229 Comments
User's avatar
Ryan Gardner's avatar

I find prolonged unsubstantiated FEAR revolting.

Expand full comment
eugyppius's avatar

oh yes.

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

Excellent essay btw!!!

Learned quite a bit.

Expand full comment
eugyppius's avatar

ha thanks bro :)

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Nov 22, 2022Edited
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Nat's avatar

Are you aware of Dr Chetty's approach to treating covid? He is a South African physician, has treated thousands of covid patients since the very beginning.

Due to the sheer volume of patients he was seeing he was able to spot patters of disease development, where around days 7-10 after onset of first symptoms a small number of patients would develop some brand new symptoms. Not necessarily severe, but to Dr Chetty's trained eye those new symptoms, when developed around that particular time, would signal that the patient needed to be put on antiallergic meds ASAP - like montelukast and antihistamines... if those were not administered the patients without exception would go on to develop severe and life-threatening symptoms.

So MCAS or not, hyper allergic reactivity is def involved in severe covid. Or at least WAS in the early alpha/delta strains (not sure if/how disease progression patterns would have changed with later strains)

To add a personal anecdote to this, I developed morning chest pressure/shortness of breath about a month after my first covid symptoms (and about 1-2 weeks after full recovery). Those new chest symptoms would appear every morning for about a week, until I remembered about that delayed allergic reactivity and decided to take antihistamines. The breathing issue disappeared. Came back a few weeks later, and again were completely removed with a couple of days' worth of antihistamines.

Expand full comment
CMCM's avatar

With what you've written in mind, it might be interesting to study the reactions/outcomes in a group of people who regularly take antihistamines prophylactically for their allergies.

Expand full comment
Nat's avatar

Yes indeed. Monkelukast would be even more likely to show stronger protective effects imo, since strong IgE inhibition (IgE is considered to play a crucial role in allergic immune responses... hence the use of steroids in severe covid) Some studies HAVE been done. Not nearly enough, but still enough to warrant attention.

*

The Association between Allergic Rhinitis and COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9534623/

"Some studies suggest that Allergic Rhinitis (AR) drugs protect against the development of severe COVID-19 and patients taking these drugs are no more prone to SARS-CoV-2 infection... This may be one reason that patients with AR and COVID-119 have milder pneumonia symptoms."

*

Montelukast drug activity and potential against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7405283/

*

COVID‐19 in a patient with severe asthma treated with Omalizumab https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7323189/

*

Levocetirizine and montelukast in the COVID-19 treatment paradigm https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34942461/

*

In this retrospective observational multicenter study, the use of the FIASMA hydroxyzine was associated with reduced mortality in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34945186/

*

Dual-histamine receptor blockade with cetirizine - famotidine reduces pulmonary symptoms in COVID-19 patients https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32871242/

Expand full comment
Debra's avatar

This probably explains why allergy meds disappeared or had very limited availability. Planned..?

Expand full comment
Viv's avatar

MCAS is (even though hugely underdiagnosed) simply too rare to be the "missing link" in susceptibility to any viral infection.

Everyone gets respiratory viruses, almost everyone in the west has had covid at least once. Very very few of them have MCAS.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Nov 22, 2022
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Viv's avatar

43% of Germans have had test-positive covid. This is higher than your claimed upper bound of MCAS of 17%. Thus MCAS cannot be a prerequisite to infection.

As for contempt prior to investigation, I guess it's not your fault you are unaware of my professional research commitment to the clinical development of avapritinib or hematology training. Contempt prior to investigation indeed!

Expand full comment
Rikard's avatar

Yes! It's like Kermit's space-bro Yoda said:

"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering."

Who benefits from our fear? Who makes a profit from giving us reason to fear? Who grabs power in the name of keeping us safe from the fear they themselves cause us?

Damn right fear leads to anger. I'm angry. I see among my kin how they've been conditioned to fear whatever the voice on the radio or the TV say is a dangerous threat.

This year abnormal number of accidents with lethal outcomes (4 instead of 0, which is the usual and has been for decades), with cars with downturned engines maxing out at 30km/h. You can drive these without a license. The reasonfor the death's was that in this instance, the car had been fitted with a double gear box and an easy re-tune to full power.

And wham bam thank you ma'm, everyone is talking about how dangerous these cars are.

