Madison Area Lyme Support Group

REMEMBER WHEN Singanayagam et al. (2020) found that 91% of samples detected at Ct > 35 were not culturable, implying a 91% FDR? We do. FDA and WHO forgot.

HHS must convene an emergency re-assessment of the practice of the use PCR this way without back-up, sequence-based estimation of false positives and false negatives.

A pandemic of false positives looms on the horizon. H5N1, a virus with legitimate clinical concern, is being detected using RT-PCR tests in animals that rely on arbitrarily high cycle thresholds (Ct), EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE EMPRICALLY BASED, they are used PER SAMPLE without negative controls or verification through sequencing. If left uncorrected, the flawed methodologies that led to massive false positive COVID-19 diagnoses could now result in an equally devastating—yet entirely preventable—culling of livestock, economic collapse, and global panic.

We have seen this before. The misuse of non-quantitative RT-PCR (nonQ-RT-PCR) testing in COVID-19 led to mass quarantines, economic disruption, and policy failures based on inflated case counts. Now, the same high Ct values are being used in H5N1 testing, despite overwhelming evidence that non-specific amplification at these levels produces vast numbers of false positives. Worse still, the absence of rigorous negative controls and reliance on fixed Ct thresholds means that entire industries—including poultry, dairy, and livestock—could be decimated unnecessarily.

We are on the precipice of a crisis that is not virological but methodological. We must act now to prevent the H5N1 pandemic of false positives by enforcing scientific best practices: mandating negative controls, implementing the ΔΔCt method, and requiring Sanger sequencing confirmation for all positive cases.  (See link for article)

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Story at a Glance:

•A massive industry exists to protect us from pandemics. Unfortunately, this industry is largely a grift which receives billions for failed cures, routinely suppresses competing therapies that could end pandemics and frequently causes the pandemics it is supposed to prevent.

•This industry routinely engages in cruel and completely unnecessary animal experimentation (which often then shapes the mentality of modern medical practices). Because of this, one group has recently been able to shift this longstanding cruelty by connecting it to the immensely wasteful spending which often accompanies that research.

•The current “war against bird flu” embodies many of the major problems in the pandemic prevention industry, as over the last few years, we’ve spent billions of dollars killing over a hundred million birds, but all this has accomplished is significantly raising the price of eggs.

•While viruses are typically treated as being “incurable” by modern medicine, many highly effective, frequently over the counter, and unpatentable treatments exist for viral illnesses that have been used for over a century (including for some of the most severe and “incurable” ones). This article will review those therapies and how they can both be used for severe illnesses and to rapidly eliminate common viral conditions (e.g., flus and colds).

In late 2019, I predicted that COVID-19 would turn into a disaster. I told many of my colleagues, who all thought I was crazy and simultaneously were confused by these remarks as I was typically the dissenting voice against getting worked up over the annual “pandemic.” While many things at work by late 2019 suggested this could happen, the primary reason I was willing to put my reputation on the line to claim this was due to the media coverage surrounding the pandemic.

Specifically, it’s a longstanding tradition for both the media and federal health apparatus to massively hype up each potential “pandemic,” but in the case of COVID (called Sars-Cov-2 at the time), the exact opposite happened. There was a consistent push to downplay it (e.g., “it’s just a flu bro” flooded the internet at that time) to the point many of my colleagues who typically got the most up in arms about (minor) infectious diseases laughed me off when I suggested COVID was something to be concerned about.

All of this was a red flag to me as I initially could not believe the pandemic industrial complex would be silent when the pandemic they had been waiting decades for finally arrived. Then, once it became very clear (from reports circulating on the internet in Dec 2019) that COVID was very different and actually had a high likelihood of causing a true pandemic, I inferred that only two things could explain why it was being suppressed—either it was known that it would turn into a huge problem and health authorities wanted time to prepare for it before the public panicked, or they wanted it to spread under the radar as much as possible so it could turn into an actual global disaster.

In my eyes, there are four central reasons why pandemics are always hyped up:

•They give federal agencies (e.g., the CDC) a way to justify their necessity and get Congressional funding (which is most likely the primary motivation).

•The ideal content for the media are things that emotionally agitate and hook viewers but do not challenge any vested interests that do not want to be exposed (e.g., major media advertisers like the pharmaceutical industry). Fear-mongering about the next pandemic hence is an excellent way to sustain those companies.

