In recent posts I’ve been exploring the question of why COVID-19 (much like other seasonal viruses) has a Jekyll and Hyde-like nature, being puny for much of the year then exploding in short, sharp outbreaks for a few weeks at a time, usually though not exclusively in the winter. I argued in a post last week that seasonality appears to be driven largely by cycles in the human immune system (though there may be environmental factors such as UV radiation, temperature and humidity as well). The trigger for the somewhat irregular (and not necessarily winter) outbreaks appears to be the appearance of a new variant (or virus) that is able to infect slightly more people, amounting to just one in 18 additional people when estimated from the secondary attack rate. The end of the outbreaks then corresponds to the exhaustion of the small pool of newly susceptible people and the restoration of the temporarily disturbed herd immunity.
I noted that the difference between a surge and a decline amounted only to a small absolute change in the R growth rate, from 1.3 during a surge to 0.8 during a decline, and that the shift between these rates often occurs very abruptly. This means that infected people quite suddenly start infecting 1.3 other people before, around three and a half weeks later, just as suddenly switching back to infecting just 0.8 people. This change in R is reflected in a similar change in the secondary attack rate (the proportion of contacts an infected person infects), which varies between around 15% during surges to around 10% outside of them. I observed that this difference is small enough to be explained by a slightly increased susceptibility to a new variant and a subsequent restoration of herd immunity a short time later.
After writing this it occurred to me that with such a subtle trigger it would seem that outbreaks should be highly sensitive to the amount of social contact people have with one another, and thus to the imposing and lifting of restrictions (or to voluntary social distancing). Indeed, it is logic like this which presumably explains why SAGE members and other scientists persist in believing in the efficacy of lockdowns regardless of how much data emerges showing they don’t make any significant impact on the infection or death rate.
A recent set of SAGE minutes explains the logic of restrictions:
There are three main ways in which baseline measures can reduce transmission (from most to least effective):
a. Reducing the likelihood that people who are infectious mix with others.
b. For those potentially infectious people who are not isolated, reducing the likelihood that they enter higher risk settings or situations.
c. Decreasing the transmission risk from a potentially infectious person in any given environment.
This seems to make sense. After all, if you can just reduce how many people infectious people come into contact with then you can surely cut the number of people they infect from 1.3 to 0.8 – it’s only half a person.
Yet it doesn’t work, and all the logical arguments in the world can’t change the data and the fact that infection curves rise and fall independently of how many restrictions a government imposes and how much distancing people engage in. Likewise, there is no sign of the predicted surges when restrictions are lifted or social distancing relaxed (the reopened U.S. states are the standout examples here).
How can we make sense of this? The answer must lie somewhere in the mode of transmission of the virus (and we can be confident that surges are caused by transmission of the virus between people because they are typically driven by new variants). What kind of transmission could explain surges being triggered by small absolute changes in the R growth rate (or secondary attack rate) yet not being sensitive to relatively large changes in the amount of social contact people have with one another, as happens during lockdowns and outbreak panics?
The answer, I think, lies in the importance of aerosol transmission to SARS-CoV-2 – meaning that the primary means of infection is through relatively prolonged exposure to air contaminated with a sufficiently high viral load from the aerosols produced by infectious people.
How does this explain the sudden triggering of outbreaks and the counterintuitive lack of sensitivity to social contact?
It’s because large outbreaks occur when the air, particularly in indoor communal spaces like shops, workplaces, public transport, doctor’s surgeries, hospitals, schools, pubs, restaurants etc., becomes sufficiently contaminated with infectious aerosols that everyone who enters those spaces and spends more than a trivial amount of time in them is exposed to an infective dose of the virus.
When this point is reached, transmission shifts up a gear, as anyone who is unusually susceptible to infection by this variant (still a small minority of people, I should add) will now be exposed to an infective dose whenever he or she enters one of these spaces. As I explained in a post last week, the risk of infection for such a person is high on any exposure and quickly approaches certainty with repeated exposure and thus does not reduce much by reducing frequency of exposure. This would explain why reducing social contact does not significantly reduce the infection rate, as exposure in communal spaces, which are almost impossible to steer clear of completely, becomes near-ubiquitous and so unavoidable.