4 fatalities in several decades. Teens can drive these and frequently do in the countryside (Sweden don't have Learner's permit rules) meaning they can easily get a proper license at 18, since they are alrady experienced drivers.

But oh no. The urban chattering classes have decided to decry this as dangerous. As right-wing. As anti-climate. So now everyone - from one week to the next - unanimously claim these cars are dangerous.

Conditioning for obedience doesn't get much clearer than that.

Expand full comment
Dave's avatar

Note Yoda didn't indicate who does the suffering.

Expand full comment
Rikard's avatar

Yah. Because he knew that either you are the one causing suffering, or the one who suffers.

Don't want either? Hermit in a swamp.

(I refer of course to the original take on the character, before prequels and Disneyfication.)

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

Disneyfication*

You stole my favorite descriptor!...:)

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

Yoda is a albino frog?

Expand full comment
Forbes's avatar

Back in 2020, I read "How Fear Works" a 2019 book by UK sociologist Frank Furedi. (A subject he's written on over many years.) You could say, I watched it play out in real time. That's why I say panic porn works, and our recent experience is but a trial run.

While most of us here say, "never again," I'm not at all sure about that. It's going to take a lot more citizen action, activism, and changed electoral outcomes--and resistance to govt micromanaging everyday lives and work.

Quarantining the healthy? Designating essential and non-essential work? Printing and spending trillions of taxpayer resources?

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

It is also going to take a serious addressing of the epidemic of cranial rectalitis that has been raging in our society for decades.

Expand full comment
Forbes's avatar

Govt and media gaslighting with propaganda explains most of your "epidemic"--or enough of it. Crowd/mob/herd behavior is a survival strategy. What individual is resilient enough to go against the crowd or the community--to go it alone? (Not many of us.) Remaining ignorant/uninformed avoids head-exploding cognitive dissonance.

And taking your "epidemic" assumption as a given, it explains why TPTB prefer to make exertions based on power, rather than reason. Taking power and using it for "the greatest good for the greatest number" is far easier than explaining the trade-offs involved, while convincing the public of their judgment of the best path forward. Politics is messy. Power unused is power forfeited.

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

I agree. I also read that book and I believe another one of his many years ago.

you are spot on with everything you say.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

Unfortunately, the more unsubstantiated fears are, the more revolting they become.

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

Exactly.

Me too! I was on a flight last Friday where a father had his infant and 2 year old masked up from eyeballs to adam's apple. It was almost a 6 hour flight! Isn't that child abuse?

Expand full comment
Rosemary B's avatar

yes, it is.

How awful.

Expand full comment
joe stuerzl 85's avatar

When I go for my morning walk ,I find that 90% at bus stops and others just walking are masked .Other masked walkers coming towards me go to the others side of the road ,when they see me coming without a mask .When I look back they are back on the side I'm on .I feel I live in a world where the three stooges are doing healthcare ,or is it sickness care ,the sickness in their brain .This is not behind us ,because the insanity is on auto pilot now .Depopulation is in progress and it is helped along by the ones to be depopulated ,murdered .To offer yourself for death shots is beyond stupid .The mask says it all it means I' m retarded a moron .

Expand full comment
Rosemary B's avatar

that is kind of funny. I live in Northern Virginia. The masked people are sort of in clumps.

There is no consistency to the areas or people that mask. I truly find it really funny.

I do not ask people why they are masking. I honestly believe that they are mentally damaged at this point. Yes, I am sad about that, but this is an easy situation to recover from.

-> Remember your old life without masks... now give the masks a toss in the garbage.

That was a nightmare you just need to step away from.

I agree with your assessment. they are morons

Expand full comment
Leo Higgins's avatar

Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fein, Dr. Howard!

Expand full comment
Cathleen Manny's avatar

Where are you? A big city I assume?

Expand full comment
Martyn's avatar

How dare you fly anywhere? Don’t you know that airplanes are symbols of structural racism designed for the sole purpose of suppressing indigineous pregnant men?

Only Al Gore, John Kerry and Leonardo DiCaprio are important enough to justify flying around spewing jet exhaust (and white privilege)!

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

It took the TSA to put me completely off of flying again.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

It would have been interesting to put a pulse oximeter on the two-year old's finger.

Hypoxia is something that flight attendants understand.

