Archive for the ‘Viruses’ Category

Twitter Files: Twitter Loves Fauci & Big Pharma ‘Marketing Strategy’

**UPDATE**

Just when it appears things could not get worse, they do. Rather than simply reporting the news, Poynter just announced that 27 newsrooms have been accepted into Transforming Crime Reporting into Public Safety Journalism where newsrooms will spend 7 months learning to reimagine their work and its impact, and create more accurate and comprehensive community “narratives” about public safety.  Gee, what could go wrong?

South Carolina’s Rep. Nancy Mace interviews Twitter executives, who are not doctors, on the fact they admit U.S. and global governments used them as a subsidiary to censor legitimate doctors about COVID information.  She also testified that the COVID injections gave her adverse reactions that may be life-long.

https://disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/twitter-files-twitter-loves-dr-fauci

TWITTER FILES: Twitter loves Dr Fauci & Big Pharma “marketing strategy”

Documents uncovered at Twitter point to dissembling by Fauci under oath, and a social media company that helped market COVID vaccines while labeling and removing tweets for vaccine “misinformation”

APR 20, 2023

When Elon Musk tweeted “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” last December, Fauci went on Fox News and said he had no clue what the Twitter CEO was talking about.

“A lot of people are spouting out a lot of things about me and Twitter,” Fauci told Fox News. “I’ve never had a Twitter account. I don’t intend on having a Twitter account, and I’ve had nothing to do with Twitter. So I don’t know what they’re talking about when they say that.”

Fauci made similar claims during an almost 7-hour deposition. While under oath, the then-medical advisor to President Biden denied using Twitter or even paying attention to social media. (See link for article)

________________

**Comment**

The problem is, Fauci took over for @WHCOVIDResponse, according to a Twitter internal COVID-19 monthly update, as well as the fact they did work with J&J on “messaging strategy” to help market the pharma company’s COVID-19 shots—action that happened only months after Twitter began removing and labeling tweets that they deemed vaccine “misinformation.  Twitter also censored and banned expert scientists who contradicted Fauci’s narrative.  All contradiction or debate was simply stamped out.

The Twitter Files reveal how the federal government (funded by taxpayers) weaponized private companies, taxpayer-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and even commercial news media to target social media accounts disseminating content that ran counter to official narratives.  The files dubbed the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” confirm that the U.S. government sought, indirectly and via private intermediaries, to have “misinformation,” “disinformation” and “malinformation” removed from Twitter and other social media platforms.  Source

Twitter files journalist Matt Taibbi received an unannounced visit at his home by an IRS agent right before he testified before Congress in what appears to be an attempt to intimidate a witness before Congress.

Government collusion with the media, UNICEF, WEF, WHO, IFCN, FB, Google, and more has been continually proven.

Nobody seems to notice or care that Fauci’s daughter worked at Twitter as a software engineer during the pandemic.  But I’m sure we should just believe him when he states they never discussed content posted to social media.

One other little factoid: Fauci’s wife serves in a leadership role overseeing bioethics at the NIH.  I’m sure that’s all kosher too, as well as the fact the pandemic vastly increased their household net worth from $7.6 million to $12.6 million between the start of 2020 and the end of 2021.  She also co-authored a March 2022 report approving of social ostracization for the “vaccine”-hesitant and encouraging employers to pressure their workers, which didn’t work out so well for the mayor of Chicago who recently lost her re-election bid, which now has to reinstate fired workers with back pay and a 7% interest on top.

http://

Fauci Files Finally Drops on Twitter – More Lies Exposed

April 20, 2023

Redacted

The first round of Fauci-related Twitter files was released and we cover it while it breaks. It showed a few new things such as the fact that Johnson & Johnson worked directly with Twitter’s marketing campaign to promote the injections, even as they were being pulled for adverse events. It also showed that Fauci had more experience with Twitter than he has previously admitted. More to come.

But Fauci is guilty of many, many crimes:

I could literally go on to infinity with this.  Fauci’s a crook, plain and simple.

Damning MHRA Report on COVID Shots: ‘Never, Ever Again’

http://

April 19, 2023

A groundbreaking new report sent to every member of Parliament by the Perseus group – a team of experts from the fields of medicine, pharmaceutical regulation and safety management – has set out in detail the numerous concerns raised by experts globally about the ‘vaccines’ and the specific concerns about the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) responsible for giving them the green light.

