Guest Post by Alex Berenson
The people who brought you Covid are really hoping to make bird flu a thing.
Scare stories about a potential epidemic of H5N1 influenza have taken off this week, with New York Times asking if we’re ready for “Back-to-Back Pandemics.”
(Or maybe Back-to-Back-and-Belly-to-Belly pandemics?)
Worst of all, Neil Ferguson is now making H5N1 predictions. Ferguson is the British epidemiologist who helped stampede the world into lockdown in 2020 with dire predictions of Covid patients overrunning hospitals. The rules didn’t apply to him, though, he made sure his married (not to him) girlfriend could drop by even when he had Covid.
(Side piece exemption! In his defense, she’s cute:)
(SOURCE)
—
Anyway, this time around, Ferguson thinks lots of people could die from bird flu. Or maybe almost nobody. It just depends. But that’s no reason not to be scared!
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Or don’t.
In case you’re wondering, the H5N1 influenza strain is not new. Scientists first found it in Scotland in 1959. It probably existed long before that.
And yes, H5N1 is highly lethal… to birds, and to any humans who are unlucky enough to be infected with it. But it has never spread between humans – and the lack of human-to-human transmission is not a coincidence.
The genetic quirks that make H5N1 so effective at sickening birds mean that it is less than ideally adapted to infecting humans. As researchers wrote in 2019, the specific “preference” that helps make the H5N1 strain so lethal “can also impair replication and aerosolization.”
Again, this interplay between lethality and ability to spread for mRNA respiratory viruses is not new. Nor is it confined to H5N1. Or the flu. In the last 20 years, both MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) and the original SARS have turned out to be highly lethal coronaviruses. But they barely spread, especially outside hospitals.
The biological realities of both virus and host are responsible for this seesaw.
At the molecular level viruses have to “choose” how to mutate the spikes that attach to human cell receptors, for example. Attacking cells deep in the lungs better may mean attacking those in the upper airways less strongly.
But even if a virus could somehow make itself incredibly lethal and highly transmissible, doing so might not be in its best interest. A respiratory virus that sickens hosts too efficiently reduces its own odds of surviving by quickly making that host too sick to move and thus carrying it to other potential targets.
Viruses like smallpox have a longer incubation period, so they can spread person-to-person before they make people very sick. Not coincidentally, they have a much higher infection fatality rate than the flu or Covid. The ultimate example of this is HIV, which people can spread for years before it sickens them, and which without treatment eventually kills almost everyone it infects.
But coronaviruses and influenza are NOT HIV. And they don’t want to be.
—
Simple thought experiment: Imagine a moderately dangerous, moderately transmissible coronavirus. It mutates in ways that makes it more dangerous. And more dangerous still.
Suddenly our middling little coronavirus is a supervirus, killing anyone unlucky enough to get it posthaste.
Danger Will Robinson!
Except. Even if superCovid hasn’t traded any theoretical transmissibility at the cellular level to increase its lethality, in reality its transmissibility is plunging because its hosts are getting so sick so fast. And with fewer new hosts, the supervirus has fewer chances to mutate to raise its transmissibility again.
It is caught in a trap of its own making.
I strongly suspect that in the absence of gain of function research – that is, human-directed engineering that simultaneously maximizes both lethality and transmissibility – influenza and coronaviruses may simply never be able to evolve in both ways at once.
Can I prove my comforting little theory? Like prove prove? I cannot. I’m not sure anyone can – not without spending a few lifetimes and a few billion dollars investigating viral transmission at the cellular level. Even then a lot of modeling and guesswork would be required. But it sure feels right, and it would explain the lack of any major respiratory virus pandemics between 1919 and 2020.
—
Maybe this time bird flu will break the rules. Maybe we have stuck so many chickens so close together for so long that H5N1 will hit the supervirus lottery and become both highly lethal and highly transmissible. But we’ve been breeding chickens on nastily crowded farms for a long time and this is what H5N1 human cases look like over the last 20 years:
(The bird flu outbreak will call you back later:)
—
So what’s really going on? Why the sudden interest in bird flu?
How do I put this politely?