The trigger of the outbreak, then, is when the viral load in most indoor communal spaces reaches a certain threshold (which will be lower in the winter) at which a critical mass of people is susceptible to infection. This occurs when enough people are infectious with the variant at once to cause this general contamination of the indoor air. You might call this the outbreak point.
In sum, aerosol transmission and susceptibility thresholds together can neatly explain why outbreaks suddenly explode when particular levels of community infection with a new variant are reached (and suddenly stop when herd immunity is shortly restored). It can also explain why lockdowns don’t do anything to help, and why naïve models that assume universal susceptibility and simple person-to-person transmission always get it wrong.
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“When viral load in indoor communal spaces reaches a certain threshold (which will be lower in the winter)”.
I see three reasons for this. Firstly, less vitamin D in the winter due to less sunlight. Secondly, more consumption of cooked foods, less consumption of raw salads and the like, and therefore less vitamin C (which is decreased or eliminated by cooking) and probably less of other nutrients at a time when they are particularly important. Thirdly, the setting of indoor temperatures excessively high in winter (and I think 17 degrees celsius/63 fahrenheit is about ideal) leads to the suppression of certain immunity boosting functions of the body triggered by winter temperatures (or so I read).
Really the government should address these issues rather than merely aggressively promoting certain experimental pharmaceutical products – even if there is less money in it. Failure to do so suggests to me that they are a corrupt, lying bunch of…
Vitamin D- our bodies are designed to store up D in the summer months to be used in the winter.
Vitamin C- can be replaced by uric acid in meat according to one theory: Kevin Stock ‘Do
humans need vitamin C?’.
Temp control in the elderly is quite problematic, as we know. Not one size fits all.
I recall the following from a bunch of references, loads of work was done on vitamins a few decades ago, but seems to have been forgotten.
The great apes (including us) and the guinea pig lost the gene to synthesise vit C. Every other species makes its own. Usually several grams of it a day. Your dog makes its own C. Species with the gene deletion didn’t die out because they can survive long enough to reproduce as long as their diet contains ascorbate. If I remember the numbers correctly, a gorilla needs several 10s of grams of C a day, which they get by consumption of vast amounts of fruit and veg. In our natural habitat we would be consuming something similar, eating fruit, vegetation, bugs, meat etc. There is lots of C in meat and fish, as its previous owner synthesised its own. Nevertheless, the official RDA for humans is only 80 mg which just staves off scurvy but doesn’t lead to optimum health. We probably need several grams a day.
Gorillas in captivity get western ailments like heart disease, if their natural diet is substituted by carbs, which are cheaper than fruit and veg.
Do Humans Need Vitamin C? | Kevin Stock
A farmer started using vitamin C on his cows when they got sick with certain illnesses. When the system is stressed by illness,then animals are not able to make enough vitamin C to fight the infection. The cows that were given extra vitamin C recovered. This principle of extra C when ill works for humans too. It’s not expensive and there are no side effects. I haven’t got the link to hand, but it’s on http://www.orthomolecular.org. Also on this site are lots of articles about humans getting sick with corona virus and being dosed with huge amounts of vit.C, sometimes intravenously. I have personal experience of Vitamin C; I had a blocked lymph node in my neck, which manifested itself as an obvious lump. The doctor said it should go down in a few days. When it didn’t they started doing blood tests – most worrying – and I had an appointment to see a specialist. So I hit it hard with big doses of vit C – the one I use has a lot of bioflavinoids in it too, plus zinc. In 48 hours the lump went, never to return. I saw the specialist and he said that vit… Read more »
In Britain we don’t get enough sun – due to latitude and modern lifestyles. – to store enough D to carry through winter. Our bodies are designed to do it, but then we invented electricity and stayed inside. And we need to expose more skin than we usually do on those rare sunny days.
Keep taking the tablets.
If you have a garden and some privacy (or can create it with screening) and for light skinned folk, 15 mins for about 40 sessions per summer or 15 plus 15 on each side of a semi naked body should do it!
It’s more likely to be reduced ventilation to keep the heat in, ie the windows are closed.
British buildings are notoriously badly ventilated.
