Disease X Or Vaccine X? Choose Your Poison!

DISEASE X OR VACCINE X? CHOOSE YOUR POISON

By TLB Contributing Writer, Dr. Mike Williams

I rarely panic. Perturbed? – Yes. But panic, rarely. However, I must admit to my heart skipping a beat when someone sent me a clip of the Alex Jones Show (AJS) a few days ago and asked me to take a look.

They also sent other clips from various sources including The Kev Baker Show that appeared to support the AJS. They also mentioned a Zero Hedge article that they said was telling a similar story. What was so concerning about all of those? What was the story? Bird Flu, that’s what.

Bird Flu I hear you say. That’s old news… why would you worry about Bird Flu? Well, to be more specific – H7N9 Avian Flu, and it’s one of the relatively new kids on the block and is not so old news. So what alarmed me about the AJS clip?

Here, have a listen to Alex for yourself:

To quote Alex:

The bioweapon’s gonna get released and they’re gonna kill a couple of billion people right up front. Before, they were gonna release a bioweapon that kills a couple of hundred million real quick to scare us and get us under their medical tyranny control. No, they’re getting ready with disease X they rolled out and advertised this year, and then notice it’s shown up.

OK: Bioweapons are real and can potentially kill billions of people. Bioweapons that potentially kill specific groups of people, e.g. by ethnicity, have been considered in the literature, also. And Disease X has been introduced and propagandised by the WHO and media. So far, so good.

He continued:

It was a 100 dead Chinese 6 days ago..it was 600 yesterday, now they’re saying 5,000 are dead…You know it’s probably 50,000…..From a[sic] air born pathogen of Bird Flu that kills 38.3 % of people..And now they are saying that was an early estimate and it may actually be higher…because other people have died now, that they thought might live.

That bit I had a problem with. My alarm was well placed: I have been tracking infectious disease like the H7N9 for years and was safe in the knowledge that it was remarkably quiescent in 2018, so far, until I saw the that clip!

100s maybe, 1000s or 50,000 dead or infected? 6 days ago? What the hell happened, nobody told me! It wasn’t in the infectious disease updates, so how could I have missed that? Those thoughts genuinely went through my mind in a split second, and yes I was slightly more than perturbed.

Quickly, I checked the official sources for infectious disease and one after another, they revealed that the H7N9 Avian Flu was still quiescent and, thankfully, there were no recent 100s or 1000s of deaths. So, in the absence of some other information not publicly available, the question is: how did those sources, including the AJS, get it so wrong? To be fair, the AJS appears to handle a lot of news stories and they may just have gone with the originating source – a ZeroHedge article entitled ‘DISEASE X’: New Strain Of Bird Flu Kills 40% Of Those Who Contract, 100s Dead In China without checking it first.

Unfortunately, the ZeroHedge article did not clarify that the quoted infections and deaths were dated from 2013 and that this year (2018) only 2 cases have been reported, as of writing this article, with one death. I suppose we all make mistakes. After all, that’s what makes us human (and thankfully we still are human; AI and the Post Humanists haven’t got their way yet). But in that case, it would probably be right to correct the mistake as it is factually pretty misleading and ironically helping to propagandise the Disease X or what I have dubbed – Flu X.

Genuine concerns

But are there any genuine concerns that Alex Jones should worry about with H7N9, and should we know more about this bug. Let’s drill down and see.

The H7N9 flu virus infects avian populations, e.g. poultry but can, rarely, infect humans that have direct contact with those birds. Airborne transmission is possible, but human-to-human transmission is very difficult. It has tended to mainly infect the elderly, with a higher percentage of males. Commonly, there is co-morbidity present in those infected, e.g. COPD, heart disease, diabetes, etc. Therefore, in real terms, unless you have direct contact with an infected bird, and are an elderly male with significant health problems, your chances of contracting H7N9 Avian Flu (Disease X) are very small.

In order for the virus to more efficiently infect from human to human, it would need to significantly mutate, and although not impossible, there is a small chance of that happening. The fatality rate has varied but shies just short of 40%. In reality, absent any new developments, it doesn’t warrant a panic.

But, nonetheless, that hasn’t stopped attempts to develop a vaccine, which are now well underway. Of course, those that believe flu vaccines work well will be chomping at the bit and, no doubt, eagerly queuing up for their first shots. However, I think they might do well to look a bit deeper into the immunology first. And, of course, the term Astroturf raises its ugly head at this juncture because big profits lay ahead, and why would we need a vaccine for a pandemic that isn’t a pandemic? Of course: Need based on facts doesn’t sell vaccines; propaganda and hype (Astroturfing) do.

Watch this excellent presentation from Sharyl Attkisson about Astroturfing if you haven’t heard of it before.

Presentation

Immunology: negative consequences?

As to the immunology, that concerns me.

There are various mechanisms that we should be aware of that can have negative consequences where vaccines are concerned. I’ll briefly describe them.

Martcheva et al argue that even with a perfect vaccine that protects theoretically against all possible strains of the virus, there will still be vaccine-induced pathogen strain replacement (VIPSR) due to changes in the ”competitive environment”. They describe strain replacement occurring at two levels:

Within-host (individual-level) strain replacement is the replacement of a strain that dominated the initial infection of a particular host by a new strain, without any intervening recovery period.

Between-host (population-level) strain replacement, in its simplest form, occurs when a once-common strain in the population becomes rare, while a second (previously rare) strain increases to a prevalence greater than that of the first strain, due to a deterministic process (rather than, say, ecological drift in a rare host population).

That is not good because by vaccinating for one strain, you make other strains more dangerous!

The replacement effect occurs when one strain or subtype is eliminated due to vaccination and at the same time another strain or subtype increases in incidence.

We particularly see that with flu viruses. Of equal worry are two additional mechanisms called Original Antigenic Sin (OAS) and Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE). In the 2017 paper Original antigenic sin: A comprehensive review, Vatti et al state just what can happen after vaccination with a viral antigen:

[W]hen the second antigen* [wild virus that infects you] is sufficiently different from the original antigen [used in the vaccine given to you], and the response to the second antigen is not quite precise, [that may lead].. to a less-effective response and possibly failure to clear the pathogen. In a more extreme example, the immune system’s recognition of the pathogen is compromised, with a failure of the immune response to even identify or flag the offending secondary antigen, leading to a complete evasion of the pathogen from the immune system, a situation which clearly could have deadly implications.

However, in a new infection with a slightly similar virus, “original antigenic sin” leads to the production of cross-reactive antibodies efficiently able to control the original virus but unable to neutralize the new one. Moreover, binding of such antibodies to the new virus could trigger the internalization of the virus into Fc and complement receptor bearing cells such as macrophages or dendritic cells (DCs), enhancing the entry of virus.

*For the sake of simplicity an antigen is a part of a virus that stimulates the immune system.

To put the above scientific work into plain English: After vaccination, your immune system is primed for a specific version of a virus, but if a new version of the virus infects you that is slightly different, then you could be in trouble. With viruses like H7N9, that trouble could be deadly. Of course, the vaccines you have already had for flu may also weaken your immune system via those mechanisms and leave you susceptible to a pandemic.

Should we vaccinate?

We must also be aware that deaths associated with H7N9 are typically due to pneumonia, not flu. That is termed the sequential infection hypothesis and also explains the deaths during the 1918 Spanish flu. They died from pneumonia, not Spanish flu, as the flu facilitated a secondary bacterial infection which led to pneumonia and death.

I mention that because the vaccines being tested for H7N9 are live attenuated intranasal vaccines (LAIV). They are a live virus, slightly modified and sprayed up the nose. A significant percentage of those vaccinated shed the virus and can infect others, albeit with a weakened version of the H7N9 virus.