Expand full comment
joe stuerzl 85's avatar

Reading about observations , like the father almost strangling his own babies with masks that resemble faces like Lazarus coming out from his grave , . Any father doing that can only be a criminal .

Expand full comment
Catkins's avatar

That is very sad and sickening. I saw someone on GB news the other night who had done some research on this to children as she’d noticed such a big change in her 9 year old.

Expand full comment
Tsubion's avatar

Forcing adults to wear masks everywhere 24/7 was also abuse. And yet no one has been prosecuted yet.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

If you weren't one of those forced to wear a mask, you couldn't be a damaged compliantant and file a complaint. Most who were forced to wear masks forced themselves.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

It certainly is oxygen deprivation, so, if one deprives another of a percentage of available oxygen, but not to the point of immediate death, does that constitute abuse ? Could we compare it to the "war" on smoking and second hand smoke ? No matter which "side" of the issue one supports, it obviously is NOT a healthy practice. So, is sustained deprivation of oxygen, even if a small percentage, humane ? An "academic" question, or as Dr. Fauci would say, a "scientific" question: most masks are relatively similar in size and shape, the amount of oxygen deprivation "probably" does not vary a great deal....yet, are the sizes and capacities of the bodies, hearts, circulatory systems of all adults and children the same ? Do we not make "adjustments" when giving children anesthesia, cough medications, even aspirin ? Hummm

Expand full comment
Tsubion's avatar

There is no reason for wearing a "medical" mask (surgical or otther) under any circumstances for "medical" reasons since the science relating to contagion is entirely wrong and unfounded. For actual toxins in polluted environments only a sealed respirator will provide adequate protection and even then only if certain procedures are followed. Toxicology needs to be boosted to the top of the heap when it comes to understanding the true causes of disease. As you said, no two people are the same. Some people's kidneys shut down after a flu jab while everyone else appears to be ok. Who knows how much subtle, slow-acting damage is happening in real time as the injectees parade around with misplaced confidence in their benefators (the injectors). Those who wore masks religiously for two years (especially children) will certainly have to deal with terrible symptoms at a later date. German neurologist said damage is already done at the micro scale but symptoms can take several years to manifest.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

My late mother, an RN who ran the ORs in a hospital in WW2, was very clear that the only reason fo wearing masks there was keep the doctor's spittle and expectorant out of the patients.

Expand full comment
Tsubion's avatar

Stops blood splatter getting in your mouth too.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

Absolutely. And your comment concerning the "injectors", in my area during the peak of the panic, ANYONE was corralled as a volunteer "injector"... a bizaar, almost Jim Jones type scene, complete with hastily erected tents (during the 2a.m. to 4 a.m. hours). This did not turn out well as one woman in my community received permanent nerve damage to her left arm (thankfully the "injector" had learned in the 1 hour "training" to ask which hand the "injected" used to eat, write, etc. ) due to improper injection technique. In "defense" of those who volunteered, they were given ORANGES and received a one hour "training" in how to properly give an injection, then, at 9 a.m. began dealing with the lines of people that stretched for blocks around the open field where the tent had been erected over night. Most amazing.... no one was actually hurt in those lines as local law enforcement were on site, but, the shoving, pushing, arguing (which I watched from across the street from the lot with the tent) was actually quite disturbing to watch. Wanted nothing to do with getting any closer.

Expand full comment
Tsubion's avatar

Wow! Thanks for laying that out. I have always wondered who could be dumb enough to inject complete strangers with unkown substances "for the greater good." Now I know!

I can only conclude that the human species is going through a period of collective insanity and will end in mass death of one variety or another. But that's enough optimism from me so I'll get back in my box until it all blows over. Good luck.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

How could the enjoyment of smoking be compared to the discomfort of hypoxia?

Expand full comment
Tsubion's avatar

As an ex-smoker, I'm not really sure I "enjoyed any of it." After your first couple of cigarettes (which are truly disgusting because your brain hasn't overcome how disgusting it is yet) your brain plays a trick on you because it now wants to continue with the nicotine addiction that has been set up. The disgusting aspect of it, the natural response to inhaling toxic smoke is overidden by your newfound drug dependency.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

Maybe you enjoyed the masochistic pleasures of smoking.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

You just proved that early onset Alzheimers is caused by smoking.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

And may I add to that, the more Unsubstantiated the fears the more effective they are ?