It might sound weird but I also think that hand dryers in public loos exacerbate the spread. Small areas, not much ventilation and all those aerosols from the dryers flying around the room. But perhaps I am just bonkers 😄
When it was hot recently, I went into a couple of shops that had fans plugged in – I didn’t think that was a good idea!
Please can the author, or anyone else for that matter, but particularly the author, (given that he is so happy to indulge in the game of fantasy virology and keep a straight face) please enlighten us to prove that he is 100% sure about the fundamental assumptions he is making in writing this article, by providing his PROOF of the following: 1) proof that the SARS COV 2 virus has been PROPERLY isolated. Not the virology cheat method based on computer models and poor quality experiments with mixtures of substances, proper isolation. I am hearing credible voices saying this has still not been done, so please can the author provide irrefutable proof that it has 2) please can the author provide proof that this specific, properly isolated transmissible virus “SARS COV 2” causes the condition known as COVID19? C19 has been associated with a whole range of illnesses, from a cough to the shits to loss of sense of smell to tiredness to blood clots to hearing voices to long covid and of course – lest we forget – the dreaded covid toe, so please provide further clarification as to which exact symptoms this virus SARS COV 2 has been… Read more »
The latest credible voice to assert that SARS COV 2 has not been isolated is Dr Jane Ruby on this episode of the Stew Peters Show
SCIENTIFIC PROOF COVID INJECTIONS ARE MASS POISONING! – THE STEW PETERS SHOW
https://www.bitchute.com/video/wAAuaAZDqDig/
Dr Sam Bailey has done some good videos as well over on odysee (for the uncensored ones)
With you, mate. I remember reading somewhere (?!) that the viral load idea had been debunked by a whistleblower science bod some while back. If this idea were to persist we’d be wearing masks in every indoor venue forever and maintaining restricted numbers too. Is this what the author wants? FGS, we are mammals that breathe through our noses and mouths and are designed to take in crap from the outside world and with an immune system that starts at the nose hair and the tonsils. Babies do not suddenly grow a mask the moment they enter this ‘contaminated’ world! At this rate we are going to have to re-educate our children about ‘germs’ or have a generation of scared OCDers on our hands! Apologies…I’m getting very frustrated!
I would also be interested in finding out how all these variants are being proven to exist, and how they are able to distinguish one variant from another using PCR tests? Given that PCR gives a positive to goats and fruit and all the rest of it….. Can anyone provide answers to these questions, because from what I can gather, this whole agenda is built on a house of cards, and not a lot else, so if anyone has the proof, please present it.
I did read a while back that they choose whichever of the several (3?) spike proteins to use in combination and then give it (the ‘variant’) a name. Sorry, can’t remember where.
My understanding is that PCR tests are not used to distinguish variants. Variants are the result of genetic sequencing randomized samples. So PCR gives the case rate, and the sequencing gives the proportions of variants.
Qualifiers:
And does it actually matter? if all this testing wasn’t going on, would we be concerned one jot about variants? Where is the increase in deaths?
Just yet another fear-mongering tool, in my estimation. Keeping the fear of impending doom on the boil.
Why do you choose to believe a handful of people like Stefan Lanka, David Crowe, Andrew Kaufman, Thomas Cowan, Sally Fallon Morell, Sam Bailey, David Icke etc. who all have books to sell (some of whom have no virus expertise) that viruses don’t exist than the millions of doctors, scientists, virologists, epidemiologists and various other experts including people from alternative/conspiracy media who all agree that viruses do exist and that SARS-CoV-2 is real?
Yes PCR tests are useless, yes no virus has ever been totally isolated, yes no virus adheres to Koch’s Postulates and yes Covid-19 has been totally over exaggerated to bring in nefarious measures against humankind but it doesn’t mean the virus and all other viruses are not real.
It also doesn’t mean that they are. Hence the need for open mindedness and scientific debate. Nothing in science is set in stone.
Does anyone seriously doubt that viruses exist?