Main criticisms of the report:

  • Lack of concern of COVID injection adverse reactions/deaths is shocking
  • Before the rollout, a rigorous proactive vigilance of safety was promised but a single 15 month old report has been given
  • MHRA failed to act for months regarding AstraZeneca shot problems (blood clotting, heart inflammation, neurological conditions, immune downregulating, and menstrual disorders)
  • Risks vs benefits were absent making informed consent impossible
  • Authoring mRNA gene products as “vaccines” yet giving them lower regulatory requirements leading to quality issues
  • Assessing its safety relative to its benefit rather than in absolute terms
  • MHRA never defines the tolerable rate of fatal and serious side-effects
  • FOIA requests reveal there has NEVER been a safety audit by the MHRA, and there is no process for investigating Yellow Card reports of adverse events
  • While the 2020 Cumberlege report lists basic safety and governance issues that notes with concern, the new Perseus group report rips the MHRA a new one
  • Anyone who shares concerns should write to his or her MP to ask if they have read the report and what they intend to do. Other suggested actions include signing the petition to “Launch a Public Inquiry into the approval process for COVID-19 vaccines” and signing the open letter to the Health Secretary organised by the Together DeclarationSource

For more:

Study Links Mask-Wearing to ‘Long Covid’

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1125150/full

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Public Health, 05 April 2023
Sec. Environmental health and Exposome
Volume 11 – 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1125150

Physio-metabolic and clinical consequences of wearing face masks—Systematic review with meta-analysis and comprehensive evaluation

Kai Kisielinski1*, Oliver Hirsch2, Susanne Wagner3, Barbara Wojtasik4, Stefan Funken5, Bernd Klosterhalfen6, Soumen Kanti Manna7, Andreas Prescher8, Pritam Sukul9* and Andreas Sönnichsen10

Background: As face masks became mandatory in most countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, adverse effects require substantiated investigation.

Methods: A systematic review of 2,168 studies on adverse medical mask effects yielded 54 publications for synthesis and 37 studies for meta-analysis (on n = 8,641, m = 2,482, f = 6,159, age = 34.8 ± 12.5). The median trial duration was only 18 min (IQR = 50) for our comprehensive evaluation of mask induced physio-metabolic and clinical outcomes.

Results: We found significant effects in both medical surgical and N95 masks, with a greater impact of the second. These effects included decreased SpO2 (overall Standard Mean Difference, SMD = −0.24, 95% CI = −0.38 to −0.11, p < 0.001) and minute ventilation (SMD = −0.72, 95% CI = −0.99 to −0.46, p < 0.001), simultaneous increased in blood-CO2 (SMD = +0.64, 95% CI = 0.31–0.96, p < 0.001), heart rate (N95: SMD = +0.22, 95% CI = 0.03–0.41, p = 0.02), systolic blood pressure (surgical: SMD = +0.21, 95% CI = 0.03–0.39, p = 0.02), skin temperature (overall SMD = +0.80 95% CI = 0.23–1.38, p = 0.006) and humidity (SMD +2.24, 95% CI = 1.32–3.17, p < 0.001). Effects on exertion (overall SMD = +0.9, surgical = +0.63, N95 = +1.19), discomfort (SMD = +1.16), dyspnoea (SMD = +1.46), heat (SMD = +0.70), and humidity (SMD = +0.9) were significant in n = 373 with a robust relationship to mask wearing (p < 0.006 to p < 0.001). Pooled symptom prevalence (n = 8,128) was significant for: headache (62%, p < 0.001), acne (38%, p < 0.001), skin irritation (36%, p < 0.001), dyspnoea (33%, p < 0.001), heat (26%, p < 0.001), itching (26%, p < 0.001), voice disorder (23%, p < 0.03), and dizziness (5%, p = 0.01).