People are less apt to revert to illogical emotional behaviors when they are able to substantiate the a danger, a fear, it allows them to focus and act. Unsubstantiated fears are nebulous, "floating" illusions taking different forms from minute to minute... same principle used by skilled film directors to make suspense or "horror" films. People just never learn, or we just don't concentrate on important principles like this, and many others, in our general (free) public education system, we concentrate the curriculum on cultural and social constructs, rather than logic, analysis, etc. We "reserve" that type of knowledge, especially understanding of what we call "human nature" for the few .... and those who know these "secrets" certainly use them to control !

Expand full comment
SheThinksLiberty's avatar

Me, too, Ryan, but I find prolonged 𝙘𝙤𝙬𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙚 worse.

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

YES!

We weren't hero's....they were just p**sy's

Expand full comment
Luke Reeshus's avatar

It really is "the mind killer, the little death that brings total obliteration."

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

Fear isn't anywhere nearly as revolting as intentional ignorance.

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Nov 22, 2022
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

I truly believe covid is a dry run for climate lockdowns, tracking, biosecurity, etc.

The population was so compliant you could say they passed with flying colors for the real show.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

Covid had two purposes: population reduction and compliance monitoring.

Expand full comment
SheThinksLiberty's avatar

Once the absurd story of the Sep 11 attacks "worked," "they" knew they could tell the average person 𝒂𝒏𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈.

Had "the people" recognized the absurdity and insisted upon a real investigation and prison time for all those who -- according to the official story, anyway -- failed so egregiously and criminally, I believe carrying out this "COV!D" crime would have been impossible.

Expand full comment
Tsubion's avatar

As long as it's on TV and the talking heads are moving their lips the glassy eyed sheep will nod in agreement and follow instructions without question.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

Truer words have never been spoken...and STILL the masses nod, and bleat, nod and bleat, and repeat and repeat on facebook/meta. Education is, in the end, the only answer. It is a long term task to develop a meaningful, rigorous, academic curriculum of logical thinking exercises, scientific method, mathematics, history, economics, etc. for the masses, free to everyone, even to those the D.C. elites call " 'ol six pack Joe's". Parents MUST take back the school curriculum and insist their children be taught what those of the the "elite class", a class WE built here in the USA, know. We did this TO OURSELVES, at one time we had one of the most knowledgeable and literate populations on earth.

Expand full comment
Tsubion's avatar

Well said! You would think the internet would facilitate "all of the above" but instead it's created ghettos of bubble-think, ever-shrinking attention spans and free-roaming smartphone zombies on autopilot.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

We could at least make some attempt to do actual education in our public schools. Begin to teach READING again ? Have mandatory reading lists ? On the heels of "Covid", what about starting with Le Bon's The Crowd ? GREAT place to start ! Fool me once, SHAME on you, fool me twice..... no no no.

"The masses have never thirsted after the truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim." -- Gustave Le Bon

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

The goal, as usual, is to not be average.

Most of the average went to Iraq to murder innocents for Bush.

Expand full comment
Gail Finke's avatar

Even if it wasn't meant to do that, that's what happened. So whether or not you're right about people creating it for that purpose, people who would like to do those things now know they can.

Expand full comment
Ryan Gardner's avatar

exactly. now they know the x and o's so to speak.

Just like Covid:

There won't be an end zone and the goal post will get moved so fast that everyone will forget we're having the world's longest instant replay.

Expand full comment
Steenroid's avatar

You could be right but I still think a majority of people don’t FEAR climate change like so many feared Covid. I think you can only push these people so far. Just wait until people freeze and starve and see the pushback.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

The Earth's climate has increasingly become known as a zero sum game that changes continuously. Everything that man has released from the Earth constitutes nothing more than a tiny fraction of a fraction of what can be attributed to nature, nature's god, and that reduced to incidental by human ignorance.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

Thou art a true sage Vonu ! A voice crying in the wilderness I fear !

Expand full comment
shibumi's avatar

People don't fear climate change like COVID; I suspect it works on something slightly different.

COViD: fear of death

climate heresey: fear of appearing immoral

Control of a different flavor.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

"heresey?" Did you mean heresy or hear say?

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

Absolutely ! Ultimate fear (Covid-the black death syndrome) trumps something like "climate change"... which, is PERCEIVED as more controllable in the MINDS of the average person, though it may be totally irrational. A somewhat similar example would be how some people PERCEIVE air travel as much more dangerous than driving in their auto daily, yet the exact opposite is true. Let's face it, Covid was marketed as the ultimate fear, and it WORKED.... probably better than their best estimate.

