Ozone, influenza and the causes of disease

A leading cause of death not listed above is iatrogenic disorders, i.e. deaths induced inadvertently by medical treatments, including medical errors. According to a 2006 report, the estimated number of iatrogenic deaths in the United States is around 784,000 per year, making it the leading cause of death, ahead of heart disease and cancer (Null et al., 2006). The situation is unlikely to be much different in other countries where Western medicine holds sway. This epidemic of patient harm is a massive scandal, but one largely ignored by government health authorities.

The WHO declared a COVID-19 pandemic on 11 March 2020. The official death toll from COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) stood at 3.0 million people in mid-April 2021 and reached 6.0 million in March 2022. However, this number is grossly inflated: it makes no distinction between cases where ‘coronavirus’ is the primary cause of death and cases where another health condition is the primary cause; even people who have died in motorcycle accidents or of gunshot wounds or heart attacks have been labelled Covid victims in some countries. For comparison, up to 650,000 people can die during a bad seasonal flu epidemic. And as the above chart shows, in 2019 6.46 million people died from respiratory diseases or infections, but without any mass hysteria and lockdowns.

Some ‘Covid deaths’ are iatrogenic deaths: it has been found, for example, that sticking tubes down sedated patients’ throats into their lungs to help them breathe (intubation) can cause additional damage to the lungs (see section 8); that’s why this practice has been reduced since the start of the epidemic. Many front-line American doctors argue that the medical cartel’s efforts to suppress effective early treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, and to push the use of deadly, poisonous, patented drugs like remdesivir caused at least 500,000 unnecessary deaths (Kennedy, 2021, pp. 124-5).

Numerous medical professionals around the world have spoken out against the authoritarian response to the pandemic, and called for protection to be targeted at the main risk groups (especially the elderly) rather than the population as a whole (swprs.org; evidencenotfear.com); mainstream and social media, however, are doing their best to suppress dissent. The economic recession triggered by the measures imposed is likely to push half a billion more people into poverty (oxfam.org), and cause millions of premature deaths in the years ahead (thepriceofpanic.com). Disruption of tuberculosis programmes alone is expected to cause 1.4 million extra deaths over the next five years (wiley.com). A top UK government scientific adviser confessed in August 2020: ‘Lockdown was a panic measure and I believe history will say trying to control COVID-19 through lockdown was a monumental mistake on a global scale; the cure was worse than the disease’ (express.co.uk). In early October 2020, the World Health Organization’s special envoy on COVID-19 backtracked and urged world leaders to stop using lockdowns as the primary method of controlling the virus as they were causing ‘a terrible, ghastly global catastrophe’, including a doubling of global poverty and child malnutrition (youtube.com).

In 2018, 1.5 million people died of tuberculosis (who.int). The pathogen believed to be responsible for this disease was discovered by Robert Koch in 1882; he called it the ‘tubercle bacillus’, and it is now known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis. His work gave a major boost to the germ theory of disease, which stood in opposition to the prevailing miasma theory – the idea that diseases are caused by the presence in the air of a miasma, a poisonous vapour containing particles of decaying matter, characterized by a foul smell. The fact that poor, filthy and foul-smelling city neighbourhoods created by rapid industrialization and urbanization tended to be the focal points of disease and epidemics seemed to support this theory, which dates from the Middle Ages.

The claim that the tuberculosis mycobacterium causes tuberculosis is disproven by the fact that this bacterium has never been found in the early stages of the disease and is absent in 50% of cases, and 85 to 95% of people ‘infected’ with this bacterium do not develop tuberculosis; nor has anybody ever shown in controlled experiments that it is capable of causing the various symptoms of tuberculosis, let alone how it might do so (Lester & Parker, 2019, ch. 4). G. de Purucker says that microbes are not the primary cause of disease; they are the result of a diseased condition of the body and act as scavengers (Esoteric Teachings, 8:62-3; Health and disease).

Everyone has countless microbes on and in their bodies. The human body consists of some 30 trillion cells, and it contains at least 38 trillion bacteria and over 380 trillion viruses (or rather, virus-like particles) (bcm.edu; scientificamerican.com). Our gastrointestinal tract houses several trillion microbial cells, and a range of diseases are associated with imbalances in the composition and function of these intestinal microbes (Lynch & Pedersen, 2016). We are said to breathe in over 100 million viruses every day (mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk), and there are over a trillion bacteria and a trillion viral particles in each gram of human faeces (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). Many of the ‘viruses’ in our bodies are bacteriophages (‘bacteria eaters’), which are usually assumed to be ‘infecting’ bacteria, but that view is starting to shift (Lusiak-Szelachowska et al., 2020). The human microbiome and virome are cutting-edge areas of research, and the symbiotic interactions among these organisms and particles contradict the ‘monotheistic view of viruses as pathogens’ (Virgin, 2014). There is growing recognition that it is wrong to assume that changes in our internal microbiome and virome are the cause of disease, rather than a response to it. Good health means living in symbiosis with the vast microbial ecosystem within our bodies.

She adds that these ‘unseen creators and destroyers’, loosely called ‘microbes’, are involved in all physiological changes, including pathological phenomena and disease. She distinguishes the microbes of science from what she calls the ‘fiery lives’.

The ‘fiery lives’ are reminiscent of the ‘scintillating corpuscles’ that can be seen under the microscope on our own physical level, and which a series of scientists from the late 19th century onwards have considered to be the precursors of microbial life forms (see section 7).

Physical health requires balance and harmony between the processes that build up and maintain the body, and those that break down and expel bodily elements. When the body is subjected to toxins, stress or other harmful influences, it tries to cleanse and repair itself (often with the help of microbes) and restore its integrity, and these efforts may produce visible symptoms of disease. The stronger our bodily constitution, the more successful this healing process will be.

Robert F. Kennedy, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the global war on democracy and public health, Skyhorse, 2021, Kindle ed.

Dawn Lester and David Parker, What Really Makes You Ill? Why everything you thought you knew about disease is wrong, 2019, Kindle ed.

M. Lusiak-Szelachowska et al., ‘The presence of bacteriophages in the human body: good, bad or neutral?’, Microorganisms , v. 8, 2020, 2012, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

S.V. Lynch and O. Pedersen, ‘The human intestinal microbiome in health and disease’, New England Journal of Medicine, v. 375, no. 24, 2016, pp. 2369-79, medicinainternaelsalvador.com.

Herbert W. Virgin, ‘The virome in mammalian physiology and disease’, Cell, v. 157, no. 1, 2014, pp. 142-50, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

2. Blavatsky: ozone and influenza

An oxygen molecule consists of two oxygen atoms (O₂), but oxygen can also exist in a heavier, unstable but highly toxic form, ozone, consisting of three oxygen atoms (O₃).

She then says that ‘real ozone’ is the ‘elixir of life’ and refers to The Secret Doctrine for more information. Finally, she writes: ‘once more an Asiatic country – China, this time – was sacrificed as a scapegoat to the sin of FOHAT and his too active progeny’.

Blavatsky says that it is possible by alchemical means (including by means of sound) to transform oxygen into ozone, and reduce it to its ‘pure essence’, thereby creating a practical ‘elixir of life’ (SD 1:144). This type of ‘ozone’ can resurrect a human or animal whose astral body has not been irreparably separated from the physical body by the severance of the magnetic cord between them. She adds: ‘As one saved thrice from death by that power, the writer ought to be credited with knowing personally something about it’ (SD 1:555; see Cranston, 1994, pp. 229-31).

Esoterically, hydrogen corresponds to the kama-rupa (‘desire body’, lower mind), nitrogen to the astral model-body, oxygen (‘the life-giving gas’) to prana or life energy, and carbon to the gross physical body (SD 2:593). In the ‘pre-geological ages’ (when the earth was more ethereal), hydrogen and oxygen – ‘which instils the fire of life into the “mother” [dormant matter] by incubation’ – are called spirit, i.e. ‘the noumenon of that which becomes in its grossest form oxygen and hydrogen and nitrogen on earth’. Nitrogen is ‘an earth-born cement to unite other gases and fluids, and serve as a sponge to carry in itself the breath of life – pure air’ – which ‘if separated alchemically would yield the Spirit of Life and its Elixir’ (SD 1:626+fn). Blavatsky stresses that ‘The ozone of the modern chemists is poison compared with the real universal solvent’ (SD 1:260). When discussing the connection between ozone and influenza, her reference to fohat (nature’s inner forces) and ‘his too active progeny’ points to the fact that the body can be overwhelmed and weakened by an overabundance of vital force.

The ‘Russian flu’ epidemic proved fatal to Blavatsky. A recurrence of the epidemic hit England in early 1891. Blavatsky, then living in London, contracted flu on 25 April and died on 8 May. (More information on the 1889 epidemic is provided in section 5.)

Death rate from influenza in Sheffield (northern England), spring-summer 1891. (academic.oup.com)

Sylvia Cranston, The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky, Founder of the Modern Theosophical Movement, Santa Barbara, CA: Path Publishing House, 3rd ed., 1994.

3. Richter: weather, ozone and epidemics

Richter argues that, since ozone is produced by the action of ultraviolet light on cold dry oxygen, the amount of ozone in the outer atmosphere varies with the amount of ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun. He quotes the following:

It is assumed here that low sunspot activity coincides with high ultraviolet radiation levels and therefore high ozone levels. But this is wrong: higher ultraviolet radiation levels occur during high sunspot activity (see section 4). In any event, Richter’s proposed correlation between low sunspot numbers, high air pressure and a high death rate from influenza is not very convincing, as the following figures from his article show.

Above: Sunspot activity and respiratory deaths (click image to enlarge).
Below: Sunspot activity and air pressure (left) and deaths in seven cities and Italy (right).

10 years later Richter published a long article entitled ‘Influenza pandemics depend on certain anticyclonic weather conditions for their development’ (Archives of Internal Medicine, v. 27, no. 3, 1921, pp. 361-86). He again argues that influenza pandemics (e.g. in 1890, 1891, 1918, 1919 and 1920) and pneumonia epidemics develop only during high pressure periods, and that changes in solar activity harmonize with and apparently cause such periods. In addition, all these epidemics come to a more or less sudden end following the arrival of distinctly low air pressure. He cites data from North America, Europe and Asia to support this. He disputes the widespread belief that respiratory diseases, often misnamed ‘cold weather diseases’, are mainly a function of temperature and humidity. He adds:

He again proposes the possibility of ozonization: the varying quantity of ultraviolet radiation emitted from the sun acts on oxygen to produce ozone, and ozone is also produced by auroral electric discharges in higher latitudes; and high concentrations of ozone cause particular harm to the respiratory passages.

Richter was writing at a time when no bacterium or virus had been identified as the cause of influenza. The term ‘virus’ was first used in 1892, and by the early 20th century many viruses had been ‘discovered’, or rather their existence had been inferred: since nothing as large as a bacterium had been observed, it was assumed that some kind of smaller microbe must be involved (see section 7). An influenza virus was first reportedly isolated in the 1930s, after the discovery of the electron microscope. Ozone was discovered in 1839; it is a blue to colourless gas with a pungent, chlorine-like odour (‘ozone’ is derived from the Greek ozein, ‘to smell’). Richter writes in the above article (p. 385): ‘We have reason to assume that air of some anticyclones contains ozone in unusual quantity as a product of unusual solar output. If we hesitate to deduce that ozone is causative of influenza because its odor and the gas itself has not been detected in the air we breathe during a pandemic, we must admit that no attempt has been made to find it.’ What is required, he says, is ‘a critical analysis of the air during the different air pressure conditions and especially during the epidemics of the respiratory organs’. In other words, there was no ozone data available at that time to either support or refute his hypothesis.

In 1939, Frederick Sargent published an article entitled ‘Studies in the meteorology of upper respiratory infections (II)’ (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, v. 20, 1939, pp. 141-7), with the subtitle: ‘Interdiurnal changes of barometric pressure and the incidence of colds at the Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire’. He writes: ‘A correlation between the weekly mean barometric pressure and weekly mean incidence [of colds] also indicates in a general way that periods of high pressure are generally associated with periods of more sickness.’ He refers in a footnote to Richter’s 1921 article, and says: ‘his day to day plots show higher incidence [of flu epidemics] with generally higher pressure, but Richter’s conclusions and theories are partly incorrect since he implies the level of pressure rather than its variability is most significant and refers to now discredited influences such as ozone, etc.’

Breathing air or oxygen at pressures greater than normal atmospheric pressure, or prolonged exposure to higher oxygen levels at atmospheric pressure, can lead to hyperoxia and oxygen toxicity, with harmful effects on the central nervous system, lungs and eyes. Oxygen toxicity produces symptoms such as disorientation, respiratory problems and myopia, and can also damage cell membranes. Long-term use of supplemental oxygen (oxygen masks) can lead to lung injury.

Several modern studies support a correlation between high air pressure and flu. For instance, Guo et al. (2019) studied the effects of meteorological factors on influenza among children in Guangzhou, a subtropical city in China, and found that the risk of influenza increased with rising atmospheric pressure. Xiao et al. (2013) studied the link between climate variables and influenza in the Chinese city of Changsha in 2009, and found that more patients appear during periods of lower temperature, higher barometric pressure and lower absolute humidity (see figure below).

The modern view is that weather conditions affect the ease with which viruses can spread. The germ theory of disease underlying this assumption will be examined in section 7.

Oxidative stress is increasingly recognized as the underlying mechanism of a wide range of diseases, especially chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer’s (Lester & Parker, 2019, ch. 7; medicalnewstoday.com). Oxidative stress is an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants in the body and can lead to cell and tissue damage. Free radicals are molecules with one or more unpaired electrons, and include highly reactive chemical species containing oxygen. The body’s cells produce free radicals during normal metabolic processes, but excess free radical production can be caused by factors such as diet, lifestyle, environmental pollutants (e.g. ozone), pesticides and radiation. Antioxidants are produced by our cells, but fruits and vegetables also provide many essential antioxidants in the form of vitamins and minerals.

Q. Guo et al., ‘The effects of meteorological factors on influenza among children in Guangzhou, China’, Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses, v. 13, no. 2, 2019, pp. 166-75, onlinelibrary.wiley.com.

Dawn Lester and David Parker, What Really Makes You Ill? Why everything you thought you knew about disease is wrong, 2019, Kindle ed.

H. Xiao et al., ‘Influence of extreme weather and meteorological anomalies on outbreaks of influenza A (H1N1)’, Chinese Science Bulletin, v. 58, no. 7, 2013, pp. 741-9, researchgate.net.

4. Modern science: ozone and health

Overview

Ground-level ozone is a pollutant that contributes to bad health, especially respiratory diseases. It can also stifle photosynthesis in vegetation, causing lower agricultural yields. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides the following information:

Ozone can cause the muscles in the airways to constrict, trapping air in the alveoli.
This leads to wheezing and shortness of breath.

A world map showing current (and historical) air quality is available here: https://waqi.info.

Troposphere and stratosphere

Just three gases account for 99.9% of the earth’s atmosphere: nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%) and argon (0.9%). All the other atmospheric gases are therefore trace gases.

The annual average background ozone concentrations over the midlatitudes of the northern hemisphere range from about 20 to 45 parts per billion (ppb) (20 ppb = 0.000002%), depending on geographic location, elevation and extent of human influence (Vingarzan, 2004). The annual ozone cycle in the northern hemisphere is characterized by a spring maximum, peaking during the month of May, largely due to increased solar radiation acting on a pool of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons built up during the winter.

Current ozone levels are about twice as high as they were a century or more ago, and have continued to rise slowly over the past few decades. Ground-level ozone does not result solely from anthropogenic sources of pollution. Stratospheric ozone can be transported downward into the troposphere to near ground level, and ozone can be produced by natural nitrogen oxides reacting with methane emitted from swamps and wetlands or with volatile organic compounds emitted by plants. However, human influence can raise local ozone concentrations to 100 ppb or more, particularly in urban areas of low- and middle-income countries. Mexico City once had ozone levels in the 500 ppb range, but these have been reduced to the still dangerous level of 120 to 150 ppb.

The WHO recommends an (8-hour average) ozone limit of 50 ppb, the European Union 55 ppb, and the EPA 70 ppb. According to the EPA, susceptible people can be adversely affected by ozone levels as low as 40 ppb.

Average summer daytime concentrations of ground-level ozone vary dramatically around the world.
Dots represent data from 4794 sites in 2010-14. (ensia.com)

Research findings

Many studies have shown that both acute and chronic ozone exposure, especially in urban areas, can adversely affect the respiratory, cardiovascular and central nervous systems and contribute to early death. Most of these studies span exposure levels well below the current EPA standard of 70 ppb (EDF, 2018).

Wong et al. (2009) confirmed this in an epidemiological study of interactions between air pollution and influenza activity in Hong Kong. They found that when ozone levels rose during the flu season, there were more hospitalizations for respiratory diseases and higher mortality. According to Anenberg et al. (2010), anthropogenic ozone is responsible for an estimated 700,000 (± 300,000) respiratory mortalities per year worldwide.

Influenza appears to worsen the health effects of ozone pollution in Hong Kong. (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

While ozone is known to be a potent inducer of oxidative stress, causing airway inflammation and increased respiratory morbidities and susceptibility to infections, the precise mechanisms are unclear. Kesic et al. (2012) found that exposure to ozone disrupts the protease/antiprotease balance found in the human airway, leading to increased influenza susceptibility. (A protease is an enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of proteins, while antiproteases inhibit the function of proteases.) Disruption in the protease/antiprotease balance is associated with several respiratory diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema and asthma.

Dissenting voices can also be heard: Young et al. (2017) analyzed the connection between air quality (ozone and fine particulates (PM2.5)) and daily deaths in California for the period 2000-2012. They found that the variability in daily deaths was mostly correlated with time of year or weather variables, and that there was no significant association with ozone or PM2.5. They conclude: ‘These results call into question the widespread belief that association between air quality and acute deaths is causal/near-universal.’

Therapeutic and other uses

Due to its bactericidal effects, ozone can be used to disinfect water. Its strong oxidative effects make it suitable for treating drinking water, wastewater and industrial effluent. Oxidation directly destroys pollutants, coloured substances, odours and microorganisms, without creating harmful chlorinated by-products. Due to its strong antimicrobial effects, some hospitals use ozone for disinfecting rooms and sterilizing medical instruments.

Ozone therapy has been practised for many years in Europe, Egypt and Cuba, but is not widely used in the United States due to current regulations and concerns about misapplication. Ozone is widely used in dentistry to treat diseases of the jaw. The most common medical use is ozonated autohaemotherapy, which involves taking blood from a patient, exposing it to ozone and returning it intravenously. Medical ozone can also be delivered rectally, vaginally or through the ear, but never via the airways. Ozonized water, particularly used in dental medicine, is applied as a spray or compress. Ozone inactivates bacteria, viruses, fungi, yeast and protozoa, and stimulates oxygen metabolism and the immune system. Low-dose medical ozone application is a proven complementary method for treating chronic inflammations. Ozone therapy is said to work well for infectious diseases, immune depression, vascular disorders, degenerative diseases, orthopaedics, hyperuricaemia (excess uric acid in the blood) and rheumatism/arthritis (Derco et al., 2018; Smith et al., 2017; Elvis & Ekta, 2011).

S.C. Anenberg, L.W. Horowitz, D.Q. Tong and J.J. West, ‘An estimate of the global burden of anthropogenic ozone and fine particulate matter on premature human mortality using atmospheric modeling’, Environmental Health Perspectives, v. 118, no. 9, 2010, pp. 1189-95, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

J. Derco, B. Urminská and M. Vrabeľ, Introductory Chapter: Ozone in Nature and Practice, July 2018, intechopen.com.

A.M. Elvis and J.S. Ekta, ‘Ozone therapy: a clinical review’, Journal of Natural Science, Biology and Medicine, v. 2, no. 1, 2011, pp. 66-70, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Human Health Effects of Ozone: The state of evidence since EPA’s last integrated science assessment, 2018, edf.org.

M.J. Kesic, M. Meyer, R. Bauer and I. Jaspers, ‘Exposure to ozone modulates human airway protease/antiprotease balance contributing to increased influenza A infection’, PLoS ONE, v. 7, no. 4, 2012, e35108, journals.plos.org.