•A multibillion-dollar industry has been created around pandemic preparedness (e.g., lots of virology research and making vaccines) that succeeds because it has no accountabilityfor abjectly failing to prevent pandemics. In turn, hyping up pandemics is vital for this industry.

•Tackling many of the real health issues facing our country requires confronting the vested interests responsible for those issues existing (e.g., pharmaceutical companies) and addressing the underlying causes of chronic illnesses in the country—all of which is a lot of work and gets a lot of pushback. In contrast, having an aggressive and drastic top-down response to an infectious disease takes relatively little effort to do and allows the government to present the facade of safeguarding our health.

As such, we will constantly see “pandemics” that are hyped up by the media and typically are accompanied by mass slaughtering of livestock along with a variety of aggressive sales pitches for that year’s vaccine and in certain years, Tamiflu as well. Inevitably however, in one way or another, the whole thing ends up being a scam(e.g., the pandemic never materializes or the therapies for it don’t really work).

Note: as I show here, Tamiflu is a scam, as despite governments having spent billions stockpiling it, there is no evidence it works (but significant evidence it frequently has side effects).

The Biodefense Industry

In a previous article, I discussed the unscrupulous “biodefense” industry, which regularly cultivates bioweapons in labs to “protect” us from them. Before COVID-19, this industry had been under great scrutiny as many within the scientific community were worried its actions could lead to a catastrophic lab leak. However, once SARS-CoV-2 leaked, the entire scientific establishment chose to double down on this research and label any insinuation lab leaks could occur “a conspiracy theory” and “a danger to science.”

For example, in 2012 the notorious Peter Hotez secured a 6.1 million grant from the NIH to develop a SARS vaccine with the stated aim of responding to any “accidental release from a laboratory,” some of which was then used to fund GoF research conducted by the leader of the Wuhan lab in 2017 (a link to paper can be found here). Once the Wuhan lab leak happened however, Hotez, not surprisingly, made a 180° pivot and since then has repeatedly condemned anyone suggesting a connection between COVID-19 and the Wuhan lab’s bat research (which he funded to “prevent” a pandemic).

However, while the bioweapons industry (with the slavish support of the mainstream media) has done everything it can to defend its public image, COVID woke too many people up to what was going on. There is now significant pushback against bioweapons research and the lucrative (but consistently ineffective) countermeasures the industry uses to protect us from pandemics.

Unfortunately, because of how much money exists in Biodefense, the industry will continue to fight for it, regardless of how much public pushback it receives. For example, over the last two years, we waged a successful campaign to sink the WHO’s horrific pandemic treaty, which was primarily designed to give the industry a blank check to do whatever it wants (to the point we are now withdrawing from the WHO). Recently I highlighted the immense public protest in Colorado against establishing a (lavishly NIH-funded) bat lab there to study dangerous viruses—which in large part was due to that lab having already had numerous safety accidents and the citizens of Fort Collins not wanting to become the next Wuhan.

This highlights the major problem with Biodefense. Beyond it largely being a grift that fails to stop pandemics (as the therapeutics it brings to market inevitably prioritize profitability rather than safety or efficacy), it frequently creates the pandemics it is supposed to prevent.

This is because the industry will frequently infect animals with dangerous pathogens along with pathogens that are modified to be more dangerous (which is done under the logic those modifications could occur naturally, so we need to be prepared for them by first having lab models to test against—despite the fact those dangerous mutations almost never occur naturally). The infected animals in turn, are used to both study how each disease behaves and to develop a variety of therapies for it which can then be used if a real pandemic ever breaks out.

More specifically, when you consider all the potential opportunities for infection and how often lab animals “won’t behave” (e.g., fight back), it’s relatively challenging to prevent lab leaks from happening. For example, when I covered the Fort Collins lab, which is one of the NIH’s premier biodefense research facilities (and hence one of the least likely labs to have lab leaks), I highlighted a long list of lab accidents (all of which are compiled here). FOIA documents showed these accidents occurred 1-3 times a month, often involving dangerous pathogens, and could have resulted in someone developing a severe infection and transmitting it to a community—many of which were caused by lower-paid, less-trained and overworked employees doing the grunt work of experimenting on infected animals.  (See link for must-read article)

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**Comment**

I’m so thankful for boldly honest researchers and doctors like AMD who are chronicling this important history that ‘the powers that be’ would simply like to hide under rug.  As long as we keep reminding each other of this pertinent history, we will be less likely to be duped again.