Infection and Illness

It is always amazing to me to encounter infectious laughter.  Whether in a crowd at a comedy club, or hanging out with a group of friends. To observe and be a part of the very real phenomenon of the infectious spread of energy amongst people is one of the most satisfying of human experiences. Almost as interesting is to observe those members of the group who don’t laugh, don’t participate in that shared energy. Why don’t they laugh? Did they not understand the joke? Maybe they already heard it and so are “immune” to the funny. Some laugh late, after a majority has joined in, but some can truly not be moved (infected). Regardless, that kind of an infection is an indicator of health. It is good for us to experience joy, and it can spread like an epidemic. The principles of epidemiology can even be used to track such a joy infection. So, obviously, that is not an illness.  But we think about infection as being related to illness, right? I suggest that is a misguided and incorrect concept. What if infection is simply the transmission of information?

Now consider another type of infection: Candida. Candida is a fungus that can cause severe illness in vulnerable people. Yet, if we test for the presence of it on anyone, it will be found – in the healthy and the ill alike. It is considered a commensal organism, meaning that it belongs in and on us. Every human has Candida, but very few will ever be ill with it. As a commensal, it gives and receives information to us and from us. When that flow of information breaks down, that is when illness ensues. Does the medical system do widespread testing for the presence of Candida? No. Why? Because that would serve no useful purpose – we already know it’s there. We wait for an ill person, with a clinical picture of fungal disease before we do the appropriate test to characterize it. That approach to clinical and diagnostic medicine was crushed and tossed into the waste bin of history at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Science and his lackies would like to keep it that way.

Take a look at the attempts that the Disease Industrial Complex (DIC) – my term of endearment – has made to entrap us into fear and compliance. Swine Flu, West Nile Virus, Ebola, Zika, COVID. More recently – Monkey Pox, Bird Flu, Disease X.  Bird Flu is their current effort. We’re told to fear the milk we drink, and we’re fed dramatic stories about people being infected – and having, wait for it, red eyes. Now, the DICs are attempting to scare is with the news that a man in Mexico died from the Bird Flu. Yet… the Mexican health ministry disputes that report, and even the WHO admits that the man had been in an extended hospitalization with multiple medical problems and he had no exposure to the animals that might have carried the Flu. As for our farm animals, once you dig through the hype you cannot find any credible information that birds or mammals are showing an epidemic spread of flu illness. Animal deaths are reported, but the why is revealing as to the hidden agenda. Recent aggressive testing has uncovered more “infection”, and infection leads to culling of the animals. So, similar to the COVID pandemic, increased infection (positive tests) has led to increased death – but from the misguided actions taken by people, not the disease process.I expect this Bird Flu nonsense to go the way of the Monkey Pox. But I’m not reassured. Each iteration of the abortive epidemics is a learning laboratory for the DICs. They are working to perfect their art of the scare. Watch and wait for Disease X.As our society struggles to move past the “global pandemic”, there is an inertia that works to hold us ensnared in a mind trap. That trap is baited with fear. We have been convinced that there is always a catastrophic illness waiting in the dark, over in some remote part of the world, or brewing in the environment around us. The tricky part of that fear form is that it leads us to believe that we have no control, no personal ability to identify the risk, protect ourselves, or recover from an encounter with that deadly disease. We have been indoctrinated into an illusion of incompetence.Somehow every other lifeform on the planet has the ability to sense its environment, identify and avoid harms, move toward what is beneficial, and recover from injury or disease. But not the modern human (known as Homo Sapiens Domesticus – hat tip to Daniel Vitalis). We have been enculturated into a state of being fearful of infection. There is a fundamental lack of understanding about our relationship to the world we live in and the elements of health and disease.Here is the foundational element: Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.This definition comes from the World Health Organization. I like it because of its focus on well-being, which, interestingly, is rarely discussed, measured, or incorporated into any treatment plan in the allopathic medical model. It suggests that health involves balance in those aspects of our lives. Along with that we still maintain health while dealing with disease or infirmity. Many people in remission from cancer or living with controlled Diabetes or Hypertension or other chronic conditions see themselves as healthy. I encounter them daily in my practice. If we shift focus to being well, much of the fear and uncertainty around illness and disease can be brushed away. Stay well until you don’t feel well, then do the common sense things to get better. If you’re a dairy farmer who gets red eyes, go home and rest them. If you’re at school and you get a fever and a cough, go home and get some vitamin C and warm soup. All the while, focus on that complete state of balanced health. Should those measures not work and things get worse, then get some professional help. The take away message is – don’t test for infection. You only become a tool of the DICs. You (and the others being tested) will be used by them to manufacture the next pandemic state of fear. Testing is reserved for unexplained illness. I guarantee that testing for infection will spread the fear pandemic more quickly and widely than any healthy, infectious laughter will be able to overcome.