N.L. Smith et al., ‘Ozone therapy: an overview of pharmacodynamics, current research, and clinical utility’, Medical Gas Research, v. 7, no. 3, 2017, pp. 212-19, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Roxanne Vingarzan, ‘A review of surface ozone background levels and trends’, Atmospheric Environment, v. 38, no. 21, 2004, pp. 3431-42, researchgate.net.

Cynthia Washam, ‘Double trouble: flu intensifies effects of ozone’, Environmental Health Perspectives, v. 117, no. 2, 2009, A74, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

C.M. Wong et al., ‘Modification by influenza on health effects of air pollution in Hong Kong’, Environmental Health Perspectives, v. 117, no. 2, 2009, A74, pp. 248-53, ehp.niehs.nih.gov.

S.S. Young et al., ‘Air quality and acute deaths in California, 2000–2012’, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, v. 88, 2017, pp. 173-84, sciencedirect.com.

5. Flu epidemics and vaccination

There is some uncertainty about where the disease originated. The first cases are said to have occurred in May 1889, in three widely separated places: Bukhara in Uzbekistan, Athabasca in northwestern Canada, and Greenland. In July, flu was reported in Philadelphia and in Hillston, a remote town in Australia, and in August in the Balkans. Around mid-October the disease was noted in Tomsk in Siberia, and in late October it appeared in St. Petersburg, in the European part of Russia (Kempińska-Mirosławska & Woźniak-Kosek, 2013; Firstenberg, 2017, ch. 7). Many academics ignore the epidemic’s complicated beginnings and simply claim that it began in St. Petersburg and then spread around the world by person-to-person contagion. For instance, Valleron et al. (2010) write: ‘The pandemic spread rapidly, taking only 4 months to circumnavigate the planet, peaking in the United States 70 days after the original peak in St. Petersburg. ... The mortality peaks occurred during the weeks ending 1 December in St. Petersburg, 22 December in Germany, 5 January in Paris, and 12 January in the United States.’ (There appears to be a discrepancy here: the period from 1 December to 12 January is 42 days, not 70, and 70 days is not equal to 4 months.)

Even in this simplified scenario, the disease would still have had to travel faster than the trains and ships of the time. Moreover, by the time the disease reached Moscow and St. Petersburg during the third or fourth week of October, influenza had already been reported in Durban (South Africa) and Edinburgh (Scotland). In November, it was being reported in New Brunswick (Canada), Cairo, Paris, Berlin and Jamaica. It reached London (Ontario) on 4 December, Stockholm on 9 December, New York on 11 December, Rome on 12 December, Madrid on 13 December, and Belgrade on 15 December (Firstenberg, 2017, ch. 7). Waves of influenza continued to strike unpredictably until early 1894. The following time lapse shows the highly uneven worldwide spread of the Russian flu from May 1889 to October 1890.

The official view is that human carriers are the only possible explanation for epidemics, with transport of microbes through the air only taking place over very limited distances. This means that odd features of a disease’s spread will nowadays simply be ignored, dismissed or explained away. In earlier centuries, it was by no means obvious that influenza was spread by contagion. In 1813, Robert Thomas wrote in his book The Modern Practice of Physic: ‘By some physicians influenza was supposed to be contagious; by others not so; indeed, its wide and rapid spread made many suspect some more generally prevailing cause in the atmosphere’ (Hoyle & Wickramasinghe, 1993, p. 103). Even into the 1850s the idea that diseases are contagious found hardly any support in medical and scientific circles.

It is hard to say exactly what role ozone or excess oxygen played in the Russian flu pandemic, but there are undoubtedly various environmental and atmospheric factors that affect when and where such an epidemic strikes. Valleron et al. note that, as in later epidemics, mortality was higher in southern European cities than in northern Europe and suggest that this may be due to ‘intrinsic geographic, weather, and/or sociological characteristics’, such as the number of inhabitants per dwelling. (It’s interesting to view the ozone concentration map (section 4) with this in mind.)

The Russian flu pandemic is nowadays attributed to an H3N8 influenza virus. There have been four flu pandemics since then. The most serious was the 1918 pandemic, sometimes called the ‘Spanish flu’, which killed 20 to 50 million people of all ages worldwide (given the global population at the time, this is equivalent to up to 217 million people today). Although most of the victims died from bacterial lung inflammations (e.g. tuberculosis), the pandemic is nowadays attributed to an H1N1 influenza virus, based on genetic material extracted from a couple of corpses, computer simulations, and a lot of imagination.

There are numerous reasons why the winter 1918 pandemic was deadlier than anything that has happened since (Gunn, 2014, ch. 15). It began towards the end of the First World War (July 1914 to November 1918), when there were tens of millions of bereaved or separated families, appalling living conditions, widespread malnutrition and very high levels of stress and fear. Many doctors had to be brought out of retirement, and used very old and ineffective treatment methods. Numerous patients had symptoms of aspirin overdose and side effects from experimental vaccines and antiserums. In addition, people displayed many different kinds of symptoms, but the various illnesses were lumped together as ‘Spanish flu’.

Seattle, 29 October 1918: a streetcar conductor turns a man away
because he isn’t wearing a facemask. (cbsnews.com)

An infectious disease is supposed to spread from a single centre but that didn’t happen with the Spanish flu. The first, mild wave began in February 1918 in Spain and at the same time in New York City on the other side of the Atlantic. The next month cases were reported in two army camps in Kansas, hundreds of kilometres from New York. The epidemic appeared in Paris in April and in Madrid in May. In June cases began mounting in war-torn Germany, but also in China, Japan, England and Norway. In the autumn there was a second, more serious wave, which began almost simultaneously in Boston Harbour (USA), India, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Central America. Brazil was hit in October and Alaska in November. Engelbrecht et al. (2021, p. 300) comment: ‘[E]ven if we factor in the fastest ships of the time, railway routes and migrating birds, there’s no sound epidemiological basis to construct a virus-caused influenza.’

A major factor in the pandemic was massive use of medications and vaccines (up to 24 vaccinations per person) containing highly toxic substances like heavy metals, arsenic, formaldehyde and chloroform, all of which could trigger severe flu symptoms. A frequently observed symptom was internal bleeding in the lungs – a phenomenon associated with smallpox vaccinations. American author Eleanora McBean blames the massive death count on ‘crude and deadly treatments and drugs’:

In 1918, aspirin was a relatively new drug, and doctors told patients to take it by the handful. As well as poisoning the body, it suppressed fever, which merely drove the problem deeper. In addition, cough syrup was used to suppress coughs, resulting in an inability to clear the lungs and bronchi. Such treatment made patients a perfect breeding ground for bacteria, with the result that, as autopsies showed, most patients died from ‘wet’ or ‘hemorrhagic’ lungs and pulmonary edema, i.e. from secondary bacterial infections. The death rate from the 1918 flu in US military hospitals was 36%, while in US medical hospitals it was generally 30% to 40%, but as high as 68% in New York City. Homeopaths, osteopaths and chiropractors, on the other hand, who sought to strengthen the body’s natural healing ability rather than suppressing symptoms, reported an average death rate in their hospitals and clinics of around 0.25% (Koren, 2019).

In the 1918 flu epidemic, unlike previous epidemics, people under 35, including servicemen, and young women working in munitions factories, died in huge numbers. Walene James (1995, ch. 8) suggests that these groups were more inclined to receive vaccinations than older segments of the population, particularly vaccination against typhoid, which was introduced in 1909.

India was the country worst hit by the pandemic, with a death toll of 10-20 million. By 1918 India had an established pharmaceutical industry and most Indian states had set up vaccination programmes. In addition, the failed monsoon in 1918 led to a severe drought and famine-like conditions, exacerbated by the very strong El Niño in 1918-19, which adversely affected many regions of the world.

New German Medicine focuses on the major impact that distressing experiences can have our health. Death-fright conflicts, for example, can give rise to lung ailments. If someone is told that they have an ‘incurable’ disease and don’t have long to live, they might suffer an acute death panic. The body might respond by multiplying lung alveoli cells to provide more oxygen and help the person escape the situation. If the conflict is resolved and healing ensues, fungi or tuberculosis bacteria will remove the cells that are no longer required. This may lead to the patient coughing up sputum containing blood – which orthodox medicine mistakes for an ‘infection’. A lot of protein is lost during this process (that’s why tuberculosis used to be called ‘consumption’), and if the healing phase is long and intense, protein deficiency could prove fatal. German New Medicine says that this is what happened during the 1918/19 Spanish flu epidemic, which was also a lung tuberculosis epidemic (learninggnm.com). The end of the First World War enabled millions of people to resolve the death-fright conflicts suffered during the fighting, resulting in mass healing. However, due to extreme poverty, many of those afflicted with tuberculosis did not get the protein-rich food needed for healing and so died.

Further flu pandemics broke out in 1957 and 1968, each resulting in an estimated 1 million global deaths, while the 2009 ‘pandemic’ resulted in fewer than 300,000 deaths in its first year (cdc.gov). The WHO initially predicted a minimum of 2 to 7.4 million deaths, thereby living up to its nickname, the ‘World Hysteria Organization’. The WHO, which is mainly privately financed, decided to ‘upgrade’ a mild wave of influenza (‘swine flu’) to a global pandemic so that pharmaceutical companies could earn $18 billion in extra revenue by selling vaccines to governments around the world, in line with contracts signed several years earlier (Profiteers of Fear; Spiegel, 2010). At the same time, the WHO dropped the words ‘enormous numbers of deaths and illness’ from its definition of a pandemic (who.int).

In late 1918 and early 1919 experiments were conducted by the Public Health Service and the US Navy on Gallops Island, the quarantine station in Boston Harbor, and on Angel Island, its counterpart in San Francisco, to determine whether influenza was contagious (Rosenau, 1919; Eyler, 2010). All the 100 volunteers were healthy young men with no history of influenza. Some of them had a large quantity of 13 different strains of Pfeiffer’s bacillus (the bacterium thought to cause influenza) sprayed and swabbed into their noses, throats and eyes. Next, mucus from the throats, noses and lungs of influenza patients was administered to the volunteers. Some volunteers then received injections of blood from influenza patients, while others were injected subcutaneously with mucous secretions that had been filtered to remove bacteria of ordinary size. Finally, 13 volunteers were taken into an influenza ward and each of them shook hands with a gravely ill patient, talked with him at close range, and allowed him to cough five times into his face; each volunteer did this with 10 different patients. In all these experiment, not a single volunteer developed influenza.

Later studies in which volunteers were ‘innoculated with influenza virus’ found that less than 50%, and as few as 16%, got sick (Cannell et al., 2008). Epidemiologist Edgar Hope-Simpson (1981, 1992) argued that the known facts did not support the theory that influenza was transmitted by direct human-to-human contact. He believed influenza viruses could be reactivated by an environmental trigger – namely, seasonal variations in solar radiation.

The following chart shows the different patterns found in the tropical and temperate climate zones. The seasons are of course reversed in the two hemispheres. More recent research identifies temperature and absolute humidity as the main factors, rather than solar radiation (Deyle et al., 2016), and these factors are assumed to affect ‘the virus’, even though no attempts have been made to demonstrate this by means of controlled experiments and virus isolation. Cannell et al. (2008) argue that what Hope-Simpson called the ‘seasonal stimulus’ of influenza outbreaks is vitamin D deficiency.

The seasonal and latitudinal distribution of influenza outbreaks, 1964-75. (Hope-Simpson)

Various researchers have noted that over at least the last three centuries influenza and other pandemics have been most likely to occur during peaks of solar magnetic activity, i.e. at the height of each 11-year sunspot cycle (Tapping et al., 2000; Yeung, 2006), though some pandemics occur near solar minima (Ertel, 1994). Towers (2017), however, attributes any such correlation to coincidence and/or poor statistical methodology.

Tapping et al. (2000) proposed that solar activity might somehow trigger the appearance of new viral strains. John Yeung (2006) suggested that a solar maximum induces climatic changes that delay the arrival of some migratory birds and that this facilitates genetic reassortment of circulating influenza viruses. But as Arthur Firstenberg (2017, ch. 7) rightly points out, ‘although influenza viruses are associated in some way with disease epidemics, they have never been shown to cause them’. He, too, stresses the weakness of the contagion theory. For instance, during the 1968 pandemic only one person caught the flu in 70% of households. Daniel Hayes (2010) invokes solar control of vitamin D production: at solar maximum, more ultraviolet C radiation (wavelength: 100-280 nm) reaches the earth, producing more high-altitude ozone, which reduces the amount of ultraviolet B radiation (280-315 nm) reaching the surface, thereby depressing production of vitamin D and weakening the immune system. Like Yeung’s theory, this clearly cannot explain pandemics during solar minima. (Other theories are presented in section 6.)

Arthur Firstenberg (2017, ch. 7) lists nearly two dozen researchers who have linked influenza to sunspots or atmospheric electricity. He himself assembles a mass of evidence demonstrating that electric and magnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation can have very harmful effects on humans, animals and plants (see Electromagnetism, subtle energies and health). He argues that the main cause of the 1889, 1918, 1957-58 and 1968-70 pandemics was the widespread deployment of new electrical technologies: power lines in the 1880s, powerful radio stations during the First World War, radar in the 1950s, and military satellites in the 1960s. He argues that this explains why neurological symptoms were often more rampant than respiratory symptoms, why many victims suffered extreme haemorrhaging, and why a disproportionate number of younger, healthier people died: those most closely attuned to the planet’s electric and magnetic pulsations are most likely to be affected by disturbances to those natural rhythms. He also links the modern wireless era to the prevalence of cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

The man-made electromagnetic fog blanketing the earth damages our cells, starves them of oxygen and slows our metabolism. Firstenberg warns: ‘Like the proverbial boiled frog, we are all immersed in a giant pot of radiation, whose intensity is increasing, and whose effect, though unperceived, is nevertheless certain’ (ch. 15). He has undoubtedly identified another potentially important factor in disease outbreaks. However, individual susceptibility to electromagnetic influences varies very widely, and it remains to be seen to what extent humans can adapt to the changing electromagnetic environment.

Flu vaccination

Worldwide, annual flu epidemics are estimated to result in about 3 to 5 million cases of severe illness, and about 290,000 to 650,000 respiratory deaths (who.int). The flu season in the northern hemisphere tends to peak in the colder months. This is said to be because the influenza virus survives longer in cold, dry air, and lower ultraviolet light levels enable the virus to remain active in the environment for longer. A more likely explanation is that lack of sunlight leads to lower levels of vitamin D and melatonin in our bodies, thereby compromising our immune systems (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov; sitn.hms.harvard.edu). Over half of the northern European population becomes vitamin D-deficient in the dark winter months. Flu-like symptoms indicate that the body is ready for a detox (youtube.com), and it’s not surprising that they often occur after the holiday period, characterized by overeating, overdrinking, and perhaps stressful family get-togethers.

Government health authorities around the world advocate vaccination against flu. Vaccination is an attempt to protect people against specific diseases by injecting toxic material (including the presumed pathogen responsible for them) into the body, thereby bypassing the body’s outer defences – i.e. the skin and mucous membranes (cellular immune system). The aim is to trick the inner defence system (humoral immune system) into producing antibodies (a type of protein), but without causing the full illness – yet it’s precisely the symptoms of disease that help expel toxins from the body. However, the presence of antibodies to a particular virus or bacterium is no guarantee against illness (impfkritik.de). Antibodies attach themselves to toxic foreign elements, and immune cells known as leukocytes then eliminate these flagged elements from the body, but this process can take place even without the formation of antibodies.

People suffering from allergies, asthma, autoimmune diseases and increased vulnerability to alleged viral and fungal infections show very active antibody production. It’s therefore no surprise that many studies have shown that vaccinated children (whose antibody production has been artificially stimulated) are more prone to autoimmune diseases and allergies such as asthma and eczema than children with limited or no vaccines (Quenten, 2004; Cowan, 2018).

In addition, vaccine immunity is usually short-lived, whereas catching a disease naturally tends to provide lifelong immunity. What’s more, vaccines can be debilitating or deadly for individuals particularly susceptible to any specific ingredient (see Vaccination and homeopathy). To trigger a stronger immune response, vaccines often contain neurotoxins, especially aluminium (an adjuvant) and mercury (a preservative), though the latter is now being phased out, as least in the West. They also contain antibiotics, foreign gene fragments, animal proteins and other toxic chemicals. Although vaccination is often credited with the massive reduction in infectious diseases since the 19th century, historical data clearly shows that the overriding factor was improved sanitation, hygiene and nutrition (see Disease, vaccines, and the forgotten history). In the UK, for example, the death rate due to measles fell by 99.5% before the measles vaccine was introduced.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is responsible for investigating the safety and effectiveness of all new vaccines and deciding which of them should be added to the vaccine schedule. CDC members own more than 50 vaccination-related patents, and/or hold shares in or receive research funding from pharmaceutical companies that manufacture vaccines – creating an obvious conflict of interest. In the early 1980s, American children received two dozen vaccine doses by age 18 for seven illnesses. Today, they receive almost six dozen doses for 16 diseases. Over the past three decades, the average cost of fully vaccinating a child to age 18 rose from $100 to $2192, and the vaccination industry now rakes in $30 billion in profit every year (lawfirms.com; childrenshealthdefense.org).

According to the CDC: ‘Flu vaccination is not a perfect product, but it is the best way to protect against flu infection.’ But even the CDC’s own pro-vaccine information makes some interesting admissions (cdc.gov):
- ‘Flu vaccine varies in how well it works, and unfortunately, some people can become infected with a flu virus that a flu vaccine is designed to protect against, despite getting vaccinated.’ According to the CDC, the vaccine was 29% effective in 2018-19, and 39% effective in 2019-20 (cdc.gov). The fact that a vaccinated person does not get flu does not prove that this is due to the vaccine, since many unvaccinated persons don’t get flu either.
- ‘Protection provided by flu vaccination can vary widely, based in part on health and age factors of the person getting vaccinated. It also can vary based on the match between the vaccine viruses used to produce vaccine and circulating viruses that season.’ Even mainstream studies have shown that during peak flu season, only 10% of upper airway illnesses can be linked to influenza viruses (Engelbrecht et al., 2021, p. 329).
- ‘In general, a flu vaccine works best among healthy younger adults and older children.’ In other words, healthier people tend to stay healthier!
- ‘Some older people and people with certain chronic illnesses may develop less immunity after vaccination.’ In other words, vaccination can undermine your health.

The US uses a ‘live’ vaccine (i.e. one containing an unattenuated virus) and an inactivated vaccine. Possible side effects of the inactivated vaccine include: fever, muscle aches, headache, Guillain-Barré Syndrome (a severe paralytic disease), and seizures (cdc.gov). Possible side effects of the live vaccine include: runny nose or nasal congestion, wheezing, headache, vomiting, muscle aches, fever, sore throat, and cough (cdc.gov). In other words, both vaccines can cause flu symptoms.

In the US, just 15% of elderly persons received the influenza vaccine before 1980. By 2001, 65% were vaccinated, yet mortality rates remained constant. A systematic review of flu vaccine effectiveness in the US found that ‘Evidence for protection in adults aged 65 years or older is lacking' (Osterholm et al., 2012). In 2004 only 45 million people, instead of the usual 90 million, were vaccinated because several influenza vaccine batches were contaminated and had to be destroyed. Yet in 2004 the number of people dying of the flu was 30% lower than during the previous year. Studies show that annual vaccination against seasonal influenza reduces immunity against more virulent strains (in other words, repeated vaccination leads to more severe illness). US doctors started vaccinating as many young children as possible against flu in 2002. The next year, flu deaths in children under the age of five increased sevenfold to 90 cases. Vaccinated children are three times more likely to be hospitalized for influenza-related complications than non-vaccinated children, while vaccinated pregnant women are four times more likely to be hospitalized than unvaccinated women. Although doctors encourage others to get an annual flu shot, surveys show that about 70% of US doctors and nurses do not get annual flu shots themselves (Miller, 2008, pp. 81-98; 2016, ch. 4).

There are over 60 other studies suggesting that vaccinated people are sicker than unvaccinated people (childrenshealthdefense.org; Engelbrecht et al., 2021, ch. 11).

Although children who have been vaccinated are supposedly ‘protected’, parents who don’t get their children vaccinated are criticized and vilified, because their inaction supposedly threatens the welfare of children as a whole. Apparently, the vaccine in one child might not work unless it somehow knows that most other children have also been vaccinated! This is just a sorry excuse for the ineffectiveness of the vaccine.

