I was part of the leadership team for H1N1 in 2009-2011. Ran the clinical trials testing vax in pregnant women and also in AIDS patients, at NIAID under Fauci. Oct 2009 we distributed the vax and then "positive tests dropped dramatically over Thanksgiving". Of course, we attributed it to our 'great efforts'.
What you're saying is substantiated by the timeseries data and historical record.
Speaking for myself, until I began looking into the data (and this question of pandemics, flu surveillance, etc), I had no idea how long these systems have been in place, and how easy it is for them to be used to shape the course of events to achieve desired outcomes.
It's all marketing and PR to make billions for investors using the biosecurity complex of which Pharma is a big part, as the pass through. Far more profitable than the War Machine circa 2023.
All of these manufactured diseases are artifacts of mass media manipulation, behavioral conditioning techniques and social engineering.
Fake photos of people falling dead- fake images of coffins piling up- fake doctors claiming hospitals were overflowing- fake tests to produce a fake disease- fake scenes outside hospitals staged by PR firms- fake media parrots lying through their teeth every night- fake trials of a toxic bioweapon- fake everything.
The most recent Covid Con is another stage set from the well-documented playbook. "The Virus™ itself is superfluous, just like the Swine Flu scamdemic of 2009. All they need to do is create the perception of a pandemic/mass panic with staged Hollywood productions, doomsday models, and the fraudulent PCR test to manufacture the cases falsely attributed as AIDS/Ebola/Avian Flu/Swine Flu/Zika/SARS/SARS-CoV-2 and upcoming Disease 'X'.
I was way up high in management. NIAID setup the Clinical Trials Network to test flu vaccines in children. Multiple institutions. I was brought in to especially help with Pregnant women because it was new group, but supposedly most vulnerable. Each site collected specimens and used commercial labs. Research determinations of Abs etc were done by the PI's gettting the grant money. Of course, Fauci directed it all.
"WHO/CDC Swine Flu Venture was successful in what it demonstrated about testing. Specifically, that testing could be leveraged to a) get the public’s attention, b) justify the pandemic preparedness industry, c) expand global disease surveillance programs, and d) pin more P&I deaths on influenza. " Describes my several years of experience as a sentinel provider, then as an objector to the H1N1 HCW mandate in NYC - threatened with termination in 2009 and ultimately terminated in 2016. Finally, as an active primary and urgent care physician in NYC during the panic-demic of 2020, i will attest that everything you have observed in your research for this article reflects very accurately what I experienced in my day to day practice.
Thank you for responding and sharing your experiences.
Unfortunately, the data make pretty clear that multiple attempts were made to “find” a pandemic. Their efforts in 2020 were successful, not because there actually was a pandemic (there was not), but because mechanisms and policies and protocols implemented implemented all at once killed people. Then, the actual causes of death were covered up in positive PCR tests for an unremarkable pathogen.
This will happen again and again until the bluff is called once & for all.
At minimum, WHO and CDC shooed be defunded and dissembled.
Jul 1, 2023·edited Jul 2, 2023Liked by Jessica Hockett
The CDC introduced its Weekly Flu Surveillance Reports 20 years ago during 1999/2000 season. Going over those original reports you'll see in those early years reports just a few pages and a scant amount of detailed information.
Going back to the 1980's you might get 14-18 million doses per year in the US. Compare that to today's 175 million doses per year.
This all changed significantly in the 2007/2008 season.
In the 2007/08 season the CDC reports doubled in length and offered up significantly more detail in their national flu surveillance data. What was once a mom and pop operation turned into a big box store with weekly reports that were once three pages long now expanding into ten plus page reports complete with colorful graphs and regional information.
With this expanded focus on flu data came much more specificity in each report.
Not coincidentally in 2008 ACIP began with recommendations that people ages 6 months to 18 years old get an annual flu vaccine.
By 2010 ACIP recommended that everyone age 6 months and older get an annual flu vaccine.
