Yeah, As I Said

According to the UK Daily Mail, US Omicron cases have doubled overnight:

The number of confirmed Omicron cases in the U.S. has nearly doubled in a period of 24 hours, and six Northeastern states saw a record number of daily COVID cases this week as the variant is now confirmed in 44 states, with New York hit the hardest.

As of Saturday morning, there were 830 cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant confirmed by DNA sequencing across the country, a 97 percent increase from Friday morning's tally.

In reality, the true number of Omicron cases is much higher, as only 1 to 2 percent of all cases are sequenced for variant markers, but the testing data shows a disturbing national trend.

The problem is that as is increasingly reported from Europe, the Omicron variant is far milder. The Daily Mail story continues at length to conflate Delta with Omicron, but its graphs simply illustrate another point I've been making:

There's little difference between the late 2020 peak and the late 2021 peak nationally, despite the fact that by the Daily Mail's count, 72% of US residents have had at least one dose of vaccine since the 2020 peak. According to this site, 203,479,206 people or 62% of the population have been fully vaccinated. Of those, the percentages in vulnerable populations are far higher. But this has had no remotely proportional impact on cases or deaths overall in the US, currently based on the Delta variant.

The public health establishment has simply had no good explanation for this state of affairs. Its strategy throughout has been to scold the plebs for insufficient adherence to whatever the current prescription is: too many block parties; not enough masking; not enough social distance; not enough jabs; not enough boosters. In response to the new wave, it's going to be rinse, repeat.

In fact, I found a really good example of the current credentialed line in a recent New York Magazine story South Africa's Omicron wave is already peaking. Why?

First, there’s the simple limit to testing capacity. As things increase, our testing capacity doesn’t increase as fast, and so we’re missing more and more cases. That can give you a distorted picture — it could look like a plateau in Gauteng, but you could imagine it’s really a much higher crest.

I also bet we can expect a lot more underreporting of Omicron, compared to previous wave, because it’s more mild, either through existing immunity or through actual reduction of intrinsic severity. And if, on average, you’ve reduced the severity of cases, there’d be a lot of people that don’t bother to come to the hospital or to get tested. And so as a rough guess, you might go from like one in 10 cases reported in South Africa to one in 20 or even one in 30 cases — that wouldn’t seem unreasonable to me. And that makes it so that at the same caseload of Delta versus Omicron you could actually have three times as many infections with Omicron.

We could also have a change in generation interval. If we have Omicron kind of doubling at this very fast two or three day rate, you don’t actually have to have Rt be three. You could have actually just made the whole thing faster without having the number of secondary infections being much higher. And we don’t have no way [sic] of knowing that at this moment.

It's a lot of entre nous patter sprinkled with jargon leavened by "I also bet", "rough guess", "kind of", and "just made the whole thing faster", concluding with "we don't have no way of knowing that at the moment". I'm not going to check if this guy is an MD, PhD, both, or neither. He isn't a credible spokesman.

This is the looming problem with the received narrative. It's putting out Ponzi scheme numbers on how fast things are gonna get worse, such that if they don't get a whole lot worse in a matter of weeks, they'll start to lose any remaining credibility. Remember that they're claiming cases will double at a rate ranging from every 1.5 to 3 days, such that by sometime next month, everyone in the world will be sick, and there'll be nobody left to infect but the space aliens. But if things do get a whole lot worse, they look just as bad, because after more than two years, they've proven themselves utterly feckless to deal with the problem and lose any remaining credibility anyhow.

If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing, let's break out the booze, and have a ball. If that's all.

"Viral Blizzard"?

I comtinue to think we're going through an effort to reboot the scary flashing red circles of March 2020. Even the conserative aggregators are running clickbait headlines about a new "viral blizzard":

A former COVID-19 adviser for President Biden's transition on Thursday warned of a “viral blizzard” that is about to hit the U.S. as COVID-19 cases rise and concerns about the omicron variant continue to fester.

Michael Osterholm, who served on Biden’s coronavirus advisory team during the transition, said in an appearance on CNN that the health care system could be overwhelmed as omicron becomes more prevalent in the U.S.