For every vaccine, the CDC issues the following warning: ‘As with any medicine, there is a very remote chance of a vaccine causing a severe allergic reaction, other serious injury, or death.’ From 1989 to January 2020, 21,636 claims were filed with the US Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, 94% of them for vaccine-related injury and 6% for vaccine-related death; 28% concerned the influenza vaccine. Of the 18,586 claims adjudicated, 38% were upheld, resulting in a total of $4.3 billion being awarded in compensation (hrsa.gov). This money is paid by the government (i.e. taxpayers); it is impossible to sue vaccine manufacturers directly, because they are protected by law! It is estimated that less than 1% of vaccine adverse events are ever reported (digital.ahrq.gov). There is no system in place for monitoring adverse events that occur months or years after vaccination, and not a single study has ever been conducted into long-term effects.

Needless to say, personal accounts of serious adverse effects from the flu and other vaccines are nowhere to be found in the propaganda put out by government authorities, the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies. The ThinkTwice website states:

J. Cannell et al., ‘On the epidemiology of influenza’, Virology Journal, v. 5, no. 1, 2008, 29, researchgate.net.

Thomas Cowan, Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018, Kindle ed.

E.R. Deyle et al., ‘Global environmental drivers of influenza’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, v. 113, 2016, pp. 13081-6, pnas.org.

Torsten Engelbrecht, Claus Köhnlein, Samantha Bailey and Stefano Scoglio, Virus Mania: Corona/COVID-19, measles, swine flu, cervical cancer, avian flu, SARS, BSE, hepatitis C, AIDS, polio, Spanish flu. How the medical industry continually invents epidemics, making billion-dollar profits at our expense, Books on Demand, 3rd ed., 2021, Kindle ed.

S. Ertel, ‘Influenza pandemics and sunspots – easing the controversy’, Naturwissenschaften, v. 81, no. 7, 1994, pp. 308-11, researchgate.net.

John M. Eyler, ‘The state of science, microbiology, and vaccines circa 1918’, Public Health Reports, v. 125, Supplement 3, 2010, pp. 27-36, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Arthur Firstenberg, The Invisible Rainbow: A history of electricity and life, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017, Kindle ed.

Trevor Gunn, The Science of Health and Healing, Holistic Promotions, 2014, Kindle ed.

Daniel P. Hayes, ‘Influenza pandemics, solar activity cycles, and vitamin D’, Medical Hypotheses, v. 74, no. 5, 2010, pp. 831-4, google.com.

R.E. Hope-Simpson, ‘The role of season in the epidemiology of influenza’, Journal of Hygiene, v. 86, no. 1, 1981, pp. 35-47, cambridge.org.

R.E. Hope-Simpson, The Transmission of Epidemic Influenza, New York: Plenum, 1992.

Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Our Place in the Cosmos: The unfinished revolution, London: J.M. Dent, 1993.

Suzanne Humphries, ‘Vaccination’, Pathways to Family Wellness, no. 42, 2014, pp. 62-7, pathwaystofamilywellness.org.

B. Kempińska-Mirosławska and A. Woźniak-Kosek, ‘The influenza epidemic of 1889-90 in selected European cities – a picture based on the reports of two Poznan daily newspapers from the second half of the nineteenth century’, Medical Science Monitor, v. 19, 2013, pp. 1131-41, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

Neil Z. Miller, Vaccine Safety Manual: For concerned families and health practitioners, Santa Fe, NM: New Atlantean Press, 2008.

Neil Z. Miller, Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies: 400 important scientific papers summarized for parents and researchers, Santa Fe, NM: New Atlantean Press, 2016, Kindle ed.

M.T. Osterholm et al., ‘Efficacy and effectiveness of influenza vaccines: a systematic review and meta-analysis’, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, v. 12, no. 1, 2012, pp. 36-44, sciencedirect.com.

M.J. Rosenau, ‘Experiments to determine mode of spread of influenza’, Journal of the American Medical Association, v. 73, no. 5, 1919, pp. 311-3, jamanetwork.com.

Spiegel, ‘Reconstruction of a mass hysteria: the swine flu panic of 2009’, 12 March 2010, spiegel.de.

K.F. Tapping, R.G. Mathias and D.L. Surkan, ‘Pandemics and solar activity’, 2000, billhowell.ca.

S. Towers, ‘Sunspot activity and influenza pandemics: a statistical assessment of the purported association’, Epidemiology and Infection, v. 145, no. 13, 2017, pp. 2640-55, cambridge.org.

A.-J. Valleron et al., ‘Transmissibility and geographic spread of the 1889 influenza pandemic’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, v. 107, no. 19, 2010, pp. 8778-81, pnas.org.

John W.K. Yeung, ‘A hypothesis: sunspot cycles may detect pandemic influenza A in 1700-2000 AD’, Medical Hypotheses, v. 67, no. 5, 2006, pp. 1016-22, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

6. Panspermia and cosmic invaders

Blavatsky rejected the idea that the first germs of life were brought to earth on a meteor, a theory put forward in her own day by scientists Hermann von Helmholtz and Sir William Thomson (Secret Doctrine, 2:158, 719, 730); theosophy teaches that life is universal and there is no such thing as dead matter, merely different degrees of manifestation of life (see Life on other worlds). However, the possibility of microbes being carried to earth from outer space is certainly plausible. It has been known since the early 1970s that many organic molecules exist in clouds of dust and gas in outer space. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe present evidence that comets and interstellar clouds might contain not only organic molecules but also viruses and freeze-dried bacteria. Some bacteria do possess remarkable properties which would enable them to survive in space and withstand entry into the earth’s atmosphere. For example, they can survive near-zero pressures and temperatures, as well as pressures as high as 10 tons per square centimetre, and flash heating to temperatures of up to 700°C.

A woodcut from 1668. Comets have traditionally been regarded as harbingers of disease, death and destruction.

A typical litre of surface seawater is said to contain at least 10 billion bacteria as well as some 100 billion viruses, most of them still unidentified and uncharacterized. Reche et al. (2018) interpreted their analysis of atmospheric samples taken in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Spain to mean that some 800 million viruses per square metre per day are falling through the air, together with a smaller number of bacteria (as explained in the next section, no disease-causing ‘virus’ has ever been properly isolated and purified and shown to exist). It is usually assumed that all such ‘viruses’ and bacteria originate on the earth’s surface and are swept upwards in air currents, but critics say that this ignores many difficulties associated with the upward transport process (Wickramasinghe & Steele, 2020). Bacteria of the genera Mycobacteria and Delftia, among others, have been found in deposits of cosmic dust on the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS) at an altitude of 400 km. The similarity of the discovered genotypes to terrestrial bacteria suggests a possible terrestrial origin, but no known physical process can elevate terrestrial bacteria and dust to such heights (Wickramasinghe et al., 2018).

Wickramasinghe and his coworkers argue that a significant proportion of these airborne microbes originate outside the terrestrial biosphere and are expelled from comets. They also state that they have isolated ‘biological entities’ measuring around 10-40 micrometres (millions of a metre) from stratospheric samples. These highly unusual entities are composed of carbon with traces of nitrogen, lack elements such as silicon, calcium and heavy metals typically found in cosmic dust, and cannot be assigned to known terrestrial taxonomic groups (Wainwright et al., 2021). The presence of DNA has been demonstrated in some of these entities. Organic structures reminiscent of bacteria and viruses have been reported in carbonaceous meteorites for several decades, though nothing more complex than proteins has ever actually been found (earthsky.org).

‘Biological entities’ composed of carbon and oxygen, from around 30 km altitude. (Wainwright et al., 2021).

The orthodox view is that pandemics start by a random mutation or genetic recombination of an alleged virus, which then spreads by person-to-person contact. Major pandemics tend to be self-limiting; they usually last about a year, and do not affect the entire human population. Wickramasinghe et al. (2020a) argue that ‘a primary cometary dust infection is potentially the most lethal, and that secondary person-to-person transmissions can progressively reduce virulence thus resulting in a diminishing incidence of the disease over a limited period’. Viruses and bacteria that are caught up in the jet streams of the upper atmosphere can supposedly be dispersed over wide areas of land and sea, triggering pockets of contagion separated by hundreds or even thousands of miles.

Hoyle & Wickramasinghe (1993, chs. 10 & 11; 2000) present evidence suggesting that catching influenza has far more to do with where we are than with the people we have recently been in contact with. For instance, spouses of sufferers are no more at risk than members of the population at large. Also, attack rates for influenza, measles, infective jaundice and whooping cough are not significantly higher in densely populated areas than in rural areas. Nor do military barracks and boarding schools show higher attack rates, despite popular belief. The common cold tends to appear across a whole nation essentially simultaneously.

The influenza pandemic in 1918-19 was first detected on the same day in Boston in the United States and Bombay in India, but then took three weeks to go from Boston to New York. The epidemic spread rapidly across Alaska, an area the size of Europe, even though it only had a small thinly spread population of about 50,000, and the cold, harsh weather meant that people could only travel by dog sleigh, at a rate of 20 to 30 miles a day. Australia remained remarkably free of the disease until February 1919, despite all the ships calling there from infected ports, and despite the well-attested outbreaks that occurred in mid-ocean (Joseph & Wickramasinghe, 2010). During the 1948 influenza epidemic, shepherds living in remote, isolated areas on the island of Sardinia contracted flu at the same time as it appeared in the nearest inhabited centres.

Hoyle & Wickramasinghe (1990, 2000) argue that the reason influenza peaks in January and February is that, in temperate latitudes, it is in the winter months that air carrying either the virus itself or a trigger for it descends from the stratosphere to ground level. Moreover, this is likely to happen in a patchy and uneven manner. They also say that electrical fields associated with intense solar winds can rapidly drive charged particles of the size of viruses down into the lower atmosphere, which is why major epidemics tend to coincide with sunspot peaks.

Mean sunspot numbers compared with timings of major worldwide flu pandemics (P),
including 1918 Spanish flu, 1957-58 Asian flu,1968-69 Hong Kong flu, 1977 Red flu.

Bear in mind that C.M. Richter (section 3) argued the exact opposite: that influenza epidemics occur during solar minima. That was certainly the case with the 1889-90 Russian flu pandemic, though there were recurrences in March to June 1891, November 1891 to June 1892, winter 1893-94 and early 1895; the solar maximum occurred in 1893. The preceding 1848-49 pandemic occurred during a solar maximum. As shown in the previous section, more pandemics are associated with solar maxima than with solar minima. The 2020 COVID-19 epidemic coincided with a solar minimum.

G. de Purucker pointed out that disease outbreaks and other afflictions were likely to occur during either sunspot maxima or minima (Studies in Occult Philosophy, p. 11). Wickramasinghe et al. (2017) cite evidence that ‘both certain and possible pandemics fall within ±2 years of sunspot extrema (maxima and minima)’. They state that grand solar minima (i.e. longer periods of low solar activity) – such as the Spörer minimum (1450-1550), Maunder minimum (1650-1700) and Dalton minimum (1800-1830) – saw devastating pandemics (smallpox, English sweating sickness, bubonic plague and cholera), and that the period of relatively low and generally declining solar activity since 2002 has also seen several pandemics (SARS, MERS, Zika, Ebola, influenza A). They argue that the weakening of the interplanetary magnetic field during solar minima allows the entry of new pathogens, while the increased influx of cosmic rays favours mutations of existing bacteria and alleged viruses.

There have been three major outbreaks of the ‘plague’: the Plague of Athens in 430 BCE; the Plague of Justinian (then Roman Emperor) in 541-542 CE; and the Black Death from 1348 to 1350, which killed around 75 million people. The mainstream view is that such epidemics begin when fleas that normally live on rats became infected with dangerous bacteria, thereby killing the rats, after which the fleas moved on to humans. However, there are no records of vast hordes of dead rats (or other small animals) during the plague. The rat/flea hypothesis also fails to account for the incredible speed with which the disease spread, and no one has explained why the fleas were completely unaffected by the bacteria they supposedly carried. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe (1993, ch. 10) argued that the spread of the disease is better explained by airborne pathogens, i.e. viruses brought to earth by comets. However, there is an alternative theory in which comets play a key role.

Estimated death toll of pandemics as a percentage of global population. (lockdownsceptics.org, June 2020)
As of March 2022, the risk of dying from or with COVID-19 is 6.0 million / 7.9 billion = 0.076%.

Around the time of the Black Death, there were many reports of severe earthquakes, subterranean thunder, floods, tempests, rains of fire, masses of dead fish and animals, large quantities of dust, pestilential mist or smoke, and ‘evil-smelling’ gases killing massive numbers of people. There are references to comets and ‘fiery meteors’, and many commentators speak of the atmosphere being ‘corrupted’. Mike Baillie points out that tree-ring data indicate severe environmental downturns around the time of the Justinian plague and the Black Death. He believes that fragments from Comet Negra, which passed the earth in 1347, loaded the atmosphere with dust and debris, polluting the air and water, and that the impact of comet debris triggered the major earthquake in January 1348. The ice-core record shows layers of ammonium dating to 430 BCE, 539 CE, the 660s and 1348, which were all times of major plagues; there was also an ammonium spike in 1908, when a suspected fragment of Comet Encke exploded over Tunguska in Siberia and flattened 2150 square kilometres of forest. Comets are known to contain ammonium, along with noxious chemicals such as hydrogen sulphide and carbon disulphide, which could cause severe respiratory problems and rapid death from asphyxiation (Baillie, 2006; Lester & Parker, 2019, ch. 4).

Cowan & Morell (2020, ch. 3) suggest that some of the symptoms of the 14th-century bubonic plague � especially bruise-like blotches on the skin � indicate radiation poisoning (comets are electrical bodies that emit X-rays), probably rendered even more deadly by dust and ammonia-like compounds in the atmosphere. William Trebing (2006, ch. 8) highlights another important factor behind the bubonic plague. The majority of Europeans lived in dirty, toxic and unsanitary conditions, and dumped their faeces and urine onto the streets. A popular food was lard pie, mixed with potatoes and other heavy starches, and cooked with lead utensils. The body’s circulatory system often became clogged with fat and poisons, and many people developed swollen buboes (glands) that turned black as they filled with blood – hence the name ‘bubonic plague’. The treatment involved removing these glands from their necks, armpits and groin. However, the glands are part of the body’s lymphatic system, which cleanses the blood, and the removal of these swollen and overworked blood filters was often fatal.

On 11 October 2019 a meteoritic bolide (possibly a cometary fragment) exploded in a brief flash some 2000 kilometres north of the city of Wuhan in the Chinese province of Hubei. Two months later, the first recorded cases of coronavirus disease were reported in Hubei. Wickramasinghe and his coworkers suggest that a pure culture of COVID-19 virus particles survived in the interior of the incandescent meteor and were deposited in the stratosphere. They first came down in Hubei, and the virus was then carried around the world by the prevailing high-level and low-level wind systems, combined with much slower spread through person-to-person infection (Wickramasinghe et al., 2020a,b; Wickramasinghe & Steele, 2020; Steele et al., 2021). They also believe that the 2003 SARS outbreak (also allegedly caused by a coronavirus), which likewise started in China, may have been triggered by a space event.

A meteor lights up the midnight sky over northeastern China, 11 October 2019. (space.com)

The ‘diseases from space’ theory has been criticized on the grounds that there are no reports of major epidemics associated with spectacular meteor showers, that cometary debris collected by stratospheric aircraft has not been found to contain the charred and mangled bodies of pathogens, and that scientists examining recovered cometary particles do not seem to be dying of mysterious illnesses (Baillie, 2006, p. 180). The theory also takes for granted that the conventional germ theory of disease is correct and that ‘viruses’ actually exist. Whether this is the case is assessed in the next section.

Mike Baillie, New Light on the Black Death: The cosmic connection, Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2006.

Thomas S. Cowan and Sally Fallon Morell, The Contagion Myth: Why viruses (including ‘coronavirus’) are not the cause of disease, New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2020, e-book.

F. Hoyle and N.C. Wickramasinghe, ‘Sunspots and influenza’, Nature, v. 343, 1990, p. 304, nature.com.

Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Our Place in the Cosmos: The unfinished revolution, London: J.M. Dent, 1993.

Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, ‘The dilemma of influenza’, part 1, part 2, 21 Jan. 2000, spacedaily.com.

Rhawn Joseph and Chandra Wickramasinghe, ‘Comets and contagion: evolution and diseases from space’, Journal of Cosmology, v. 7, 2010, pp. 1750-70, journalofcosmology.com.

Dawn Lester and David Parker, What Really Makes You Ill? Why everything you thought you knew about disease is wrong, 2019, Kindle ed.

I. Reche et al., ‘Deposition rates of viruses and bacteria above the atmospheric boundary layer’, ISME Journal, v. 12, 2018, pp. 1154-62, nature.com.

E.J. Steele et al., ‘Cometary origin of COVID-19’, Infectious Diseases and Therapeutics, v. 2, no. 1, May 2021, panspermia.org.

William P. Trebing, Good-Bye Germ Theory: Ending a century of medical fraud and how to protect your family, Xlibris, 6th ed., 2006.

M. Wainwright et al., ‘Neopanspermia – evidence that life continuously arrives at the earth from space’, Advances in Astrophysics, v. 6, no. 1, 2021, isaacpub.org.

N.C. Wickramasinghe and E.J. Steele, ‘The coronavirus may have come from space’, 6 Feb. 2020, vixra.org.

N.C. Wickramasinghe et al., ‘Sunspot cycle minima and pandemics: the case for vigilance?’, Journal of Astrobiology & Outreach, v. 5, no. 2, 2017, longdom.org.

N.C. Wickramasinghe et al., ‘Confirmation of microbial ingress from space’, Advances in Astrophysics, v. 3, no. 4, 2018, isaacpub.org.

N.C. Wickramasinghe et al. (2020a), ‘Comments on the origin and spread of the 2019 coronavirus’, Virology: Current Research, v. 4, no. 1, 2020, hilarispublisher.com.

N.C. Wickramasinghe et al. (2020b), ‘Predicting the future trajectory of COVID-19’, Virology: Current Research, v. 4, no. 1, 2020, hilarispublisher.com.

7. Disease and microbes: cause and effect

Modern germ theory is usually attributed to French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), who believed that disease arises when a healthy body is invaded from outside, by bacteria or other microbes. In his view, this was confirmed by the fact that these germs were found in diseased tissues but not in healthy ones, and he believed that vaccination was a good way of destroying them. His vaccine against anthrax was not a great success: in southern Russia it was administered to 4564 sheep, 3696 of which quickly dropped dead (Hume, 2018, p. 289). He also invented a treatment for rabies, involving injections of a broth made from the spinal cord of diseased rabbits. Before this treatment was introduced, the average number of deaths per year from rabies in France was 30; after its introduction, that number increased to 45 (p. 298).

Pasteur claimed to have proved that bacteria caused disease by injecting them into animals and making them sick. However, in his notebooks (which he had instructed his heirs not to publish) he admits that he was unable to transfer disease using a pure culture of bacteria: ‘the only way he could transfer disease was to either insert the whole infected tissue into another animal (he would sometimes inject ground-up brains of an animal into the brain of another animal to �prove� contagion) or resort to adding poisons to his culture, which he knew would cause the symptoms in the recipients’ (Cowan & Morell, 2020, ch. 1).

In 1860, over 17 years before Pasteur adopted germ theory, the famous English nurse, Florence Nightingale, attacked a key element of the theory:

Some of the discoveries that Pasteur distorted and incorporated into germ theory were actually made by his rival, Pierre Antoine Béchamp (1816-1908), a French chemist and biologist. Through careful experimentation, Béchamp demonstrated that tiny motile particles – which he called microzymas (‘tiny ferments’) – were involved in processes such as fermentation. Earlier scientists had given them names such as ‘molecular granulations’ and ‘scintillating corpuscles’. Béchamp considered them to be the basic units of life, and responsible for the activity of cells, tissues, organs and entire living organisms. He concluded that the primary cause of disease was toxic imbalances within the body, and in unhealthy tissue the microzymas already present changed into different strains of bacteria, which acted as scavengers and cleaned up the internal environment (Hume, 2018). In other words, he held that microbes are pleomorphic (i.e. can change their shape and size), rather than monomorphic, as Pasteur believed. Modern microbiology has confirmed that pleomorphic bacteria exist in healthy human blood – something once considered impossible (Gunn, 2014, ch. 3). Béchamp referred to microzymas as the builders and destroyers of cells, and found that they survived the death of an organism. As an opponent of germ theory, he opposed vaccination and warned of its dangers.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878), another contemporary opponent of Pasteur, stated: ‘The microbe is nothing, the terrain [i.e. body and mind] is everything.’ The alternative to germ theory is therefore sometimes called ‘terrain theory’. German physician Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902), the father of modern pathology, believed that disease arose from abnormal activity inside cells, rather than from outside pathogens, and that social factors such as poverty played a major role. He stated: ‘If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat – diseased tissue – rather than being the cause of diseased tissue; e.g. mosquitoes seek the stagnant water, but do not cause the pool to become stagnant.’