All of this at the behest of Pharma- they created a market.
In North America alone the flu vaccine market stands at around $3.7 billion per year as of 2021- globally around $7 billion.
"The flu" is not a medical condition it is a business model.
This debate about what the “flu” is needs to be disseminated more widely. So many of our presuppositions need to be challenged. Because what we thought we knew about the flu corresponds to what we think we know about coronaviruses.
So when I was working as a GP I used to get loads of people with headcolds and the like coming to tell me they had the flu and I used to send them away telling them it was a cold virus or whatever. And that if they really had influenza they wouldn’t be in front of me they would be flat out in bed at home. My idea then was that influenza made you quite Sick with myalgia headaches rigours etc but no particular respiratory symptoms. When I think back I can barely think of any who fitted in with my idea of what the flu was. But it didn’t really matter to me because most of what I was seeing was fairly trivial illness anyway.
I know this is boring - but important nevertheless. I’m now very sceptical about the whole story of influenza mortality. The flu is generally lumped together with lots of other pathology and called Influenza like illnesses ILI’s. I’ve read a lot about the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and I’m of the opinion that the data is very dubious. We really don’t have any idea of exactly how many died and from what. I suspect much of it was from the effects of ww1 on nutrition and immunity and other things besides. The statistics in the uk on flu and flu incidence are based on reported episodes by selected practices. These reports will be based on some arbitrary idea of what the flu is. This will depend on the ideology of the individuals reporting it.
So in those winters of alleged high incidence of flu and flu mortality I believe what we were seeing was bacterial pneumonia resulting from any number of respiratory viruses.
I don’t believe any of the statistics on flu were confirmed by reliable laboratory testing. Although I’m sure there was sample testing by fluorescent antibody or PCR or cell culture but this is a whole debate in itself.
The claim has been made that many deaths were due to Aspirin poisoning. It had circa 1897 been developed and marketed and was administered during that "pandemic" in astonishingly large doses - 100x the now recommended dose.
I think people have put too much faith in surveillance data as an objective, scientific source that is unfettered and unaffected myriad forces and factors.
From your post: “This is not to say that physicians are simply following a formula; to be sure, each doctor exercises professional judgment and assesses individual patients or situations, but clearly there is a kind of conditioning steered by smaller groups of professionals”
A phenomenon that has occurred over the past 25 years and accelerated in spade’s following Obamacare is hospital ownership of physicians. In my community, it is clear that “institutional “ medicine follows (and hides behind) CDC recommendations. This provides leverage for behaviors (testing decisions) to be affected, providing support to your claims.
I look forward to your follow up on this issue.
Side notes I wish to share:
The point of care testing now available does significantly enhance diagnostic clarity for etiology during ILI. The last review on confirmed causes of pneumonia was a few years ago. What we learned is the majority of clinically admitted pneumonia remains undiagnosed. Further of confirmed (through PCR assays) were due to Rhinoenterovirus !
What saddens me as a physician is that despite these facts, there remains no targeted anti viral medications. The public health leaders appear fixated w vaccination as the solution.
"A phenomenon that has occurred over the past 25 years and accelerated in spade’s following Obamacare is hospital ownership of physicians. In my community, it is clear that 'institutional medicine' follows (and hides behind) CDC recommendations. This provides leverage for behaviors (testing decisions) to be affected, providing support to your claims."
This is such a good point, and one I hadn't considered. Along those lines, it seems that medical professionals have been robbed or made impotent, if you will, by CDC and other guidance (AMA/JAMA comes to mind....), as well as by deference to tests and numbers. I'm not in medicine, but I can speak to how similar things can and have occurred in education - with teachers letting standardized test scores do the thinking for them, versus diagnosing a student's actual grasp of skills and content.
Regarding point-of-care testing for diagnostic clarity...can you expound on this a bit (just for my information). In what ways does the testing help you (and the patient, of course)?