Of Vaccines and Viruses

The time is upon us. A COVID-19 vaccine will soon be made available to “protect you” from the scourge of SARS-CoV-2. What will you do, when it is offered? You owe it to yourself to be well informed about what this COVID vaccine is, what it does for you and to you, and your reasoning behind the decision to take or decline the shot.

As I have written about before: what vaccines are, what they do in the body, and their impact on health is a complex topic. Take all of those issues and apply an exponential to the complexity factor as you sit down to learn about the COVID-19 vaccines. To kick off the consideration: non-influenza viral respiratory tract infections are the most common illnesses in people and are estimated to cost more than $40 billion annually. What a goldmine it would be to offer a vaccine to protect against winter viruses! Yet it has never happened. Take your own deep dive into why that is, but here it will suffice to say that has never happened because it can’t – at least not by using the standard rules of vaccine development and licensing. But these “warp speed” vaccines are different and innovative, say the developers and health officials. Yes, they are, but those innovative technologies are not new – they just never have been developed into a marketable product – because, again, they can’t be as long as companies are held to the rules.

mRNA Vaccines Are New, But Not Unknown

There are currently no licensed mRNA vaccines in the United States. However, researchers have been studying and working with them for decades. Interest has grown in these vaccines because they can be developed in a laboratory using readily available materials. This means the process can be standardized and scaled up, making vaccine development faster than traditional methods of making vaccines.

mRNA vaccines have been studied before for flu, Zika, rabies, and cytomegalovirus (CMV). As soon as the necessary information about the virus that causes COVID-19 was available, scientists began designing the mRNA instructions for cells to build the unique spike protein into an mRNA vaccine.

The declarations of a global pandemic and a US public health emergency have changed all the rules. Specifically, all devices/diagnostics/therapeutics used to address this public health emergency are exempt from the rules of approval and liability for damages. That goldmine for revenue opportunity is now open for strip mining. Once the “new technology” vaccines can slip into use through Emergency Use Authorizations the possibilities are endless.

Future mRNA vaccine technology may allow for one vaccine to provide protection for multiple diseases, thus decreasing the number of shots needed for protection against common vaccine-preventable diseases.

It’s important to understand the differences between vaccines that are in current use vs. the proposed COVID vaccines. In general a vaccine puts a product into your body that circulates around the tissues until your immune system sees it and reacts. The new COVID vaccines act in a very different way: they introduce manufacturing instructions that have to be taken up inside your cells to then have your own cells make the proteins that are sent out into the body to stimulate your immune system.  In essence these vaccines contain artificial “viruses” that infect your body. See explanations and graphics below:

Paul Offit explains mRNA vaccines:

Dr.Seheult explains vaccine mechanics:

NYT describes similarities between viral and vaccine infection:

So what does the flexibility of Emergency Use Authorization allow for? First proof of real-world effectiveness of a vaccine does not need to meet the usual standards. It has been determined that COVID-19 vaccines need to be 50% effective at preventing disease. But then what is the definition of that disease? The CDC tells us that a COVID-19 patient can have no symptoms with a positive PCR test, OR can be a person with two of the following symptoms –  fever (measured or subjective)/chills/rigors/myalgia/headache/sore throat/nausea or vomiting/diarrhea/fatigue/congestion or runny nose – regardless of diagnostic testing.

As long as the vaccine prevents 50% of people from developing a positive test or having a running nose or a headache – that is an effective vaccine.  A low bar indeed.

Beyond that there is NO requirement for evidence that the vaccine reduces disease transmission. Those issues together mean that you can be vaccinated and go on to contract the infection but have no symptoms, and then while having no symptoms be able to spread that infection to other people.

This is where it becomes important to read the fine print. Not only is the intended effect of the vaccine minimal, but the known negative effects of similar trial vaccines are significant:

One of the foremost concerns of vaccine experts is the risk hastily tested coronavirus shots may lead to a condition known as vaccine-induced enhanced respiratory disease, or ERD. When this occurs, weakened antibodies actually help viruses enter cells, exacerbating the condition vaccination was meant to prevent.

Distinguishing between COVID-19 and ERD would require identifying biomarkers, such as certain types of white blood cells that are associated with allergic response and proteins involved in immune signaling, said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in an email.

https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/fda-advisory-meeting-coronavirus-vaccines-5-questions/587149/

Put into plain language – the FDA is concerned that the COVID-19 vaccine could cause people to have more severe illness after getting the shot. They are concerned enough about this that the EUA documents specifically direct manufacturers to monitor for this outcome.

Data from studies in animal models administered certain vaccine constructs against other coronaviruses (SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV) have raised concerns of a theoretical risk for COVID-19 vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease (ERD). In these studies, animal models were administered vaccine constructs against other coronaviruses and subsequently challenged with the respective wildtype virus. These studies have shown evidence of immunopathologic lung reactions characteristic of a Th-2 type hypersensitivity similar to ERD described in infants and animals that were administered formalin-inactivated respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine and that were subsequently challenged with RSV virus due to natural exposure or in the laboratory, respectively (Refs. 4-9). Vaccine candidates should be assessed in light of these studies…

Here’s the kicker, that really bad event would likely happen when a person has a second exposure to the virus or in children whose mothers received the vaccine.

Then there is the issue of vaccine mandates. When I was in the Army I was given a lot of vaccinations. Some of those were used under the provisions of Investigational New Drugs (IND). As a member of the Armed Forces I did not have a choice in the matter – acceptance of those vaccines was coerced. Unless you are a member of the military, are mentally unfit, or are incarcerated you cannot legally be forced to take a new EUA authorized COVID-19 vaccine – period.

FDA must ensure that recipients of the vaccine under an EUA are informed, to the extent practicable given the applicable circumstances, that FDA has authorized the emergency use of the vaccine, of the known and potential benefits and risks, the extent to which such benefits and risks are unknown, that they have the option to accept or refuse the vaccine

Lastly, the unintended effects of these vaccines will not be known for many years. There are immediate, delayed, and transgenerational effects that are normally watched for in a time period call phase IV monitoring.

 Although the vaccine development process and FDA’s evaluation are rigorous and comprehensive, there is still a need for ongoing surveillance of vaccines after FDA-approval to identify uncommon adverse events or long-term complications that may occur, and sometimes to monitor effectiveness. In certain cases, the FDA may require the manufacturer to conduct post-marketing studies to further assess known or potential serious risks. (These studies are sometimes called Phase 4 of development).

Many factors of how these vaccines will be used under the EUA will bypass or corrupt proper phase IV monitoring.

My closing thought for you to consider is that a mad rush had taken place to address valid concerns along with overblown fears, regarding this viral illness that is called novel. While there is a lot yet to be learned about it, we have well established measures to protect against as well as minimize the impact of this infection. Rational use of vaccinations can be an element of those control measures. Vaccination is never the only tool to use –

recent studies show that flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% among the overall population during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine

So make your decision wisely, and be thoughtful in taking responsibility for holding your health in your own hands.