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. —. Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 – 1860)
I haven’t chosen to believe anyone – but thanks for making my mind up for me. I am simply asking for proof of something that is very important. Science is a process of establishing proof – if you or no-one else can provide proof that any proper scientific experiments have been conducted which categorically prove that SARS COV 2 has been proven to exist and to cause a condition called COVID19 – that’s a pretty piss poor show from my point of view and simply gives weight to what the people who argue this point are saying. I have asked for proof – you haven’t provided ANY – but you expect me to blindly believe in people whose reputation and fields of expertise have come under scrutiny and have been found wanting – big time – “because science”. How can they claim there are new variants if there is no proof of any new variants? How can they claim there is a new virus when there is no proof of a new virus? How can they expect us to “trust the science” when the science upon which they rely has no basis in proven fact? This stuff should be easy… Read more »
I don’t know about the author but these may address your first request.:
https://theconversation.com/i-study-viruses-how-our-team-isolated-the-new-coronavirus-to-fight-the-global-pandemic-133675
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7045880/
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/6/20-0516_article
(Incidentally I found out the source of confusion in our exchange yesterday and responded to some of your links on mask wearing.)
Thanks, not really conclusive though and no evidence of any transmission nor controls but I found an interesting paper via a search fromone of these which seems to have more solid evidence
This is an interesting theory and attempts to realistically link observations in a logical way. The other day, when visiting a new hospital, it occurred to me how low the ceilings were and how claustrophobic the building felt compared to the Cathedral like conditions of the old London hospitals I remember from my youth (50-60 years ago). Much is puzzling about this disease but increasingly aerosol spread in enclosed spaces seems a key factor, I guess this would tie in with the outbreaks that have occurred at food processing plants. It indicates that the only piece of public health advice on this virus that has been on the right track is ventilation and it also explains why this virus does not spread outdoors.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that top rate filtered air conditioning and ventilation systems reduced disease spread but that poor ones could make the situation worse, presumably by distributing the virus aerosols? I would be interested to hear the comments of a ventilation engineer on this aspect of the disease.
When considering aerosol transmission, you have to remember that aerosols evaporate quite quickly, and moving air and higher temperatures speed the process.
I am not clear, however, whether the virus particles still float around in the air or survive long without a moist home, however I am clear that once in this state the masks won’t stop much infection.
Aerosols are the evaporate and they become more infectious as they shrink. They then hang around in the air for hours – like cigarette smoke particles.
“When the water part of the droplets evaporates, the concentration of virus particles in the droplets elevates significantly.”
Modern building regulations are demanding that houses are virtually air tight, to save heating costs. Then they have to figure a way of ventilating them artificially, at even more expense and with varying degrees of success. I presume there are similar issues with schools, hospitals, offices etc. So the green agenda creates incompatible requirements which take even more energy to compensate.
Large institutions built in the late 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century had plenty of windows, and chimneys. Schools used to be naturally lit, loads of big windows, and consumed little electricity in each classroom, the lights only went on during winter late afternoons. Those corridors allowed air flow through the building. Similarly in most other communal buildings. Look at modern school buildings of the last 20 years, everything has to be lit, air has to be pumped , massive increase in power consumption, maintenance costs are massive just to run the building on a daily basis.
As I read it, the nub of the article: The trigger of the outbreak, then, is when the viral load in most indoor communal spaces reaches a certain threshold (which will be lower in the winter) at which a critical mass of people is susceptible to infection. This occurs when enough people are infectious with the variant at once to cause this general contamination of the indoor air. You might call this the outbreak point. But something must change to facilitate this build up? Presumably small scale ripples of infection, in an endemic phase, can be explained by minor feedback loops associated with minor changes in, for example, ambient conditions, general population health and behaviour, and even mere chance. But large ‘waves’?? It seems to me that some fundamental cause, or change, is necessary to precipitate sudden steep rises (and falls) in infection numbers. I don’t think we yet have any clear idea what that cause – or, almost certainly, causes – might be. My own way-out speculation is that, together with underlying climatic factors (e.g. winter v. summer) there is something within the virus which causes, or allows, it to suddenly take off (and decline), and that this acts in parallel… Read more »
Of course the other side of the coin is natural immunity. Makes no difference how many viruses are floating in the air if you are immune.
The level of immunity probably depends on vitamin D status and many other things.
All interesting thoughts though.