In his "parting" media blitz today, Fauci our highest paid U.S. government employee (higher than president or vice president) used his last "official" press conference to ramp the fear as high as possible. Perhaps (??) in anticipation of beginning a whole new career at 80 something ? Perhaps, flying around the world collecting mind boggling sums of money to give public speeches to other countries about the "black death" coming ? Could the "black death" actually be a reduction in the world population due to the "war" on fossil fuels and the deaths that will result for sub zero temps and no way to heat ? Collateral damage on the march to fill the entire world with poisonous, used, batteries ? Just some thoughts.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

You believe human nature is such that people can only be "pushed" so far... hummm, interesting concept... Les Miserables ? China this past weekend ? Why I think you are spot on target ! You are quite right, the farther up the scale the deprivation goes (lack of heat, lack of food, finally lack of water due to crack down on all the progress man has made from simple wood fire to refining oil from the ground into a myriad of useful fuels... we seem to be in a period of moving backward, into a "dark ages" where true education is exchanged for indoctrination, and fears among the masses abide.

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

If you study the educational philosophies of John Dewey, you will realize that education was never his purpose.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

So now in China, is what we are seeing the second phase of this world wide successful "experiment" in ultimate and complete control ? The revolt seems to have begun, the final straw of human endurance seems to have dropped, and the overt, brutal, raw, "crack down" on resistors has begun (if the weekend news videos are any indication) June 4, 1989 all over again ?

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

Since China's zero covid program has already ended their economic growth,, their population may make protracted resistence likely to produce reform. Their military has a lot of angry people to subdue.

Expand full comment
Catkins's avatar

Oh very much so

Expand full comment
Vonu's avatar

It doesn't matter when what it is developing is fraudulent.

Expand full comment
RioRosie's avatar

People aren't generally bothered by coughing & sneezing?

Perhaps once upon a time they weren't bothered.

In May I was returning to the US from a vacation. This was peak allergy season for me, and I accidentally packed my OTC allergy meds in my checked luggage. Halfway between Zurich & the US, I had a dry cough, which I treated with frequent sips of water. (Note: this was AFTER the airlines lifted the mandatory mask requirement.)

Welll....

The masked 20 & 30-somethings were horrified, looking at me like I"m Typhoid Mary.

The "older" passengers didn't bat an eye.

As I was leaving the plane, a flight attendant whispered to me that I should, in the future, wear a mask because I was coughing.

I snapped at her: I do NOT have COVID. I had to take a TEST before I boarded the flight. Masks do NOT work. I have ALLERGIES. Springtime pollen causes me to cough & sneeze. Anyone who's anxious about a cough & a sneeze needs to GET OVER IT....and KISS MY ASS.

Expand full comment
Cathleen Manny's avatar

Good for you, RioRosie! We have all got to speak up for ourselves. I’m beyond sick and tired of brainwashed people.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

Fauci knows the "beyond sick and tired of it" folks are beginning to be the majority, and you could see it in his face today, he is terrified of not being considered THE SCIENCE (remember " I AM SCIENCE" ? ? He's going to do everything he can now as a "civilian" to ramp this up around the world ! Adding this edit since I wrote this in November. Apparently the Chinese citizens are also "beyond sick and tired of it all" too, is you watch the news video !

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

This type of "brainwashing" is only possible because the vast majority of people in every country of the world, could not tell even the basics of an 8th grade general biology test such as: Explain the difference in bacteria and a virus.

That is the type of question we had at one time on 7th and 8th grade tests in the USA. We were not expected to give an answer worthy of a PhD. in virology but, we were expected to go into adult life knowing such BASIC and helpful information. Does anyone think this lack of even basic "science" will cause leaders, authorities, lawmakers, etc. to RE-think how important it is to give EVERY citizen access to a GENUINE traditional education ? Or, will they continue to concentrate on social constructs, sexual orientation, and a variety of other subjects more important than biology, history, economics and mathematics.

How many "run of the mill, so called deplorable Walmart shoppers, know the primary meaning of the word "esoteric" ? That was another word on the 6th grade spelling and vocabulary list of us "old timers" ! Anyone even remember "spelling" or "vocabulary" tests ?