"I think we're really just about to experience a viral blizzard," Osterholm told CNN's Erin Burnett. "I think in the next three to eight weeks, we're going to see millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus, and that will be overlaid on top of delta, and we're not yet sure exactly how that's going to work out."

But Dr Osterholm has been a consistent COVID entrepreneur, outdoing even Dr Fauci. A little over a year ago, he said,

Shutting down businesses and paying people for lost wages for four to six weeks could help keep the coronavirus pandemic in check and get the economy on track until a vaccine is approved and distributed, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a coronavirus advisor to President-elect Joe Biden.

Osterholm, who serves as director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said earlier this week that the country is headed toward “Covid hell.” Cases are rising as more people grow tired of wearing masks and social distancing, suffering from so-called “pandemic fatigue,” he said Wednesday. Colder weather is also driving people indoors, where the virus can spread more easily.

That is to say, in November 2020, fully six months after lockdowns were finally lifted, he wanted to reimpose them for "four to six weeks". Yeah, like 15 days to flatten the curve. It looks like not even Dr Fauci bought into that one. So I've got to put "viral blzzard" in the context of last year's "Covid hell". We got through hell, I assume we'll make it through a blizzard.

Next we have Omicron more likely to reinfect than Delta, no milder -study, which was the lead at one of the aggregators yesterday:

Dec 17 (Reuters) - The risk of reinfection with the Omicron coronavirus variant is more than five times higher and it has shown no sign of being milder than Delta, a study showed, as cases soar across Europe and threaten year-end festivities.

The results of the study by Imperial College London were based on UK Health Security Agency and National Health Service data on people who tested positive for COVID-19 in a PCR test in England between Nov. 29 and Dec. 11.

Aha! Imperial College London! The same institution that foisted the discredited models that led to the 2020 lockdowns on us! I'm entitled to be skeptical here, too.

But there's another issue we still need to address, something I only gradually learned to look at during my postgraduate studies in the University of Hard Knocks, a reasonability check. The numbers we're seeing in these stories suggest a dire outcome three, six, or eight weeks from now. That's what Drs Osterholm and Fauci are telling us as we speak. These predictions are supported by assertions like "more than five times higher", or the one below:

The exact number is 21,027 cases, the first time New York State has officially cracked 20,000 in a day. It’s a cinch that case counts were higher than that in the early days of the pandemic, before testing was available, but give it a week. The way Omicron spreads, they’re likely headed for a true record in daily COVID infections. In fact, if it’s true that the variant’s doubling time is two to three days, New York State could reach 100,000 cases by Christmas Day. The entire United States is averaging “only” 125,000 right now.

But "if it's true" that the variant's doubling time is two to three days, with eight days to Christmas as of yesterday and thus up to four doublings, we're actually talking about roughly 300,000 new cases per day by Christmas, aren't we? By January 1, we're up to over a million new cases per day. By January 31, we're talking something like the entire US case total to date per day, about 50 million. Two days after that, 100 million per day. Two days after that, 200 million new cases per day, after which we quickly exceed the US population in new cases per day. These are Ponzi scheme numbers. Professors of math and statistics warn us to be skeptical of such. And I have no idea where this guy, who claims to be a conservative, is getting estimates like a doubling time of two to three days.

And consider that if random people in the US had been returning from South Africa in mid-November and spreading cases at that rate, a month later we should already be looking at very noticeable numbers all over, when the current spikes in some regions are simply consistent with those we've seen over the past two years, while states like California and Florida remain flat. So far, rhe Omicron panic isn't passing a reasonability check.

But add to that the stories that, taken in context with what we already aren't seeing, suggest Omicron has in fact arrived, it's indeed spreading fast, but it's a non event:

The omicron variant has quickly surpassed the delta variant in collections taken from wastewater sampling sites in Orange County [Florida], officials said.

A sampling this week showed that omicron represented almost 100% of the strains in the samples from the wastewater facilities, Orange County Utilities spokesperson Sarah Lux said in an email.

It’s a different story when it comes to people seeking treatment for COVID-19, officials said.

“Those who are hospitalized are being primarily infected by the delta variant,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said Wednesday at a news conference held at the Orlando International Airport.