Although Pasteur is nowadays regarded as a hero, in his own time he was widely seen as a plagiarist and fraudster who drew dubious conclusions from sloppy experiments. He was, however, a skilled self-publicist, enjoyed the emperor’s patronage, and won the backing of investors, with the result that his theory came to dominate medical thinking. As Ethel Douglas Hume writes, ‘Pasteur inaugurated the era that was to see the prostitution of science to commercialism’ (2018, p. 289). The idea that disease is not our own responsibility but can be blamed on outside agents that need to be attacked and killed with toxic (but highly lucrative) drugs and vaccines was in tune with the dominant mechanistic worldview at that time. In developing modern medicines, untold cruelty and suffering is inflicted on tens of millions of laboratory animals every year, even though such experiments can never provide real evidence of disease under natural conditions.

Another key figure in the development of germ theory was German doctor Robert Koch (1843-1910), who has been labelled ‘an enterprising swindler’ (Engelbrecht et al., 2021, p. 72). In 1890 he announced that he had developed a miracle drug against tuberculosis, known as Tuberkulin. People flocked for treatment, but the cure proved a catastrophic failure, causing chills, high fever or death. As death rates soared, the drug was carefully inspected and found to be nothing more than a bacillus culture killed off by heat. In 1892, in an attempt to disprove Koch’s theory that cholera was caused by Vibrio cholerae bacteria alone, Max von Pettenkofer (a chemist) consumed a huge dose of these bacteria without falling seriously ill; Ilya Mechnikov (an immunologist) then repeated the experiment, with the same result (wikipedia.org; nautil.us).

Koch formulated four postulates for proving that a particular microbe causes a particular disease: 1. the microbe must be present in all organisms suffering from the disease, but not in healthy organisms; 2. the microbe must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in a lab culture (the latter does not apply to viruses, which can only be cultured in host cells); 3. the disease must be produced when a pure culture of the microbe is introduced into a healthy organism; 4. the same microbe must be reisolated from the experimentally infected host. The first postulate was quickly abandoned, since no microbe makes every person sick and in many sick people the relevant microbe cannot be found.

Thomas Rivers (1937), the ‘father of modern virology’, admitted: ‘It is obvious that Koch’s postulates have not been satisfied in viral diseases.’ He proposed two new watered-down postulates: ‘(a) A specific virus must be found associated with a disease with a degree of regularity. (b) The virus must be shown to occur in the sick individual not as an incidental or accidental finding but as the cause of the disease under investigation.’ This is a statement of the obvious, but virologists have never demonstrated virus pathogenicity in a rigorous manner (theinfectiousmyth.com). According to Fredericks & Relman (1996), there is no need to detect a complete pathogen in a patient, only ‘a nucleic acid sequence belonging to a putative pathogen’, which ‘should be present in most cases of an infectious disease’, while ‘fewer or no' such sequences ‘should occur in hosts or tissues without disease’.

In the 1930s, American scientist Royal Raymond Rife (1888-1971) developed his ‘universal microscope’ (consisting of 5682 parts), which could magnify specimens by 31,000x without killing them, compared with 2000x for conventional microscopes. (The electron microscope can achieve magnifications of up to 10 million, but can only be used to examine very thin slices of killed tissue.) This enabled him to observe previously unseen microorganisms in blood and tissue. He, too, came to the conclusion that viruses, bacteria and fungi could change into one another. He identified a ‘cancer virus’ and developed a radio frequency instrument with which he successfully treated many patients for cancer and other diseases, allegedly by killing the germs responsible when the device was tuned to the correct frequency. Another possibility is that the use of resonant frequencies helped to harmonize the body. Despite his germ-theory mindset, Rife stated that disease is not caused by bacteria themselves but by their chemical constituents acting on the body’s ‘unbalanced cell metabolism’, and that ‘if the metabolism of the human body is perfectly balanced or poised, it is susceptible to no disease’. His work was actively opposed, undermined and suppressed by the medical cartel, and doctors were forced to stop using his instruments (Lynes, 2011; Young, 2016b).

French biologist Jules Tissot (1870-1950) conducted extensive research that supported Béchamp’s findings (Verner et al., 1953). German microbiologist Günther Enderlein (1872-1968) confirmed the pleomorphism of certain microorganisms. He called Béchamp’s microzymas ‘protits’ or ‘endobionts’ (similar in some ways to what are now called nanobacteria), and studied their development cycle, which involved viral, bacterial and fungal phases. He found that whether these microforms were virulent or not depended on the bodily milieu, especially its acidity or alkalinity (biologicalmedicineinstitute.com). Like Béchamp, Enderlein used a darkfield microscope, which shows (live) specimens bright on a dark background, magnified by up to 28,000x.

In the 1950s French-born biologist Gaston Naessens (1924-2018) developed his ‘somatoscope’, which allowed observation of living organisms up to a magnification of 30,000x. In animal and human blood and plant sap, he observed an ultramicroscopic, living and reproducing form that he called a ‘somatid’, which he considered to be a negatively charged energy condenser and a precursor of DNA. He observed how the somatid life cycle involved several changes of form. The first three stages – somatid, spore and double spore – occur in healthy organisms, but if the immune system is disrupted, the somatids go through 13 additional stages (including bacterial, yeast and fungal forms), connected with disease. Naessens, too, concluded that germs are the result of disease. Disease originates in a body that has been weakened by factors such as radiation, pollution, electric fields, poor nutrition, accidents, shock, and depression.

Naessens discovered that the various forms in the 16-stage cycle were associated with degenerative diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, cancer, and AIDS, and this enabled him to predict the onset of such diseases long before any clinical signs of them appeared. He developed an attachment that can be fitted to any darkfield microscope to enable observation of the somatid cycles. He also developed a product, derived from camphor, which – when injected into the lymph system – strengthens the immune system, and he achieved a 75% success rate in treating cancer. He was persecuted by the medical establishment and in 1989 he was prosecuted in Canada for medical malpractice, but was acquitted. (See Bird, 1991; Belderis, 1992; cerbe.com.)

Many more scientists have continued to pursue terrain theory. Robert Young (2016a), for instance, divides the microzyma development cycle into three main stages: (1) repair protein complexes (misnamed ‘viruses’); (2) bacteria; and (3) yeast, fungus and mould. Second- and third-stage microforms develop when nutritional deficiency, toxicity or elevated acidity creates diseased tissue that needs to be broken down, and they produce toxic acids while doing this work. When an organism dies, it is decomposed via putrefaction (bacteria) or fermentation (yeast and fungus). Young writes:

Bacteria and ‘viruses’ are associated with acute disease, while fungi are associated with chronic and degenerative disease, such as cancer, and gradually consume the organism. The root cause of disease, however, is an imbalance, and disturbed energy flows, within the body and/or mind (Bigelsen, 2007).

References to pleomorphism disappeared from biology textbooks in the 1920s. Only very limited morphological variations within a particular species or strain of microorganisms are now admitted. Extreme variations are sometimes reported but usually dismissed as cellular debris or artefacts (biologicalmedicineinstitute.com). Conventional doctors do not usually look at live blood. They tend to look at dead blood samples that have been chemically stained to enhance certain things, such as the cell wall and nucleus. But this artificial process disturbs and disorganizes all the living, moving, feeding microforms – making then invisible or unidentifiable. ‘Consequently, observers of dead blood refer to these forms as “artefacts, “organelles,” “microsomes,” etc. [and] their role in the development of disease symptoms goes unrecognized’ (Young & Young, 2001, p. 29).

Until the rise of the germ theory in the late 19th century, a far more holistic view of disease prevailed. The Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese systems of medicine, which date back many thousands of years, recognize that health is a state of balance embracing both mind and body. In the 6th century BCE, Pythagoras stated: ‘The gods are innocent of man’s suffering. Our diseases and physical pains are the products of excess!’ Greek physician Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BCE) and Roman physician Galen (130-210 CE), too, held that each individual bears primary responsibility for maintaining health through sensible behaviour and lifestyle choices. In medieval Europe, disease was believed to arise when the ‘humours’, or vital essences, in the human body fell out of equilibrium. This echoed the teaching of the ancient Hindus and Chinese that health depends on keeping in balance the subtle energies (prana or chi/qi) circulating through the body (see Health and disease).

In traditional Chinese medicine, illness was seen as the result of blockages in the flow of qi within the body (Volkmar, 2000; Schonebaum, 2011). This in turn was attributed to a variety of factors: moral flaws or wrongdoings, a weak physical constitution, a polluted location, the bad geomancy of a residence, and various meteorological and cosmological factors. Epidemics were seen as an expression of imbalance or disharmony between heaven and earth. Chuanran is a very old Chinese word that literally means ‘to dye by transmission’, where dyeing (of fabric) is being used in the sense of contamination. Chuanran originally referred to contamination of one or more people with malevolent or pestilential qi (similar to the Greek concept of miasma), whether originating from a living or dead person or from a location. It was also widely believed that evil qi could be transferred by ‘demons’; from a theosophical perspective, this refers to nonphysical agents such as elementals (nature-forces), including negative thought-forms, or to the decaying astral corpses of the dead (kama-rupas). In early 20th-century China, chuanran became the standard translation of contagion via the transmission of microbes. From the standpoint of orthodox science, this represented the dawning of medical enlightenment. But the current obsession with the germ theory of disease can also been seen as a modern superstition.

Bacteria and viruses

The prevailing ideology today is still that microbes (bacteria, viruses, fungi) cause disease, and we need to kill or inactivate them by means of aggressive medications and invasive treatments, even if this leads to side effects that are worse than the disease itself. However, even orthodox medicine recognizes that there is no bacterium or virus that causes a disease in every person who has that microbe in their body. All individuals carry microbes associated with specific diseases within them, yet normally show no symptoms of those diseases.

The microbe hunters originally thought that each disease was caused by a single microbe. Nowadays, however, a particular microbe can be associated with many different illnesses, and many different microbes can be associated with the same illness. For example influenza-like symptoms have been associated with flu viruses, respiratory syncytial viruses, and bacteria, and most disease symptoms are not associated with any microbes at all. But as Dawn Lester and David Parker point out, ‘[T]here is no original scientific evidence that definitively proves that any “germ” causes any specific infectious disease’ (2019, ch. 3).

Bacteria are saprotrophs (scavengers), which means that they live and feed on dead organic matter. Despite what is commonly assumed, they do not attack healthy tissue, but decompose diseased or dead tissue and other toxic waste. After cleaning up the debris that damaged or dying cells leave behind, they disappear again (Young & Young, 2010; Quanten, 2003). Many experiments have shown that bacteria can modify and adapt their structure and metabolic function in accordance with the changing bodily environment (Baker, 2005). Fungi, too, help to decompose and dispose of dead cells and other bodily waste. Most bacteria and fungi are made from somatids/microzymas within our own cells and can turn back into them. A simple illustration is provided by an apple that is dropped on the ground, causing the skin to bruise but not break; that area soon begins to turn brown and rot from the inside, due to the activity of endogenously developed microorganisms.

Over 50 billion of our cells die every day as part of the body’s natural self-renewal process, so there is always a low level of bacterial activity. Disease is accompanied by higher levels of toxicity and cellular death, and therefore more intense bacterial activity. While performing their cleanup task, bacteria produce toxins, which can cause secondary symptoms if they build up in the body. Aerobic bacteria (i.e. bacteria that need oxygen) can produce poisons if their oxygen supply is reduced. For instance, in a healthy body Clostridia bacteria ferment carbohydrates in the lower bowel, but under anaerobic conditions they produce toxins that can cause severe food poisoning. It’s the environment or terrain that causes the bacteria to create the toxins. Similarly, cholera is not directly caused by Vibrio cholerae bacteria, which are found in both sick and healthy people, but by the toxin that these bacteria produce under low-oxygen conditions (Cowan & Morell, 2020, chs. 1, 3). A high-protein, high-acid diet causes predominance in the intestine of putrefactive bacteria which produce highly toxic chemicals; some of these are absorbed into the bloodstream and, if the liver is unable to fully detoxify them, they can cause or aggravate many disease states (Immerman, 1979; Young & Young, 2010).

As Dr Robert Young (2016a) points out: ‘Orthodox medicine is well aware that it is bacterial toxins more than the bacteria themselves (they feed in us), that cause the symptoms referred to as infectious disease. Little if any emphasis is placed on this fine but important distinction.’ The widespread use of toxic antibiotics to destroy bacteria in the name of promoting health is, however, misguided. It is like blaming rats for creating the piles of garbage they feed on, and then poisoning the rats in the hope of getting rid of the garbage. Dr William Trebing (2006, ch. 4) argues that antibiotics should only be used in life-threatening situations where detoxification threatens to run out of control. The indiscriminate use of antibiotics has prompted bacteria to mutate, become more aggressive and develop resistance.

Pneumonia is said to be caused by the bacterium pneumococcus, but this cannot be true because this bacterium is absent in more than 25% of cases and administering it to healthy organisms does not cause the disease (Baker, 2005). E. coli bacteria reside in the intestines of healthy people, so it makes no sense to regard them as a major cause of food poisoning. Ingesting putrefying food contaminated with bacteria and fungus will poison a person, but this would also be true if the food was first irradiated to kill any microbes. Bacteria are helpless against living healthy cells, especially white blood cells and other cells that make up our body’s natural defences.

As for viruses, when viewed under an electron microscope they appear as tiny blobs in and around cells. But no virus has ever been isolated from the body, purified of all contaminants and cell debris, and then shown – in properly controlled experiments – to cause disease in a cell, animal or human (Lanka, 2015, 2020; Roberts 2009, 2010; Engelbrecht et al., 2021; theinfectiousmyth.com).

The proper method for isolating a virus is as follows: take fluid from a patient, filter it (to remove anything the size of bacteria), spin it in a density-gradient centrifuge so that the constituents separate into different density bands, and extract the purified virus particles with a pipette; they can then be genetically and biochemically characterized. This method has been used to isolate bacteriophages (‘bacteria eaters’) and ‘giant viruses’ (these types of spores are wrongly assumed to attack bacteria and other unicellular organisms such as algae, but actually help them by sharing their own genetic material with them), and also exosomes (produced by our own cellular defence mechanisms; see below). But this method has never been applied to alleged pathogenic viruses. Instead, virologists take diseased fluid that is assumed to contain the virus, along with all manner of other particles and contaminants, and then either add it to a culture of human or monkey cells which has been starved of nutrients and poisoned with antibiotics and other chemicals, or administer it in an unnatural manner (e.g. via the brain) to laboratory animals such as mice or monkeys. If some of the cells become unhealthy or die, or if the lab animals show any ill effects, the virus is assumed to be responsible – and is then said to have been ‘isolated’ and proven to be infectious!

Centrifugation separates a mixture of viruses and cellular particles into different bands.

Consider the CDC-approved procedure for ‘isolating’ the measles virus for use in vaccines (cdc.gov; Hanley, 2018, pp. 28-30). Wash monkey kidney cells with trypsin, a digestive enzyme taken from a pig’s pancreas, which will begin to dissolve the cells. Add the kidney cells to a cell culture containing antibiotics (poisons), and then add fetal bovine serum (a growth supplement). Next add a urine, mucus or saliva sample from a measles patient (assumed to contain the measles virus). If the cells start showing signs of damage, this is blamed on the virus. Add more trypsin until at least half the cells look sick and distorted. Scrape the cells off the top and use as a measles-virus stock for making vaccines. At no point is the measles virus actually detected, purified and photographed with an electron microscope. No control experiment is conducted in which the cell culture is treated in the same way but without the human sample (and alleged virus). No telltale signs of measles are observed: the damaged cells are monkey kidney cells, whereas measles manifests on the skin. No attempt is made to identify and remove other organisms or contaminants mixed in with the pig trypsin, monkey kidney cells or calf fetus blood that may end up in the vaccine.

Stefan Lanka (2020, pt. 1) commissioned an independent laboratory to carry out the sort of control experiments that virologists never perform. The result was that the tissues and cells in the cell culture die regardless of whether material from a patient allegedly ‘infected’ with the measles virus is added, because during the laboratory procedure the cells are poisoned with antibiotics and deprived of nutrients (so that they will more easily absorb the alleged viruses). The death of tissue and cells in a test tube has been regarded as proof for the existence of a virus since June 1954, when John Enders published a speculative paper on his experiments with the measles virus, which included no control experiment. Enders admitted in the paper that his findings were not conclusive, but he received the Nobel Prize for Medicine later that year, and his unscientific cell culture technique became unquestioned scientific dogma.

Viruses were invented in the late 19th century to explain certain diseases that were not associated with bacteria; it was assumed that these viral microbes were too small to be observed under a light microscope. In practice, ‘viral’ infections are mostly diagnosed on the basis of clinical symptoms, not by directly detecting, isolating and identifying the virus. Indirect detection methods are also used. Sometimes people are said to be ‘infected’ if tests show that they have high antibody levels – even though the antibodies could have been produced in response to other things, and high antibody levels are also often cited as evidence that a person has been infected with a virus in the past and is now protected against it. Sometimes DNA or RNA fragments that are thought to be associated with a virus are looked for in diseased cells or fluids, and a technique known as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is used to replicate them millions or billions of times and make them easier to find. But again it is impossible to know for certain whether such fragments actually come from the virus, since the genome of a purified virus has never been sequenced.

Bacteria and viruses are very different. A bacterium is regarded as a living, self-replicating organism. Viruses are far smaller and simpler than bacteria, and consist of tiny bits of genetic material (RNA or DNA) – less than one billionth the size of the cell’s genetic code – contained within a protein capsule. They are inert particles with no respiratory, circulatory or digestive system; they display no metabolic activity and cannot move, grow or reproduce by themselves. They are therefore not alive as defined by science. The official view is that they reproduce by ‘hijacking’ a host cell, but nowhere in nature does any living thing reproduce anything other than its own kind. Viruses are also said to mutate very fast in a ‘cunning’ effort to defend themselves and survive. They allegedly lose the ability to take over other cells within a few hours of being outside the host body. However, the idea of an intelligent, highly sophisticated cell being taken over and killed by an inert particle a million times smaller than itself is absurd. In addition, no one has explained how the death of a cell is able to induce a fever or skin rash, or any of the other symptoms of a ‘viral’ disease. It is also unclear how a virus, which is not motile, manages to escape from the host cell and ‘hitch’ itself to a particle of saliva or mucus that is then ejected during a sneeze or cough. It is noteworthy that neither bacteria nor viruses can be grown on healthy tissue. They can only be cultured by using things like beef broth, albumen-based broth, or eggs to stimulate their growth. All these things are dead organic matter – the food that scavengers love.

Scientists have never demonstrated that a virus can enter the body from outside, penetrate a cell and cause it to become diseased (Gunn, 2014, ch. 4). There is no evidence that the viruses associated with a particular disease can actually cause that illness through skin contact, when breathed in or when ingested. A virology textbook mentions that experiments on the transmission of rhinovirus (cold virus) from a person on one side of a table to a person sitting opposite proved ‘singularly unsuccessful’. The transmission of influenza from a naturally infected husband/wife to his/her spouse was equally unsuccessful (Dimmock & Primrose, 1987, p. 230). All that can be said for certain is that a small percentage of people who have been in the presence of other sick people will develop a similar disease, while most will not. Allen et al. (1973) reported that six out of 12 men wintering at an isolated Antarctic base unexpectedly developed symptoms of a common cold after 17 weeks of complete isolation. Although specimens taken from the men failed to reveal a causative agent, it was assumed that the cause was probably a virus that had become reactivated after a sharp drop in temperature.