Whatever the finer points of this article it misses the elephant in the room. We are talking about a ‘disease’ with a 99.7/8/9% (pick your preference) overall recovery rate, skewed massively towards the very old and/or seriously ill. A disease that the overwhelming majority of people have to be told they have, (by a test that was never designed to be diagnostic). The finer points of transmission are for post grad thesis and scientific prizes. If this was Ebola or bubonic plague we would need to focus on this but it isn’t and we don’t. even discussing it in a general forum gives credence to the psychopaths who have ruled our lives for 18 months.
It’s been a gross over reaction, with a strong element of opportunism, if we set aside conspiracy theory for the time being. That said, a lot of it ought to be common sense when it comes to heating and ventilation, and seasonal effects. Historically (including late Dec 2019) I’m reasonably sure that occasions when I’ve acquired the odd respiratory problem happened in poorly ventilated, humid and busy situations. Typically present in them for a couple of hours or so. Maybe some who are at risk should stay away, but at their own volition only.
Respiratory problems caused by what we are breathing. Occam’s razor personified.
Apparently the Dutch have put in a big raise and decided that C19 is in the same category as Ebola, which is pretty shocking
Dutch House of Representatives voted for a law (for 103, against 26) that – gives Covid (+future variants) same status as Ebola – gives Government unlimited powers: curfew, lockdown, mask mandate, vaccine mandate etc – takes away ALL constitutional protection How did this happen?
https://twitter.com/100trillionUSD/status/1412425858988527624
Power corrupts.
I’ve just read the Twitter thread and maybe it’s not what the post suggests. It is however highly likely that governments will try to achieve ‘after the fact’ legitimacy for the, at best panicky, at worst evil and contrived, draconian measures of the last 18 months. What we have seen in the UK is how a prima facie sensible contingency such as Orders in Council can be corrupted by incompetent ministers well out of their depth, clinging to ‘advice’ from soothsayers and psychopaths. Fear of discovery and probable censure then led them to repeatedly double down. We need a system that prevents this in the future. Oh, and a massive trial and execution process for these criminals.
99.9% survival in a country with 67 million people in it is 670,000 people dead.
99.7% means 1.8 million dead. That’s a city about a third bigger than Birmingham.
The law of large numbers wins I’m afraid.
“The law of large numbers wins I’m afraid.”
Only if you are the infantile kind of person who is easily impressed by big numbers and incapable of putting them in context. Sadly the evidence of the past year and a half is that surprisingly large numbers of people, including ostensibly intelligent and well educated people, are exactly that.
First, you have misplaced a decimal point. 99.9% survival gives 67k dead if everyone gets infected.
Second, the survival rate is of those infected. We don’t know how many are susceptible in the first place, but pre-existing immunity could be anything from 0-100% in a particular community, given this disease has pretty much run its course.
Third, the “law of large numbers” applies both ways. We get over 600k deaths every year, and the nature of this disease means a lot of those will be the same people.
Nice try but deeply flawed in so many ways. The maths error has already been pointed out, as has the usual annual mortality. Add to that the evident misallocation of cause of death and the ‘law of large numbers’ argument evaporates. Where it might be useful is a country like India. 1.3 billion is a VERY large number. Quoting total mortality in that context would be deceptive if used it in relation to other countries.
self pwned
my sides
Spot on, Will. Concentrations of viral aerosols combined with/caused by, concentrations of people, in closed environments, are the key to understanding most transmission. Ventilation of closed spaces and dispersal of people are key to reducing viral aerosol concentrations, and their effects. Government needs to get its messaging to reflect this, it’s currently way behind the curve. Nosocomial infections are a major driver, as the NHS doesn’t understand this either. Food processing plants, where the atmospheric conditions are controlled specifically to prevent pathogenic growth in foodstuffs, without ventilation, are good examples of where viral aerosols can gather in excess of the “threshold”.
Yes, but many such places are popular – in the hospitality trade, e.g. It’s a question of balance for some, whether to go to some places when it’s busy, or not, should be up to them in the main. There is a risk that apparatchiks who want to shut down this or that will exploit the situation.
How long do you need inside exposure to get the virus is a key question. The estimate for flu, I read, was about an hour. That figures. In schools, even with good ventilation, doors and windows open, the children get it, but they spend hours inside with each other. And a good thing they get it too.