But remember that Florida is a state that hasn't had any sort of spike in cases even as Omicron permeates the sewers in Orlando. So I think my seat-of-the-pants estimate that if Omicron is here, we should be seeing it already is correct -- but so far, people aren't getting sick from it or even noticing it. And there's this news from South Africa:

South Africa, which announced the discovery of the variant on Nov. 25, is being watched as a harbinger of what may happen with omicron elsewhere.

. . . Currently there are about 7,600 people with Covid-19 in South African hospitals, about 40% of the peak in the second and third waves. Excess deaths, a measure of the number of deaths against a historical average, are just below 2,000 a week, an eighth of their previous peak.

“We are really seeing very small increases in the number of deaths,” said Michelle Groome, head of health surveillance for the country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

More than 90% of hospital deaths were among the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, News24 reported, citing Waasila Jassat, a researcher with the NICD.

The problem is that the entrepreneurs, Biden, Fauci, Osterholm and so forth, are laying markers that we should be seeing a dire outcome in a matter of weeks, something that can easily be confirmed or discredited in a short period -- but if the virus is behaving like they claim it is, we should be seeing something much worse even now.

The Looming Conundrum Is Still Looming

A little over a year ago, President-elect Biden said this:

[A] "very dark winter" is approaching as the U.S. coronavirus case count nears 10 million.

"There is a need for bold action to fight this pandemic," Biden said in Delaware. "We're still facing a very dark winter."

Biden, whose campaign against President Donald Trump made the coronavirus a main focus, pledged to "spare no effort to turn this pandemic around once we're sworn in on Jan. 20."

Yesterday, a little over a year later, President Biden said this:

President Biden on Thursday warned of a winter of "severe illness and death" for unvaccinated Americans as coronavirus cases spike across the country.

Biden, in a meeting with medical advisers and Vice President Harris to discuss the pandemic, said the country was in a better position to deal with the omicron variant of COVID-19 because of steps taken to limit travel and increase access to boosters.

"But it's here now and it’s spreading, and it’s gonna increase," Biden said of the omicron variant, which experts think is more contagious than previous strains.

"For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death... for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm," Biden continued.

Dr Fauci laid down the same marker. Farther down in the story:

Anthony Fauci, Biden's top medical adviser on the pandemic, said earlier Thursday that the omicron variant will likely be dominant in the U.S. in "a few weeks" and warned of the possibility of hospitals being overwhelmed this winter.

So let me see. As best I can tell from the very sketchy and incomplete data that's been published, the Omicron variant, though first announced by South Africa on November 27, has been loose in the US, the UK, and elsewhere since about November 15. It is said to be exponentially more transmissible than the 2020 model, and it incubates in only 2 to 4 days. So why need we wait further weeks to have our hospitals overwhelmed? While regional US COVID statistics vary widely and are still driven by the Delta variant, here's the all time graph for Florida, which I think is significant because without vaccine, mask, or social distance mandates, its totals have remained low since the summer:

Given the very high transmissibility and short incubation period of Omicron, plus the relaxed attitude toward vaccines there, shouldn't we already have begun to see an alarming uptick? But if you go back to last fall and winter, cases there began to rise in late summer and peaked right around the new year. So much for last year's "dark winter".

The problem is that nothing's changed in the year since he pledged to turn things around.

"My first 100 days won't end the Covid-19 virus. I can't promise that," Biden said at an event in Wilmington, Delaware. "But we did not get in this mess quickly, we're not going to get out of it quickly, it's going to take some time. But I'm absolutely convinced that in 100 days we can change the course of the disease and change life in America for the better."

Last week, in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, the President-elect said he will ask Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days after he takes office.

The conundrum is that, with the renewed doomsday rhetoric, either he's acknowledged that his COVID strategy has been ineffective, or he's sending the message that the doomsday rhetoric is an attempt to stoke continued panic over a steadily decreasing threat. Meanwhile, even the uber establishment Atlantic ran a story Where I Live, No One Cares About Covid.

