The 1918 Spanish flu... when researchers attempted to spread it no one got sick - Printable Version
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The 1918 Spanish flu... when researchers attempted to spread it no one got sick - Lordy x2 - 09-22-2020
The 1918 Spanish flu is said to have been one of the most highly virulent, contagious diseases of all time, but when researchers attempted to spread it from person to person -- by directly spraying "infectious" secretions into people's noses, eyes and throats -- no one got sick
The 1918 flu pandemic, also known as the Spanish flu, is considered to be one of the most severe pandemics in history. Said to have been caused by an H1N1 virus that originated in birds, it spread around the globe from 1918 to 1919, infecting about 500 million people, or one-third of the world's population at that time. An estimated 50 million people were said to have died due to the 1918 flu pandemic, 675,000 of them in the U.S.[i]
To this day, there remain many questions about this pandemic and the virus that is said to have caused it. "While the 1918 H1N1 virus has been synthesized and evaluated, the properties that made it so devastating are not well understood," the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) admits.[ii]
Although the 1918 H1N1 virus was said to be highly virulent and spread via human contact, what is even more curious is that laboratory experiments were never able to confirm this. In fact, when researchers took every measure they could think of to infect people with the virus, they were unsuccessful, calling into question whether it was, in fact, spread from person to person.
Scientists Fail to Infect Other Humans With 1918 Spanish Flu
Infecting humans with a flu virus for the sake of medical research is no longer deemed ethical, but this wasn't the case during the 1918 to 1919 pandemic, when Dr. Milton Rosenau, an infectious disease expert, conducted human experiments on U.S. Navy sailors in cooperation with the Public Health Service and the U.S. Navy.[iii]
Volunteers from the U.S. Naval Training Station in Deer Island, Boston, who "appeared to be in excellent physical condition," took part in the study,[iv] which consisted of the scientists attempting to infect the healthy volunteers with the flu. To do this, they collected various secretions from people sick with the flu -- nasal secretions, mucous from their throats and even direct coughing in the face -- and exposed the volunteers.
The donors were said to be early in the disease, within the first, second or third day, to ensure they would still be contagious. The infectious substances were then sprayed into the volunteers' nostrils, throat and eyes, and then the researchers waited 10 days for them to become ill -- but "none of them took sick in any way."[v] Writing in the journal Public Health Reports, John Eyler, Ph. D., of the University of Minnesota, explained:
"[Volunteers] … were inoculated with mixtures of other organisms isolated from the throats and noses of influenza patients. Next, some volunteers received injections of blood from influenza patients. Finally, 13 of the volunteers were taken into an influenza ward and exposed to 10 influenza patients each.
Each volunteer was to shake hands with each patient, to talk with him at close range, and to permit him to cough directly into his face. None of the volunteers in these experiments developed influenza."[vi]
Other research has also failed to show human-to-human transmission of influenza, with one 2003 review conducted by U.S. CDC scientists and colleagues concluding, "Our review found no human experimental studies published in the English-language literature delineating person-to-person transmission of influenza."[vii]
Edwin Jordan, a public health scientist who conducted some of the most well-known research into the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic,[viii] also reported in 1927 that five studies failed to demonstrate sick-to-well transmission of influenza.
"Jordan reports that all five studies failed to support sick-to-well transmission, in spite of having numerous acutely ill influenza patients, in various stages of their illness, carefully cough, spit, and breathe on a combined total of >150 well patients," according to a review published in Virology in 2008.[ix] Rosenau's study was the largest among them.
Scientists Caution Against Concluding the Obvious
Even after failing to infect people with the flu despite multiple direct exposures, Rosenau stated, "We must be very careful not to draw any positive conclusions from the negative results of this kind."[x] At the same time, he acknowledged:
"We entered the outbreak with a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from person to person. Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease."[xi]
Their report documented eight other studies that also failed to identify how the Spanish flu was spread, but said perhaps other factors were involved relating to how the virus was discharged from or entered the body. Perhaps, some suggested, the volunteers were already immune. But some of the volunteers were specifically included because they had no prior exposure to influenza.
Others suggested that the virus donors may have no longer been infectious, but the patients were said to have been within their first three days of illness, when viral shedding should be at its peak.[xii] "It seemed that what was acknowledged to be one of the most contagious of communicable diseases could not be transferred under experimental conditions," Eyler wrote.[xiii]
Their study effectively showed that the 1918 Spanish flu was not a contagious disease, but they still theorized that perhaps if they had been more aggressive in exposing the volunteers (more aggressive than directly spraying "infectious" nasal secretions up someone's nose?), they would have gotten a different result.