All viruses are made by cells, and they are mostly species- and organ-specific. Cells make viruses by producing short lengths of genetic code and wrapping part of their own outer membrane around them as they bud them out. One view is that this is a way of disposing of faulty genetic sequences (Quanten, 2004). Another view is that they are ‘repair proteins’ evolved from microzymas (Young, 2016a). In some cases, cells are believed to splice the genetic codes they receive from viruses into their own DNA. In contrast to viruses, cells are immensely complex: they respond intelligently to their surroundings and constantly communicate with one another. Photos of alleged viruses ‘injecting themselves’ into a cell actually show the cell engulfing the ‘virus’. This is a standard process – known as phagocytosis (‘cell-eating’) – that cells use to ingest bacteria, dead tissue debris and other errant cells (Baker, 2005).

Cells that come under threat from chemical poisons, poor nourishment or electromagnetic smog are known to produce particles called exosomes as a defence mechanism, possibly as a way of warning other cells of the danger, or of instructing them how to respond to the trauma, or in some cases to devour and clean up toxins. Exosomes are one of several types of extracellular vesicles (EVs), which mediate intracellular communication by transporting lipids, proteins or nucleic acids to target cells. Because proteins associated with viruses have been detected in some EVs, mainstream scientists have jumped to the conclusion that viruses are ‘hijacking’ EVs in an effort to cause ‘infection’ (Giannessi et al., 2020). Exosomes are often indistinguishable from viruses, and it is questionable whether any such particle is a virus in the literal sense of the word (i.e. ‘poison’) (Cowan & Morell, 2020, ch. 6; Roberts, 2009). However, in so far as viruses are debris from disintegrated cells, they could contribute to ill health if they accumulate faster than the body can eliminate them (Baker, 2005), or if the bodily environment causes them to evolve into more complex, toxigenic forms (Young, 2016a). Cells that are sick and start to malfunction sometimes produce so many ‘viruses’ that they eventually burst apart, following which immune cells clean up the debris. Cells may produce a multitude of ‘viruses’ with slightly different genetic codes, making it look like the viruses are ‘deliberately’ mutating.

Epidemics

Are epidemics only possible if contagious agents exist? Dr Patrick Quenten believes not:

If a number of children attending the same nursery get sick at the same time, we’re programmed to assume that this happens because an infectious ‘bug’ is going round. But it is readily conceivable that children of a similar age, in the same developmental stage, learning similar things, experiencing similar frustrations, in a similar environment could have similar reactions. Moreover, there are always children who do not ‘catch the bug’ because they do not have that particular susceptibility, while other children who have been isolated for a long period may well get sick (Gunn, 2014, ch. 15).

People influence one another on many different levels all the time, both consciously and unconsciously. From a theosophical viewpoint, all organisms are part of a vast network of energetic connections and resonances. We are constantly exchanging various forms of energy-substance, not only on a physical level, but also on an astral and mental level. We are often influenced by collective thought-forms – fads, fashions, crazes, panics, etc. – which affect our physical, emotional and mental health. Karma – cause and effect – does not just operate at an individual level. We are social beings and are drawn together, even before birth, into families, communities, cities, nations, races, etc. So there is nothing surprising about waves of disease sometimes affecting large masses of people.

A simple illustration of sympathetic resonance in the physical world is provided by vibrating music strings. If a string tuned to note A₄ (frequency = 440 Hz) is plucked, its vibrations set sounds waves in motion that will cause a second nearby string tuned to the same note to vibrate and sound at the same frequency. It will also cause a string tuned to E₄ (330 Hz) to resonate, because they share an overtone of 1320 Hz (3rd overtone of A and 4th overtone of E; i.e. 3x440 = 4x330 = 1320 Hz).

Disease is an attempt by the body to restore balance and harmony. Factors that can disturb our inner equilibrium range from external influences such as the weather, food, environmental pollutants, the people we mix with, and the information we receive, to internal influences such as our thoughts, beliefs and emotions, and stress arising from our inability to cope with our experiences. Disease often strikes at key stages in our development, particularly in childhood. Even a person in apparently perfect health may harbour karmic weaknesses or susceptibilities which lead them to become ill.

Orthodox medicine sees disease symptoms as malfunctions that need to be suppressed with aggressive medications, and is obsessed with trying to prevent disease by injecting toxic vaccines into the body. This approach tends to throw the immune system out of balance and has a very detrimental impact on public health. Holistic therapeutic approaches, such as homeopathy, on the other hand, view symptoms as intelligent healing responses, and seek to enhance the body’s innate healing power by means of safe, natural, nontoxic therapies, in order to restore balance to the body, mind and spirit (see Modern medicine).

If an acute disease process is successful, it acts as a purifying experience that restores equilibrium, homeostasis and good health. But if the cleanup process is left unfinished, either because the symptoms are suppressed or because the body is too weak to withstand the disease process, waste products accumulate and tissue renewal is not completed, possibly leading to a recurrence of the disease, chronic ailments, disability or even death.

Ultimately, we are what we make ourselves, and reap what we sow. We inherit strengths and weaknesses – physical, emotional and mental – from our own past (partly via our parents). It is up to us to use the capacities we are born with or acquire in our present incarnation to rectify weaknesses and further develop our positive characteristics. In addition to a sensible diet and regular exercise, cultivating kindness, compassion, altruism, and a calm and positive frame of mind will contribute to the health and wellbeing not only of ourselves but also of society as a whole.

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Robert O. Young (2016a), ‘Second thoughts about viruses, vaccines, and the HIV/AIDS hypothesis � Part 1’, International Journal of Vaccines and Vaccination, v. 2, no. 3, 2016, medcraveonline.com.

Robert O. Young (2016b), Who had their finger on the magic of life – Antoine Bechamp or Louis Pasteur?, 19 September 2016, medcraveonline.com.

Robert O. Young and Shelley Redford Young, Sick and Tired? Reclaim your inner terrain, Pleasant Grove, UT: Woodland Publishing, 2001.

Robert O. Young and Shelley Redford Young, The pH Miracle: Balance your diet, reclaim your health, New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2010, Kindle ed.

8. Virus mania and COVID-19

Epidemics of fear

The medical establishment, through the mainstream media, treats us to endless scares about viral epidemics: polio, AIDS, hepatitis C, SARS, avian flu, swine flu, Ebola, and now COVID-19. But as Torsten Engelbrecht, Dr Claus Köhnlein and their coauthors explain in their hard-hitting and exhaustively documented book Virus Mania (3rd ed., 2021), this fearmongering, which proves very profitable to the pharmaceutical industry, ignores the fact that the existence, pathogenicity and deadly effects of contagious viruses have never been proven, even though the technology required to do so has existed for nearly 100 years. As Dr Etienne de Harven puts it: ‘We are not witnessing viral epidemics; we are witnessing epidemics of fear’ (p. 13).

To prove the pathogenicity of the ‘polio virus’, a sample of spinal tissue or faeces from a person or animal affected by polio (which could have contained all sorts of contaminants) was injected into the brains of animals. If the animals became ill, this was blamed on a virus, yet no attempt was made to isolate and purify it, image it with an electron microscope and characterize its genome. The viruses used in the two vaccines produced in the late 1950s and early 60s were grown from monkey cells treated with a human excrement suspension; the first one was withdrawn as unsafe in 1961. The CDC estimates that 87% of polio cases in the US between 1973 and 1983 were caused by vaccination. To make it look like the vaccines were working, many cases of polio were reclassified as acute flaccid paralysis or Guillain-Barré syndrome (Vaccination and homeopathy). The paralytic symptoms of polio can also be caused by toxins contained in insecticides and pesticides.

The AIDS scare broke out in the early 1980s and was said to pose a threat to the whole of humanity. The retrovirus supposedly responsible – HIV – has never been isolated in purified form. Its existence was originally inferred by observing reverse transcriptase activity in cells, but all cells are capable of displaying this property. To decide whether someone is ‘HIV positive’ the virus hunters do not look for the virus but use indirect methods, such as HIV antibody tests, PCR viral load tests, and helper cell (T-cell) counts – which Engelbrecht and Köhnlein call ‘as uninformative as a toss of a coin’. None of the proteins detected in HIV antibody tests are specific to HIV, and nearly 70 medical conditions (including tuberculosis, influenza and malaria), together with certain vaccinations and even pregnancy, can give a positive result.

In wealthy countries nearly all AIDS patients are men who lead a promiscuous lifestyle and consume toxic drugs and medications. In poor countries a much larger proportion of the population has AIDS, men and women are equally affected, and most of those suffering from AIDS are malnourished. In rich countries people are diagnosed with AIDS if they test positive in an antibody test and suffer from at least one of 26 well-known diseases, including Kaposi’s sarcoma, Hodgkin’s disease, shingles and tuberculosis. In most of Africa, patients can be diagnosed with AIDS simply because they have a combination of three or four symptoms such as chronic diarrhoea, prolonged fever, persistent cough, weight loss of at least 10%, and generalized itching. According to computer models, millions of Africans are dying of AIDS, but population figures contradict this. The ‘answer’ to AIDS has been to administer large quantities of highly toxic drugs, which often cause further immunosuppression, but also have the advantage of boosting the coffers of big pharmaceutical companies. The drug doses used today are smaller than in the 1980s, so patients live longer. (See HIV=AIDS=Death.)

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) supposedly causes liver damage. It was invented in 1987, after researchers found fragments of genes that were presumed to belong to a new virus. But nobody has ever detected such a virus in the blood of hepatitis C patients, and gene particles classified as the hepatitis C virus have been found in people with negative antibody tests. Most HCV-positive patients have no disease symptoms at all (not even in the liver), yet are treated with toxic medications that are known to destroy liver cells. Liver damage appears to be primarily caused by alcohol and drug abuse; almost 80% of drug addicts are HCV-positive. Once again, millions of dollars are being made by selling drugs and treating people for an often nonexistent problem, and we are still waiting for the predicted liver cirrhosis epidemic.

A wave of hysteria about SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) erupted in November 2002. It was sparked by a few cases of pneumonia in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, yet people are constantly contracting pulmonary infections and dying. The existence of the SARS coronavirus has not been proved, and 30% of patients with SARS symptoms failed to test positive for it. Material assumed to contain the virus was injected into some macaque monkeys through their throats, noses and under their eyelids, but they only developed mild symptoms, including lethargy, rash and breathing difficulties. The monkeys had been anaesthetized with ketamine, which can cause precisely these symptoms. As usual, there was no control group of animals receiving the same injections but without the alleged virus.

A virus should attack all age groups, but SARS largely spared children, and no epidemic occurred among healthcare workers. SARS patients were given all sorts of harmful antiviral and antibiotic medications that can trigger the symptoms they’re supposed to fight. When the panic was over, doctors and researchers realized that the aggressive treatments had probably killed a lot of patients (Crowe, 2020d). According to the WHO, there were only 800 probable SARS fatalities in the first nine months after the outbreak began. But the hysteria caused more damage to the Asian economy than the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami, which claimed 230,000 lives.

SARS disease symptoms are the same as those produced by pesticide and air pollution. Cui et al. (2003) found that Chinese patients from regions with high air pollution indexes (APIs) were twice as likely to die from SARS as those from regions with low APIs. Biochemist Howard Urnovitz believes that the SARS ‘virus’ is no more than a rearrangement of human genes caused by pollution stress (West, 2003).

The first patient to trigger the SARS panic came from Guangdong province in China, one of the most highly polluted regions on earth, due to the presence of oil refineries, metal smelters and other chemical industries. Since the mid-1990s it has also become a booming centre of e-waste processing. For $1.5 a day, locals disassemble computers, monitors and printers with their bare hands, endangering their health and the environment. Although the import of high-tech junk was officially banned, the waste still makes it to China because the regulatory authorities are overwhelmed or due to corruption. A lot of garbage is burned or dumped onto rice fields, irrigation facilities or into waterways.

In 2005 the media announced that an avian flu virus named H5N1 was likely to mutate in the near future and trigger a global epidemic, in which up to 150 million people, or even everybody on earth, might die. Needless to say, no electron micrograph of a pure and fully characterized H5N1 virus exists. Large amounts of a sample supposedly containing the virus, along with all sorts of cellular components and other potentially damaging material, was injected into ducks’ windpipes, nasal cavities, eyes and throats for several days, and all the resulting damage was then blamed on H5N1. No virus is required to make animals sick. Industrial poultry farming is quite capable of doing that, due to extremely close crowding in artificially lit cages, denatured industrial feed, distortion of animal bodies due to overbreeding for certain desired physical characteristics, and administration of antibiotics and vaccines. Fattened chickens can barely support their own weight, and 10% suffer cardiac arrest. Cannibalism and self-mutilation are common.

H5N1 is said to have caused the deaths of 153 people from the end of 2003 until November 2006, mostly in Asia. Some of the victims were merely suffering from cold symptoms, but died after intensive treatment with antiviral drugs. H5N1 could not be detected in various diseased organs at all, but this was shrugged off as an ‘enigma’.

In early 2003 health problems with a very high death rate were reported on six poultry farms in the Netherlands, triggering an epidemic of hysteria. The next day it was announced that a highly pathogenic H7N7 virus had been found. In the months that followed, 26 million chickens in the Netherlands, around 2.5 million in Belgium and approximately 100,000 in North Rhine-Westphalia were gassed, poisoned by lethal injection, electrocuted or manually slaughtered. As Engelbrecht et al. (2021, p. 277) comment: ‘In the end, 30 million birds died from another all-too-human strain of virus mania.’

In November 2005 a single mildly sick duck was found in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Using modern indirect molecular biological proof procedures, this was attributed to the avian flu virus H7N3. In addition to killing the single duck, the authorities immediately slaughtered a further 56,000 healthy ducks and geese.

In May 2009, the WHO decided that a wave of influenza with a ‘severe course’ was no longer necessary to declare the highest pandemic level. This enabled it to declare a new swine flu pandemic in the summer of 2009, even though the overwhelming majority of patients suffered only mild symptoms and the number of deaths worldwide was low (less than 300,000), with most victims having pre-existing conditions; the risk of serious illness turned out to be no higher than for the annual seasonal flu. Once again, people were diagnosed as ‘infected’ using tests that do not detect viruses, but certain protein and gene molecules that are assumed to belong to viruses and can be found in many people. As mentioned in section 5, this new pandemic was mainly motivated by the financial interests of the vaccine and pharmaceutical industry.

The pandemic was attributed to an H1N1 virus that allegedly originated in Mexico. H stands for haemagglutinin, and N for neuraminidase. These two proteins are said to be found on the outer shell of the virus and help it to infect host cells; the number indicates the subtype. But there is no scientific proof that they form part of disease-causing viruses. Neuraminidases are enzymes found in all human and animal cells. They are released in greater quantities when cells are destroyed, e.g. by vaccine adjuvants, pesticides or heavy metals. But the conventional assumption is that viruses are using these enzymes to replicate. To impede this process, patients are given toxic drugs called neuraminidase inhibitors, including Tamiflu and Relenza. These drugs thicken the blood, which can lead to sepsis and blood poisoning, and even organ failure. Any deaths are then blamed on the alleged virus (Engelbrecht et al., 2021, ch. 9).

COVID-19: an orgy of stupidity

A new coronavirus, named SARS-CoV-2, allegedly arose in December 2019 in the city of Wuhan in the Chinese province of Hubei. It is said to cause a disease that has been called COVID-19. However, this is not really a new disease since it has no unique symptoms of its own. The most common symptoms are fever, dry cough and tiredness. Less common symptoms include aches and pains, sore throat, diarrhoea, and loss of taste or smell. Serious symptoms include difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, chest pain or pressure, and loss of speech or movement. In fatal cases it causes severe pneumonia, leading to respiratory failure. According to initial forecasts, the resulting pandemic would kill 40 or 50 million people. The reality is very different.

The official death toll stood at 1.83 million at the end of 2020, and reached 3.0 million in mid-April 2021 (latest death toll). Higher-than-average mortality has only been observed in certain countries and cities. However, the death total is grossly inflated because anybody who dies with the symptoms in question is often labelled a COVID-19 victim even though the vast majority were also suffering from one or more other serious illnesses, such as like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and cancer. In other words, most countries do not distinguish between deaths from COVID-19 and deaths with COVID-19.

US hospitals typically receive $5000 for pneumonia patients, but the amount increases to around $13,000 if the patients are listed as COVID-19, and $39,000 if they are put on a ventilator (eu.usatoday.com). Washington State Department of Health admitted that its COVID-19 death toll includes anyone who tested positive for the virus, even if they died from other causes, such as gunshot wounds (freedomfoundation.com). In the US, COVID-19 is listed as the sole cause of death on the death certificates of only 6% of the total number of ‘Covid deaths’; the average number of additional health conditions is 2.6 (cdc.gov). In the UK, anyone who dies within 28 days of a positive test is classed as a ‘Covid death’, regardless of the actual cause of death (coronavirus.gov.uk).

The aggressive treatments patients are receiving – including invasive ventilation, high-dose corticosteroids and antiviral drugs – have contributed to the number of deaths. For instance, of the patients who died in Italy on 9 April 2020, 84% had received antibiotics, 55% antiviral drugs, 33% corticosteroids, and 18.6% a combination of all three. In Italy, Spain, France, England and the USA, many patients were given extremely high doses of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), whose side effects include death due to cardiac arrhythmias (Engelbrecht et al., 2021, pp. 506, 508). Normally, autopsies are conducted to determine the precise cause of death, but suspiciously few autopsies have been carried out on ‘Covid’ victims.

As of 10 February 2021, 93% COVID-19 deaths in the US have occurred among
those aged 55 or older. Only 0.2% were younger than 25. (heritage.org)

Lockdown and social distancing measures have been implemented with widely different degrees of severity in different countries. Measures include school closures, workplace closures, bans on public events, restrictions on gatherings, closure of public transport, stay-at-home orders, restrictions on internal movement, and international travel controls. Governments announced that these measures were necessary to ‘flatten the curve’, i.e. reduce the infection rate and therefore the number of people dying in the short term, in order to prevent medical services from being overwhelmed. However, the original predictions of fatalities and the number of hospital beds that would be needed were terribly exaggerated; in the United Kingdom, for example, the initial model-based projection was that over 500,000 people might die, whereas the actual death toll by the end of December 2020 was around 70,000. At the same time, the measures imposed were expected to ‘lengthen the curve’, i.e. prolong the disease, by delaying the development of immunity among the general population. In many countries the outbreak had already peaked before the lockdown was imposed.

Prior to 2020, international lockdowns had never been used to try and influence the course of an epidemic, not even during the 1957-58 Asian flu pandemic and the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic. The WHO’s 2019 influenza guidelines state that measures such as contact tracing, quarantine of exposed individuals, entry and exit screening, and border closure are ‘not recommended in any circumstances’. The idea of a nationwide lockdown was so absurd that it was not even mentioned.

The first known Covid case in Wuhan, China, was reported on 15 December 2019, and by 31 December, the number of cases had climbed to 27. Wuhan and Hubei province were put under lockdown on 23 January 2020, by which time 26 people had died. The pandemic in Wuhan was over by late February. However, by late March global panic had set in, because total infections worldwide were 140 times higher, and deaths 440 times higher, than a month earlier. In Italy deaths rose from 30 per day in late February to over 800 per day in late March, putting a huge strain on its health service. Italy imposed a lockdown on 10 March and other countries quickly followed suit. By the end of March, most countries had implemented containment measures. They did so because the Wuhan lockdown was widely believed to have worked. This was the message from China, and it was supported by the WHO and other ‘health experts’.

In retrospect, China’s impressive success in controlling the epidemic (according to its official figures) cannot be attributed to the lockdown, as the graph below shows. Containment measures are expected to take one to two weeks to impact cases and deaths. But in Wuhan the case growth rate fell almost immediately after lockdown was imposed, whereas in Italy it fell just as fast, but before lockdown was imposed. The shape of the curve is always similar, lockdown or no lockdown.

In a detailed analysis of 161 countries, Surjit Bhalla (2020), an International Monetary Fund executive director, found that, far from being a success, lockdowns were a ‘monumental failure’: only 10% of the lockdown countries achieved positive results; in over 80%, lockdowns had a significant counterproductive effect, leading to extra cases and deaths. And contrary to expectations, delayed and/or less stringent lockdowns performed better than early and/or more stringent lockdowns. Most countries imposed a lockdown earlier in their epidemic than China did – but performed considerably worse.

Meunier (2020) examined the data for several European countries and concluded that lockdowns ‘might not have saved any life in western Europe’. In early November 2020 seven of the 11 municipalities of Northern Jutland in Denmark went into extreme lockdown, while the other four kept the existing moderate restrictions in place; infection levels in the various municipalities were similar before the new measures were imposed. Kepp & Bjørnskov (2021) report that infections in the lockdown municipalities then proceeded to decrease, but at least a week before lockdown could have had any effect, and that a similar decline was seen in the non-lockdown municipalities. This casts doubt on the effectiveness attributed to lockdowns by some epidemiological computer models.

Chaudhry et al. (2020) examined data on COVID-19-related deaths across 50 countries and found no association between the degree of lockdown and death rates. Bjørnskov (2020) explored lockdown severity and mortality rates in 24 European countries and found ‘no clear association between lockdown policies and mortality development’. From week 11 to 22, the hard lockdown countries experienced 372 additional deaths per million while the others experienced excess mortality of 123 deaths. Dr Karina Reiss and Dr Sucharit Bhakdi (2020, ch. 6) give the following assessment: ‘[T]he epidemic followed essentially the same course all over Europe. The effects of the lockdown were exclusively negative.’ Over 30 scientific papers have been published reaching similar conclusions (AIER, 2020; inproportion2.com).

Dennis Rancourt (2020a) observes that the all-cause mortality peak that occurred in some mid-latitude countries in the northern hemisphere in the spring of 2020 is highly unusual because it only lasted about four weeks (at half-maximum) and occurred far later in the ‘infectious’ seasonal cycle than is normal for respiratory epidemics. It followed the declaration of a pandemic by the WHO on 11 March 2020, a firestorm of hysterical fearmongering by social and mass media, and the panicked imposition of lockdown measures. He notes that the Covid peak ‘is positively correlated with the share of COVID-19-assigned deaths occurring in nursing homes and assisted living facilities’. Care homes were turned into ‘killing fields’ because sick, elderly people were transferred there from hospitals, denied specialized medical treatment, and subjected to neglect, social isolation and stress. He calls this ‘an accelerated mass homicide’. In France, such measures caused some 30,200 deaths in March and April 2020 (Rancourt et al., 2020).

Rancourt et al. (2021b) investigated all-cause mortality in the United States from March 2020 to October 2021, and found that, unlike Canada and Western European countries, the US experienced exceedingly large excess mortality of around a million people, with around 600,000 of the deaths being attributed to Covid. They write:

They also conclude that the massive vaccination campaign ‘had no detectable mitigating effect’ and probably contributed to deaths 35-64-year-olds, especially in summer 2021. By contrast, Rancourt et al. (2021a) note that Canada experienced a ‘covid-peak’ of around 12,000 deaths, which reached its maximum at the end of April 2020, far later than with any previous epidemic in its history.

A study of 50 countries, published in The Lancet in July 2020, found that full-scale lockdowns were not associated with significant reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality (thelancet.com). In August 2020, TrendMacro published an analysis using US cellphone tracking data, showing that locking down the economy did not contain the disease’s spread and reopening it didn’t unleash a second wave of infections. In fact, states with longer, stricter lockdowns had larger ‘Covid’ outbreaks (kusi.com). This contradicts the ‘infectious virus’ theory. As of 29 June 2021, Covid deaths per 1 million inhabitants stood at 1877 in the UK and 1435 in Sweden (worldometers.info), yet the UK imposed a harsh, police-enforced lockdown on 23 March 2020 whereas Sweden adopted more moderate measures (with no lockdowns, masks or primary school closures). Other countries that did not suffer the predicted catastrophe despite not imposing hard lockdowns include Iceland, Belarus, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea. In June 2020, Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko stated that the World Bank and IMF had promised his country $940 million in funding if the government imposed a lockdown (with curfews, quarantines and isolation) to fight COVID-19. ‘This is nonsense,’ he declared. ‘We will not dance to anyone’s tune’ (eng.belta.by).

The padlock indicates when the UK lockdown was imposed. If the measures worked, a sudden drop in cases should have occurred about 10 days later, but that did not happen. The trend had slowed even before lockdown began, and the curve has the standard shape for an epidemic.

Italy, Spain and Belgium all imposed harsher lockdowns than the UK. Sweden had no lockdown.
(latest graph: ourworldindata.org)

Sweden has faced fierce criticism from the mainstream media for resisting the lockdown mania and adopting the herd-immunity approach that every country had followed in all preceding epidemics. A shadowy group was exposed in early 2021 that had deliberately spread misinformation to international media in an effort to discredit Sweden’s strategy (Hellström). In November 2020, Swedish politicians did impose tougher restrictions, though not a full lockdown, which is illegal under the country’s constitution (sebastianrushworth.com). Sweden’s excess mortality in 2020 was 6% higher than in 2018. Excess deaths per 100,000 population in 2020 were twice as high in England as in Sweden (Lewis, 2021).

The following graph puts Sweden’s 2020 mortality in a broader historical perspective.

Swedish mortality from 1835 to 2020 (Source: Jens/SCB)

Axe et al. (2020) conclude from their analysis of the data that the low death rates in several of the no-lockdown countries or states, and the lack of any meaningful correlation between lockdown orders and the case and death curves mean that there is no clear-cut evidence that lockdowns have a positive impact on the course of the disease. What we do know for certain, is that lockdowns have a huge economic and human cost (collateralglobal.org; thepriceofpanic.com).

In Western countries, 30 to 70% of Covid-related deaths have occurred in nursing homes, which don’t benefit from a lockdown, and where stress, fear, loneliness and inadequate care took a heavy toll on the often overdrugged, vaccinated and poorly fed residents (swprs.org). In Italy the crisis began with a panic-induced collapse of nursing care for the elderly. In numerous other countries, too, many nursing home staff were too afraid to go to work, and some care homes were even left without any staff at all. In one Canadian nursing home, for example, health officials found dehydrated residents lying listless in bed, unfed for days, amid a foul stench; only five of the 31 deaths were attributed to COVID-19 (Irwin, 2020). In some US states, nursing homes were ordered to accept patients with active COVID-19 infections who were being discharged from hospitals to free up beds for more serious cases (forbes.com).

In the United States, there were about 299,000 excess deaths from January to October 2020; two-thirds were attributed to Covid, while the rest were most likely linked to the effects of lockdowns, panic and fear (cdc.gov). In the UK, the treatment of heart attacks and strokes decreased by 40% because many patients no longer dared to go to hospital or the care was no longer available (telegraph.co.uk). The British Medical Journal reported that in the five weeks prior to 12 May 2020 there was a ‘staggering burden’ of 30,000 more deaths than would normally be expected in care homes and other community settings in England and Wales: 10,000 were officially attributed to COVID-19, while 20,000 were due to patients being moved out of hospitals that were anticipating high demand for beds (bmj.com). A British government report from April 2020 stated that a limited lockdown could cause 185,000 excess deaths in the medium to long term (DHSC, 2020).

In the Netherlands, hospital care for Covid patients saved an estimated 13,000 to 21,000 quality-adjusted life-years (1 QALY = one year in perfect health). However, an estimated 100,000 to 400,000 QALYs have been lost because people with cancer, heart disease, diabetes or gastrointestinal diseases were denied the care they needed (gupta-strategists.nl). A similar study in the US concluded that the lockdowns might have saved between a quarter and three-quarters of a million life-years, but would lead to the loss of 18.7 million life-years (revolver.news).

Based on a detailed cost-benefit analysis, Joffe (2020) concludes that lockdowns are far more harmful to public health than COVID-19. On balance, lockdowns cost a minimum of five times more life-years than they save, and more realistically, they cost 50 to 87 times more. Between 20 and 50% of excess deaths occurring during the pandemic in high-income countries are not due to COVID-19 but to the countermeasures. Joffe says that the devastating collateral damage shows what happens when mass hysteria based on worst-case thinking and modelling replaces balanced and rational risk assessment, and he calls for an end to the ‘lockdown groupthink’. James DeMeo (2021) writes: ‘Basic all-cause US death data for 2020, when reviewed in light of a claimed Covid-19 pandemic, suggest most annual excess deaths are due to the physical consequences of lockdown-related mandates which create economic ruin and added emotional and somatic-pathological devastation within vulnerable populations.’ He points out that panic and anxiety can cause sphincter muscles in the throat and bronchial tubes to contract, thereby contributing to respiratory symptoms.

The world economy is expected to shrink by at least $8-9 trillion (about 6% of GDP) in 2020-2021, and by more than $50 trillion over the coming decade (Joffe, 2020). The International Labour Organization warned in April 2020 that 1.6 billion people were in immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed by the economic impact of the disproportionate COVID-19 response. The head of the World Food Programme warned that disruption to food supplies could lead to 300,000 deaths per day from starvation (wfp.org). The measures imposed have clearly taken a heavy toll, with social isolation and loss of jobs and income triggering a massive rise in drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, depression, suicides, etc. In the long term, crippling the economy is bound to plunge more people into poverty and shorten millions of lives. The World Bank expects an additional 150 million people to be pushed into extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90 a day) by the end of 2021 (worldbank.org). For thousands of years it has been common practice to quarantine the sick. We had to wait until the 21st century for a society dumb enough to quarantine the healthy.

% of US adults showing symptoms of anxiety and/or depressive disorder. (statista.com)

The COVID-19 epidemic is mainly a function of two things: how the disease is defined, and testing. The definition of SARS was self-limiting and the ‘epidemic’ burned out very quickly. That is because to become a SARS patient you had to have had contact with another SARS carrier, and you then had to test positive for the ‘virus’ (i.e. for the biomarker of the presumed virus). As David Crowe (2020a) says: ‘Once everyone was quarantined, contact with an existing case was highly unlikely, testing stopped, and doctors could declare victory.’ In China, the number of new COVID-19 cases only began to fall after a link to another patient was included as a condition for testing. Other countries did not follow suit, and the number of cases began to skyrocket from mid-February onwards. If random testing were to continue indefinitely, the fake epidemic might never end – which would be great news for Big Medicine and Big Pharma, and also Big Government.

The ‘COVID-19 tests’ do not detect the COVID-19 virus. Particles have been seen in electron micrograph that have been labelled the new coronavirus; they resemble other particles that are regarded as harmless exosomes (see figure below). The ‘virus’ particles are of extremely different sizes; in one paper, the size ranged from 60 to 140 nanometres (1 nm = 10^-9 m); viruses are not supposed to vary in size by such a huge amount (Engelbrecht et al., 2021, p. 479). Despite several misleading claims, the ‘virus’ has not been isolated and purified, and no one has sequenced its entire genome end to end, or demonstrated that it is pathogenic (Engelbrecht & Demeter, 2020; Engelbrecht, 2020; Corbett, 2020a, 2020c; Crowe, 2020e; Kaufman, 2020a, 2020b; Kaufman & Cowan, 2021a, 2021b; questioningcovid.com). This means there is no ‘gold standard’ for any test.

Instead, microbiologists have searched lung samples from patients for RNA segments similar to those associated with other coronaviruses (which also haven’t been isolated). Such segments are assumed to come from the virus, and a computer algorithm is used to fit the thousands of segments together into an entire genome by looking for overlapping regions, with missing sequences being filled in by drawing from existing databases. This is known as ‘in silico’ gene sequencing (meaning that it’s done in a computer). But no one has verified that the ‘virus’ seen in electron micrographs actually contains these RNA segments. It is quite possible that this RNA is produced by our cells in response to certain types of stress. Cassol et al. (2020) report finding cellular structures indistinguishable from the alleged Covid virus in patients negative for COVID-19 and in kidney biopsies from the pre-Covid era. They also note that the corona-like surface could be caused by coating proteins picking up the dyes in the electron-microscope preparation (Cowan, 2021).

Left: exosomes (top: outside the cell; bottom: in a multivesicular body (MVB) inside the cell).
Right: the COVID-19 ‘killer virus’ (top: outside the cell; bottom: inside the cell). The virus and the
MVBs containing exosomes have similar sizes and were all found in bronchial fluid. (odysee.com)

The procedure used by Chinese scientists to determine the genetic sequence of SAR-CoV-2 is as follows (F. Wu et al., 2020; Kaufman & Cowan, 2021c). They took lung fluid from a single patient who had tested positive for ‘the virus’ (before the virus had even been sequenced!). They extracted all the RNA strands (both human and microbial), then threw out those longer than 150 bases so that the remaining strands could be sequenced simultaneously using �next generation sequencing'. Some sequences were then ‘trimmed’, leaving 56,565,928 sequenced fragments (‘reads’). Two computer programs were then used to piece the strands together into longer strands � known as ‘contigs’ (contiguous sequences) � by matching overlapping regions. A total of 1.7 million contigs were generated, ranging in length from 200 to 30,474 bases. They chose the longest contig, but discarded 571 bases. The final genome adopted for SARS-CoV-2 was therefore 29,903 bases long (assembled from 123,613 reads), and it was 89% similar to a bat coronavirus genome (originally created in the same arbitrary way).

This procedure is another clear indication that virology has degenerated into a pseudoscience. Since the genetic code consists of only four letters, the different RNA fragments can be pieced together in countless different ways; that’s why other labs never manage to come up with exactly the same genome as the Chinese sequence (which they use as a template). The thousands of discrepancies found are labelled ‘mutations’ (nextstrain.org), providing plenty of opportunity to stoke fears about ‘more contagious’ and ‘deadlier’ variants.

COVID-19 tests use the RT-PCR technique to try and find one or more RNA segment, each of which is said to make up less than 1% of the entire viral genome. A segment is first converted to DNA by using the reverse transcriptase (RT) enzyme. The amount of DNA obtained can easily vary by a factor of 10. This DNA is then multiplied millions of times using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In each PCR cycle, the number of DNA strands is doubled. If we start with one strand, then after 40 cycles there will be a trillion strands (2⁴⁰). PCR is a highly sensitive technique that is prone to contamination, giving false or inaccurate results. It was invented by Kary Mullis (who received a Nobel Prize for it in 1993), who explained that it simply turns a minuscule amount of something into a lot of something and does not tell you whether or not you are sick. The Covid test kits themselves carry the warning: ‘For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures’ (technical-support.roche.com; creative-diagnostics.com; Engelbrecht & Demeter, 2020). James DeMeo (2021) asks:

Different tests look for different RNA segments; some look for two or three segments, but don’t always require all of them to be found. Furthermore, the quantity of RNA found does not always correlate with how sick a person is.

The test does not give a positive/negative result. It merely tells you how many cycles are needed to detect sufficient material to beat the arbitrary cutoff between ‘positive’ (infected) and ‘negative’ (not infected). Different tests (there are dozens of them) use between 31 and 45 cycles (known as the cycle threshold, Ct) before a person can be declared ‘negative’ if insufficient RNA is found (Crowe, 2020b). In July 2020 New York’s state lab identified 872 positive tests, based on a cutoff of 40 cycles. If it had used a cutoff of 35 cycles, 43% of the tests would no longer qualify as positive, and using a cutoff of 30 cycles, 63% of the tests would no longer qualify as positive (nytimes.com).

Official guidelines state that a cycle amplification value in the 20s to 30s should be aimed for, and values higher than 40 are suspect (Engelbrecht & Demeter, 2020). Jaarfar et al. (2021) found that if a Ct of 35 cycles or higher is used, the accuracy drops to 3%, resulting in a 97% false-positive rate. A systematic review by Jefferson et al. (2020) found that no ‘live viruses’ could be found in patients where a positive PCR test had used a Ct above 24. La Scola et al. (2020) found that the PCR test had to be run at 17 cycles in order to get 100% confirmed real positives. Yet the WHO recommends 45 cycles (who.int), and in the US the FDA and CDC recommend 40 cycles (fda.gov). China, on the other hand, stopped testing people for COVID-19 except for those exhibiting symptoms (Mercola & Cummins, 2021, p. 79).

There are countless cases of patients going from positive to negative and back to positive on successive days. In such cases it is up to doctors to ‘interpret’ the result, in accordance with their preconceptions. A woman from Shenzhen tested negative 18 times, but because other members of her family had tested positive, the doctor declared that she too was infected. Often only 3% to 5% of people test ‘positive’, even when testing is restricted to people suspected of carrying the virus. A paper by Chinese scientists found that the rate of false positives could be as high as 80% among people with no symptoms (Crowe, 2020a). The president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences stated that PCR tests are only 30% to 50% accurate (Engelbrecht et al., 2021, p. 486). It is widely recognized that the virus test kits can produce false positives and false negatives, react to non-infectious virus fragments from a previous infection, or react to other common coronaviruses with a partially similar gene sequence. A study in England in April/June 2020 found that 86.1% of people who tested positive had no Covid symptoms (Petersen & Phillips, 2020).

In Tanzania, samples from a goat and a papaya fruit were labelled as human samples and sent for testing; they both tested positive (21stcenturywire.com)! Animals that have tested positive include cats, dogs, minks and zoo-kept animals like lions, tigers and leopards. In November 2020 Denmark slaughtered 17 million minks in response to ‘Covid outbreaks’ at over 200 mink farms (nbcnews.com).

Many scientists and government health authorities have admitted that SARS-CoV-2 has not been isolated and purified. The procedures used to ‘prove' the existence of the virus amount to pseudo-isolation. In one procedure, samples from patients’ throats or lungs are ultracentrifuged (spun at high speed) and the top part of the centrifuged material (the supernatant) is skimmed off. PCR is then used to check for the presence in it of an RNA fragment assumed to form part of the virus. If the result is positive, the supernatant is labelled an ‘isolate', even though it contains billions of different micro- and nanoparticles, including exosomes (Demeter et al., 2021; Scoglio, 2020). Since PCR is based on the assumption that the virus exists, using it to prove the existence of the virus is an example of circular reasoning.

To test the pathogenicity of the virus, Bao et al. (2020) took the supernatant (assumed to contain the ‘isolated’ virus) and put it into the noses of transgenic mice. Less than half the mice showed any symptoms. The worst effect it produced was an 8% weight loss and ‘slightly bristled fur’ (not yet reported in humans!). In addition, the autopsy findings in the transgenic mice did not match those in Covid patients (Kaufman, 2020). The transgenic mice had been genetically engineered to overproduce the ACE2 enzyme, which could explain some of the mild symptoms they displayed. This study is supposed to prove that SARS-CoV-2 causes coronavirus disease!

Shan et al. (2020) introduced fluid from a Covid patient into the trachea of six macaque monkeys. This caused some damage to the lungs (note that pneumonia can be caused by breathing in vomit or a harmful substance), but after six days the injuries had largely disappeared. None of the monkeys developed any visible clinical symptoms, except that one monkey partly lost its appetite. The experimenters were pleased with this outcome because it matched the fact that most people testing positive for ‘the virus' are completely healthy!

Two dissimilar-looking (false-colour) images of alleged SARS-CoV-2. (niaid.nih.gov)

There are several theories about the origin of the imaginary SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was initially claimed to be a bat coronavirus that underwent a mutation that enabled it to infect humans. An increasingly popular theory is that it is a bat coronavirus that was modified by virologists at a military/civilian lab in Wuhan, and either escaped due to an accident, or was deliberately released (Mercola & Cummins, 2021, ch. 2). There are hundreds of biomedical/biowarfare labs across the world, funded by governments, the military and national security agencies, which are seeking to genetically modify bacteria and viruses in order to turn them into deadly weapons. This is euphemistically called ‘gain-of-function’ research. Despite all the speculation, there is no evidence that a viable bioweapon of this kind has ever been developed. In theory, it would be possible to take a harmless exosome and add toxic material to it, but there is no guarantee that its dispersion through the atmosphere and from person to person would turn it into an effective weapon.

The PCR test protocol for SARS-CoV-2 was invented in a German lab. The paper concerned (by Corman, Drosten, et al.) was hurriedly published in Eurosurveillance in January 2020 without being peer-reviewed. A team of scientists has identified serious flaws in it but the journal refused to retract it. The PCR test was developed by Drosten and recommended by the WHO for worldwide use even before Chinese scientists had published the first proposed genome for the ‘virus’ and before anybody had even attempted to demonstrate that the alleged virus could cause illness. In November 2020 a Portuguese court ruled that PCR tests are not reliable and it is unlawful to quarantine people based solely on a positive result. Similar court cases have been won in Austria and Germany.

In autumn 2020, mass testing was carried out in several English cities using a more rapid test, known as a lateral-flow test (LFT), which looks for alleged virus proteins (antigens) instead of RNA. This test is said to avoid the risk of over-amplification and cross-contamination that plagues PCR (Yeadon, 2020). The positive rate from LFT was only 0.7% – far lower than the 13% positive rate for PCR. But PCR remains the preferred test because the assumption is made that the antigen test produces many ‘false negatives’, caused by the virus ‘hiding’ (DeMeo, 2021).

If a person is declared ‘positive’, they can be quarantined and given aggressive medications even if they have no serious symptoms; side effects of these drugs include nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and liver damage. Sicker patients may be prescribed untested drugs, and if they suffer declining health or die, this is blamed on the virus. At the end of April 2020, as many as 140 drugs were being tried out on Covid patients. In a case reported in the Lancet, a 50-year-old patient suffering from fever, chills, coughing, tiredness and shortness of breath was treated with antiviral drugs (interferon alfa-2b, lopinavir and ritonavir), an antibiotic (moxifloxacin) and an anti-inflammatory (methylprednisolone) – substances that can have fatal side effects even when taken alone. The man died and his death was inevitably attributed to Covid, but could just as easily have been caused by the drugs. In Italy 53% of people who officially died of Covid had received antiviral drugs and 83% had received antibiotics (Engelbrecht et al., 2021, ch. 12). Hospitalized patients who are denied visitors and confronted every day by staff hidden behind layers of protective gear are almost certain to suffer declining health. As John Hardie (2020) puts it: ‘The friendly reassuring smile and warm handshake so beneficial to those in emotional distress is replaced by a human robot encased in latex and plastic.’

Many prominent American doctors argue that the medical cartel’s vigorous efforts to suppress effective early treatments like ivermectin (IVM) and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), and to push the use of deadly, patented drugs like remdesivir (a failed Ebola drug) caused at least 500,000 unnecessary deaths (Kennedy, 2021, pp. 124-5). IVM has been shown to reduce mortality by an average of 75%. In December 2020, Peru’s president, under pressure from the WHO, severely restricted IVM availability, leading to a 13-fold increase in Covid deaths. Anthony Fauci (the US Covid tsar), Bill Gates and the WHO financed research mercenaries to carry out nearly 20 studies deliberately designed to discredit HCQ as unsafe. HCQ costs about $10 per course, while remdesivir costs over $3000 per course. Gates has a large stake in remdesivir’s manufacturer, Gilead.

Invasive ventilation can be very traumatic. When patients are intubated, their lungs react to the pressure generated by the ventilator with an out-of-control immune response (cytokine storms) that can lead to excessive inflammation, organ failure and death; damage can be caused not only to the lungs but also to other organs like the liver and kidneys (sciencedaily.com; ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). Doctors are intubating many patients unnecessarily because they’re afraid of being infected via leaky oxygen masks; this amounts to medical malpractice, and in the case of SARS the fear of infection proved unfounded. During the SARS panic, a Hong Kong hospital which did not immediately resort to invasive ventilation was found to have a death rate four times lower than 13 hospitals which used immediate intubation. Among intubated COVID-19 patients over the age of 65, a 97% death rate was found in both China and New York (Crowe, 2020a).

There are numerous different antibody tests that are claimed to indicate whether a person is or has been infected with the COVID-19 virus. Each manufacturer is allowed to ‘validate’ its own test, i.e. declare how good it is. Often people test negative when they ought to be positive, or vice versa. David Crowe (2020c) writes:

The virus is said to be transmitted from person to person. Yet there are countless documented cases of people of various nationalities testing positive even though they have had no contact with other carriers and have not travelled to an affected region (Crowe, 2020a). For instance, of the first 425 cases in Wuhan, 72% had not been exposed to the seafood market where the virus supposedly originated or to a person with respiratory symptoms. None of the first 37 cases found in Lombardy in Italy had any links to each other or to previous coronavirus cases (e.g. from people arriving from China). There has, in fact, never been a rigorous study clearly proving that a person who tests ‘positive’ for SARS-CoV-2 can make another person ‘positive’ (Engelbrecht et al., 2021, p. 487). Screening of nearly 10 million people in Wuhan revealed that not a single person tested positive who had been in close contact with an asymptomatic individual who had tested positive (Cao et al., 2020). But the virus fanatics simply ignore anything that doesn’t fit their beliefs and agenda.

It has been calculated that the average number of people to which a single infected person will transmit the COVID-19 ‘virus’ is between 1.4 and 4; this is known as the reproductive number or Ro (‘R-nought’ or ‘R-zero’). However, to preserve the contagion theory, some people have to be labelled ‘superspreaders’. For instance, the first person diagnosed with the disease in a highly populated region of South Korea was a 61-year-old woman who had no known contacts or travel to explain her case, and she was blamed for infecting 37 other people (Crowe, 2020a). Studies of multi-person households have found that the risk of infecting another person is ‘surprisingly low’; often only one person tests positive. In the case of a young Chinese woman with congenital heart disease who tested positive, 455 people she had had contact with were also tested, including family and hospital staff, but none of them tested positive (Irwin, 2020).

Immunological studies show that the overall lethality of COVID-19 is about 0.1% to 0.3% and thus in the range of a severe flu (swprs.org; Irwin, 2020), whereas initial estimates were over 10 times higher. In October 2020, Dr John Ioannidis (2020), a leading epidemiologist, put the average infection fatality rate at 0.15%-0.20% for the whole global population and 0.03%-0.04% for people less than 70 years old. Given the way the Covid death toll has been artificially inflated, the fatality rate could even be lower than for flu (0.1%). In the case of the 2009/10 ‘swine flu’ epidemic, the death rate was initially estimated to be 1% (1 person in 100), but a study several years later found that it was less than 0.02% (1 person in 5000), i.e. over 50 times lower (Irwin, 2020). Instead of studies showing a low fatality rate being welcomed as good news, they are more likely to be dismissed or ignored by ‘health experts’ and the mainstream media.

Other key facts include the following:
- Even in the global ‘hotspots’, the risk of death for the general population of school and working age is typically in the range of a daily car ride to work.
- About 80% of all people develop only mild symptoms or no symptoms. Even among 70-79 year olds, about 60% develop only mild symptoms. About 95% of all people develop at most moderate symptoms and do not require hospitalization.
- The median age of Covid deaths in most Western countries is over 80 years and only about 4% had no serious pre-existing health conditions (swprs.org).
- In the first six months of the epidemic, only about two dozen children and adolescents died of the disease worldwide. For comparison: some 8000 young people die every day from malnutrition-related illnesses, and in the United States 200 died from influenza in 2019 while 10,000 die every year from injuries (Irwin, 2020).

As of late April 2021, the United Kingdom ranked 13th in the world in terms of Covid deaths per million inhabitants. According to the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS), 608,002 people in England and Wales died in 2020, and Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificates of 80,830 (13%) of them. This was the highest annual number of deaths since the flu pandemic of 1918, but the population was then only half of what it is today. A better measure is the number of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants: this shows that 2020 had the highest mortality rate since 2003. But we also need to allow for the fact that older people now make up a larger proportion of the population. The ONS publishes age-standardized mortality rates back to 1943. These figures show that every year from 1943 to 2008 had a higher mortality rate than 2020 (bmj.com)! 2019 had the lowest age-standardized mortality ever in England and Wales; in fact, the previous 11 years all had historically low levels of mortality. This means there was a large amount of ‘dry tinder', i.e. old and frail people, to feed the next wave of disease. The ONS estimates that up to two-fifths of the overall death toll are due to lockdown measures (lockdownsceptics.org).

As of 29 June 2021, Covid-related deaths per million inhabitants in different countries range from virtually zero in some (mainly smaller) countries to 5749 in Peru (worldometers). This massive range indicates that numerous factors must be at work: how deaths are counted; local climate and weather; demographics; population density; existing levels of health, healthcare and health hazards; toxic and harmful treatments, etc.

One of the factors to which the huge divergence in death rates has been attributed is ‘pre-existing immunity’. This concept, based on the virus theory, refers to T-cell immunity built up by exposure to other coronaviruses in the past, and it is thought to apply mainly to Asia. An important factor in the low death rate in certain countries is said to be early closure of borders, particularly in island nations like New Zealand and Australia (swprs.org). This assumes that human-to-human interaction is the main route for the transmission of the alleged virus. But various researchers, including Wickramasinghe and his team, believe that viruses are also carried around the world by winds.

In a study of 50 countries, Chaudhrya et al. (2020) found that increased COVID-19 mortality per million people was associated with higher obesity, an older population, higher unemployment rates, a higher gross domestic product (GDP), and greater income inequalities, while rapid border closures and full-scale lockdowns were not associated with statistically significant reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality. Nell et al. (2020), in a study of 146 countries, found that half of the enormous variance in Covid deaths per million in different countries can be explained by four factors: percentage of the population over the age of 70; obesity rate; prevalence rates for Covid comorbidities (diabetes, dementia, cardiovascular diseases, lower respiratory infections, respiratory diseases and kidney diseases); and healthcare expenditure per capita – wealthier nations prolong the life of the elderly beyond the age at which they have died in poorer countries, creating a group of people who are particularly vulnerable in disease outbreaks, especially after a weak prior influenza season. The authors also concluded: ‘Lockdowns do not appear to reduce deaths or flatten epidemic curves in any way.’

De Larochelambert et al. (2020), in a study of 160 countries, observed that higher Covid death rates occurred in the 25° to 65° latitude range north and south, and in the -35° to -125° longitude range. Higher death rates are associated with national criteria such as higher GDP, higher life expectancy (and greater proportions of older and frailer people), major metabolic risk factors (e.g. inactive lifestyle, poor nutrition quality, and obesity), greater prevalence of hypertension, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases (the most frequent comorbidities associated with Covid mortality), and cooler weather and lower ultraviolet radiation. They also found that the stringency of anti-pandemic measures, including lockdown, ‘did not appear to be linked with death rate’.

Herby et al. (2022) conducted a meta-analysis of 24 studies and found that lockdowns in Europe and the United States reduced Covid mortality by just 0.2%. Any benefits were more than offset by the devastating economic, social and psychological consequences. The analysis finds that lockdowns ‘contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy’, and concludes that ‘lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument’.

The psychological impact of both the restrictions imposed to control the epidemic and the coverage of the disease by mass and social media is of key importance. If people are exposed to endless sensationalized, fear-inducing propaganda and are gullible enough to believe it, this is likely to undermine their health. On the other hand, if the authorities assure the population that measures have been taken to prevent the disease being brought into the country, and that anyone already infected will be quickly tracked down and quarantined, that could reduce the level of anxiety.

Our health is determined by what we eat, drink, breathe, feel, think and believe. The power of the mind should not be underestimated. There is plenty of evidence that our beliefs, expectations and mood have a major impact on our health – for better (placebo effect) or for worse (nocebo effect) (see Mind, health and healing).

Malnourishment, poisoning and injuries can all result in organ dysfunctions, but so can emotionally and psychologically distressing experiences. Different types of ‘conflict shocks' affect different parts of the brain, resulting in symptoms in the corresponding organs or tissues (learninggnm.com). Respiratory problems, for instance, can result from various psychological conflicts involving fear (learninggnm.com; Hanley, 2018, pp. 144-51). This was rediscovered in modern times by Dr Ryke Geerd Hamer, founder of German New Medicine.

Fear is highly contagious and can be debilitating or even deadly. For instance, environmentalist John Perkins relates that when he was growing up in New Hampshire (USA), his parents convinced him that if his feet got wet, he had to change his socks and shoes immediately otherwise he would catch a cold. He found that when he failed to follow their advice, he did indeed get sick, though he noticed that some of his schoolmates did not. Years later he became acquainted with the Shuar, who assured him that no harm would come of having wet feet. He then discovered that he no longer contracted a cold, even after spending days in the rainforest with wet feet, and even in New Hampshire.

African doctors sometimes attribute AIDS sickness to ‘voodoo death’ syndrome, a term for psychologically induced illnesses. One nurse reported that, when a group of patients dying of AIDS were tested and found out that they were negative, they suddenly started to recover and regained perfect health (Young, 2016). A more extreme example: In 1853 two young Frenchmen were bitten by the same dog. One died of ‘rabies’ within a month, but the other was unaware of this as he had left for America. 15 years later he returned to France and learned of his former companion’s death. He then developed rabies symptoms himself and died within three weeks (Hume, 2018, p. 291).

In 2006, an episode of a popular teenage soap opera, Strawberries with Sugar, was broadcast in Portugal in which the characters got infected with a life-threatening virus and experienced rashes, dizziness and difficulty breathing. Soon afterwards over 300 Portuguese students were struck with the same symptoms and several schools had to close. An investigation concluded that the students’ symptoms were caused by watching the show, i.e. by mass hysteria (smithsonianmag.com). In 2007 a case was reported in which a young man involved in a clinical study attempted to commit suicide by taking an overdose of the experimental drug being tested. Convinced that he was going to die, he developed serious symptoms and arrived at the hospital sweating and shaking and with extremely low blood pressure. However, it turned out that he was part of the control group and the pills he had taken were placebos. When the doctor told him this, the man recovered within 15 minutes (acsh.org). On Emirates flight 203 in September 2018, several passengers were showing flu-like symptoms. Observing this, other passengers then started to feel sick, and panic broke out, resulting in all the passengers being quarantined on arrival in New York. An investigation revealed that only a few passengers were genuinely sick (buzzfeednews.com).

In a study of mass hysteria and COVID-19, Bagus et al. (2021) write: ‘Negative information which is spread through mass media repetitively can affect public health negatively in the form of nocebo effects and mass hysteria.’ Those affected may develop physical symptoms, including weakness, headaches or a choking feeling. This is known as mass psychogenic illness or epidemic hysteria, and can be a contributing factor in real epidemics. If a powerful state apparatus is controlled by a well-organized group infected by collective hysteria, the measures it imposes on the rest of the population can cause ‘almost unrestricted harm’, as the Covid crisis clearly shows. Lockdowns, coerced social isolation and other dehumanizing measures have led to a surge in stress and anxiety and undermined public health.

Despite the fact that most people’s risk of dying from COVID-19 is minuscule, an endless barrage of negative and biased news – including misleading statistics and emotional pictures of coffins, mass graves and patients on ventilators – has convinced countless people that a killer virus is on the rampage. A leaked internal document shows that, when the Covid crisis began, the German government was advised to instil fear in three main ways: by stressing the breathing problems of COVID-19 patients in order to trigger the primal human fear of death by suffocation; by convincing children that they can infect and kill their parents and grandparents; and by stressing the danger of irreversible long-term health damage and sudden death. As H.L. Mencken once wrote: ‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.’

An important factor in the epidemic is air pollution. COVID-19 symptoms are the same as air pollution symptoms: fever, tiredness, dry cough. The worst-hit areas all have a big air pollution problem. This link has been pointed out by Dr Sucharit Bhakdi, a renowned German microbiologist. He argues that coronaviruses have been circulating for a long time and cannot cause a severe epidemic. He calls the extreme response ‘grotesque’, ‘self-destructive’ and ‘collective suicide’ (youtube.com; swprs.org).

Wuhan (China), the initial epicentre of the pandemic, is one of the world’s most polluted cities. Wuhan experienced severe influenza outbreaks in the spring of 2018 and 2019, when air pollution indices were very high. Street protests about poor air quality took place there in the summer of 2019. Severe smog is also linked to the sharp rise in pneumonia cases in January 2020 (eurasiareview.com).

In Europe, northern Italy is one of regions worst hit by COVID-19; it is one of the most polluted areas and has one of the oldest populations in Europe. Conticini et al. (2020) investigated the correlation between COVID-19 and atmospheric pollution and concluded that ‘the high level of pollution in Northern Italy should be considered an additional co-factor of the high level of lethality recorded in that area’.

Yaron Ogen (2020) studied data from 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France and Germany, and found that 78% of COVID-19 fatalities occurred in five regions located in northern Italy and central Spain, and that these regions had the highest NO₂ concentrations combined with downwards airflow, which prevents efficient dispersal of air pollution. Like ozone, NO₂ can irritate the lungs and contribute to respiratory problems. He concludes: ‘These results indicate that the long-term exposure to this pollutant may be one of the most important contributors to fatality caused by the COVID-19 virus.’ Coccia (2020) also found that Italian cities with more than 100 days of air pollution exceeding the limits set for PM10 and ozone have a very high average number of infected individuals, and that inland cities with low wind speed have a higher number than coastal cities with high wind speed.

In a study of air pollution and COVID-19 in England, Travaglio et al. (2020) found that nitrogen oxides and ozone showed a significant correlation with the cumulative number of deaths, and nitrogen oxides showed a significant correlation with the cumulative number of cases. X. Wu et al. (2020) studied the correlation between long-term exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 deaths in the United States and found that an increase of 1 microgram of fine particulates (PM2.5) per cubic metre was correlated with an 8% increase in deaths. Jim West (2020, 2019) points out that in the US the most intense epicentres began in New York State in the same locations as the measles epicentres in 2019, and he links this to environmental pollution. In particular, he argues that cyanide poisoning caused by the petrochemical industry and the use of fracked fuel has played a key role worldwide. Hydrogen cyanide can cause many of the same symptoms as those attributed to COVID-19: cough, shortness of breath, hypoxia (low oxygen), fever/chills, muscle pain, throat irritation, changes in taste and smell, dizziness, weakness, headache, nausea, loss of appetite, diarrhoea, numbness.

There are undoubtedly numerous other factors that potentially contribute to ‘COVID-19’ mortality. For example, two massive vaccination campaigns against influenza and meningococcus were carried out in Lombardy in the months leading up to the outbreak, notably in the later hotspots of Bergamo and Brescia (bergamonews.it). Flu shots given to elderly people commonly contain contaminants like aluminium and mercury (neurotoxins), formaldehyde (a carcinogen), and polysorbate 80 (an emulsifier that breaks down the blood-brain barrier). Those who received the flu shot in the United States during the 2017-2018 flu season had a 36% increased risk of COVID-19 (Wolff, 2020). In a study of 39 countries, Wehenkel (2020) found a positive association between the national influenza vaccination rate (IVR) of people 65 years and older and reported COVID-19 deaths per million inhabitants; all the highest Covid death rates occurred in countries with IVR > 50%. This may be an example of what vaccine scientists call ‘antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of disease’ or ‘paradoxical immune enhancement’ – i.e. the ability of vaccination to undermine health (Arvin et al., 2020).

Nutritional deficiencies and the side effects of pharmaceutical drugs can also help account for COVID-19 symptoms. For example, zinc deficiency can cause cough, nausea, fever, pain, abdominal cramping, diarrhoea, loss of taste and smell, loss of appetite, fatigue and apathy, inflammation, and decreased immunity. ACE-inhibitor blood-pressure-lowering drugs, such as Lisinopril, can cause a dry, persistent cough, dizziness, nausea, headache and trouble breathing (Cowan & Morell, 2020, ch. 9). The side effects of the antiviral drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) include breathing difficulties and the worsening of existing respiratory diseases. Antipsychotics, opioid analgesics, anticholinergics and even antidepressants can also cause severe respiratory diseases, including pneumonia (Engelbrecht et al., 2021, ch. 12).

Some researchers have put forward the controversial claim that the rollout of 5G (fifth-generation wireless technology) is correlated with outbreaks of COVID-19 (coronadatencheck.com; weatherpeace.blogspot.com; Cowan & Morell, 2020, chs. 2, 14). Arthur Firstenberg writes: ‘5G is escalating the radio assault on our planet to a new level, using much higher frequencies, much greater bandwidth, and much greater power levels’; the proliferating 5G stations on the ground only have a limited geographic range, but coverage will be extended planet-wide when thousands of 5G satellites go into operation in the near future (cellphonetaskforce.org). As well as suffering lung damage (autopsies sometimes show lungs filled with microclots), COVID-19 patients have often lost their sense of smell, or they have headaches, dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, vomiting, muscle pain, tachycardia, hypotension, cardiac arrhythmias, hypoxia, coagulation disorders, strokes, and seizures – all of which are classic effects of radio waves (cellphonetaskforce.org). Jim West (2020) argues that 5G cannot be a major factor because 5G technology was not substantially present in all the Covid epicentres, but that electromagnetic smog is certainly a potential contributing factor. It should be borne in mind that hospitals are packed with sources of electromagnetic energy, often located next to patients’ heads.

Rubik & Brown (2021) note that COVID-19 began in Wuhan, China, shortly after the introduction of city-wide 5G, and ‘spread globally, demonstrating a statistical correlation to international communities with 5G antennas installed’. They study the scientific literature on the detrimental bioeffects of radiofrequency radiation (RFR) and identify several ways in which RFR may contribute to COVID-19 as a toxic environmental cofactor. They conclude that ‘RFR and, in particular, 5G, which involves 4G infrastructure densification, has exacerbated COVID-19 prevalence and severity’.

Dr Robert Young argues that Covid symptoms are primarily circulatory problems stemming from pathological blood coagulation, caused by toxicity or acidity (Freeman, 2020; drrobertyoung.com). Due to the compromised bioterrain, the blood is unable to remove its waste products and pick up oxygen, leading to cell-membrane breakdown and genetic mutation. People suffering from this condition will experience oxygen deprivation (hypoxia), and show symptoms identical to high-altitude sickness, as has been reported in some Covid patients. In Young’s view, contributing factors include electrical and magnetic fields (1G to 5G), acidic foods and fluids, environmental toxins, toxic drugs and vaccines, emotional stress and adverse lifestyle. The main treatment for Covid and other diseases is to restore a healthy alkaline condition to the body. The reason why hydroxychloroquine seems to work for many Covid patients, if administered in low doses, is because it raises the alkalinity of the blood as well as killing parasites. Those who stand to profit from more expensive drugs and vaccines have gone to great lengths to discredit HCQ. Nor is Big Pharma interested in reports of patients being successfully treated with ivermectin (another antiparasite drug), vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, or homeopathic remedies.

Top: Healthy red blood cells.
Bottom: Red blood cells with ‘corona effect’, indicating oxygen deprivation and radiation poisoning.

Hope-Simpson’s chart showing the seasonal and latitudinal patterns of influenza epidemics was presented in section 5. COVID-19 shows similar tropical and temperate patterns.

As the graph below illustrates, Europe shows a classic Gompertz curve (steep rise and slower decline), which is typically found in temperate regions, while Peru (military-style lockdown) and Brazil (no hard lockdown) show a tropical-type curve. The overall US curve is a combination of both types: the Gompertz curve for the northeastern USA, and the tropical-type curve for the southern and western USA (see Ivor Cummins).

Several studies have found that higher temperature, ultraviolet radiation and/or relative humidity are inversely correlated with Covid cases and deaths (lockdownsceptics.org). It is noteworthy that not a single European country saw deaths rise during the summer of 2020, even countries that did not experience a major spring wave.

Governments initially announced that the lockdowns would need to continue for a few weeks in order to ‘flatten the curve’. But even after the brief period of excess mortality ended, many restrictions remained in place, and the narrative changed. The message was that social distancing, masking and bans on large gatherings will have to continue indefinitely, or at least until ‘the virus’ disappears or a vaccine is introduced. By August, overall mortality in most European countries was back to average levels or had fallen below average. So the media stopped highlighting the number of deaths, and switched to creating panic about spikes in ‘cases’ (the inevitable result of increased testing) and the risk of a ‘second wave’ – ignoring the fact that most of the people concerned were not even ill, that few people were dying, and that ‘positive’ test results are deeply flawed, if not meaningless. Spain saw one of the biggest spikes in cases, but around 75% showed no symptoms, only 3% required hospital treatment, less than 0.5% needed intensive care, and the death rate was only 0.3% (bbc.com). By November 2020, various European countries were reintroducing harsher shutdowns again, despite the failure of the original lockdown to have any measurable effect on the ‘spread of the virus’.

Dr Mike Yeadon (2020) calls the overhyped UK ‘casedemic’ in autumn 2020 a ‘PCR false positive pseudo-epidemic’. The cure, he says, is simple: stop mass testing. This is not the first PCR-induced panic. In 2006 a hospital in New Hampshire in the United States diagnosed 134 of cases of whooping cough using PCR (the positive rate was around 15%). Physicians dutifully accepted this explanation of the patients’ coughs and colds, and thousands of health workers were given antibiotics and vaccines. On further investigation, however, it was found that not a single person was infected with the bacterium thought to cause the disease: 100% of the PCR positives were false and the whooping cough epidemic never happened (nytimes.com).

Every winter sees increased mortality (from flu and other causes), with deaths often peaking in January/February and then falling. Politicians took advantage of this to ramp up hysteria and justify oppressive measures, and then claimed credit when deaths declined. In Europe, some countries experienced moderate or high excess mortality in spring 2020 but low excess mortality in the autumn/winter (e.g. Netherlands, Sweden); some had little excess mortality in the spring, but moderate to high excess mortality in the autumn/winter (e.g. Germany, Slovenia); some had moderate or high excess mortality in both periods (e.g. United Kingdom, France, Belgium); and some had virtually no excess mortality in both periods (e.g. Norway, Finland) (see euromomo.eu).

The following graph shows WHO figures on flu cases worldwide since 2009 (the year of the swine flu epidemic). Thanks to Covid mania, flu supposedly disappeared almost entirely after the first quarter of 2020. In reality, many flu and pneumonia deaths have been labelled as ‘Covid’ deaths (DeMeo, 2021).

The man-made coronavirus crisis provides a stark lesson in mass psychosis. Spreading fear and panic about a ‘deadly virus’ can rapidly turn the majority of the population into obedient sheep who will gladly isolate themselves, cover their faces, avoid close human contact (fellow humans are now to be viewed as ‘agents of contagion’), accept bans on children playing and going to school, and accept the destruction of businesses and livelihoods, in the delusional belief that this will provide ‘protection’ and ‘save lives’. In reality, lockdowns lead to massive suffering, despair and loss of life. Liberties are being eroded, government control over our lives is being expanded, and mass surveillance is being strengthened. With funding from the US Defense Department and Bill Gates, Profusa is developing a permanent hydrogel chip, about the size of a grain of rice, that could be injected into the body, perhaps together with a vaccine, and provide feedback to a database on changes in body chemistry and other biometrics. The idea is to detect ‘Covid’ before any symptoms appear (tapnewswire.com).

The World Economic Forum and many world leaders are calling for a ‘Great Reset’, a ‘fourth industrial revolution’, under the slogan ‘build back better’. This agenda is being sold to the public using feel-good terms like sustainability, social justice, food justice, climate-smart agriculture, and poverty reduction. In reality, however, wealth would be concentrated to an even greater degree in the hands of the powerful global elites and giant corporations, such as Big Tech (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft) and Big Pharma (Roche, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, etc.), whose profits have soared since the Covid crisis began. These forces are colluding in measures that could ultimately lead to an authoritarian, technocratic regime of digital surveillance, censorship and centralized control that enforces obedience and conformism.

Despite blatant attempts to censor and crush dissent, there are signs of growing popular, scientific and legal opposition to the dystopian perversity of the ‘new normal’ (worlddoctorsalliance.com; gbdeclaration.org; anhinternational.org). Reiner Fuellmich, a German lawyer specializing in the prosecution of fraudulent corporations, and a member of the German Corona Investigative Committee, is planning to take the WHO (and other players) to court for crimes against humanity (jermwarfare.com).

The lockdown experiment is a complete failure. As the graph below shows, there is no overall correlation between lockdown severity and deaths per million. But most pro-lockdown politicians and health officials are incapable of admitting that the restrictions were a cruel and murderous mistake. The Covid craze resembles a dogmatic religious cult and has much in common with the climate alarmist cult. Unvalidated computer models are used to generate doomsday scenarios. And when forecasts and interventions fail, a clique of politicians, ‘experts’ and mainstream opinion-makers – motivated by the desire for wealth, power and social control – fight hard to uphold the faith and silence critics, in the hope that the masses will continue to look to the cult for their salvation.

Numerous real-life studies of facemask users have found that masks make no significant contribution to preventing respiratory diseases when compared with a control group of non-users (Rancourt, 2020b, 2020c, 2020d; childrenshealthdefense.org; cebm.net; swprs.org). Virus believers say that this is because the main transmission path is aerosol particles smaller than 2.5 microns (millionths of a metre), which are far too tiny to be blocked, and a single particle is sufficient to cause infection (Rancourt, 2020b). Macintyre et al. (2015) conducted the only published randomized controlled trial (RCT) of cloth masks among healthcare workers and cautioned against their use: ‘Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection.’ Xiao et al. (2020) studied 14 RCTs and found that the use of facemasks and hand hygiene in nonhealthcare settings ‘did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza’. A Danish RCT in early 2020 found that high-quality surgical facemasks have no statistically significant effect on the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate in a community setting (Bundgaard et al., 2020; Kaufman, 2020); three prominent journals rejected this paper because of its politically incorrect message. A February 2021 review by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) found no significant evidence supporting the effectiveness of medical or nonmedical facemasks in the community (ecdc.europa.eu). Some scientists and organizations have actually been forced to retract earlier statements about the ineffectiveness of masks (architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk).

In its influenza guidelines, the WHO (2019) stated: ‘Ten RCTs were included in the meta-analysis, and there was no evidence that facemasks are effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza.’ It also stated that ‘RCTs have not found that hand hygiene is effective in reducing transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza’, and that there is ‘no evidence’ that surface and object cleaning is effective in reducing respiratory disease transmission in the community.

Not surprisingly, poorly designed (often theoretical) studies funded by those with a financial stake in the official Covid narrative find that masks are effective (truthbarrier.com). It has also been claimed that although facemasks don’t protect the wearer, they are somehow able to stop transmission from the wearer to others. Dennis Rancourt (2020d) calls this ‘the fantasy of the magical one-way mask’.

Masks can have adverse effects, since they reduce oxygen intake and force people to reinhale their own waste CO₂, thereby acidifying the blood. Rancourt (2021) reviews the growing body of scientific evidence on the physical, psychological and developmental harm caused by masks, and concludes: ‘Universal masking harms people and society, without any detectable benefit.’ But in some countries people are now being advised to wear two (or more) masks! Schools in China, however, are prohibiting students from wearing masks while exercising, after three children died during physical education classes. In the US, the 20 states that have never ordered people to wear facemasks have lower COVID-19 death rates than the 30 states that have mandated masks (cellphonetaskforce.org). But muzzling the population is a good way of perpetuating fear and enforcing obedience.

The financial interests of governments, Big Pharma and major vaccine-pushers such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are so closely intertwined that, not surprisingly, there’s a concerted effort to pursue a billion-dollar global vaccination strategy, including vaccine passports (swprs.org; cimmigrationnews.com). It normally takes up to 10 years or more for vaccines to be thoroughly tested and approved, but this process was compressed into just 10 months. However, as the British Medical Journal points out: ‘History shows many examples of serious adverse events from vaccines brought to market in periods of enormous pressure and expectation.’ In 1976, an untested swine flu vaccine was administered to 46 million Americans resulting in 4000 claims amounting to $3.5 billion in compensation; two-thirds of the claims were for neurological damage (childrenshealthdefense.org). The Pandemrix vaccine against the 2009 swine flu also led to thousands of cases of narcolepsy (a neurological disorder), particularly among children and adolescents, and to claims for compensation in the millions (ibtimes.co.uk; bmj.com). In most countries, Covid vaccine manufacturers have already been exempted from liability for any injuries or deaths caused by their fast-tracked vaccines.

Despite all the misleading hype, Covid vaccine trials were not designed to detect whether the vaccines can reduce virus transmission or serious outcomes such as hospitalizations and deaths, or to evaluate vaccine effectiveness for the elderly and other vulnerable groups (bmj.com); a reduction in minor symptoms is sufficient for the vaccines to be labelled a success, and no consideration is given to long-term effects. Serious complications and failures have been reported in the testing of new coronavirus vaccines (childrenshealthdefense.org; childrenshealthdefense.org; forbes.com), which include next-generation, gene-tampering vaccines (childrenshealthdefense.org). Concerns have been expressed in the medical literature that COVID-19 vaccines could cause antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) or vaccine hypersensitivity (VAH), leading to more severe cases of Covid (Coish & MacNeil, 2020; Cardozo & Veazey, 2020; anhinternational.org). Adequate information on this risk was not provided to vaccine-trial participants; nor is it being made available to the public.

The experimental Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccines are intended to biohack our cells so that they produce the coronavirus ‘spike’ protein (which the virus is said to use to gain entry to our cells), and provoke an antibody response. Both vaccines contain the adjuvant PEG (polyethylene glycol), which can trigger a serious adverse immune response and result in anaphylaxis (i.e. severe allergic reaction or shock) (childrenshealthdefense.org). In the phase 2 trial of the Moderna vaccine, 80% of the volunteers in the medium- and high-dose groups (average age 33 years and healthy) reacted with moderate to severe side effects (swprs.org). In the large phase 3 studies, Moderna states that 9% experienced grade 3 myalgia and 10% grade 3 fatigue, while Pfizer states that 3.8% experienced grade 3 fatigue and 2% grade 3 headache. Grade 3 adverse events are those severe enough to prevent daily activity, and can trigger long-term health challenges affecting the nervous system or autoimmunity (bmj.com; anhinternational.org). 1.2% of those receiving the Pfizer vaccine and 1% of those receiving the Moderna vaccine suffered a severe or life-threatening adverse event.

There are several problems with the Pfizer vaccine (rairfoundation.com; Reiss & Bhakdi, 2020, ch. 7). First, it has not been tested on elderly people with pre-existing conditions; it has mainly been tested on healthy, young subjects – up to 50% of whom suffered fever, chills, muscle pain, joint pain, headaches and nausea, whereas 85-90% of people who test positive for Covid do not fall ill. Moreover, the production of antibodies is never a guarantee of immunity. Second, the vaccine can cause very serious allergic reactions. Third, earlier tests on animals show that such vaccines (for SARS-CoV-1) can cause an adverse immune overreaction; the vaccinated animals almost died (Tseng et al., 2012). That’s why the mRNA vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 were exempted from animal testing. Fourth, there is a major risk of autoimmune reactions, and also embolismic disturbance which could cause death or female infertility. While many people will not eat genetically modified food, they seem eager to inject their own bodies with a potentially gene-altering vaccine.

Both Pfizer and Moderna claim that their vaccines are 95% effective. The figures for the Pfizer phase 3 trial are as follows: 44,000 participants, split evenly between the vaccine group and the placebo group; the outcome was 162 Covid cases (0.736% of the participants) in the placebo group compared with eight (0.036%) in the vaccine group (bmj.com). This means that the number of cases in the vaccine group was about 95% lower than in the placebo group. However, it also means that those in the vaccine group were only 0.7% (= 0.736 - 0.036) less likely to get Covid than those in the placebo group. To put it another way, the reduction in the relative Covid risk is 95%, while the reduction in the absolute Covid risk is only 0.7% (ryerson.ca; archive.is). Moreover, if we were to include the 3410 cases of suspected Covid-19 (1594 in the vaccine group vs. 1816 in the placebo group) that were not confirmed by PCR, the relative risk reduction would fall to 19% (bmj.com).

People in the vaccine group were three to four times more likely to take medicines to suppress symptoms like pain and fever, which could reduce their chances of being classed as having Covid at the end of the trial. In addition, staff knew who had received the vaccine and who had received the placebo so they may have given the placebo group more tests on the assumption that they are more likely to get Covid. In vaccine recipients, symptoms like headache, fever and chills may have been regarded as vaccine side-effects rather than Covid. Both Pfizer and Moderna have refused to disclose all the data on the grounds that this would not be in the public interest.

Like other manufacturers, Pfizer was allowed to terminate its vaccine trial after six months because it was considered ‘unethical’ to deny the vaccine to people in the control group. This made it impossible to detect long-term vaccine injuries. Pfizer’s final report on its trial indicates that 17 people died in the control group (from all causes) compared with 21 in the vaccine group, due to excess heart attack fatalities in vaccinated individuals.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, like the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, uses an adenovirus to deliver DNA to our cells so that they make the spike protein. The phase 3 trials for the vaccine were conducted in Britain, Brazil and South Africa. The British and Brazilian arms were single-blind, meaning that the researchers knew who was in the vaccine group and who was in the control group – this is unforgivable as it increases the risk of the results being manipulated. In addition, the control group in both these two arms was not given a proper placebo (salt water), but the meningitis vaccine, which is known to produce significant side effects. Only the South African arm used a proper placebo and was double-blind, but its results have not been published. The results from the two inferior studies showed that 0.5% of those who received the Covid vaccine developed symptomatic Covid, compared with 1.7% of those who received the meningitis vaccine. Two people in the Covid vaccine group developed transverse myelitis, an extremely rare and serious neurological condition; one of those people had undiagnosed multiple sclerosis (sebastianrushworth.com).

Post-vaccination deaths reported to VAERS, 1990 to 11 March 2022 (OpenVAERS).
About half are US reports and the rest are foreign reports.

The CDC is not interested in investigating whether reported vaccine deaths are in fact caused by vaccination. In fact, it discourage autopsies of people who die following vaccination. This enables it to dismiss reported deaths as ‘coincidences’. Peter Schirmacher, a leading pathologist, examined 40 people who died within two weeks of vaccination and found that at least 30% to 40% of the deaths were caused by the vaccine. In September 2021, two other German doctors performed autopsies on 10 people who died following vaccination, and found that five deaths were very probably related to the jab and two more were probably related.

In March 2021 more than 20 countries suspended Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccinations due to reports of cerebral blood clots – some resulting in death – in healthy people who received the vaccine (childrenshealthdefense.org). The European Medicines Agency trotted out the usual mantra: ‘The benefits outweigh the risks.’

Every effort will be made to hail Covid vaccination as a success: more active antibody production may temporarily suppress Covid-type symptoms; adverse reactions will receive as little publicity as possible; doctors will be less inclined to diagnose Covid in vaccinated people; and the number of amplification cycles in the PCR test can be lowered to reduce the number of people testing positive (in April 2021 the CDC recommended reducing the number from around 35 to no more than 28 when testing vaccinated people!). The long-term effects of the new vaccines are entirely unknown: billions of people are basically being used as lab rats. (See Covid-19, section 5, for updated information.)

In November 2020 the British Medical Journal accused politicians and governments of suppressing science for political and financial gain.

The germaphobia now infecting much of the world like a mental virus is an irrational fear based on ignorance. Anxiety and stress lower resistance and make people more susceptible to illness, including the ‘infection’ they fear.

In the current climate of media-fuelled hysteria and paranoia, disease is being blamed on evil pathogens, or on ‘infected’ people who don’t keep their distance or wear masks or apply enough hand sanitizer. We’re even supposed to believe that a person in apparently perfect health can ‘infect’ us and kill us – a thoroughly sick mentality. Yet we are already crawling with hundreds of trillions of microbes and draw them in with every breath. Bacteria aid the human digestive system and promote health. Bacteria and fungi are also found in many foods, including cheese, yoghurt, olives and tempeh. Even the conventional germ theory teaches that we build ‘immunity’ by coming into contact with microbes, not by hiding in our homes (which are also full of them), or behind masks and visors. A young child develops its immune system by grabbing everything within reach and putting its hands or other objects in its mouth, not by being isolated or placed in a sterilized environment. Ironically, germaphobes tend to long for vaccination, which introduces ‘pathogens’ and toxins directly into the body and disrupts the immune system.

One litre of seawater contains over 20,000 species of bacteria and 10 billion ‘viruses’ – known as bacteriophages – that exist in symbiosis with simple organisms like one-celled algae. Engelbrecht et al. comment:

There is no such thing as a risk-free life; the risk of dying begins the moment we’re born. The fanatical attempt to eradicate Covid, a relatively minor risk, no matter how many lives are wrecked or destroyed in the process, is delusional and a crime against humanity. While numerous people have succumbed to the mass delusion, others have experienced an awakening. Many people can see that the official narrative does not add up and that massive harm is being inflicted. And some people have explored further and discovered that the germ theory is false, and that good physical and mental health is primarily our own responsibility.

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COVID-19 survival rates per age group in the United States
0-17 years 18-49 years 50-64 years 65+ years	99.998% 99.95% 99.4% 91%
(cdc.gov, 19 March 2021)

Ozone, Influenza and the Causes of Disease

David Pratt

Contents

1. Causes of death and disease

2. Blavatsky: ozone and influenza

3. Richter: weather, ozone and epidemics

4. Modern science: ozone and health

Overview

Troposphere and stratosphere

Research findings

Therapeutic and other uses

5. Flu epidemics and vaccination

Flu vaccination

6. Panspermia and cosmic invaders

7. Disease and microbes: cause and effect

Bacteria and viruses

Epidemics

8. Virus mania and COVID-19

Epidemics of fear

COVID-19: an orgy of stupidity