Here's My Theory Of The Non Prosecution Four

Now that I've taken as good a look as can be had at the four Epstein assistants listed in the 2008 non prosecution agreement, Sarah Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova, Adriana Ross, and Lesley Groff, the one thing that strikes me is that they had little in common. One was a pilot, one came from an affluent hedge fund background, while two were groomed to be Epstein confidantes from their teens. About the only thing they all did was, at least now and then, schedule nymphets for massages with Epstein. However, not all seem to have participated in those massages.

Here's my biggest question: how many $200,000 a year personal assistants does it take to schedule Jennifer for 11:00 if Heather can't make it? How many massages can a 55 year old guy handle in a day? Even at Epstein's most priapic, a dozen might be the upper limit, but hey, let's say it's 20. And it wasn't just these four who did the scheduling. Maxwell herself is alleged to have done it, and there were apparently others, which is suggested as well in the non prosecution agreement.

Nobody seems to have asked this question. Half a dozen $200,000 personal assistants with side benefits like full time nannies, fancy cars, paid hairdressers, expensive takeout, and paid education? Just to schedule Bambi if Debbie can't make it? That money must have been for something else.

Actually, I know a little about something else. I worked for three years during the Enron era for another company whose CEO pled guilty to securities fraud and spent 12 years in federal prison. It wasn't a total Ponzi scheme, but it had Ponzi elements: if revenues weren't what was expected in a given month, accounting just kept extending the days in the month until revenues added up to what they needed. The company had been operating that way from its founding.

I thought that place was strange from the start, though I knew nothing about the cooked books. The departments where I worked were absurdly overstaffed, with people who did absolutely nothing even by normal corporate standards. The products they sold had extremely poor reputations in the industry. It was generally understood -- and I was told this straight out more than once -- that it would cost too much to fix bugs that were reported, and if customers pressed field reps like me about it, we were to smile and mumble something about how we were sure they were working on it.

The bottom line was that it was impossible to work there and be conscientious. This worked out for a certain number of employees; the others were eventually edged out, as I was. But the key issue was that the company needed a certain number of people who seemed to be doing, their jubs to keep up appearances but couldn't possibly if they were in fact conscientious. Those were either really stupid or really corrupt. (My boss for much of that time was one of the corrupt. I remember her shriekiing to a colleague, "You know what? I made quota last month! Can you believe it?" In retrospect, it showed she was in on the frammis.)

Epstein's multiple personal assistants with little to do but schedule nymphets from day to day strike me as a symptom. One was a pilot, but I would guess she didn't do much flying and didn't do much else. Another was a hedge fund lady, but I would guess she didn't do much hedge funding and didn't do much else. All these assistants were being paid to look pretty and not ask questions, and unless they were into fun and games with the nymhpets, that was it.

In terms of the non prosecution agreement, they were basically decoys. There had to be people who worked for Epstein who knew what was really going on -- that is, other than Maxwell -- but so far, nobody has talked to them.

That's one thing that's hinky about the whole trial.

Who Is Adriana Ross?

The odd thing about the four women named in Epstein's 2008 non prosecution agreement is how unproductive it is to try to figure out what, if anything, they actually did all day. Adriana Ross is the best example. Just as the Maxwell trial began, the UK Mirror hyped,

A former model accused of organising under-age girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse has left the US as the FBI is poised to make arrests.

Adriana Ross, 36, who was once questioned about Prince Andrew under oath, was tracked down by the Mirror as she left her home in Miami, Florida.

As she packed a case into a car she refused to answer questions about Andrew or her alleged role with Epstein.

And when she later arrived at the city’s cruise terminal with her husband, she insisted: “I have nothing to say.”

. . . On Friday night sources told the Mirror that papers were being prepared ahead of “several arrests”.

But Ms Ross is now on a cruise of all things, where the FBI could pull her off the ship at will, and there still have been no arrests. Where have you gone, J Edgar? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. The Mirror story goes on,

She was accused of clearing three computers from Epstein’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005 before police raided it – but when asked about this she exercised her right to remain silent.

During a civil prosecution in March 2010, she refused to answer questions about Prince Andrew, whose friendship with Epstein has led to public shame.

. . . Lawyers for Epstein’s victims also tackled Ross on notes found in the billionaire’s bin purportedly showing Ross allegedly arranging when and how victims would visit him.

One read: “Adriana hasn’t confirmed Julie for 11 yet, she is keeping Brittany on hold in case Julie doesn’t call back.”

Web searches bring up slightly more background. Elsewhere according to the UK Mirror,

Polish-born [Adriana] Ross moved to the US in 2002 and was once on the books of the prestigious Elite model agency.

She wed her first husband in Miami and worked for Epstein for a number of years until his first arrest in 2007.

Since leaving his employment, Ross has qualified as an accountant and lives with second husband, Ariel Salazar, in a run-down £217,000 home.

Ross and fellow alleged “potential co-conspirators” Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff and Nadia Marcinkova could still be subject to criminal charges in New York.

According to the Daily Beast,

Court filings reveal that an alleged co-conspirator referred to as Employee-1 will tell jurors that in 2005, Epstein’s staff continued to enable his sex crimes and that she made phone calls to schedule his underage “massage” appointments.

The unnamed employee appears to be Adriana Ross, a 38-year-old former model from Poland who was among four women to receive immunity as part of Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea agreement in Florida. . . . According to prosecutors, Employee-1 will testify that in October 2005, Epstein and her superior, another co-conspirator identified as Employee-2, instructed her to help remove computers from the money manager’s Palm Beach mansion.

However, the prosecution in the Maxwell trial has rested its oddly abreviated case without calling Ross or mentioning the 2005 episode. The story continues,

In a 2010 deposition, former butler Janusz Banasiak said Ross and a male associate hauled computers out of Epstein’s lair weeks prior to Palm Beach cops executing a search warrant. Ross, whose deposition was taken a month after Banasiak’s, invoked her Fifth Amendment rights when answering questions posed by victims’ lawyers. Those queries included: “Isn’t it true that Ghislaine Maxwell delivers underage minor females to Jeffrey Epstein?” and “How much additional money or bonus were you paid to take the computers that we’re talking about out of Jeffrey Epstein’s house?”

Attorneys also asked Ross if Maxwell discussed retaliating against girls who went to the police, and whether Maxwell and Epstein had ever threatened her. One lawyer asked whether Maxwell told Ross: “Don’t worry. If we get caught we have it covered and we’ll just attack these little girls.” The ex-model replied, “I refuse to answer.”

Since coming to America in 2002 on a visa sponsored by a modeling agency, Ross has used the surnames Mucinska and Salazar.

But that's the sum total. Ross worked for Epstein from some time after her arrival in the US at age 18 until about the time of Epstein's 2006 Florida arrest, which isn't all that long, especially in comparison to the others mentioned in the non prosecution agreement. There is no evidence of a romantic relationship with Epstein; she was already too old. During that time, she apparently set up a tentative visit by someone named Julie in case Brittany couldn't make it. We might assume the visit was to Epstein for a massage and that Brittany and Julie were underage, but we certainly don't know, and nothing of this is in evidence in the Maxwell trial.

And in any case, Ms Ross is exercising her right to remain silent. At best, it looks like Adriana Ross was a low-level scheduler who was paid to look good and hand out hundred-dollar bills to nymphets. The photo above suggests she wan't terribly bright. At one point, she helped a tech guy wheel out some computers. The other week, she went on a cruise with her husband.

Is that all? What about the tech guy? Wouldn't he have known a lot more about the computers? Did they ever go looking for him?

Something's hinky here. There's some sleight of hand going on, and the press, insofar as it's paying attention, is complicit.

Who Is Lesley Groff?

Lesley Groff is a more shadowy figure among the Epsein assistants named in the 2008 non prosecution agreement. Every indication is that, with an affluent and apparenty influential husband, she has been able to lawyer up and take advantage of the legal protections built around the Epstein enterprise followindg his arrests. She began working for him as an adult and does not appear to have been groomed or brought into his circle as a sex slave. Unlike many other Epstein associates, there's no indication she ever had a romantic relationiship with him. According to the Daily Beast,

Lesley Groff was another Epstein assistant who allegedly coordinated travel for young girls, often calling to schedule “massages.” Though not directly named in Monday’s [2019 Epstein] indictment, the 51-year-old has been previously named as one of Epstein’s three female assistants. According to a 2005 Chicago Tribune story about executive-assistant pay, Epstein divulged his assistants made about $200,000.

Groff's compensation went beyond that:

The accused trafficker told the business reporter that he bought Groff a Mercedes-Benz E320 to make her commuting easier after she had a child, and he paid for a full-time nanny so that she could keep working for him. “There is no way that I could lose Lesley to motherhood,” Epstein told the Times.

According to this source,

In a separate 2017 lawsuit, filed by an anonymous Jane Doe, it was claimed that Groff was part of a circle of female 'recruiters' close to Epstein.

'Groff coordinated schedules between Epstein and the various young females used for sex; made travel arrangements for the girls; tended to their living needs; and communicated with them in order to maintain their compliance with the rules of behavior imposed upon them by the enterprise,' the lawsuit said.

Groff's attorney Michael Bachner has denied the claims, saying: 'As an executive assistant to Epstein, Lesley worked as part of a professional staff that included in-house attorneys, accountants, an office manager and other office staff.

'Lesley's job included making appointments for Mr. Epstein as directed by him, taking his messages, and setting up high-level meetings with CEOs, business executives, scientists, politicians and celebrities.

'At no time during Lesley's employment with Epstein did she ever engage in any misconduct.'

This site says Groff, "now lives with her husband in a Connecticut town populated by hedge fund owners [New Canaan]".

. . . her spokesman said she was an executive secretary for the billionaire sex offender.

“After Epstein’s arrest, his attorneys set up a company (DKI LLC) to pay salaries and other overhead. Lesley considered herself to be an employee of Epstein until she resigned in 2019 but was simply being paid by the company set up by Indyke at Epstein’s direction or knowledge,” the spokesman added.

. . . Lesley Groff’s husband, Ike Groff, is a former hedge fund founder and works in real estate. It seems she has gone on and lived her life since the Epstein allegations emerged in Florida 2005. As many have.

Lesley Groff came into Jeffrey Epstein’s world in the late 90s as a personal assistant.

The Epstein victim's compensation fund has provided her legal cover as well.

Lesley Groff said Tuesday that the withdrawal of a Manhattan Supreme Court suit filed by Jennifer Araoz cleared her name.

“This is a true vindication for our client Lesley Groff who had no knowledge and no participation in any of these horrific crimes,” said Groff’s attorney Jon Whitcomb. “But as a wife and a mother, Lesley remains heartbroken for Jennifer and all of the victims.”

Araoz accused Epstein of abusing her at his E. 71st St. mansion in 2001 and 2002. The first time Araoz visited the perv’s $77 million townhouse as a freshman in high school, she waited to meet Epstein in Groff’s office, according to her suit. Her abusive “massages” of Epstein, which began when she was 14 years old, were often arranged by Groff, she claimed.

Araoz filed a claim in the out-of-court Epstein Victims Compensation Program. She accepted a settlement from the program, which required she withdraw her claims.

“Participation in the Victims’ Compensation Program requires permanent discontinuance of all legal actions against former employees of Jeffrey Epstein, including Ms. Groff,” Araoz attorney Eric Lerner said. “My client maintains the truth and veracity of all of the allegations in her pleadings.”

The overall puzzle for me with Groff is that she and her husband appear to be, at least on the surface, sophisticated and respectable people. Groff worked for Epstein at a high level for at least 20 years, by these accounts, and although she was well paid, it must have been very clear to her that hinky stuff was going on -- as best anyone can tell, Epstein's fortune was built on Ponzi schemes, embezzlement,and blackmail. The other assistants were more like upscale bimbos; Groff isn't in that league. What did she know?

Who Is Nadia Marcinkova?

According to Wikipedia,

Nadia Marcinko, also known as Nada Marcinkova (Slovak: Naďa Marcinková) (born 1986), is a Slovakian-born pilot, flight instructor, and the CEO of Aviloop, an aviation website. She is known for her association with financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as Ghislaine Maxwell.

. . . Over the years, several news outlets have reported that Marcinko, previously known under the name of Nada Marcinkova, worked as a long-term assistant to Jeffrey Epstein and was a regular pilot of Epstein's so-called Lolita Express. It was reported that she was one of four of Epstein's accomplices (including Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, and Lesley Groff) that were given immunity from prosecution in Epstein's controversial non-prosecution agreement from 2008. The Guardian reported that Marcinkova was questioned in 2010 concerning Epstein, who was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution

. . . According to the Miami Herald, Marcinko visited Epstein "more than 70 times when he was in Palm Beach custody," after his first criminal conviction.

In 2019, in written testimony given by Epstein's underage victims, Marcinko is also described as having encouraged and engaged in sexual acts with the underaged girls, sometimes involving sex toys, at the suggestion of Epstein. In one account, according to police, Epstein told one victim Marcinkova was his "sex slave", and that Epstein had "purchased her" when she was 15 from her family in the former Yugoslavia, a claim journalist Philip Weiss had made in New York Magazine in 2007.

However, Marcinkova/Marcinko is from Slovakia, not the former Yugoslavia, and her father denies selling her to Epstein. Whatever the circumstance, as with other of his associates, she seems to have transitioned from being an underage victim to an adult protegee whom Epstein sponsored by furthering her education and professional development, and she transitioned from victim to adult enabler and coconspirator. Also at the link,

Marcinko started flight training at a flight school at the Palm Beach County Florida Airport, and with 250 hours in her logbook, she accepted an offer from Jeffrey Epstein to obtain her Gulfstream II rating and was certified shortly thereafter.

Like Sarah Kellen, she has continued in an Epstein-related business after her direct association with Epstein ended, but the extent to which the business is actually profitable is highly uncertain.

Marcinko became popular on social media, under her label "Gulfstream Girl". Gulfstream Aerospace filed a trademark infringement suit (Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation v. Aviloop LLC et al.) against her on November 18, 2013. Marcinko and Gulfstream reached an out-of-court settlement, filed on January 6, 2014, after which Marcinko changed her online name to "Global Girl".

As of 2019, she remained CEO of her aviation business, Aviloop, described by Wired as a "supremely odd aviation branding business, whose website features flawless shots of her with Gulfstreams." The business is based at an address in New York, that is in a property controlled by Mark Epstein, brother of Jeffrey Epstein.

Like Sarah Kellen, her business is or was conducted out of an Epstein-related property and represents a continuation of a business role she performed with Epstein, in her case as a pilot. However, the business itself, as with Kellen, doesn't seem compatible with a high-profile lifestyle, and this raises for me the question of whether Epstein, in addition to securing a non prosecution agreement on their behalf, also provided them with a nest egg that could serve as an inducement not to testify against him or other associates in future legal cases.

Although Marcinkova was one of Epstein's pilots, and her flight logs were among those subpoenaed by the US Virgin Islands, she was not called to testify in Ghislaine Maxwell's trial. That link also points out that in 2009, another Epstein pilot,

David Rodgers provided logs that revealed that Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey and Naomi Campbell were on board Epstein’s “Lolita Express” jet[.]

The only Epstein pilot called to testify in the Maxwell trial was Larry Visoski, who claimed he never saw any inappropriate activity on the plane. This raises the question of why neither Marcinkova nor Rodgers was called as a witness if Visoski's testimony was of so little value. But according to CNN, at Maxwell's trial,

Visoski testified that Epstein paid for his two daughters' education through college and gifted him acreage at the New Mexico ranch where Visoski built himself a home. The pilot noted that it was Epstein's practice to pay for the schooling of all his employees' children because he valued higher education. He also acknowledged signing a non-disclosure agreement as a part of his employment.

Two college educations in this day and age come to nearly half a million, far more than generous for an employee benefit. It sounds more like hush money. And neither Sarah Kellen nor Marcinkova had children, so we might suspect some other emolument of equivalent value was paid to them. In general, Epstein seems to have had a remarkable ability to spot weaknesses in his marks, victims, and enablers and keep manipuating them for decades with some combination of money, guilty conscience, loyalty, and obligation.