Discussion: Masks interfered with O2-uptake and CO2-release and compromised respiratory compensation. Though evaluated wearing durations are shorter than daily/prolonged use, outcomes independently validate mask-induced exhaustion-syndrome (MIES) and down-stream physio-metabolic disfunctions. MIES can have long-term clinical consequences, especially for vulnerable groups. So far, several mask related symptoms may have been misinterpreted as long COVID-19 symptoms. In any case, the possible MIES contrasts with the WHO definition of health.

Conclusion: Face mask side-effects must be assessed (risk-benefit) against the available evidence of their effectiveness against viral transmissions. In the absence of strong empirical evidence of effectiveness, mask wearing should not be mandated let alone enforced by law.

Systematic review registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42021256694, identifier: PROSPERO 2021 CRD42021256694.

_________________

**Comment**

And yet, people are still donning these futile, toxic, oxygen depleters, infection propagators, and pollution causing face coverings that have set education back decadesYes, I’m passionate about this.

Sadly, an employee in a large hospital system in Michigan reports they’ve worn masks for almost three years. Recently, everyone got an email stating they are finally dropping masking but only for those who got the gene therapy injection and all recommended boosters despite the fact it is now widely known these injections don’t stop transmission or infection, severe illness, hospitalization, or death and are linked to more adverse reactions and death than any other “vaccine” in the history of VAERS.  But, truth be damned.  Keep pushing the face diaper narrative at all costs.

Seriously, ENOUGH of the lunacy!

For more:

Must Read: CDC Hires Ad Firm & A Handful of Companies Control the Global Propaganda

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/cdc-ad-firm-promoting-flu-vaccine

CDC Hired Ad Firm to Write ‘News’ Articles Promoting Flu Shots for Kids, Elderly, Documents Reveal

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hired a marketing firm to write what looked like news articles but were actually ad placements created to persuade parents of young children and elderly people to get flu shots, according to documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hired a marketing firm to write what looked like news articles but were actually ad placements created to persuade parents of young children and elderly people to get flu shots, according to documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show the CDC in September 2020 hired Weber Shandwick, a marketing firm, to create and place unattributed articles on news sites.

The campaign was part of a multi-year, $32 million dollar contract between Weber Shandwick and the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) to promote influenza vaccination and strengthen NCIRD’s immunization program.  (See link for article)

__________________

https://media.mercola.com/ImageServer/Public/2023/April/PDF/companies-control-global-propaganda-pdf.pdf

A Handful of Companies Control the Global Propaganda

April 14, 2023

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • PR firms and ad agency holding companies are a central cog in global propaganda machine. They make sure the same message is distributed in many different places in a cohesively timed fashion
  • An estimated two-thirds to 80% of the content broadcast and published by corporate media comes from public relations firms such as these four. In other words, most so-called mainstream media “news” is propaganda
  • The four largest ad holding companies in the world are the Publicis Groupe, WPP, the Omnicom Group and the Interpublic Group, and all are deeply interlocked with the corporate media, the military-industrial complex and the policymakers
  • A handful of private investment companies dominate every aspect of our lives and own everything we spend our money on. The two largest ones are Vanguard and BlackRock. Vanguard and/or BlackRock are also among the top 10 shareholders in the four largest ad agency holding companies
  • The 1% of the world’s wealthiest people provide the ideological justification that is driving the implementation of The Great Reset worldwide. The term academia uses to describe this globalist cabal is “The Transnational Capitalist Class” or TCC

In her book “One Idea to Rule Them All, Reverse Engineering American Propaganda,” Michelle Stiles reveals how the American public (and indeed the global population at large) have been indoctrinated and conned by public relations (PR) companies that run the globalist cabal’s propaganda campaigns. I will be interviewing Michele shortly for this book.

The PR agency creates a global media plan for a given client. It decides the articles to be written and where they’re to appear. It then decides where ads will run and when. So, while drug companies appear to have a rather direct influence over media, it’s really the PR firms that wield the greatest control, especially when it comes to the organization of it all.

They make sure the same message is distributed in many different places in a cohesively timed fashion. As such, PR companies are a central cog in the global propaganda machine and need to be understood as such.

On a side note, there are two designations for PR companies: public relations firms and ad agency holding companies. Ad agency holding companies do public relations but are primarily ad agency based.

A Russian Nesting Doll Model of the World

As detailed in “Who Owns the World?” a handful of private investment companies dominate every aspect of our lives and own everything we spend our money on, from food and beverages to clothing, travel, housing and just about everything else you can think of.