Hospitals and nursing homes would be worst, together with houses, places where you spend 24 hours in enclosed places.
Under an hour?
Nope.
There would be variants, obviously, in the air change and in the infectiveness of individuals, but rule of thumb looking something like that.
Sorry, variables. Not variants. I used to be quite clever, once.
And yet . . .
Back when the first lockdown started I was told one of the supermarket staff “had to self-isolate”, yet she was never tested so it could just have been a cold.
In all the time since then NO staff in the supermarket or any of the other shops and farm shops have succumbed. And sad to say some of the supermarket girls are dumptrucks, but even they never caught it.
No doubt many others elsewhere could tell the same story.
Not quite related to the article but my 30-something wife has an appointment for her first ‘dose’ of Pfizer in a couple of days’ time. I have sent her lots of articles about the potential serious adverse events and we also know indirectly two young-ish people who were severely injured (one fatally) by these jabs, so she knows the dangers. However, she still thinks the risk of getting ‘long covid’ could be even greater. I concede that long covid is a real thing but it is such a nebulous concept and distorted and exaggerated by the media that I don’t know how to respond to that concern. Any ideas? Ultimately it is of course her decision whether to take the jab, just as she respects my decision not to take it, but I am having sleepless nights about it…
I have had long COVID. Its easier than glandular fever, childbirth and it’s aftermath, just about any major surgery you can have or indeed breaking your arm. In fact it’s much the same as the aftermath of any bad virus, with a bit more dragging respiratory issues and pain in the interstitial linings of your lungs. It’s crap but it doesn’t go on forever, and your hair, (which will fall out again after another viral illness or indeed childbirth), will grow back. It’s a drag, but just your body healing. And you can still function. On the other hand I have attended a funeral of someone with young children who will never see them grow up because they “protected others”. I’m also on groups with desperate women who’ve lost healthy viable foetuses within days of vaccination. And others whose egg quality during IVF has plummeted and whose husband’s sperm count and quality has mysteriously decreased following vaccination. You can’t say anything there. How do you tell someone grateful to the hospital for supporting them through infertility that the same organisation just killed their viable late-stage foetus? How do you tell someone that their partner’s choice to protect their parents by… Read more »
Thank you so much for the response. I hope you are fully on the mend now and sorry to hear about the devastating effects of the vaccine on your acquaintances and their families.
One of the best replies I have read on here. Easily an argument you can show people that should make them think. Top marks!
It’s a difficult decision for her isn’t it. I am certain I had covid in March 2020, no community testing was available, so can’t be 100%. I was 62 at the time, I am a fit, slim runner. It took me a while to get better and the cough lasted at least 2 months but it was not the worst illness I have ever had. Many other viruses have been much much worse for me. The fatigue was quite a hit but again nothing worse than on previous infections. I didn’t then and don’t now fear this virus so am happy to take my chances without vaccination. I do fear these vaccines and most people around me have been vaccinated with many suffering bad side effects only a few getting away with just a sore arm. I feel people’s fear of any infection has been so heightened it is difficult for them to be rational. We cannot be totally risk free in life. In my circle I know of a poor young person who got a viral infection, the hospital could not determine what it was, this person died and horribly after having both legs amputated. Another person recently has… Read more »
You don’t need a test to know you had Covid. Symptoms, timing, place … if you are certain, be certain.
Your observations and experience are stronger than a PCR test.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience, Wendy. That is really helpful. I wish you much happy running, cycling, swimming and all the other things you mentioned!
I’m finding germ theory increasingly lacking with respect to viruses. It assumes that the virus is either outside or inside the host. That once inside it is booted out.
If you look at it from a slightly different perspective then you can get more power when it comes to staying well. Terrain theory probably isn’t 100% correct – viruses (whatever they are) are in us and around us at all times once they have arrived in your vicinity.
While we are healthy it isn’t a problem. Only when we are out of balance does a virus affect us. Seasonality, lack of vitamin D, a poor diet etc will make us vulnerable.
Terrain theory does lead to the question why, when we are underpar, do all the viruses in our body not go “get ‘er” at the same time but that aside it will explain asymptomatic infections, surges, seasonality and more.