However, there is a very sobering question to be asked of live attenuated viruses: what if they revert back to their wild type and infect humans as they would naturally in the wild?

Surely, no one would be stupid enough to manufacture a weakened version of a lethal virus and put it into a vaccine designed to infect humans if there was a chance that the weakened virus could “unweaken” itself and potentially kill its host? Especially when that virus doesn’t easily infect humans at the moment?

Surely, someone would have tested for this eventuality? Has anyone tested a live attenuated virus to see if it would revert back to wild type? Yes, they have, using the live attenuated intranasal vaccine called FluMist.

By propagating the virus under well-controlled laboratory conditions, we found that the FluMist vaccine backbone could regain virulence to cause severe disease in mice…

Oh Dear! Yes, you read that right! A live attenuated (weakened) flu virus can “unweaken” itself and regain its wild type virulence.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, that vaccine developed for seasonal flu caused an increase in bacteria in the upper respiratory tract, the very bacteria that causes pneumonia!

As you can see, the development of a vaccine for the H7N9 doesn’t fill me with joy.

In conclusion

Alex Jones and others are not wrong to be worried about the potential for serious problems with H7N9 and can be forgiven for being misled. Absent a bioweapon being released (and let’s hope to God that doesn’t happen) or a rare mutation of the virus, there is little chance at this time of an outbreak of the H7N9 virus. But maybe they should be more concerned about the roll out of a global vaccination program on the back of the hysteria as that may prove to be quite problematic!

Sleep well and don’t have nightmares—at least not yet!

Sources:

Alex Jones show https://youtu.be/i_3vA6j36lQ?t=12m36s

Ethnic bioweapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_bioweapon

Sharyl Attkisson Astroturfing TED Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU

Disease X could be the world’s worst nightmare https://nypost.com/2018/03/10/disease-x-could-be-the-worlds-worst-nightmare/

‘DISEASE X’: New Strain Of Bird Flu Kills 40% Of Those Who Contract, 100s Dead In China https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-15/disease-x-new-strain-bird-flu-kills-40-those-who-contract-100s-dead-china

Martcheva M. Vaccine Induced Pathogen Type Replacement: Theoretical Mechanism DIMACS Workshop on Co-evolution October 11, 2006

Vatti, A. et al. Original antigenic sin: A comprehensive review, Journal of Autoimmunity. 2017. 83, 12-21 doi.org/10.1016/j.jaut.2017.04.008

Sobhanie M. et al. Evaluation of the Safety and Immunogenicity of a Candidate Pandemic Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine (pLAIV) Against Influenza A(H7N9), The Journal of Infectious Diseases. 2016. 213 (15 March) DOI: 10.1093/infdis/jiv526

Mina MJ, McCullers JA, Klugman KP. Live attenuated influenza vaccine enhances colonization of Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus in mice. mBio. 2014. 5(1):e01040-13. doi:10.1128/mBio.01040-13

Skowronski DM, Janjua NZ, Kwindt TL, De Serres G. Virus-host interactions and the unusual age and sex distribution of human cases of influenza A(H7N9) in China, April 2013 . Euro Surveill. 2013;18(17):pii=20465. Available online: http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=20465

Influenza A virus subtype H7N9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H7N9

Haili L. et al. Clinical characteristics from co-infection with avian influenza A H7N9 and Mycoplasma pneumoniae: a case report. Journal of Medical Case Reports. 2018 12:77 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13256-018-1583-5.

Brundage JF, Shanks G. Deaths from Bacterial Pneumonia during 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic. Emerg Infect Dis. 2008;14(8):1193-1199. https://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1408.071313

Zhou B. et al. Reversion of Cold-Adapted Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccine into a Pathogenic Virus. J. Virol. October 2016 vol. 90no. 19 8454-8463. doi:10.1128/JVI.00163-16

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Additional TLB articles by Dr. Mike Williams (click on links below):

openDemocracy or Measles Conspiracy

No TIME to Die – By Dr. Mike Williams

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