While there appear to be hundreds of competing brands on the market, like Russian nesting dolls, larger parent companies own multiple smaller brands. In reality, all packaged food brands, for example, are owned by a dozen or so larger parent companies.

These parent companies, in turn, are owned by shareholders, and the largest shareholders are the same in all of them: Vanguard and Blackrock. These institutional investors also own each other. They’re shareholders in each other’s companies, which erodes the concept of competition and strengthens the global monopoly even further.

Four Ad Holding Companies Dominate the Media Landscape

The four largest ad holding companies in the world are currently the Publicis Groupe, WPP, the Omnicom Group and the Interpublic Group, and Stiles notes, all are “deeply interlocked with the corporate media, the military-industrial complex, and the policy elites.”

Each agency, in turn, has smaller subsidiaries and affiliates, again giving us the illusion that there are far more players than there really are. And, as with everything else, Vanguard and/or BlackRock are among the top 10 shareholders in these top four ad agency holding companies. They also own major media companies, and the largest drug companies.

An estimated two-thirds to 80% of the content broadcast and published by corporate media comes from public relations firms.

For clarity, in her book, Stiles lists the top three as WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic, but as of November 2021, Publicis surpassed WPP in terms of market value, nabbing the No. 1 spot as the world’s largest ad holding company.1 WPP still has a larger annual revenue, though. That said, all four boast multibillion-dollar annual revenues. In 2022:

  • London-based WPP, which has agencies in 112 countries, made $17.847 billion.2 Noteworthy clients include Amazon, Microsoft, NBC, Healthline, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Pfizer.
  • Publicis made $14.957 billion3 serving clients within the technology, pharmaceutical and banking industries.
  • New York City-based Omnicom made $14.289 billion4 from its 200+ agencies, which service more than 5,000 corporate brands, universities, nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
  • The Interpublic Group’s revenue was $10.928 billion,5 and its clientele include the U.S. Army, ABC, Columbia Records, Unilever, U.S. Bank, Facebook and ExxonMobil, just to name a few.

According to Stiles, an estimated two-thirds to 80% of the content broadcast and published by corporate media comes from public relations firms. In other words, most so-called mainstream media “news” is propaganda.

Remarkably, when you add the revenues of these top four ad holding companies together, it’s still below $60 billion, which seems a modest price to control up to 80% of the global mainstream media landscape. Clearly, it’s money well-spent, from the globalist’s perspective.

The Transnational Capitalist Class

As noted by Stiles, the term academia uses to describe this globalist cabal is “The Transnational Capitalist Class” or TCC. “They are 1% of the world’s wealthiest people who provide the ideological justification driving desired actions to be implemented worldwide in pursuit of their shared interests through transnational governmental organizations,” she writes.

She goes on to cite sociologist Peter Phillips’ book, “Giants: The Global Power Elite,” in which Phillips details:

“… the vast web of interconnectedness of the 17 giant investment firms managing in excess of $43 trillion in capital, who are themselves cross-invested with each other, the near giants … and have ownership stakes in the top 1,500 corporations spanning the globe, giving them enormous power in corporate board rooms across the planet.

Leaders of these firms meet together at various policy-making conferences throughout the year to network, strategize and finalize recommendations in the form of reports and whitepapers that heavily influence worldwide geopolitics …

If you still live in the dark ages thinking there is no intertwined global elite controlling and overpowering the sovereignty of nation-states and dominating the ideological landscape, take the time and read Phillip’s book. It’s a reality check as bracing as a cold shower …

Philips profiles 389 of the world’s most powerful players in capitalism … It’s a very small ecosystem of entwined connections, financial overlap, elite prestige and message control which they inhabit …

There are integrations, cross integrations, partnerships, overlap of leadership and constant networking among the 1%. This is evident. So far, an obvious but overlooked question is: If a deeply complex geo-political and ideological web has already been established, who are the weavers and what are they up to? Who is responsible for the organization on such a grand scale?