Expand full comment
shibumi's avatar

Yeah, I've done that as well when I sneeze or cough.

"I have allergies."

Expand full comment
Ben Kurtz's avatar

Been thinking of using this line:

"Oh, I've been tested. Don't worry, it's not COVID. It's TB."

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

I have no doubt they would have the "authorities" (local police) waiting for you at landing !

Expand full comment
KB's avatar

I do hold my breath when talking to someone WAY to close into my space. Not a germ-a-phobe like with hand sanitizers or masks, but still don't like ppl coughing/weezing in close proximity. I hear ya though.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

I NEVER have... hate it in planes, trains, and automobiles, even clerks and waiters, not germ phobic either, just hate being coughed on directly... doesn't everyone ? ?

Expand full comment
CMCM's avatar

Good for you....that kind of thing NEEDS to be said out loud to the maskoids.

Expand full comment
Catkins's avatar

Love it

Expand full comment
Cube Cubis's avatar

it's kinda like we all got vaccine induced alzheimer's or something

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

That's not too funny, I have often wondered what would happen to ME if I ever voiced such thoughts, especially on campus with colleagues present !

Expand full comment
Cube Cubis's avatar

crackle pop

Expand full comment
Cube Cubis's avatar

or clot

Expand full comment
shibumi's avatar

Well, if you really want to go to a dark place, locate Walter M. Chesnut and look up his work on vaxxine induced prions.

You're closer to the truth than you realize.

Expand full comment
Ann Marie's avatar

I truly fear that could actually be... Fauci's "experiments" have gone on so long, with such "bad actors" as co-conspirators, his WELL FINANCED "work" has been below the radar for many many years......

Expand full comment
Robin Whittle's avatar

Thanks for this most interesting report.

All this is interesting from the point of view of basic science, which is fine. It is also of interest to people who earn their living by getting research grants. It is easy to look at this complex set of relationships and argue that more research is needed.

However, for those people who genuinely want to minimise the impact of viruses, including by limiting average viral shedding due to lower disease severity, and so to reduce overall rates of transmission, there is one intervention which stands out as being far more effective than anything which comes out of conventional research: boosting everyone's circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels from the typical (in the absence of lots of UV-B skin exposure or proper vitamin D3 supplementation) 5 to 25 ng/mL (12.5 to 62.5 nmol/L) to at least the 50 ng/mL (125 nmol/L) level which the immune system needs to work properly.

For 70 kg 154 lb bodyweight without obesity, this requires, on average 0.125 mg 5000 IU of vitamin D3 a day. This takes a few months to build up the levels. This is a gram every 22 years, and pharma grade vitamin D3 costs about USD$2.50 a gram ex-factory.

All sound too simple to be true? Please read the research cited and discussed at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/ and in the recent Nutrients article by New Jersey Professor of Medicine Sunil Wimalawansa "Rapidly Increasing Serum 25(OH)D Boosts the Immune System, against Infections - Sepsis and COVID-19: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/14/2997 .

Most of conventional medicine is mistaken or at least has something seriously missing as long as doctors go about their business with patients without first ensuring they have enough circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D for their immune systems to work properly.

Expand full comment
Simon Tufnell's avatar

This information is so important, in fact I'd say it's critical to support your immune health. My Vit D has historically been around 30, and it 2020 when I realized how important Vit D was, I made a strong effort to raise my level. It went to 38, then 53, now 75. In June, around 25 people in my office and everyone at home had Covid (probably the start of BA5), although I tested positive I never had any symptoms. I believe my Vit D played a big role in that.

Expand full comment
Robin Whittle's avatar

I assume you are using ng/mL units for your 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels. This is nanograms per millilitre, which is parts per billion by mass. In the UK, New Zealand, Australia and some other countries, nmol/L is the preferred unit. This is nano moles per litre, where a mole is a number of molecules: about 6 with 23 zeroes after it. 1 ng/mL = 2.5 nmol/L.

38 ng/mL is well above average 30 degrees or more from the equator, for people who do not supplement vitamin D3 properly and who have not had a lot of recent UV-B skin exposure. 70 ng/mL is much better! (BTW, the same ~297 nm wavelength UV-B which converts 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin to vitamin D3 cholecalciferol, by breaking a carbon-carbon bond and so opening up one of the molecules carbon rings, also damages DNA and so raise the risk of skin cancer. UV-B is not the long-term solution. Supplements are the only long-term way of attaining good 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels.)