Questioning Germ theory… very interesting. Actually, it is something I have been doing myself silently. As to avoid ‘those looks’, or the switching off of people from the points you are trying to make.
The spread of HIV seems to support your position. If we few are allowed to ‘think such things’ 😉
Yes!
I can speak for both sides. For the first fifty years of my life I had a virtually nonexistent immune system, used to catch every cold. flu and food poisoning bug going. I was plagued with skin, eye, sinus, gum and fungal infections, and outbreaks of thrush
Then I was diagnosed with diabetes (a weird genetic type) and simply by eating the exact opposite of what I was told my immune system sprang into life and for the last 17 years I haven’t had flu or “food poisoning” and only about two actual colds. Pretty sure I DID have covid, back in December 2019, but I survived.
One February I broke a wine glass and cut my thumb really badly, the sort of thing that in the past would have needed stitches and antibiotics, or at least ointment. It healed so well and so rapidly that by July you couldn’t see which thumb was damaged.
Fortunately the NHS was not my sole source of medical information or none of this would have been possible.
An elegant theory, but can I put a plea in, YET AGAIN, for proper consideration to be given to the annual flu vaccination schedule and its effect on the development and transmission of other diseases, especially coronaviruses. So fed up of posting this link, but on the off-chance it hits home, and with everyone now better versed in the mediocrity of poorly tested, mass-produced vaccines, I’m hoping it might get attention. To it I will add, 1.) Flu vaccination in children is carried out with a live virus squirted up the nose, and promptly sneezed out. 2.) The same mechanism by which some people who’ve had a covid vaccine, (traditional or modern untested) go on to develop covid, the already vaccinated elderly population go in to develop flu. Rather amusingly it’s written off as the dejected variants and circulating disease being mismatched. More likely it’s because when you ramp up the immune system to fight one particular strain, you deplete it for fighting anything else. 3.) As we have seen a vaccine can thus drive mutations in the population at large. 4.) The volume of circulating respiratory disease is thus increased by the flu vaccinated school population who are trapped… Read more »
Just realised the scientific community caught up with mothers everywhere.
https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m810/rr-0
Oh thanks for that, I recall this but had no reference for it
“This occurs when enough people are infectious with the variant at once to cause this general contamination of the indoor air. You might call this the outbreak point.”
This best explains the ‘infection hump’ you get after vaccination. All those vaccination centres are full masked operations, but they are enclosed spaces. When people move through them some go down with Covid regardless. Therefore:
Interesting article.
But why are not more school children from one class ill if one of them tests positive. Or other settings where people are closely together for a long time.
If this was so highly transmissible, why are more people ill with the common cold if they come into contact with a person who sniffles and coughs, but not when they apparently are infectious with covid?
Good point. If it wasn’t for the testing, you probably wouldn’t suspect that a child even had covid. And as the testing is highly flawed, perhaps that child doesn’t have covid at all. Should the test be accurate (in that rare instant), then the child’s immune system must be fighting the virus successfully, thus not transmitting it, and be termed asymptomatic. And as we all know, so-called asymptomatic spreading is yet another lie this egregious government and the sinister SAGE have foisted upon us
The others are immune.
My worry is that if SAGE and the government accept Will’s hypothesis, that R > 1 is caused by a tipping point of viral load occurring in large numbers of enclosed spaces, then the government will go the full monty and do a complete lockdown, with house arrest and fines for breaking it.
Worthy as Will’s work on this is, we desperately need a cultural movement that dismisses this kind of fearful attitude to seasonal respiratory viruses and to occasional deaths from them as contemptible, and laughs at people who hide from them.
That’s the only chance we have, I think, of not becoming the opposite -a terrified, over-regulated and over-governed, over-medicated culture – probably global.
Sadly, it would depend on attitudes amongst our elites that we have lost over the past century or so and will probably never recover.
An “abrupt change” in the R rate could also come about by an abrupt change in the number of cycles that the PCR test is run with . . . but they wouldn’t fiddle with that would they?
lol…sshhh. Don’t point out how ‘outbreaks’ are achieved! The author’s belief in the data is amusing as he tries to work out what causes ‘outbreaks’.
