
I've often thought that the vaccine was a preventative measure for something that might happen or spread from a DI experimentation leak perhaps (like in The Stand), or, an act against something that already existed. Then, after Ben's Hostile coup, I thought that it could be something that would prevent the spread of what might have been a biological agent in the killer gas cans. And even though it is 3 years before the actual Mittelwerk Spider Protocol, it could relate to some trial tests that TM was doing on his virus before the actual application on the islands as protrayed in TLE.
So clearly, I'm clueless on this. :-)
I think I agree with pgtbeauregard that the virus is part of the long con, sort of a mind control, to get people to do what Ben and his group want. The "sickness" kept Desmond in the Swan doing what he was supposed to do. Maybe some of Danielle's crew did get sick (after all they were in an environment where anyone can get an infection or virus or even a bad cold) and in her crazy hormone driven mind she went over the edge thinking they were sick from some strange, fatal and contagious disease. Claire was told the vaccine would save her baby...she was definitely being manipulated by fear.
Memphish said: I wish someone would sit Danielle down and ask her about the symptoms of the sickness. Dull TV? Maybe, but at least I'd know.
LOL Waaay too easy for LOST!
1. The Sickness IS a con.
2. Danielle is insane.
I'm not so sure the sickness isn't real. Here's what I suspect: there is not an actual disease, but there are symptoms that result from exposure to some type of technology. I am specifically thinking of this "implant" Claire is infected with. The DHARMA vaccine seemed to clear her symptoms almost immediately.
What if the vaccine is a preventative measure against exposure to a form of microtechnology that, when activated, begins to kill a person. It would explain the "injection every nine days" rule, because real vaccines don't work like that. But if there were concern over exposure to these "implants," it might be necessary to take a weekly injection of a substance which neutralizes the implant.
Though Ben referred to it as an implant, there might be other ways to become exposed and contaminated. It doesn't have to be a surgical implant; it could be injected. So perhaps Danielle's team was somehow exposed, and their bizarre symptoms frightened her so much she killed everybody.
I do think the whole "quarantine" thing is part of a mindgame to make people stay in the Swan, but that doesn't mean the vaccine wasn't serving a genuine purpose. Because Radzinsky and Kelvin never actually got sick, that's probably why they deduced "there is no sickness."
This also clears up the annoying plot hole about why Juliet's supposed fertility serum was contained in the same vials as the DHARMA vaccine.
I'm thinking about the people we've seen take the shots. They are (1) the people manning the Swan and (2) pregnant women. The shots must do something to counteract the effects of exposure to extreme levels of electromagnetism. The Swan inhabitants need it because of proximity. The pregnant women need it because of the extreme effects on their wombs as evidenced by the x-ray Alpert shows Juliet. Arguably all women on Island would need it for that reason and I'd speculate that if you only started taken shots post-postitive pregnancy test it would be too little too late which Juliet's results seem to bear out.
I find Juliet's failure to administer anything to Sun once confirming her conception date unusual. You'd think if this drug does attempt to counteract the magnetic effect Sun needs to be on it ASAP. Sun might have a fighting chance since she conceived after a realtively short time of exposure on Island whereas pregnant Others may have been exposed for years.
I don't think Claire's "sickness" caused by the implant andthe sickness of Danielle's people could be the same because I don't think Danielle's people could have been implanted. Though maybe they were and Danielle just didn't know it.
Ben's "foresight" with respect to Claire's implant is super creepy. It also makes me wonder if Jack, Kate and Sawyer also have implants. What about Juliet?
Wow-
Betcha they do! We don't know what happened to them when they were captured - except that they were unconcious.
Juliet I'm not so sure about.
Good theorizing Memphish
I don't think the vaccine really has anything to do with pregnancy. I'm in this train of thought because of this whole "implant" nonsense and because the vaccine seemed to genuinely help Claire. I don't believe Danielle's team were "implanted" by somebody, though that scenario might be possible. Like I said, there might be another way to become exposed to whatever this thing is.
And I agree . . . I think it's quite possible Jack, Kate and Sawyer were all injected with the supposed implant. Possibly Juliet, as well. This would be an excellent form of social control, wouldn't it?
Oh yeah, I forgot that I also do think that the mindgame injections are possible too, like you all said, as a way of controlling people by their fears. As long as they don't find out like Kelvin, Rad, and finally Dez, that there is no reason to take it.
I also really like your idea of the implants keeping poeple in line. What if they implanted recruits with some kind of "thingy" (microchips of today were not around in the early DI days) that would cease to function properly if they left the island, and then they would die or whatever. Say, if the implant went too far away from the magnetism, it would malfunction and hurt the implantee.
Does anyone have any ideas on how this "whatever" that they implanted in Claire might have worked? Could it be some kind of remote apparatus, where Ben could release a sickness by remote control? That's the only thing I can imagine with a bio-type implant. Maybe you could remotely burst a tiny bladder in the device that holds germs.
Capcom,
What if they injected "vaccinated/implanted" everyone when they got to the island - you wouldn't know the difference is you thought you were just getting immunized.
This could be part of the mind control/free will issue
pgtbeauregard,
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking . . . people were unknowingly injected with something when they first arrived to the island.
Capcom,
I've wondered a lot about what kind of "implant" Ben could be referring to. I mean, you're right. That kind of technology didn't exist in the DHARMA Initiative days. Of course, I don't know how sentient clouds of black smoke exist, either. I found the whole "implant" element to be so out of left field and kind of ridiculous, myself, but if it's part of the story, it probably serves some significance.
I guess there's always the possibility that, if time is screwed up, some forms of futuristic technology somehow exist on the island.
Your implant-upon-arrival ideas sound good!
I know, when TPTB threw out the implant thing with Claire, it didn't sound right, that they could do that. I would have better believed that Juliet sprinkled some kind of germy fairy dust on her at night. :-) I hope that they expand a bit on that info in the future.
Well, if the implants turn out to be the source of the so-called sickness, it'll feel less like some random element tossed in from an episode of STAR TREK and more like part of the show's mythology. Here's hoping . . .
The idea of taking Claire, doing the soft (yet drugged) sell to convince her to give up Aaron, and also putting an implant in her in the event she winds up back with the 815 survivors and one of the Others needs to earn their trust is a stretch. This plan is as convoluted as kidnap the doctor so he'll perform back surgery when his "girlfriend" has cage sex with his rival scheme. I think Ben has been watching too many James Bond movies. Either that or he's lived through this before and is changing things up to better insure the outcome he desires. I hope it's #2.
I agree it's convoluted. I'm hoping that putting the implant in Claire was for a reason other than a potential con. There might be a necessity we're not seeing.
I actually don't think Ben was counting on Kate and Sawyer hooking up. I don't think it was planned in advance that Jack would see them together or anything like that.
If Ben has lived it before then he should have known Juliet would betray them.
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