I attempt to shed light on the riddle that is seasonal influenza using my favourite bag of spanners. Today I turn back the clock on a few previous articles
For anyone interested, it has also been covered in detail by Profs Henegan and Jefferson in their Trust the Evidence series aptly named the 'Fword'. This made interesting background reading (like Hope Simpson) and covered a lot of the work from the Common Cold Research unit at Salisbury. What struck me was that whilst there are ILI (nfluenza like illnesses) that produce flu like symptoms, there are many agents that can cause them. And I recall no cause whatsoever can be found in about 20% of symptomatic cases....So when is 'flu' actually flu??
In challenge studies with the good old Rhinovirus, quite often people just did not get infected no matter how much snot and spittle was forced upon them! And in others, like you mention, spontaneous outbreaks occured at ice stations where people had been isolated for months.
It's not surprising that respiratory virus studies always throws up a can of worms. With 'flu' it seems we don't really know what it is, who is susceptible or how it is actually transmitted. But that doesn't deter the epidemiological modellers.
As an aside, I do hope you will be able to look at the data regarding the effectiveness of the 'flu' vaccine.
As ever, thanks for all your hard work, and I look forward to the next installment.
Glad to see you're getting into this topic, and with the H/S book
1) I'm not sure I would say "we have the WHO interfering with how we Brits go about counting those counts." The Brits' (and the Americans and a whole lot of other countries) willingly participate in the WHO, adopt the ICD, conform to disease surveillance directives, etc. Regarding flu, one of the GISRS centers is in London and the World Influenza Centre was established in London in - surprise! - 1918: https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/who-and-the-flu-re-do
2) As a general point regarding "seasonal waves," I found when looking at/plotting as a time series NYC daily death records from 1914-1919 that seasonal variation is not all that exaggerated. There is also some suggestion that death record keeping used to fall off at the end of the year (probably due to holidays) and that the January spike in death records is a reporting artifact. I'm very suspicious of the records in 1918 and have wondered to myself if countries involved in WWI basically put solider battlefield deaths into the fall 1918 curves - and that is one reason (among others) for the simultaneous spikes in October 1918.
My major interest in this line is investigation is that I think numerous chronic infections are causing or contributing to chronic diseases across the board. I'll be digesting with thoughts of reactivation in mind.
Some factors that don't seem to be in the table (presumably because "current concept" does explain it) are things relating to clustering of cases or geographical features.
You may recall Joel's article showing covid totally lost its seasonailty before and after vaccination:
The more I read around the subject the more I view influenza as an outcome rather than a 'thing'; with that outcome resulting from a matrix of factors.
“...all of the influenza strains and their future offspring are already present in the human species, and have been thus since before the last ice age. All that happens is that something external and somewhat environmental comes along to trigger a latent nasty”
Like chicken pox and shingles? Makes sense.
“,,,but this ain’t just terrain theory, and it ain’t just germ theory: I shall call it Germain theory (see what I did there?)”
But is this germane to the issue? Sorry, couldn't resist! ;-)
My head is spinning!!!! Must re-read and the links.
Read the 5 reports. Head spinning more and based on the last one my stomach is also now spinning. Ups! just off to the ...............
Oh dear. A hot cup of tea with a dash of whisky should do the trick...
Great subject.
For anyone interested, it has also been covered in detail by Profs Henegan and Jefferson in their Trust the Evidence series aptly named the 'Fword'. This made interesting background reading (like Hope Simpson) and covered a lot of the work from the Common Cold Research unit at Salisbury. What struck me was that whilst there are ILI (nfluenza like illnesses) that produce flu like symptoms, there are many agents that can cause them. And I recall no cause whatsoever can be found in about 20% of symptomatic cases....So when is 'flu' actually flu??
In challenge studies with the good old Rhinovirus, quite often people just did not get infected no matter how much snot and spittle was forced upon them! And in others, like you mention, spontaneous outbreaks occured at ice stations where people had been isolated for months.
It's not surprising that respiratory virus studies always throws up a can of worms. With 'flu' it seems we don't really know what it is, who is susceptible or how it is actually transmitted. But that doesn't deter the epidemiological modellers.
As an aside, I do hope you will be able to look at the data regarding the effectiveness of the 'flu' vaccine.
As ever, thanks for all your hard work, and I look forward to the next installment.
Quite. Cracking comment. I'm not sure what I'm chasing anymore!
Glad to see you're getting into this topic, and with the H/S book
1) I'm not sure I would say "we have the WHO interfering with how we Brits go about counting those counts." The Brits' (and the Americans and a whole lot of other countries) willingly participate in the WHO, adopt the ICD, conform to disease surveillance directives, etc. Regarding flu, one of the GISRS centers is in London and the World Influenza Centre was established in London in - surprise! - 1918: https://www.woodhouse76.com/p/who-and-the-flu-re-do
2) As a general point regarding "seasonal waves," I found when looking at/plotting as a time series NYC daily death records from 1914-1919 that seasonal variation is not all that exaggerated. There is also some suggestion that death record keeping used to fall off at the end of the year (probably due to holidays) and that the January spike in death records is a reporting artifact. I'm very suspicious of the records in 1918 and have wondered to myself if countries involved in WWI basically put solider battlefield deaths into the fall 1918 curves - and that is one reason (among others) for the simultaneous spikes in October 1918.
3) You may know that my view is the flu shot and other "preventative treatments" are basically what make winter respiratory illnesses worse. This article is linked in mine above but ICYMI: https://totalityofevidence.substack.com/p/1900-prophylaxis-of-grippe
Not sure I'm going to be able to get my hands on the data I'll need, so this project might not get very far!
Well, if you need anything from this side of the pond, I'm your gal :)
Why thank you kindly!
🤗
My major interest in this line is investigation is that I think numerous chronic infections are causing or contributing to chronic diseases across the board. I'll be digesting with thoughts of reactivation in mind.
Some factors that don't seem to be in the table (presumably because "current concept" does explain it) are things relating to clustering of cases or geographical features.
You may recall Joel's article showing covid totally lost its seasonailty before and after vaccination:
https://metatron.substack.com/p/covid-cases-in-america-during-summer
https://metatron.substack.com/p/empirical-proof-of-covid-outbreaks
The more I read around the subject the more I view influenza as an outcome rather than a 'thing'; with that outcome resulting from a matrix of factors.
These appear to be the entirety of his relevant papers in Pubmed:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4311423/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/458138/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7462597/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6358347/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4032351/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3301379/
Peritinent citations seem to be slim to none.
I say! Fabulous! I'm going to need extra batches of Mrs Dee's superb shortbread.
“...all of the influenza strains and their future offspring are already present in the human species, and have been thus since before the last ice age. All that happens is that something external and somewhat environmental comes along to trigger a latent nasty”
Like chicken pox and shingles? Makes sense.
“,,,but this ain’t just terrain theory, and it ain’t just germ theory: I shall call it Germain theory (see what I did there?)”
But is this germane to the issue? Sorry, couldn't resist! ;-)