In the past 5-7 years there has been developed more extensive respiratory testing. Point of care tests are CLIA waved assays done at the patient bedside, resulted in 5-10 minutes. Examples are Strep antigen testing, influenza A and B; COVID 19.
Next day assays (have to sent to certified lab) can report within hours to two days and include PCR
assays.
At first these broad panel tests costed 3-4 thousand dollars and sold only to hospitals. About 4 years ago, slightly more narrow but still broad respiratory diagnostic panels can be run in the office. I was able to arrange these assays for $350, making their use rather practical for doctors and patients IF diagnostic clarity was warranted. Before COVID the panel tested for Flu A and B, coronavirus 1-4 (COVID is coronaviruses 5), RSV, Entero Rhinivirus, parainfluenza strains, and pertussis.
The hospital screens now test some strains of pneumococcus and urine for Legionnaires mycoplasma.
As you and many point out there is the issue of false positives testing but odds of false positives results are low when there is true clinical active infection.
If we allow logic to work, it follows that if we can verify a pathogen at presentation we can have prognosis clarity, natural history (including incubation periods for recommending contact avoiding), etc.
Going further if we develop oral antiviral treatments for RSV and EnteroRhinovirus we can circumvent unnecessary hospitalizations and hanging questionably helpful broad spectrum antibiotics etc.
Hospitals now have hired hospitalists staffing their facilities. They develop order and treatment protocols that are increasingly blindly followed as the workforce gets diluted with less skilled/experienced newbies and non physician physician extenders.
The result is what you experienced in education. Dummied down product and unquestioning order takers.
Just this weekend on notes I posted an ABIM report regarding the shifting doctor workforce. On my Substack you can find blogs I’ve written regarding the hospitalist movement and the Covid crisis’ overreaction.
Trouble is ……there is no (IMO that is) satisfactory way of clinically diagnosing Influenza or Covid-19. I have spent all of my career in medicine and I can honestly say I do not know what Influenza is. I’m not even convinced that influenza viruses are necessarily pathogenic among the whole gamut of viruses found in the upper respiratory tract. Until we really go into this we are just scrabbling about among the garbage
The reason I keep banging on about flu.....what it is and whether it is what it is supposed to be....is that constantly we compare IFR’s using that of flu as the yardstick. I believe these waves of winter mortality due to pneumonia are bacterial. The issue distracts us from focussing on what is really going on with mortality. That’s all.
So what I’m leading up to - is - has there ever been a major epidemic - or pandemic - due to a virus - that has resulted in major mortality? Is it not the case that there is a tendency for there to be a seasonal wave of death from pneumonia in frail and vulnerable individuals in winter months . And that if a search for the putative virus is carried out we will find a culprit?
Amazing that you Jessica figured this all out in no time and generations of Drs around the world never thought about it
So it really is a case of …….what you think you know that ain’t so.
“So what I’m leading up to - is - has there ever been a major epidemic - or pandemic - due to a virus - that has resulted in major mortality?”
As far as I can tell, no.
I think the reason I reached this conclusion is from looking at mortality data and (importantly) understanding that the ICD classifications are a taxonomy of human knowledge - not an ontological truth.
THAT someone died is not debatable. HOW someone died and/or what caused it is another matter altogether.
Apropos here: "none of the post-second-world-war ... CDC‑promoted ... viral respiratory disease pandemics ... can be detected in the all‑cause mortality of any country. "
Have just read your tweet re Spanish flu plague etc and like you have been thinking some things over. Having talked to my erstwhile partner in the practice we got to the the subject of “the flu”.
So I’ll send you my thoughts in a series of bulletins so as not to bore you.
First - what the hell is the flu?? Medical textbooks describe the symptoms as temp myalgia poss sore throat cough etc etc. These are exactly the same as any old upper respiratory infection. Due we believe to any number of viruses.…..more to follow
Great! So we’re on the same page metaphorically speaking.
I’ll send you a copy of a recent conversation I had with a colleague. It may come in instalments ….