People who study these types of things have many names for the weavers: ‘The Deep State,’ ‘The 1%,’ ‘The Elites,’ ‘GloboCap,’ ‘The Powers That Be,’ or simply ‘Globalists.’ It is likely that the true leaders will always remain hidden, and the leaders profiled in Phillips’ book are more or less figureheads fronting for controllers behind the scenes.

Remember, wolves don’t go announcing themselves to the general public. If things go awry, their anonymity protects them. In the end, knowledge of the names is not as important as understanding the systematic game of ‘winner take all’ that they are playing.”

But for all their private meetings, the globalists would not have been able to build this hidden monopoly where they own everything, were it not for their control of the media.

They hid their control of the media pretty well for a long time, but during COVID, the lockstep word-for-word regurgitation of nonsense and easily-confirmed lies revealed there was, without doubt, a top-down organization to the madness.

Here, Publicis appears to be a top candidate as the primary string-puller, seeing how it’s partnered with the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a “reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of life.

US Government Spends Billions on Propaganda

While private interests are at the center of the globalist cabal or Deep State, it’s a mistake to think that governments aren’t participating in their plans — or their propaganda.

As reported by Stiles, between 2007 and 2015, the U.S. federal government spent more than $4 billion on public relations services, plus another $2.2 billion for polling, research, and market consulting services. Why does a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” need all this PR? In short: to indoctrinate the public with the globalists’ narratives and points of view.

“Building trust takes time because character is only revealed through action,” Stiles notes, and this is well-known to con artists and propagandists alike. Without a certain level of trust, a con won’t work, and we are now discovering that the globalist cabal has spent decades orchestrating a con so big many still cannot believe it. They’ve infiltrated academia, science and just about every branch of government, and not just in the United States.

In a functioning system, mainstream media would have alerted us to the game plan and exposed the liars and the frauds along the way. But they didn’t, and the reason they didn’t is because mainstream media are no longer free to report truth. It’s been captured by the globalist propaganda machine and its primary function is to broadcast the narratives created by PR companies on the cabal’s behalf.

Propaganda is a rich man’s sport,” Stiles writes. “Imagine with piles of money you can purchase ‘trust,’ enabling you to monopolize ideas. Your ideas at the top of the food chain ensure continued market dominance and financial leverage over a manipulated citizenry.

You are going to do this in various ways; creating foundations that will ‘donate’ large sums of money to organizations you would like to influence, sponsoring organizations that influence national and global leaders and by creating nonprofit organizations that can promote your message while appearing independent.

This takes decades, but you’re a patient person. After all, global ideological dominance shouldn’t happen overnight. When sufficient entities exist or have been captured — the average citizen is subject to the finest pseudo-reality that money can buy.

It’s a diabolical achievement — the corruption and take-over of the ideological free market. Your ideas saturate the landscape, and your helpless victims struggle to triangulate ‘truth,’ trapped in a literal spider’s web of interconnected and well-financed authoritative voices and entities.”

The Creation of an Idea Syndicate

Stiles goes through the various ways in which the globalists technocrats and transhumanists managed to create an “idea syndicate” where their ideas always get top billing. One way has been through the capturing of societal influencers through the lures of “grants and the promise of appointments, publications and prestige.

This strategy has resulted in people of low integrity and morals taking center stage — most are basically people willing to sell out — while simultaneously throttling the influence of independent thinkers who cannot be bought.

Another highly effective strategy is to “control the realm of ideas by lavishly funding certain themes and narratives while selectively starving others slated for extinction,” Stiles writes. This is routinely done through charitable foundations. Through “charity,” the cabal can fund the ideas that the TCC endorses while simultaneously starving out opposing ideas and ideals. As noted by Stiles:

“The true threat of the foundations lies ‘in their ability to provide war chests in the battle of ideas,’ picking winners and losers and corrupting the free-flowing ideological landscape …

Those ideas that are nonconformist, unconventional or simply do not comport with the dominant ideology espoused by the foundation trustees would be left to wither on the vine, having little reach or power to influence.

Much of what is called ‘truth’ today is supported by ‘research.’ ‘The research says’ is the essence of supposed objectivity and the backbone of a superior argument leaving the fellow without research in the dust. The logic is as follows: All worthy ideas get funding for research; your ideas have no supporting research; therefore, your ideas are inferior.

