  The recent radio observations (Mooley et al, 2018) of a superluminal radio
afterglow following GRB 170817A are interpreted in terms of a jet impacting a
baryonic cloak, which is presumably the material caught at the front of the jet
as the latter emerges from a denser ejected material. Assuming that we the
observers are located {\bf at a viewing angle of $\sim 0.2$ radians from the
emitting material (perhaps slightly more from jet axis)}, we suggest that the
Lorentz factor of the jet is $\lesssim 20$ at the time of the prompt emission,
and that, as suggested previously, it is accelerated to much higher values
before finally decelerating during the afterglow phase. A less extreme example
of a short GRB being observed off axis may have been GRB 150101b (Fong, et al.,
2016). A feature of GRBs viewed from large offset angles is a large afterglow
isotropic equivalent energy as compared to prompt emission, as predicted
(Eichler, 2017), and this is born out by the observations of these two GRB.
  It is also shown that the prompt emission of GRB 170817A, if seen way
off-axis ($\theta \gg 1/\Gamma $), could not be made by internal shocks in the
baryonic material that powers the afterglow.