Have just read your tweet re Spanish flu plague etc and like you have been thinking some things over. Having talked to my erstwhile partner in the practice we got to the the subject of “the flu”.
So I’ll send you my thoughts in a series of bulletins so as not to bore you.
First - what the hell is the flu?? Medical textbooks describe the symptoms as temp myalgia poss sore throat cough etc etc. These are exactly the same as any old upper respiratory infection. Due we believe to any number of viruses.
Sure! I have a lot of questions about “flu,” based on some reading I’ve been doing. By that, I mean medical journal articles from the early part of the 20th century. Frankly, I don’t get what flu is. And it seems no one else does either! I also don’t understand what “secondary bacterial pneumonia” is. Secondary to what? Isn’t there simply pneumonia of various kinds and casual agents - none of which are explicitly or exclusively linked to flu? Can a person die from flu without pneumonia present? I have no medical background, but I’m a good thinker, and I simply don’t get it!!
Don't trust the CDC's Flu/ILI reports - Dang straight!
I make the same point in this piece, which documents all the school closings in America before "official" Covid. I do admit I use CDC data ... but lots of other sources as well.
Jessica,
Astute and sobering analysis.
I was part of the leadership team for H1N1 in 2009-2011. Ran the clinical trials testing vax in pregnant women and also in AIDS patients, at NIAID under Fauci. Oct 2009 we distributed the vax and then "positive tests dropped dramatically over Thanksgiving". Of course, we attributed it to our 'great efforts'.
Seen much differently now, in retrospect. Sigh.
Laura Kragie MD. biomedworks.substack.com
Thanks, Laura.
What you're saying is substantiated by the timeseries data and historical record.
Speaking for myself, until I began looking into the data (and this question of pandemics, flu surveillance, etc), I had no idea how long these systems have been in place, and how easy it is for them to be used to shape the course of events to achieve desired outcomes.
It's all marketing and PR to make billions for investors using the biosecurity complex of which Pharma is a big part, as the pass through. Far more profitable than the War Machine circa 2023.
All of these manufactured diseases are artifacts of mass media manipulation, behavioral conditioning techniques and social engineering.
Fake photos of people falling dead- fake images of coffins piling up- fake doctors claiming hospitals were overflowing- fake tests to produce a fake disease- fake scenes outside hospitals staged by PR firms- fake media parrots lying through their teeth every night- fake trials of a toxic bioweapon- fake everything.
The most recent Covid Con is another stage set from the well-documented playbook. "The Virus™ itself is superfluous, just like the Swine Flu scamdemic of 2009. All they need to do is create the perception of a pandemic/mass panic with staged Hollywood productions, doomsday models, and the fraudulent PCR test to manufacture the cases falsely attributed as AIDS/Ebola/Avian Flu/Swine Flu/Zika/SARS/SARS-CoV-2 and upcoming Disease 'X'.
It's all fraud and fiction- all of it.
Did a diff tests also have to be administered on site, or was it a matter of specimen collection and then the labs running the assay?
I was way up high in management. NIAID setup the Clinical Trials Network to test flu vaccines in children. Multiple institutions. I was brought in to especially help with Pregnant women because it was new group, but supposedly most vulnerable. Each site collected specimens and used commercial labs. Research determinations of Abs etc were done by the PI's gettting the grant money. Of course, Fauci directed it all.
"WHO/CDC Swine Flu Venture was successful in what it demonstrated about testing. Specifically, that testing could be leveraged to a) get the public’s attention, b) justify the pandemic preparedness industry, c) expand global disease surveillance programs, and d) pin more P&I deaths on influenza. " Describes my several years of experience as a sentinel provider, then as an objector to the H1N1 HCW mandate in NYC - threatened with termination in 2009 and ultimately terminated in 2016. Finally, as an active primary and urgent care physician in NYC during the panic-demic of 2020, i will attest that everything you have observed in your research for this article reflects very accurately what I experienced in my day to day practice.