See the histogram graphs from sunny Israel at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#03-uk-low . 38 ng/mL would put you in the top 2 or 3 % of the population. Half the Arab - and so generally Muslim - women had 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels below about 11 ng/mL. The graphs above this one show that such disastrously low levels are even more pronounced in people from Africa, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh who live in the UK, which is hell and gone from the relatively sunny latitude of Israel. African Americans face similar problems, all through the country, but especially in the north.

Not only did you save yourself from likely moderate or worse symptoms - which you might have had with your old 25-hydroxyvitamin D level - but you surely shed a lot fewer virus particles than your co-workers. They surely spread the disease to other people, including themselves. You either didn't, or did so to such a lesser degree that if everyone had done what you did, there would be no pandemic.

I am 70 kg and take a 1.25 mg 50,000 IU vitamin D3 capsule once a week. With a little in a multivitamin, this averages out to about 0.188 mg 7500 IU a day. Despite having spent the last two and a half years raising awareness of the immune system's need for good 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels, I have not bothered to get my level tested. It is unlikely to be below 60 ng/mL or above 110 ng/mL, which is fine with me.

150 ng/mL is the level above which toxicity *might* become a problem for some people, but it is much harder to attain such levels since a self-limiting enzymic process converts 25-hydroxyvitamin D into another compopund which is degraded and excreted - and the activity of this process scales with 25-hydroxyvitamin D level, You can see this in the roll-of of the vitamin D3 intake X vs. 25-hydroxyvitamin D (made in the liver from vitamin D3) level curves from McCullough et al. 2019 https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#castillo and below that Heaney et al. 2015 and especially Ekwaru et al. 2015: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#ekwaru .

Expand full comment
Jim Brown's avatar

" It’s a powerful reason to avoid interference with the broader viral ecosystem via insane policies like mass containment."

I wonder: Is it also a powerful reason to be cautious about mass vaccination?

Expand full comment
eugyppius's avatar

oh of course. i think with influenza, we've been saved by the fact that our flu vaccines just don't work, and the Corona vaxx, aside from a few early moments, never really changed the dynamics of infection either.

Expand full comment
JCR's avatar

Hasn't it been completely obvious that there is a "survival of the fittest" and "whack a mole" phenomena occurring in the battle against respiratory viruses? That targeting one virus, if done effectively, simply advantages another circulating virus. There has been data that shows that the influenza vaccine doesn't reduce your risk of getting "sick", in general, but instead reduces your risk of getting sick from the targeted strain. But regardless, people still get sick with some sort of respiratory virus. Obviously, it's more complicated and with many variables. But, the simplistic concept that the flu vax "reduces your risk of getting sick" is total b.s. Who knows, perhaps covid was the result of a highly effective flu vaccine, paving the way for a novel coronavirus to be the predominant circulating respiratory virus. Perhaps it's a phenomena that is bound to occur with all of our tinkering.

Expand full comment
Stuffysays's avatar

That was interesting - thank you.

I've always thought people make too much fuss over coughs and colds. Scientists seem particularly keen on viruses don't they? Good hygiene, good health and luck is what people need to stay alive!!!

Expand full comment
Just_Henry's avatar

Science has become Science Fiction. Don’t believe any of it from “official” sources any longer. FYI, this is from a neuroscientist with a handful of discoveries published in Science magazine. Pretty sad.

Expand full comment
Tardigrade's avatar

As a lifelong science-fiction fan, rather than smear my favorite genre, I refer to much of today's purported science as Science™.

A lot of science fiction has better science in it than today's Science™ does.

Expand full comment
The Green Hornet's avatar

I almost feel badly for the covid cultists that spent so much time rewriting basic virology and immunology. 🙄

Expand full comment
Cor Termorshuizen's avatar

"This is probably one of the reasons that containment policy and virus mortality often seem to be so closely correlated. Care homes, for example, were subject to some of the most zealous containment measures of all, and they were repeatedly ravaged by high-mortality SARS-2 outbreaks."

I don't know if this is debunked. It sounds plausible. The impact of these hypotheses is that lockdown was even worse: it contributed to the death rate. I wonder if this can be captured in numbers.