It's even been suggested that perhaps the donors didn't actually have the flu at all, but it's believed that physicians were highly capable of diagnosing influenza in 1918, and all the donors were symptomatic, making this highly unlikely. "Obviously, another explanation is that sick-to-well transmission is not the usual mode of contagion," the Virology Journal review added.[xiv]
Indeed, the real disease here appears to be in researchers believing what they want to believe -- in this case that the Spanish flu was easily transmitted from person to person -- even if the science clearly says otherwise.
References
[i] U.S. CDC, 1918 Pandemic (H1N1 virus) https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html
[ii] U.S. CDC, 1918 Pandemic (H1N1 virus) https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html
[iii] Public Health Rep. 2010; 125(Suppl 3): 27-36. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862332/
[iv] Experiments Upon Volunteers to Determine the Cause and Mode of Spread of Influenza, Boston, November and December 1918, Page 7 https://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3750flu.0016.573
[v] Virology Journal volume 5, Article number: 29 (2008) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
[vi] Public Health Rep. 2010; 125(Suppl 3): 27-36. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862332/
[vii] Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 37, Issue 8, 15 October 2003, Pages 1094-1101, https://doi.org/10.1086/378292 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/37/8/1094/2013282
[viii] Epidemic Influenza. A Survey. 1927 pp.599 pp. https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/19292700266
[ix] Virology Journal volume 5, Article number: 29 (2008) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
[x] Medium June 1, 2020 https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/spread-of-spanish-flu-was-never-experimentally-confirmed-9f91b37c4dd8
[xi] Public Health Rep. 2010; 125(Suppl 3): 27-36. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862332/
[xii] Medium June 1, 2020 https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/spread-of-spanish-flu-was-never-experimentally-confirmed-9f91b37c4dd8
[xiii] Public Health Rep. 2010; 125(Suppl 3): 27-36. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862332/
[xiv] Virology Journal volume 5, Article number: 29 (2008) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
RE: The 1918 Spanish flu... when researchers attempted to spread it no one got sick - Lordy x2 - 09-22-2020
In Stunning Reversal, CDC Says It Published New Guidance On Risks Of 'Airborne' COVID-19 "In Error"
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/stunning-reversal-cdc-says-it-published-new-guidance-risks-airborne-covid-19-error
After publishing guidance warning about the serious risks of "airborne" infection associated with SARS-CoV-2, the CDC just seriously harmed its own credibility by acknowledging Monday that it had posted the new guidance "in error", following a pressure campaign from the WHO.
Scientists have been gathering evidence that the novel coronavirus plaguing the world spreads via aerosol particles practically since it first emerged, and back in July, a group of 200 scientists sent a letter to the WHO urging the international public health agency to change its guidance on the spread of the disease. The problem scientists argued is that the WHO hasn't updated its views to incorporate new research showing that aerosol spread is a much greater threat than touching contaminated surfaces, or via large droplets spread by close contact between individuals.
Yet, the WHO has refused these overtures, and this week it successfully convinced the CDC to do the same.
After the WHO announced earlier that it had reached out to the CDC over the guidance change, the agency informed American media outlets that a "draft version" of the guidance had been "posted in error".
"A draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency’s official website," the CDC said. "CDC is currently updating its recommendations regarding airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). Once this process has been completed, the update language will be posted."
Even so, the American media has grown increasingly convinced that aerosols significantly contribute to overall spread of the virus, with ABC News suggesting yesterday that expensive UV-light powered surface cleaners were merely examples of "hygiene theater".
For months, the CDC has insisted that these large droplets are the primary mode of transmission, which is why - it argued - people must wear masks in public, because masks are effective at blocking large particles.
Experts quoted in the US press reports are already slamming the CDC for injecting more confusion into the conversation surrounding COVID-19 prevention at a particularly risky time. After all, schools are still reopening across the US and many are diving headlong into the unknown, fearful that all of this activity could cause another wave of the pandemic, as Dr. Scott Gottlieb warned yesterday.
The FDA is already under fire for its allegedly "premature" approval of convalescent plasma, which critics claim is the result of untoward political pressure from the president.
All this scrutiny is helping to cement a new nickname for the agency.
Centers For Damage Control
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 21, 2020
Whoops.