The most likely explanation is more economic than biological. Covid supercharged spending on virology, epidemiology, and immunology. A LOT of people, and not just in the United States, made a lot of money on that gravy train.
But all good epidemics must come to an end – even in countries foolish enough to use mRNA vaccines (let’s hope, anyway) – and Covid is no exception.
What’s a good epidemiologist to do now?
Release the chickens!
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Here’s a problem for epidemiologists; people like me.
They told so many lies and promlugated so many ridiculous solutions to their imaginary problems that a significant portion of the population- at least in terms of raw numbers- no longer believe in virology or its basic premise. I’d never encountered the term terrain theory before in my life and assumed, like most people, that illness spread the same way smoke from a fire operates, on a level you couldn’t see, but could be exposed to just by being in the same space. I find that notion ridiculous now and it sounds a lot more like medieval style medicine than it does reality; vapors, humors and the like. Seeing how many horrible errors they made, if it was indeed motivated by goodwill rather than as a coordinated fraud at all levels, one could only conclude that most people in the medical field were ignorant of the most basic facts regarding human health.
Therein lies the problem going forward. I look at doctors and nurses now the same way I regard politicians and bankers. Greedy frauds siphoning wealth from people by scaring them into thinking they need their services. I don’t know what they are teaching in medical schools, but it’s probably the same thing that you’d get in a gender studies course, useless pap. Maybe I’m throwing the baby out with the bathwater, who knows, but I wouldn’t go to a doctor for anything other than a traumatic injury, even if I was having a heart attack. I would literally rather die on the front yard than get into an ambulance today and if I have any influence on my children, none of their children will ever take any kind of vaccine for anything ever again.
It was like watching a beloved teacher being hauled off in handcuffs for molesting children. Everything you trusted- and that was 90% of medicine for most people- is gone. All of their degrees and titles mean diddly squat today because they proved they had no clue how to handle something that should have been a no brainer by introducing all these brand new solutions that were based not on research or studies, but political mandates. They were just another kind of commisar or capo enforcing diktats of the ruling class rather than trying to care for their patients.
Even if they are right about some things, there are millions of people who will never believe anything they say going forward and for those who have real health concerns, it will probably make a lot of public health issues much worse. In the same way that STD’s are rampant in the AA community because of blowback from the Tuskegee experiment, the aftermath of the Covid hoax will far surpass their worst expectations.
And knowing how they operate, one has to consider the possibility that that may have been the intent all along.
I sure hope you are right Hardscrabble. I’m with you. I’ve learned more about so called medicine and medical treatment in the last 3 years than I ever thought I would. But I had some foreknowledge as I somehow subscribed to Jon Rapoport’s email newsletters 20 years ago.
I have no other explanation for the life changes experienced by my wife and I. By all rights we should have been the picture of health 15 years ago. We had a stable home, high income, top shelf health insurance, regular visits to the doctors for check ups and blood work, access to the best foods, good genetics and in our prime years.
And yet we we always ill. I was overweight, had terrible insomnia, sleep apnea, regular bouts of colds and flu, my wife was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, etc.
Now after 15 years with no health coverage, no visits to the doctor, and a life that could only be described as low income bordering poverty, we no longer suffer from any of it. She’s had zero symptoms in over a decade, works with her hands cleaning people’s homes, I’m exposed to more pathogens on a daily basis than bio-lab worker, work longer hours than I did in the military, exposed to every kind of weather, all day, every day and I’m in better shape than anyone in my generational cohort and even better thanmy own body was at 45. The last medication I took was a post-op antibiotic after the operation on my foot after my fall four years ago.
How does modern medicine explain that?
My belief now is that healthy organisms are resistant to oportunistic infections and diseases. We’re exposed to them constantly, but they can only take advantage of something that is already weakened from stress, poor diet, lack of adequate rest, etc. For the last three years the medical establishment has dismissed such thinking as ridiculous, insisting that obesity is a misunderstood form of fitness, that anxiety should be teated with mind altering drugs that mask it rather than seeking out the root causes and eliminating them from your life and even that our souls can be trapped in the wrong bodies justifying amputation of healthy body parts. If this isn’t some kind of madness I don’t know how you’d describe it.
Fantastic. And less stress since you bought your freedom/ own your life. Stress messes people up, so Mental Terrain must be a thing also.
I take my dog to the dog park everyday, for reasons. About a week ago there was a young girl there who commented on my dog and said she had two dogs but leaves the one thats sick at home. The dog apparently has digestive issues.
She tells me the vets tell her they can’t find the problem. I interrupted to say I bet they tell you they need this xray, this blood work up, this diagnostic test, try this meds, try this special (expensive) food… and still can’t find the problem. She’s nodding the whole time. I asked her if she knew what that was called. Its called the upsell. And they will continue to upsell until you have spent 6 – 10K on your dog. Milking you of every penny they can. She was at about the 6K mark.
Her eyes popped when I asked her if they did the same in the medical community. They too do not want to ‘cure’ anything, its all about upselling, money. Tests, meds, scans, blood works, etc etc etc. I think, I hope, she was red pilled that day.
Healthy living is THE best medicine for everything, its a great prophylactic for sick bodies and minds and avoiding the medical criminals. Get some.
Well said HF, I agree 100%. I’ve been to a doctor twice since I ETSed from the Army 40 years ago. My last doctor visit was 2016 and the VA quack tried to put me on 3 different meds that he said I’d have to stay on permanently. I told him no thanks and never went back again. The last time I took a needle in the arm was when I was in the Army. The medical coding system is tracking the unvaxxxed, so now when you go to get your teeth cleaned your dentist is reporting your vaxxx status to Big Brother. I don’t know about the optometrist, but I suspect they do as well.
When someone asks me about my health care I tell them that I stay the bloody hell away from doctors. I’ve had several ask me if I think I know more than someone who’s had 8 years of medical school and an internship. My answer is that I know my own body far more intimately than any other person possibly could and there’s no doubt that I know way more about the side effects of statins than the quack who tried to prescribe them to me.
All the systems in this country are set up to enslave you. Food, medical, education, utilities, (in)justice, banking, you name it, they are all designed to construct a cage around you. Anyone who gives one iota about their personal liberty will find ways to opt out of all these bullshit systems.
Scrabble, you “called it” more than 2 weeks ago labeling everything a ponzi scheme.
Surely if the health industry were a subcategory of finance, it’d be called a Ponzi scheme. From the must publish papers to the “research” grants.
Again, Live Free or Die.
Moar virusisms? Walt thought they were doing aliens next.
Well, they floated the idea as a triar barroon; but it got shot down.
Lucy and her football always find sucker Charlie Browns:
What I want to know is how an obvious pencil-necked geek, a scum-sucking freak with a lousy physique, managed to get ANY woman to crawl into bed with him.
Money, the universal lubricunt.
It likely never happened, it was just narrative management and behavioural science.
1. At the time pencil neck needed to be removed from his staring role, as his claims were being heavily criticized by some scientists.
2. Scandal is a great distraction, the public is encouraged by the media to be outraged at the ‘rule breaking’ and take schadenfreude delight at lover boys misfortune and dismissal.
3. Public are duped into holding the position that ‘rule breaking ‘ is unforgivable and must be punished.
Brought to you by,
‘The Behavioural Insights Team’
(Incorporating, The Gaslighers Guild, and Narcissists Anonymous)
True, the Machine is built out of lies. Skepticism in all it belches forth.
“So far, there is no proof that a strand of H5N1 can spread between humans, nor that it will. Yet the hysteria surrounding avian flu far surpasses that which accompanies the yearly arrival of a new flu strand, which regularly kills hundreds of people. And it far surpasses the attention given to other diseases, such as diarrhea, which claim at least 3 million lives a year in poor countries.
The reason for this hysteria is the prediction that, if this virus mutates into a form transmissible between humans, tens of millions will be at risk – as in the 1918 pandemic that killed 50 million to 100 million people. But what is the rational response to such predictions?”
From here: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/opinion/h5n1-hysteriapatent-nonsense-on-avian-flu.html
No one in the MSM dared talk this way during the Scamdemic.
What has changed since this Op-Ed was published in 2005?
Smith Mundt
Remember folks..
‘Don’t put your dickin a chickin’