As you can easily see, all ideas do not have equal opportunity to advance if the control lever of funding is biased. With this scheme in place, entire intellectual flotillas of specialized science could be created and used to commandeer social policy, legislation, and judicial rulings by directing the money spigots flowing into academia …

Foundation control of monies to academia can be thought of as a chokehold on the seedbed or ideological germination centers targeting idea creators and their livelihood.”

The third way to create an idea syndicate is through front groups — third-party organizations that claim to be independent but are really agents of and for a particular agenda.

“With enough money, front groups can afford to scheme up designer truth hot off the assembly line to support literally any platform,” Stiles writes, adding, “Thanks to billions of dollars spent through foundations, public relations firms and the third-party technique, Americans are literally swimming in a sea of manufactured truth …”

Controlling Competing Views

So, to summarize, maintaining control over ideas and prevailing narratives involves both the monopolization of ideas and the simultaneous suppression of competing views, and PR companies and media perform both functions.

As noted by Stiles, even when media present opposing views, they do so very carefully. “Truth that has the power to unseat the illusion of democracy will have a firewall erected against it,” and media simply will not cross that firewall, no matter how “neutral” they pretend to be.

ChatGPT Weighs in on Potential Dangers of PR Firms

In closing, and just for fun, a member of my team recently asked ChatGPT to “write a story about the potential dangers of how the top three ad holding companies, which also act as public relations firms, can influence news coverage about pharmaceutical products, similar to how Bill Gates could use his foundation’s money to influence the World Health Organization and media organizations to influence the coverage of global health, and potentially benefit from his own pharmaceutical investments.”

The carefully engineered prompt for the AI allowed a response that reveals the kernel of truth that even the radicalized programmers at OpenAI could not filter out:

ChatGPT weighs in on potential dangers of pr firms
– Sources and References

_________________

**Comment**

This, right here, should be required reading for everyone.  It distills down to its basic components why we have lived and continue to live through a dystopian nightmare on steroids.  We’ve been gamed on every level and there are few “good guys” left willing to boldly speak the truth come hell or high water.

For more:

Tick-borne Powassan Virus is Being Transmitted in Concentrated Clusters in New England, Yale Study Says

https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/tick-borne-powassan-virus-is-being-transmitted-in-concentrated-clusters-in-new-england-yale-study-says/

Tick-borne Powassan virus is being transmitted in concentrated clusters in New England, Yale study says

YALE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

April 11, 2023

By Jenny Blair, Yale School of Public Health

For New Englanders, tick-borne infections are a fact of life. Lyme disease, a bacterial infection carried by the deer tick, was first described in Connecticut in the 1970s and remains a major problem.

But deer ticks transmit other diseases to humans as well, including anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and an emerging virus called Powassan. Cases of Powassan virus have risen dramatically in recent years in the United States, mostly in the Northeast and Great Lakes region.

Most people infected with Powassan do not experience symptoms, but for some, it can result in brain swelling and even death. There are currently no vaccines or treatments for Powassan virus infection. Prevention is primarily dependent on education and control.

In a new study, researchers at the Yale School of Public Health provide insights into the transmission dynamics of the Powassan virus that could help focus public health efforts and limit infections. The study found that the virus appears to be highly localized in its spread, meaning that the virus is maintained in scattered local hotspots with very limited mixing between hotspot sites.

“It’s incredibly important to do surveillance to know what’s out there,” said Chantal Vogels, a research scientist in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) and a co-first author of the study.

By greatly expanding on what little genomic information scientists had before our study, Vogels said, “we were able to explore patterns of transmission and spread and unravel the ecology of the virus.”

Mapping viral spread

The team studied 279 samples of Powassan virus lineage 2 found in deer ticks (Ixodes scapularis, also called black-legged ticks) collected in Connecticut, New York, and Maine between 2008 and 2019.

By deciphering and comparing the virus’s complete genetic codes, or genomes, the researchers reconstructed the history of Powassan in the region. They estimated when branches of the virus’s “family tree” diverged and pieced together how the virus evolved and where it traveled via its hosts.

It’s incredibly important to do surveillance to know what’s out there.

