Study: Unable to Produce ONE Case of Flu Despite Prolonged Close Contact But NIAID-Funded Scientists Engineer Mutant Flu Virus & ‘Expand its Host Range’

February 16, 2026

More on the ‘virus,’ ‘no virus,’ debate…..

https://jonfleetwood.substack.com/p/niaid-funded-scientists-tried-to?

NIAID-Funded Scientists Tried to Make Influenza Spread—They Couldn’t Despite 80+ Hours of Close Human Exposure: Journal ‘PLOS Pathogens’

Researchers engineered real-world transmission conditions using infected volunteers and sealed indoor exposure sessions, but no secondary infections were detected.
Jon Fleetwood
Feb 12, 2026

A new peer-reviewed study reports that researchers were unable to produce a single confirmed case of influenza transmission in a controlled human exposure experiment, despite prolonged close contact between infected individuals and healthy volunteers.

The study, published last month in PLOS Pathogens, tested whether naturally infected people could transmit influenza to others under tightly controlled indoor conditions designed to facilitate spread.

Transmission did not occur.

“[N]o transmission was observed in this study,” the authors confirm.

Researchers recruited individuals with confirmed influenza infection and placed them in repeated exposure sessions with healthy participants inside a sealed hotel-based quarantine environment.

Volunteers interacted face-to-face, shared objects, and spent hours together in a room with intentionally low ventilation—conditions chosen to support transmission.

Even under these circumstances, no recipient developed influenza-like illness, tested PCR-positive, or showed serological evidence of infection.  (See link for article)

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**Comment**

Even the most hardened skeptic must scratch his head on this one.

Authors give possible reasons for the unexpected outcome:

  • the sick weren’t coughing enough
  • people had immune protection
  • airflow quickly diluted exhaled breath, reducing exposure

Fleetwood points out the exact same thing was found with COVID challenge studies. In other words, exposed volunteers failed to produce sustained infections.

This experiment has been repeated numerous times now showing the same result: nadda.  Going all the way back to the 1918 influenza pandemic, an experiment was conducted on 62 prisoners:

injected with infected lung tissue from sick or deceased patients, have infected tissue dropped in their eyes, and sprayed in the nose and mouth with infectious aerosols. Others would see mucus taken from critically ill patients and put it into the noses and throats of prisoners. In other parts of the trials, experimenters would take the blood of the sick and inject it into the healthy, to see if it was spread through infectious microorganisms in the blood.

Not one got ill or died.

What nobody is saying here is that viruses don’t exist.  But, there is a camp that asserts just that.  Go here for the history of this camp.  I would say these challenge studies don’t help the virus camp.

One thing is sure: exposure alone is not enough to make someone sick.

Which makes you wonder about the purpose of this……

https://jonfleetwood.substack.com/p/niaid-funded-scientists-engineer?

NIAID-Funded Scientists Engineer Mutant Influenza Virus and ‘Expand its Host Range’: Journal ‘Nature Communications’

Gain-of-function flu pathogen acquires new cell entry function, expands infection capability.
Jon Fleetwood
Feb 16, 2026

Scientists funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) engineered influenza viruses and introduced mutations that expanded the virus’s host range—an outcome that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) itself formally defines as gain-of-function research under a 2025 Executive Order implementation notice.

The study, published in Nature Communicationslast week, confirms the work was funded through a NIAID influenza research center.

The authors state:

“Funding was also provided, in part, by … CRIPT (Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis and Transmission), a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funded Center for Influenza Research and Response (CEIRR, contract 75N93021C00014…).”

The CEIRR network is one of NIAID’s primary federally funded influenza research programs.

The current Director of NIAID—allowing such risky influenza lab engineering—is Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, who holds a patent on the technology behind the Trump administration’s $500 million influenza vaccine platform.

The same federal agency funding the creation of mutated influenza viruses is led by the man who helped invent—and could profit from—the vaccine meant to fight them.

Moreover, the study comes as Congress and President Donald Trump have enacted a new law allocating more than $5.5 billion in taxpayer funding for pandemic preparedness, with influenza—the same pathogen engineered in these experiments—named as the only virus explicitly identified in the statute.

Funding for the experiment also came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

(See link for article)

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**Comment**

According to attorney Tom Renz, the scuttle that dangerous ‘gain of function’ research was recently banned due to an Executive Order, is false.  Rather, it’s codified and allowed under new regulation.  It’s all good if you are compliant with current regulation.

“Gain of Function” has now been legitimized and sanctioned.  Far from being banned.

The ‘no virus’ camp rolls their eyes at all of this because according to them, none of this exists.

Something exists and something is making people sicker than dogs. How about we find out what is causing these illnesses killing people and STOP funding research making pathogens deadlier?

For more:

Regarding Wisconsin:

 

 

Category:

Activism, research, Viruses

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