Expand full comment
Jessica Hockett's avatar

I am working on this some with NYC and other data. My working hypothesis is that the notion of SARS-CoV-2 ripping through care homes and killing people is...lacking.

Expand full comment
SimulationCommander's avatar

Remember that back in early 2020 (peak NYC crisis) you didn't even need a positive test to count as a corona death, just any corona symptoms. This at a time when tests were restricted to sick people with covid symptoms, and only 25% were positive.

Expand full comment
Jessica Hockett's avatar

Correct. I was just reviewed a study the other day that showed probably deaths in NYC as those without a confirmed positive test that had covid on the death certificate. Need to figure out which study that was :)

25% positive among sick people in March 2020, for an allegedly fast-spreading virus that was supposed to have “arrived” in Dec 2019/Jan 2029 is awfully high, don’t you think? :)

Expand full comment
JCR's avatar

Those high death rates likely tied to care homes with undisclosed bacterial/fungal infection outbreaks. I believe that info is routinely kept quiet.

Expand full comment
Jessica Hockett's avatar

That is one of of many likely contributors, yes

Expand full comment
User's avatar
Comment deleted
Nov 23, 2022Edited
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
Jessica Hockett's avatar

Yes, those factores were significant contributors.

Now we need to prove it. :)

Expand full comment
SimulationCommander's avatar

LOL they mandated an outbreak in every care home by throwing covid patients in them!

Expand full comment
Jessica Hockett's avatar

Yes and no.

Is the IFR in nursing homes as high as the Covid-attributed death toll among nursing home residents would have us believe? (John Ioannodis and colleague suggest no https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.08.21260210v2.full)

Why don’t we have a source that shows us how many nursing home residents nationally died from/with Covid, whether in-facility or out of facility, in 2020? Why is there no source for how many all-cause deaths among nursing home residents there are every year?

Expand full comment
James Wilkinson's avatar

We are nowhere near the point of fully understanding our microbiome nor microvirome, despite attempts from those that claim to know that using an immunological sledge hammer carries with it no negative impacts on our immune systems.

Many viruses, retroviruses, phages, etc all compete for space in their ecosystems which are our bodies, and all the other animals on our planet. This interplay is not simple, and one imagines that most of these agents have formed a consensual relationship with their hosts over time, such that their success, which is predicated on our success, forms a defense system that, in a health individual, one perturbs at one's peril.

Expand full comment
Casey Preston's avatar

I think you’ve hit on the basic problem. The health and scientific establishment have based their beliefs on a model in which the body is a fortress and the immune system is the army that keeps the fortress from falling. The better model is that the body and immune system are in equilibrium with themselves and the environment around them. Getting sick is a natural and expected perturbation to that equilibrium. The body will increase immune system activity until the equilibrium is restored, and that includes keeping secondary respiratory infections from becoming overwhelming. Focusing on keeping people from getting sick at all will just throw the equilibrium out of balance until something catastrophic occurs.

Expand full comment
Tardigrade's avatar

Beautifully put.

Expand full comment
Catherine Kelly's avatar

Another great article! So interesting to find out there's such an interplay between viruses and the results of trying to suppres them. It seems like hubris is at the core of all these terrible interventions, people believing they can out-nature nature and getting it wrong. It's the precautionary princliple in reverse - lets try it and see what happens instead of lets not try it till we know what happens. I work in a school and usually viruses go around at this time of year but this year is different. For instance we've had chicken pox which is normal, but instead of infecting a few children it has gone though entire classes and the whole school, that's not normal and I don't know if it's becasue they didn't mix for so long and then they get it all at once but that seems likely. It seems to be happening with other illnesses too.

Expand full comment
Kitsune, Maskless Crusader.'s avatar

Just like with masks, natural herd immunity and immunology 101 the entire world wide medical profession just simply forgot everything it knew prior to covid. With a few notable exceptions, of course.

Expand full comment
Jessica Hockett's avatar

I'd like to point out that the interplay between rhino and SARS-CoV-2, per the Biofire panel, mirrors the interplay between influenza A and rhino in the Scotland study: https://syndromictrends.com

Also note in the Biofire data that rhino and influenza A have been up and down at the same times, of late.

Expand full comment
MKnight's avatar

This is phenomenal. I want to send it to every freaked-out ninny I know.

Expand full comment
Linotype's avatar

Thanks for this very interesting information.

Expand full comment