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” ― Arthur Conan Doyle
Thanks Will again for a very interesting article and a plausible hypothesis. Everything points to aerosol infection incl. the uselessness of masks. However, Heneghan produced an article some time ago which showed that there was no real hard evidence for aerosol transmission which was a surprise. However, recently I came upon a report from a hospital, where they could prove aerosol transmission by having staff members visiting a common toilet within 25 minutes. It would be interesting if anyone had a link to this report. This would be almost a proof of aerosol transmission like in measles. This would render all masks totally ineffective and in practice SD will not work and the pandemic is unstoppable until immunity is reached.
You need RCTs to prove how infection works, and you wouldn’t get permission to deliberately try to infect with a dangerous pathogen.
No it was not deliberate giving them infections.It was an observational study after the event,if I remember correctly.
“we can be confident that surges are caused by transmission of the virus between people because they are typically driven by new variants “
How to be suckered in one short sentence!
The confidence in the underlying official narrative is sooo touching – grasping at daddy’s shirt.
The important issue is that this virus is no big deal, and we should be living life as normal whilst academic issues are researched and examined. All else is now smoke and mirrors – and irrelevant speculation.
This https://trialsitenews.com/is-there-a-correlation-between-mild-covid-19-previous-encounters-with-coronaviruses-stanford-university-investigators-think-maybe/ fits into the complexity of the spread of the virus variants and any subsequent infection and disease.
Nice to see some big institutions picking away at the simplistic SAGE modelling.
Any thoughts on DIPs and whether they play a part in spread without disease?
This is like ‘going down the rabbit hole’, Will. Leaving aside any and all concerns about the RT-PCR test which of course disqualifies automatically any sensible discussion over infection rates. The ‘science’ of virus and herd immunity has been around for decades, not 18 months since SARS2 entered the scene. Localised, natural herd immunity levels are altered temporarily by human behaviour. Humans change their location and hence change the localised immunity levels to any and all respiratory virus. This most often happens following the September/October period following change of schools/colleges which is often linked to changes of houses and/or jobs. Similar ripples occur at other times of mobility, like Christmas etc. As the described Will, this will change the immunity levels TEMPORARILY until new herd immunity levels are attained. It totally normal and always happens. Regarding SARS2/covid, unless there is a totally unexpected visitation of some of those affected people to care homes with old people with comorbidities its effect on normal death rates is unlikely to occur. Of course if suddenly the NHS decides to ship people will infections from hospitals to care homes it will ( and has). If the NHS is so totally incompetant to put respiratory… Read more »
Military grade pathogens deployed on demand?
I’m interested by the fact that we had a very cold April this year, with frosts pretty much throughout the month (it was one of the coldest on record, but you don’t hear the likes of the BBC trumpeting that fact like they are currently about the heatwave in the US) and the frosts continued into early May. And covid cases began to rise in mid to late May. Whereas last spring/summer we had a very warm spring (it was wall to wall sunshine almost throughout the first lockdown), and cases were low over the entire summer. Could it be that the unseasonably cold April triggered a boom in cases 2-4 weeks later?
Now it could be that its entirely unrelated, or more related to new variants, but it does interest me to think whether the transmissibility of the virus is related to outdoor temperatures, or some second order effect such as when its colder outside people turn the heating up inside.
Yet it doesn’t work, and all the logical arguments in the world can’t change the data and the fact that infection curves rise and fall independently of how many restrictions a government imposes and how much distancing people engage in. Likewise, there is no sign of the predicted surges when restrictions are lifted or social distancing relaxed (the reopened U.S. states are the standout examples here).
I think this is using the wrong model of how social distancing may affect infections. Counter-examples are strong evidence against a law that says social distancing always leads to less infections. But it isn’t a law. It is one intervention among many. At this level it is always going to be hard to pick out its contribution as compared to vaccines, medicines, natural immunity, the weather and the unknown. Especially as laws and behaviours are not necessarily correlated. I think of it more like an economic intervention such as lowering interest rates. There are very strong theoretical reasons for thinking that lowering interest rates will boost activity but there are many counterexamples. It doesn’t mean we dismiss it as a tool.
Its simple, sick infectious people who normally would have stayed home … put on their mask and went shopping because they where told the mask prevents you from infectiong others …
(and no asymptomatic people are not infectious)