alicespringstomind

““Cases” are no such thing. Cases in medicine, for people that are listening, are people that are sick. We don’t call someone who has a strand of mRNA in their snot a “case”. No. Those are not “cases”. Those are simply, 99% of the time, in many provinces in this country <Canada>, false positive results“.

Dr Rodger Hodkinson at 1h1m

Our noses and throats are considered a “highly complex microbial ecosystem”, in which we breathe in bugs, and breathe them out again, over time, taking in all manner of the many thousands of species, strains and evolving “variants” of bacteria, viruses and fungi with each breath. We live with these bugs without knowing it. Having these tiny organisms in our noses and throats does not make us sick. A vulnerable immune system is responsible for disease. Exposure in fact, makes us healthy by working with our immune system in complex ways. It certainly doesn’t define us as “cases” of disease.

About 1 in 10 people have a bacteria called Neisseria meningitidis in the back of their nose and throat without being ill. This is called ‘naso-pharyngeal carriage’, and it happens to all of us intermittently. Sometimes the bacteria invade the body and cause certain illnesses (meningitis and septicaemia are the most common), which are known as meningococcal disease.

Very few people ever get meningococcal disease. Yet it causes over a million cases of severe disease per year globally, with up to 150,000 of those people dying and many more developing serious long term consequences such as paralysis and brain damage.

Breathing in a bit of N. meningitidis doesn’t make you a “case” and we don’t chase every carrier down looking to eradicate the bacteria. Because that would be a very stupid, wasteful and unattainable thing to do.

The bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae can cause pneumonia, meningitis, middle ear disease and septicaemia (“blood poisoning”). At any point in time up to 20% of adults are intermittent carriers, meaning we breathe it in and then quite quickly (over a matter of days to weeks) it dies, or we breathe it out again. About 10% of adults are persistent carriers of this bug, meaning it sits for more than 4 months in their nose-throat. Children carry these bugs at even higher rates. Most carriers have the bug sitting in their nose and throat without ever becoming ill.

Breathing in S. pneumoniae does not make you a “case”. We also don’t chase down every carrier looking to eradicate this bacteria. It would be stupid, wasteful and unattainable.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) causes upper respiratory tract infections and can lead to pneumonia, particularly in early childhood. Studies are sparse, but it seems that between 4% and 20% of people carry this virus in our nose and throat at any time. Mostly we are not sick and have no symptoms, but occasionally it causes illness.

Testing positive to RSV would not make a healthy person a “case” of RSV disease. However this virus is the leading cause of lower respiratory tract infections in young children, with up to 200,000 deaths per year. We would never attempt to waste our time tracking every test-positive person and isolating them in order to “save lives”. Because we know that “ZeroRSV” would be a stupid, wasteful and unattainable aim.

Four (and now five) strains of human Coronavirus; Adenovirus; Metapneumovirus; Rhinovirus; Influenza; Parainfluenza; are some of the 200 known respiratory tract viruses which we are repeatedly exposed to throughout our lifetime. There are many more which are unknown, and many more “bacteriophages”, (viruses that infect bacteria), all of which we inhale and exhale with each breath, and which sit in our noses and throats, and even in our lungs, mostly doing no harm before disappearing again until the next visit. When they leave, parts of their genetic material can remain for significantly longer periods of time.

It is this genetic material that PCR tests are able to find by magnifying them to great enough numbers that they become detectable. The amplification process makes the test extremely prone to false positive results; as do various stages in the testing process which risk contamination leading to false positive results. The test is incredibly useful under certain specific circumstances, in laboratories with strict processes. It is also very vulnerable to misuse in the wrong circumstances. One example of misuse is ongoing testing of healthy people, particularly when laboratories have to reduce the quality of their processes in order to increase their speed and/or the number of tests performed. Another example is by testing of the sick without simultaneously testing for multiple other organisms in order to determine a correct diagnosis, which would also utilise other laboratory tests and clinical information.

People with symptoms of a common cold who turn up to a Covid-19 PCR testing station and consequently test positive have no way of knowing if their diagnosis really is Covid-19, or another organism that they are simultaneously infected with but which has not been tested for. The only information they receive is that some genomic material of the virus which causes Covid-19 may be present in their upper respiratory tract. This is not a diagnosis.

Complex interaction between humans, viruses, bacteria and fungi has been occurring for millions of years, and the appearance of new viruses into the human virome occur fairly frequently. About 8% of the human genome (our own genetic material) is thought to consist of “viral fossils”, and about 40% of our genome is thought to have originated from viruses.

The array of viruses which visit our noses and throats is collectively called the “respiratory virome”. We would be utterly ridiculous to test every healthy person and then isolate them based on the presence of genetic remnants of potentially harmful bugs in their respiratory virome. Our lives would be an infinite round of testing and quarantine.

Why are public health agencies such as WHO and CDC, who surely understand this very basic information about human-virus interaction, involved in promoting this nonsensical behaviour? Why are we agreeing to this practise for one virus which happens to be new to our virome and for which most of us have a 99.98% chance of survival if we are infected? Instead of focusing on healthy and low risk populations, lives would have been, and could be, saved if early treatment of the sick was instead promoted, and protection of the vulnerable was the public health focus.

Focus on the healthy appears to have been used to justify harmful measures such as lockdowns, business closures, school closures, and cessation of normal human activity. All of these measures are harmful to population health. Why are they being promoted?

“What we used to call “cold and flu season” is now the fourth wave, the fifth wave, the tenth wave. It’s not going to end. This is an endemic cold virus that is now endemic in our community. It’s going to continue to mutate. The mutations are always more contagious and less severe. And that’s going to be used against us. … When my grandfather was 91 he caught a cold. It turned into pneumonia and he was hospitalised, and eventually placed on a ventilator. And he passed away. You know what we did? We celebrated his life. You know what we didn’t do? We didn’t ask the doctor, which precise cold virus led to this pneumonia? Was it an Adenovirus? Was it a Rhinovirus? Was it a Coronavirus? And you know, his death certificate said “Pneumonia”. That’s how it was. Until 2020 …“.

Dr Teryn Clarke, Neurologist and Communications Director at America’s Frontline Doctors, speaking at the One Year Anniversary White Coat Summit