Thank you for responding and sharing your experiences.
Unfortunately, the data make pretty clear that multiple attempts were made to “find” a pandemic. Their efforts in 2020 were successful, not because there actually was a pandemic (there was not), but because mechanisms and policies and protocols implemented implemented all at once killed people. Then, the actual causes of death were covered up in positive PCR tests for an unremarkable pathogen.
This will happen again and again until the bluff is called once & for all.
At minimum, WHO and CDC shooed be defunded and dissembled.
The CDC introduced its Weekly Flu Surveillance Reports 20 years ago during 1999/2000 season. Going over those original reports you'll see in those early years reports just a few pages and a scant amount of detailed information.
Going back to the 1980's you might get 14-18 million doses per year in the US. Compare that to today's 175 million doses per year.
This all changed significantly in the 2007/2008 season.
In the 2007/08 season the CDC reports doubled in length and offered up significantly more detail in their national flu surveillance data. What was once a mom and pop operation turned into a big box store with weekly reports that were once three pages long now expanding into ten plus page reports complete with colorful graphs and regional information.
With this expanded focus on flu data came much more specificity in each report.
Not coincidentally in 2008 ACIP began with recommendations that people ages 6 months to 18 years old get an annual flu vaccine.
By 2010 ACIP recommended that everyone age 6 months and older get an annual flu vaccine.
All of this at the behest of Pharma- they created a market.
In North America alone the flu vaccine market stands at around $3.7 billion per year as of 2021- globally around $7 billion.
"The flu" is not a medical condition it is a business model.
Re: Flu as a business model, I agree. More than that, it’s a way of gaining political and financial power over people and institutions.
Very much appreciate the details about chronology and other things that occurred. Will add to my master timeline and as some notes to this article.
This debate about what the “flu” is needs to be disseminated more widely. So many of our presuppositions need to be challenged. Because what we thought we knew about the flu corresponds to what we think we know about coronaviruses.
So when I was working as a GP I used to get loads of people with headcolds and the like coming to tell me they had the flu and I used to send them away telling them it was a cold virus or whatever. And that if they really had influenza they wouldn’t be in front of me they would be flat out in bed at home. My idea then was that influenza made you quite Sick with myalgia headaches rigours etc but no particular respiratory symptoms. When I think back I can barely think of any who fitted in with my idea of what the flu was. But it didn’t really matter to me because most of what I was seeing was fairly trivial illness anyway.
More to follow…….
I know this is boring - but important nevertheless. I’m now very sceptical about the whole story of influenza mortality. The flu is generally lumped together with lots of other pathology and called Influenza like illnesses ILI’s. I’ve read a lot about the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and I’m of the opinion that the data is very dubious. We really don’t have any idea of exactly how many died and from what. I suspect much of it was from the effects of ww1 on nutrition and immunity and other things besides. The statistics in the uk on flu and flu incidence are based on reported episodes by selected practices. These reports will be based on some arbitrary idea of what the flu is. This will depend on the ideology of the individuals reporting it.
So in those winters of alleged high incidence of flu and flu mortality I believe what we were seeing was bacterial pneumonia resulting from any number of respiratory viruses.
I don’t believe any of the statistics on flu were confirmed by reliable laboratory testing. Although I’m sure there was sample testing by fluorescent antibody or PCR or cell culture but this is a whole debate in itself.
More to follow……..
The claim has been made that many deaths were due to Aspirin poisoning. It had circa 1897 been developed and marketed and was administered during that "pandemic" in astonishingly large doses - 100x the now recommended dose.
Brilliant stuff Jessica.
I had worked out that H1N1 was a test-run, but I didn't realise just how much there was to be not learned from it at all!
Thank you!
I think people have put too much faith in surveillance data as an objective, scientific source that is unfettered and unaffected myriad forces and factors.
From your post: “This is not to say that physicians are simply following a formula; to be sure, each doctor exercises professional judgment and assesses individual patients or situations, but clearly there is a kind of conditioning steered by smaller groups of professionals”
A phenomenon that has occurred over the past 25 years and accelerated in spade’s following Obamacare is hospital ownership of physicians. In my community, it is clear that “institutional “ medicine follows (and hides behind) CDC recommendations. This provides leverage for behaviors (testing decisions) to be affected, providing support to your claims.
I look forward to your follow up on this issue.
Side notes I wish to share:
The point of care testing now available does significantly enhance diagnostic clarity for etiology during ILI. The last review on confirmed causes of pneumonia was a few years ago. What we learned is the majority of clinically admitted pneumonia remains undiagnosed. Further of confirmed (through PCR assays) were due to Rhinoenterovirus !
What saddens me as a physician is that despite these facts, there remains no targeted anti viral medications. The public health leaders appear fixated w vaccination as the solution.
"A phenomenon that has occurred over the past 25 years and accelerated in spade’s following Obamacare is hospital ownership of physicians. In my community, it is clear that 'institutional medicine' follows (and hides behind) CDC recommendations. This provides leverage for behaviors (testing decisions) to be affected, providing support to your claims."
This is such a good point, and one I hadn't considered. Along those lines, it seems that medical professionals have been robbed or made impotent, if you will, by CDC and other guidance (AMA/JAMA comes to mind....), as well as by deference to tests and numbers. I'm not in medicine, but I can speak to how similar things can and have occurred in education - with teachers letting standardized test scores do the thinking for them, versus diagnosing a student's actual grasp of skills and content.
Regarding point-of-care testing for diagnostic clarity...can you expound on this a bit (just for my information). In what ways does the testing help you (and the patient, of course)?
Thank you!
In the past 5-7 years there has been developed more extensive respiratory testing. Point of care tests are CLIA waved assays done at the patient bedside, resulted in 5-10 minutes. Examples are Strep antigen testing, influenza A and B; COVID 19.
Next day assays (have to sent to certified lab) can report within hours to two days and include PCR
assays.
At first these broad panel tests costed 3-4 thousand dollars and sold only to hospitals. About 4 years ago, slightly more narrow but still broad respiratory diagnostic panels can be run in the office. I was able to arrange these assays for $350, making their use rather practical for doctors and patients IF diagnostic clarity was warranted. Before COVID the panel tested for Flu A and B, coronavirus 1-4 (COVID is coronaviruses 5), RSV, Entero Rhinivirus, parainfluenza strains, and pertussis.
The hospital screens now test some strains of pneumococcus and urine for Legionnaires mycoplasma.
As you and many point out there is the issue of false positives testing but odds of false positives results are low when there is true clinical active infection.
If we allow logic to work, it follows that if we can verify a pathogen at presentation we can have prognosis clarity, natural history (including incubation periods for recommending contact avoiding), etc.
Going further if we develop oral antiviral treatments for RSV and EnteroRhinovirus we can circumvent unnecessary hospitalizations and hanging questionably helpful broad spectrum antibiotics etc.
Hospitals now have hired hospitalists staffing their facilities. They develop order and treatment protocols that are increasingly blindly followed as the workforce gets diluted with less skilled/experienced newbies and non physician physician extenders.
The result is what you experienced in education. Dummied down product and unquestioning order takers.
Just this weekend on notes I posted an ABIM report regarding the shifting doctor workforce. On my Substack you can find blogs I’ve written regarding the hospitalist movement and the Covid crisis’ overreaction.
It what ways do these expanded tests and results change prognosis, management or outcomes?
I don't know much about antivirals, but Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson have been doing a series on that topic https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/p/the-story-of-antivirals-against-influenza-fef
Trouble is ……there is no (IMO that is) satisfactory way of clinically diagnosing Influenza or Covid-19. I have spent all of my career in medicine and I can honestly say I do not know what Influenza is. I’m not even convinced that influenza viruses are necessarily pathogenic among the whole gamut of viruses found in the upper respiratory tract. Until we really go into this we are just scrabbling about among the garbage
Jessica
The reason I keep banging on about flu.....what it is and whether it is what it is supposed to be....is that constantly we compare IFR’s using that of flu as the yardstick. I believe these waves of winter mortality due to pneumonia are bacterial. The issue distracts us from focussing on what is really going on with mortality. That’s all.
Chris (retired GP)
https://www.c-span.org/video/?465845-1/universal-flu-vaccine
I agree with you and would maybe go further: without the flu shot, “flu season” peaks would be lower
So what I’m leading up to - is - has there ever been a major epidemic - or pandemic - due to a virus - that has resulted in major mortality? Is it not the case that there is a tendency for there to be a seasonal wave of death from pneumonia in frail and vulnerable individuals in winter months . And that if a search for the putative virus is carried out we will find a culprit?
Amazing that you Jessica figured this all out in no time and generations of Drs around the world never thought about it
So it really is a case of …….what you think you know that ain’t so.
“So what I’m leading up to - is - has there ever been a major epidemic - or pandemic - due to a virus - that has resulted in major mortality?”
As far as I can tell, no.
I think the reason I reached this conclusion is from looking at mortality data and (importantly) understanding that the ICD classifications are a taxonomy of human knowledge - not an ontological truth.
THAT someone died is not debatable. HOW someone died and/or what caused it is another matter altogether.
You also on or about July 5, 23 added the very important Denis Rancourt essay to your site
Highly recommended (I just caught up): https://www.woodhouse76.com/cp/133342080
Apropos here: "none of the post-second-world-war ... CDC‑promoted ... viral respiratory disease pandemics ... can be detected in the all‑cause mortality of any country. "
Correct
A conversation I recently had with a colleague
Have just read your tweet re Spanish flu plague etc and like you have been thinking some things over. Having talked to my erstwhile partner in the practice we got to the the subject of “the flu”.
So I’ll send you my thoughts in a series of bulletins so as not to bore you.
First - what the hell is the flu?? Medical textbooks describe the symptoms as temp myalgia poss sore throat cough etc etc. These are exactly the same as any old upper respiratory infection. Due we believe to any number of viruses.…..more to follow
Great! So we’re on the same page metaphorically speaking.
I’ll send you a copy of a recent conversation I had with a colleague. It may come in instalments ….
Have just read your tweet re Spanish flu plague etc and like you have been thinking some things over. Having talked to my erstwhile partner in the practice we got to the the subject of “the flu”.
So I’ll send you my thoughts in a series of bulletins so as not to bore you.
First - what the hell is the flu?? Medical textbooks describe the symptoms as temp myalgia poss sore throat cough etc etc. These are exactly the same as any old upper respiratory infection. Due we believe to any number of viruses.
Jessica
I have some views on influenza based on my lifetime experience as a GP in England.
I think you may find them useful.
Would you have time to consider them?
Sure! I have a lot of questions about “flu,” based on some reading I’ve been doing. By that, I mean medical journal articles from the early part of the 20th century. Frankly, I don’t get what flu is. And it seems no one else does either! I also don’t understand what “secondary bacterial pneumonia” is. Secondary to what? Isn’t there simply pneumonia of various kinds and casual agents - none of which are explicitly or exclusively linked to flu? Can a person die from flu without pneumonia present? I have no medical background, but I’m a good thinker, and I simply don’t get it!!
Don't trust the CDC's Flu/ILI reports - Dang straight!
I make the same point in this piece, which documents all the school closings in America before "official" Covid. I do admit I use CDC data ... but lots of other sources as well.
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/school-closings-spiked-before-official?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Thanks Jessica, great work. I want to synthesis your series into an article, so wondering how many more on the subject you are planning on writing?
At least 5 total.
Hope to have the next one out within the next couple weeks, God willing. :)