Chantal Vogels, research scientist, Yale School of Public Health

Sometime between 1940 and 1975, a major branch of the lineage 2 virus appeared in the Northeast. This branch of the virus, which accounts for most Powassan cases in North America, first appeared in southern New York State and Connecticut. Then, several long-distance jumps occurred, likely when infected ticks caught rides on migrating birds or other vertebrate hosts. By 1991, it had reached Maine. During its initial decades in the region, Powassan became more populous in the wild, but this probably leveled off about 2005.

The virus now appears to be moving slowly or staying put, simmering in specific hotspots, and evolving independently in each one. For instance, the scientists could find no evidence that separate clades of the virus were mingling with each other across a 20-kilometer (or approximately 12.5 miles) stretch between two Connecticut sites. The scientists note, however, that they sampled only a limited number of locations, so it’s possible they missed hotspots.

Still, this new information could help health officials to target those hotspots, where Powassan is more likely to spill over into humans, for education and eradication efforts.

“If it’s anything like [the related] tick-borne encephalitis virus, [previous researchers have] estimated that these foci are typically about the size of a football field,” said Doug Brackney, a researcher in the Department of Entomology at The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, and an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at YSPH.

A quiet menace

Researchers first identified the virus in 1958 in a five-year-old boy from Powassan, Ontario, who developed severe encephalitis and died. After that, about one case per year was diagnosed until 2006. Then cases began to climb, and since the late 2010s dozens of diagnoses have been made nearly every year.

Given that the virus’s numbers appear to have leveled off in the wild, this increase in human disease may have happened because more humans are encountering ticks, and/or because more health professionals are checking for Powassan in patients with suspicious symptoms.

Unlike Lyme disease, which takes hours to pass from an infected tick to a human, Powassan can be transmitted just 15 minutes after the tick latches on. More New England residents have likely been infected with Powassan than have shown symptoms.

“We typically only see the most severe cases of disease, and those are the people that end up in the hospital. But it’s probably just the tip of the iceberg,” Vogels said.

“I think it’s really important to be early with this work,” she added, “to prevent a situation where everyone has heard of this virus, and it creates a huge burden on public health.”

The study appears online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

***

The study’s four co-first authors are Vogels; Brackney; Alan P. Dupuis II of the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany; and Rebecca M. Robich of the MaineHealth Institute for Research (MHIR).

The five co-senior authors are Robert P. Smith of MHIR; Philip M. Armstrong of The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES); Alexander T. Ciota of the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) and SUNY Albany; Simon Dellicour of KU Leuven and Université Libre de Bruxelles, both in Belgium; and Nathan D. Grubaugh of the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University.

Other co-authors are Joseph R. Fauver of the Yale School of Public Health and the University of Nebraska Medical Center; Anderson F. Brito of the Yale School of Public Health and Instituto Todos pela Saúde, São Paulo, Brazil; Scott C. Williams and John F. Anderson, both of CAES; Charles B. Lubelczyk of MHIR; Rachel E. Lange and Laura D. Kramer, both of NYSDOH and SUNY Albany; Melissa A. Prusinski of NYSDOH; Jody L. Gangloff-Kaufmann and Laura B. Goodman, both of Cornell University; and Guy Baele of Belgium’s KU Leuven.

The research was funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Science, a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the NIH. Baele received funding from Internal Funds KU Leuven and the Research Foundation – Flanders. Dellicour received funding from the Research Foundation – Flanders, the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique, and European Union Horizon 2020.

_______________

**Comment**

Wisconsin is a hotspot for Powassan as well.  It also is not rare.  Again, this is an issue of it being “rarely reported.”  Big diff.

Coppe Lab, a CLIA certified lab, right here Waukesha has been studying Powassan for quite some time. Their pdf below states that numbers look low because only severe cases are reported. Despite this, there’s been a 375% increase in the last 5 years. 

They state the clinical picture of Powassan looks like many other tick-borne illnesses and is…

PROBABLY OVERLOOKED YET DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTES TO DISEASE LONG TERM.

About two-thirds are subclinical cases but around 30% of symptomatic adults contract a severe form called meningoencephalitis. One-third of those have incomplete recovery with neuropsychiatric symptoms that become chronic. The overall fatality rate is about 1% and severity of illness increases with the age of the patient.

For more: