Lose Them Pounds

“The Immunity Fix: Strengthen Your Immune System, Fight Off Infections, Reverse Chronic Disease and Live a Healthier Life” is a new book written by James DiNicolantonio, Pharm.D., with whom I co-wrote “Super Fuel,” and Siim Land, an esteemed biohacker and author of “Metabolic Autophagy.”

In it, they review how to improve and regulate your immunity — a topic that should be high on anybody’s list these days. The catalyst for this collaboration was a number of academic papers written by DiNicolantonio on the underlying reasons for why some people suffer worse COVID-19 outcomes.

Many who end up with severe illness produce low amounts of Type 1 interferon. There’s also a reduction in their adaptive immune system. As a result, they don’t clear the virus quickly and end up having to rely on a more proinflammatory killing of the virus inside their cells instead.
Immune System Basics
As a refresher, your immune system consists of two primary “arms”:

The innate immune system, which is your first line defense made up of natural killer (NK) cells, macrophages and white blood cells like neutrophils

The adaptive immune system — T cells, and B cells that produce antibodies

As explained by DiNicolantonio:

“We used to think that the adaptive immune system was this system that takes a while to kick in, and once you have immunity from your adaptive immune system, then you have a longer-term protection, which is true. However, the adaptive immune system also seems to have cross sensitivity, meaning if you’ve been exposed to previous coronaviruses, your T cells seem to have some cross sensitivity to SARS-COV-2.
So, essentially, what we see is a reduction in T cells, in the cytotoxicity of these CD8 T-killer cells, which kill viruses in a nice, apoptotic, controlled way.
When you have a reduction in those types of immune cells, you have to rely more on your proinflammatory innate immune system for clearing viruses — things like neutrophils, white blood cells, macrophages. They kill in a much more pro-inflammatory, non-specific way, and they end up killing healthy bystander cells.
What we think is going on is, essentially, you have this reduction in Type 1 interferons … which interfere with the virus. And at the same token, you have a reduction in B cells and T cells. So, what ends up happening is you don’t clear the virus as quickly, and you end up having this proinflammatory killing.
Siim and I collaborated because these things are complex. We need to get this in layman’s terms. What our book boils down to is that your diet and your lifestyle control those types of things, and there’s things that you can do to support your own immune system.”

Your T cell function tends to decline with age. It’s also reduced in those with chronic disease. Reduced T cell function appears to be a primary cause of severe COVID-19, seeing how those with the worst COVID-19 outcomes are the elderly and/or those with comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease.

These factors worsen the proinflammatory response that you get from SARS-CoV-2, but they also weaken your immunity in general. “The Immunity Fix” reviews lifestyle strategies that help you sidestep and prevent this proinflammatory response. “It’s a very holistic approach to looking at the immune system,” Land notes.
Top Two Nutrient Deficiencies to Address

Diet and nutritional supplementation are two key strategies that can help boost your immune function. According to Land and DiNicolantonio, vitamin D may be the most important nutrient in this respect.
Vitamin D activates more than 2,000 genes, DiNicolantonio notes, including vitamin K-dependent proteins and repair genes. It also helps your body produce powerful antimicrobial and antiviral peptides.

Those over the age of 60 have a ninefold greater risk of dying from COVID-19 than that of younger individuals. If you’re severely vitamin D deficient, your risk can be 15fold greater. So, while you cannot change your age, you can certainly alter your vitamin D status, thereby potentially minimizing your risk.

However, in order to convert the vitamin D into its active form, you need magnesium, so magnesium would probably be the second-most important nutrient deficiency to address. Magnesium is also required for immune cell function, so if your magnesium level is low, your immune function could be impaired. 

“People who have genetically low magnesium in their natural killer (NK) cells and their CD8 T-killer cells … their immune system is down. They have chronic activation of Epstein-Barr, which 95% of us are infected with, and they’re at a much higher risk of lymphoma,” DiNicolantonio says.
“And that’s just one nutrient. Being deficient in one nutrient can potentially cause this immunodeficiency essentially. So, in the book, we go through how nutrients and your immune system interact and why nutrient deficiencies are probably leading to a lot of these poor COVID-19 outcomes.”

Zinc and Selenium Are Also Important
In terms of importance, zinc would probably nab the third spot. Taking zinc lozenges at the first onset of cold symptoms has been shown to cut the duration of the common cold by six to seven days, but you have to take it correctly.

“If you’re using lozenges, you have to take it every two hours,” DiNicolantonio explains. “You got to take it within 24 hours of symptom onset. You have to take about 18 milligrams per dose, and you have to get the total daily dose over 75 milligrams.”

Fourth on the list would be selenium. Not only is selenium deficiency associated with a fivefold higher risk of dying from COVID-19 and a threefold higher risk of having a poor COVID-19 outcome, but it is also associated with coxsackievirus-induced cardiomyopathy (Keshan disease).
So, if you’re deficient in selenium, a nonvirulent RNA virus called coxsackievirus, which typically only causes hand, foot and mouth syndrome in certain children, can become much more virulent, leading to virally induced cardiomyopathy. Patients with this cardiomyopathy, known as Keshan disease, are typically given selenium. Selenium is also important for the production of glutathione, which appears to play a significant role in COVID-19.
The Importance of Melatonin

Another thing that is associated with improved COVID-19 outcomes is melatonin. DiNicolantonio explains:

“Melatonin is interesting. I kind of view it like molecular hydrogen but with some additional advantages. Melatonin can freely pass into any cell membrane, so that’s very key. If you want to get to the oxidative stress, you have to be able to access it and get into the mitochondria. Melatonin and molecular hydrogen are two molecules that can do that and really do that well …
Melatonin is not just this hormone we secrete in the brain. We synthesize it from serotonin, and it can be produced in many cells. So, it’s active throughout the entire day. What’s interesting is that it’s one of the only molecules that seems to increase the transcription of Nrf2.
Most plant polyphenols and all these other Nrf2 boosters only inhibit the inhibitor of Nrf2, which is KEAP1. Essentially, they’re making the current Nrf2 levels more active. When you add melatonin, that increases the transcription of Nrf2. Very few molecules can actually do that.
And Nrf2 is how we boost our endogenous antioxidant enzymes. Really, that’s the key. If you have acute respiratory distress, you want to boost your overall endogenous antioxidant systems, and the best way to do tha is through Nrf2 activators, particularly melatonin.”

High-Dose Melatonin Reduces COVID-19 Mortality

As for dosage, a recent case series involving 10 patients with COVID-19-related pneumonia used 36 to 72 mg of oral melatonin per day in four divided doses, which is far higher than recommended for sleep. DiNicolantonio comments:

“It’s so safe. Doses of melatonin up to 1,000 mg per day in humans have shown virtually no side effects besides grogginess and sleepiness … Melatonin use is associated with an 83% reduction in mortality from COVID-19, a 30 to 50% reduction in testing positive for SARS-COV-2, and in a case series of 10 COVID pneumonia patients, it cut the duration of hospital stay by five days.
And none of those patients who got melatonin ended up on a mechanical ventilator or died whereas in similar severe COVID-19 cases that were hospitalized at the same time, 25% to 40% of those individuals ended up on mechanical ventilators or died.”

As explained by DiNicolantonio, melatonin is actively produced throughout the day and is a master antioxidant, meaning it scavenges free radicals. It also binds to melatonin receptors that upregulate your innate antioxidant defense systems.

“Melatonin actually seems to concentrate in the bone marrow and that’s important because your immune system comes from stem cells produced from your bone marrow,” DiNicolantonio explains.
“From those stem cells, you get your immune cells. Some of your immune cells can even produce melatonin. We think it’s being concentrated in the bone marrow to protect immature stem cells and immune cells from oxidative damage, which actually makes a lot of sense.”

Nebulized Hydrogen Peroxide

While Land and DiNicolantonio hypothesized that inhaled molecular hydrogen at 2% or 3% would be a potential important strategy in COVID-19 patients requiring ventilation in a hospital, this can be significantly expensive. A better alternative, in my opinion, would be nebulized hydrogen peroxide, which you can do at home. This is my personal go-to strategy, and I’ve seen many recover from COVID-19 using this strategy.
You can review my video below for more detailed in formation.

Nebulizing hydrogen peroxide into your sinuses, throat and lungs is a simple, straightforward way to augment your body’s natural expression of hydrogen peroxide to combat infections and can be used to support the immune system.

All you need is a desktop nebulizer, food-grade hydrogen peroxide and some saline. That way, you have everything you need and can begin treatment at home at the first signs of a respiratory infection. Keep in mind food grade hydrogen peroxide must be diluted down to a 0.1% dilution before use.

I believe the hydrogen peroxide works like a signaling molecule, and may even have some direct viricidal effect on the cells in the lining of the lungs and the sinuses where the virus takes hold initially. So, you’re potentially killing it directly, plus supporting your immune responses.
Address Your Metabolic Health

In addition to addressing nutrient deficiencies, in particular vitamin D, magnesium, zinc and selenium, Land stresses the importance of optimizing your metabolic health.

“Research [has found] that metabolic syndrome, obesity and diabetes, all those things, worsen the outcomes of COVID-19 as well as other infections like influenza. Obesity also increases the duration that you can carry the virus and share it for longer. So, it’s especially negative in a society that tends to be in poor metabolic health.
One interesting thing that we discovered during the writing of the book is that one of the molecules that gets activated during an infection is called HMGB1, which stands for High Mobility Box-1.
That gets activated during an infection, and it’s one of the key molecules that kind of offsets the cytokine storm by activating NFKB and NLRP3 inflammasome and eventually causes this massive pro-inflammatory cytokine response …
What we theorized based on this research, is that hyperglycemia, insulin resistance, elevated blood sugar will make it more likely that HMGB1 is going to get into the cell and turn on NFKB and these other pro-inflammatory cytokines that will eventually lead to the cytokine storm.”

The Case for a Low Linoleic Acid Diet
DiNicolantonio and I discussed the importance of avoiding seed oils in our book, “Superfuel.” In it, we dove deep into the importance of healthy fats for metabolic health, and the destructive nature of linoleic acid-rich vegetable oils.

Linoleic acid (LA) is one of the most perishable molecules in food, meaning it’s highly susceptible to damage. When it oxidizes, it turns into oxidative metabolites called oxidative linoleic acid metabolites or oxylipids or OXLAMs that damage proteins, DNA and cell membranes and are likely the primary culprit of chronic disease.

OXLAMs also activate pathways that destroy your immune response. What we didn’t fully appreciate at the time was that even healthy oils, such as olive oil, can have a negative impact, thanks to their LA content. LA is also high in conventionally raised chicken, as these animals are typically fed LA-rich grains.

If you exceed 10 grams of LA per day, and perhaps as little as 5 grams — regardless of their source — you may radically worsen your metabolic health. From a historical perspective, 150 years ago, the average consumption of LA was 2 to 3 grams. Today, many get more than 30 grams a day from their diet. In my view, an LA-restricted diet may be the single most important dietary intervention available.
DiNicolantonio adds:

“That’s a great point, and I think from a COVID-19 perspective, the biggest thing you want to do is increase the resilience of your cells to oxidative stress. Unfortunately, if you’re consuming a diet high in LA, and if it doesn’t get burned for fuel and it gets stored in tissues, the half-life of LA is 680 days, and it can start oxidizing the cellular membranes, including on your immune cells as well.
If you increase your omega-6 intake, that affects the levels in your immune cells. And if you saturate your immune cells with this oxidized LA, you’re probably at a much higher risk of secreting more proinflammatory cytokines in your own cells, and your lungs and your arteries are probably much more susceptible to the damage that occurs when our body tries to kill off viruses.
I’m sure if we were to actually look at the blood levels of oxidized LA in severe COVID-19 patients, they would be sky high … So yeah, it’s likely a huge driver of overall inflammation.”

Simple Strategies to Improve Your NAD+ Level

Another important molecule is nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which can be increased using precursors such as nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) and/or nicotinamide riboside (NR).
Any type of oxidative stress is going to deplete NAD. So, fix your metabolic dysfunction and improve your nutrient deficiencies first.
NMN appears to be the superior of the two, as it activates a salvage pathway. However, you don’t need to take an expensive supplement to improve your NAD+ level. Strategies such as exercise, hot or cold exposure and time-restricted eating — which costs you nothing — can get the job done. Land explains:

“A lot of the NAD that your body produces is recycled through the salvage pathway. Very little (less than 1%) of it is going to come from food, especially tryptophan or niacin.
The easiest way to prevent losing your NAD as you get older or as you get immunocompromised is to promote the salvage pathway, and one of the activators of this NAMPT enzyme that governs the salvage pathway is AMP protein kinase (AMPK), and AMPK gets primarily turned on by catabolic stressors in the body, such as exercise, sauna, cold, as well as fasting.
What I’ve concluded is that doing this regular intermittent fasting or timed eating is a very efficient way of keeping our energy levels high and preventing the lowering of the other things that lower NAD, like inflammation and oxidative stress.
The problem is that NAMPT is controlled by sirtuins and sirt1 especially. Sirtuins are longevity genes. Sirtuins also control your circadian rhythms. So, what I think is that if your circadian rhythms are misaligned, if you’re doing shift work or you’re jet lagged or something, then sirtuins are not going to be expressed, and you will also then inhibit NAMPT, which will then shut down the NAD salvage pathway.”

In other words, when sirtuins are suppressed from mismatched circadian rhythms, you also suppress NAMPT, as the NAMPT requires sirtuins to work. Sirtuins also consume NAD, so if your NAD level is low, you’re not going to get the benefits sirtuins provide.

“I think the supplemental NR and NMN are very useful if you’re in an NAD-deficient state because the problem is that if you’re already low in NAD, then it’s hard to raise that bar because you’re already so low and depleted,” Land says.
“If your NAD is high, then you experience the less negative side effects from inflammation oxidative stress because your body can repair and deal with it, whereas if you’re immunocompromised, you’re very old or you are just nutrient deficient and have low NAD, then it’s a vicious feedback loop. So, using something like a NAD precursor or a booster can be a quick fix to get yourself back on the right track.”

If you use an NAD or NMN supplement, consider getting it in suppository form. Other alternatives include subcutaneous or intranasal administration, all of which are more effective than oral supplements. That said, as noted by DiNicolantonio, if your NAD is low, your best bet is to address the underlying cause rather than simply adding supplements.

“Ultimately, any type of oxidative stress is going to deplete NAD. So, fix your metabolic dysfunction and improve your nutrient deficiencies first, and ultimately your NAD need is going to go down. Fix the things that are causing you to burn through your NAD.”

One of the most common sources of oxidative stress is electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure, which is the topic of my book “EMF*D.” Two primary enzymes consume NAD. One is poly ADP-ribose polymerases (PARP), which is also known as adenosine ribosyl transferase (ARTD). PARP is used to repair DNA damage, and every time PARP is activated, it uses up 150 molecules of NAD.
The good news is that strategies such as sauna, exercise and fasting not only will improve the production of NAD, but also will reduce the consumption of it. These strategies also lower inflammation, which in and of itself will lower your NAD consumption.
Other Benefits of Sauna Bathing

In addition to preserving your NAD, sauna bathing also mimics a fever, which is your body’s first-line defense against infections. DiNicolantonio explains:

“The reason why we induce a fever to fight an infection is because that allows our cells to secrete heat shock proteins. In order for a virus to replicate, it has to infect your cell, hijack your machinery, and it has to export its ribonucleoprotein complex out of the cell to replicate. In order for that complex to get exported, the M1 protein has to dock onto it.
Heat shock protein 70, which gets released during sauna sessions, can combine to the viral ribonucleoprotein complex preventing M1 protein from docking. [By] inhibiting the export of that viral ribonucleoprotein complex, [heat shock protein] essentially inhibits viral replication.”

According to Land, regular sauna bathing and exercise are among the best things you can do to strengthen your immune system and increase your body’s resilience. The two are also complementary.
Exercise causes preconditioning hormesis, so if you exercise before your sauna, then you significantly bolster your body’s ability to handle infection and other stresses. The heat will also promote recovery from the exercise by boosting growth hormone, repairing damaged proteins and reducing inflammation.
More Information

This interview merely touches on a small number of highlights of the information found in “The Immunity Fix,” so to learn more, be sure to pick up a copy. To connect with DiNicolantonio and Land, see their websites, DrJamesDinic.com and SiimLand.com. Both can also be found on Twitter and Instagram by searching for DrJamesDinic (@drjamesdinic) and Siim Land.

There’s good news for those of you who have taken the proactive step to make sure your vitamin D level is optimized. Several recent studies demonstrate vitamin D can have a significantly beneficial impact on your cancer risk, both in terms of preventing cancer and in the treatment of cancer.
Vitamin D Reduces Cancer Mortality

In the first of these studies,1,2 which included 25,871 patients, vitamin D supplementation was found to reduce the risk for metastatic cancer and death by 17%. The risk was reduced by as much as 38% among those who also maintained a healthy weight.
This was a really poorly done study as they only gave participants 2,000 IUs a day and never measured their blood levels. Had there been no improvement, I would not have been surprised, but the fact is it still reduced metastatic cancer and death by 17%, and they found significant benefit among those who were not obese.
This is pretty extraordinary but not as good as epidemiological studies that show a 50% to even 78% reduction in vitamin D sufficient people, as suggested in a study further below. That said, UPI reported the results saying:3

“The benefits of vitamin D3 in limiting metastases — or disease spread to other organs — and severity was seen across all cancers, and was particularly prominent among study participants who maintained a healthy weight …
‘The primary message [of our study] is that vitamin D may reduce the chance of developing metastatic or fatal cancer among adults without a diagnosis of cancer,’ study co-author Dr. Paulette Chandler told UPI.”

The study, published in JAMA Network Open, is a secondary analysis of the VITAL Study4 which, in part, sought to determine whether taking 2,000 IUs of vitamin D per day would reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease or stroke in people who did not have a prior history of these diseases.
The VITAL study itself, which followed patients for an average of 5.3 years, found no statistical difference in overall cancer rates among those who took vitamin D3, but there was a reduction in cancer-related deaths, which is what prompted this secondary analysis.
Obesity May Inhibit Vitamin D’s Benefits
The fact that patients with a healthy weight derived a much greater benefit — a 38% reduced risk for metastatic cancer and death compared to 17% overall — suggests your body weight may play a significant role in whether vitamin D supplementation will provide you with the anticancer benefits you seek.
Obesity may confer resistance to vitamin D effects. ~ Dr. Paulette Chandler

According to study co-author Dr. Paulette Chandler, assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, “Our study highlights that obesity may confer resistance to vitamin D effects.”5
There may be something to that. Research6 published in 2010 found that dietary fructose inhibits intestinal calcium absorption, thereby inducing vitamin D insufficiency in people with chronic kidney disease.

That said, vitamin D tends to be lower in obese people in general, for the fact that it’s a fat-soluble nutrient and when you’re obese, the vitamin D ends up being “volumetrically diluted.” As explained in the paper “Vitamin D in Obesity,” published in 2017:7

“Serum vitamin D is lower in obese people; it is important to understand the mechanism of this effect and whether it indicates clinically significant deficiency … Vitamin D is fat soluble, and distributed into fat, muscle, liver, and serum.
All of these compartments are increased in volume in obesity, so the lower vitamin D likely reflects a volumetric dilution effect and whole body stores of vitamin D may be adequate … Obese people need higher loading doses of vitamin D to achieve the same serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D as normal weight.”

While that particular paper stresses that lower vitamin D in obese individuals might not mean that they’re deficient, others disagree. For example, one study8,9 found that for every 10% increase in body-mass index, there’s a 4.2% reduction in blood levels of vitamin D. According to the authors of that particular study, obesity may in fact be a causal factor in the development of vitamin D deficiency.10
Vitamin D Also Improves Colorectal Cancer Outcomes

A scientific review11 published in the September 2020 issue of the British Journal of Cancer noted that having low vitamin D is associated with poor colorectal cancer survival.
To assess whether vitamin D supplementation might improve survival in these patients, they reviewed the findings of seven trials, three of which included patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer from the outset and four population trials that reported survival in incident cases.
Overall, the meta-analysis found supplementation resulted in a 30% reduction in adverse colorectal cancer outcomes. Vitamin D also improved outcomes among patients already diagnosed with colorectal cancer. According to the authors:12

“Meta-analysis demonstrates a clinically meaningful benefit of vitamin D supplementation on [colorectal cancer] survival outcomes. Further well-designed, adequately powered RCTs are needed to … [determine] optimal dosing.”

Low Vitamin D Linked to Increased Cancer Incidence

Another review and meta-analysis,13 this one published in November 2019 in Bioscience Reports, looked at vitamin D supplementation on cancer incidence and mortality in general. Ten randomized controlled trials with a pool of 81,362 participants were included in the analysis.
While the incidence rate of cancer was very similar between the vitamin D intervention group and the placebo control group (9.16% versus 9.29%), the risk reduction in mortality was deemed “significant.” As reported by the authors:

“The mortality rate of cancer was 2.11% (821 cases) and 2.43% (942 cases) in vitamin D intervention group and placebo group, respectively, resulting in a significant reduction in risk (RR = 0.87).
There was no observable heterogeneity or publication bias … Our findings support a beneficial effect of vitamin D supplement on lowering cancer mortality, especially in subpopulations with no history of cancer, extra use of vitamin D, or calcium supplement.”

Vitamin D Protects Against Breast Cancer
Several studies have highlighted the benefit of vitamin D for breast cancer. For example, an analysis14 by GrassrootsHealth published June 2018 in PLOS ONE showed women with a vitamin D level at or above 60 ng/mL (150 nmol/L) had an 82% lower risk of breast cancer compared to those with levels below 20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L).
An earlier study,15,16 which looked at women in the U.K., found having a vitamin D level above 60 ng/mL resulted in an 83% lower breast cancer risk, which is nearly identical to GrassrootsHealth’s 2018 analysis.
One of the most recent meta-analyses17,18 looking at breast cancer was published December 28, 2019, in the journal Aging. Here, they reviewed 70 observational studies, finding that for each 2 ng/mL (5 nmol/L) increase in vitamin D level there was a corresponding 6% decrease in breast cancer incidence.
Overall, this translates into a 71% reduced risk when you increase your vitamin D level from 20 ng/mL to 60 ng/mL. The following graph, created by GrassrootsHealth,19 illustrates the dose response between vitamin D levels and breast cancer risk found in this study.

GrassrootsHealth’s 2018 analysis in PLOS ONE also analyzed this dose relationship.20 To do that, they looked at the percentage of breast cancer-free participants in various vitamin D groups, from deficient (below 20 ng/mL) to optimal (at or above 60 ng/mL), over time (four years).
As you might expect, the higher the blood level of vitamin D, the lower the incidence of breast cancer. The graph below illustrates this dose-related protection. At four years, the percentage of women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the 60 ng/mL group was 78% lower than among those with blood levels below 20 ng/mL.

How to Optimize Your Vitamin D Level

If you live in the northern hemisphere, which is currently heading toward winter, now is the time to check your vitamin D level and start taking action to raise it if you’re below 40 ng/mL (100 nmol/L). As you can see from the studies above, a vitamin D level of 60 ng/mL (150 nmol/L) or higher is recommended if you want to protect against cancer.
An easy and cost-effective way of measuring your vitamin D level is to order GrassrootsHealth’s vitamin D testing kit. Once you know your current vitamin D level, use the GrassrootsHealth vitamin D calculator21 to determine how much vitamin D you might need to reach your target level. To optimize vitamin D absorption and utilization, be sure to take your vitamin D with vitamin K2 and magnesium.
Lastly, remember to retest in three to four months to make sure you’ve reached your target level. If you have, then you know you’re taking the correct dosage. If you’re still low (or have reached a level above 80 ng/mL), you’ll need to adjust your dosage accordingly and retest again in another three to four months.

Choline is an essential nutrient, but it is not usually classified as a vitamin. According to Biology Online, a vitamin is “a low molecular weight organic compound that is essential for normal growth and metabolic processes and is required in trace amounts.”1 Since your body can produce some choline in the liver, it is not classified as a vitamin.
Your body needs fat-soluble and water-soluble vitamins to function optimally. Fat-soluble vitamins are stored in fatty tissue and the liver.2 They include vitamins A, D, E and K. Water-soluble vitamins are not easily stored and the excess is normally flushed out of your body in the urine. Water-soluble vitamins include vitamin C and all the B vitamins.
Choline is found in fat-soluble and water-soluble compounds in your food.3 Enzymes in your body free the choline from the compounds in your food where it’s absorbed in the small intestines and moved to the liver. Choline is then sent around your body to help make cell membranes.
Your body does not naturally produce enough choline to meet your needs. Therefore, you must get some from the food you eat.4 Choline levels are not routinely measured, but most people in the U.S. eat less than the recommended amount of foods containing choline.
While symptoms of a frank deficiency in healthy children and adults are rare, insufficient choline may be linked to health conditions including neurological degeneration and liver disease. Choline functions in the body overlap those of B vitamins, which in part may explain how choline was originally called vitamin B4.
Choline Was Once Considered a Vitamin

The earliest recorded information about choline occurred in 1862 when Adolph Strecker found that when lecithin was heated it generated a new chemical.5 He named that chemical choline. Three years later Oscar Liebreich identified a new molecule in the human brain that he named “neurine” and which later turned out to be identical to choline.
Nearly 100 years later in 1954, Eugene Kennedy described a pathway the body uses to incorporate choline into phosphatidylcholine. By this time scientists had identified many of the B complex vitamins.6
It wasn’t until 1998, though, that the Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Medicine recognized choline as an essential nutrient.7 In the fall of 2020, Elena Gagliardi from the ambulatory nutrition services department at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center spoke with a reporter from U.S. News & World Report and explained that choline is not a vitamin.8
Instead, it is “a chemical compound vital for its many roles in the body.”9 Adenine is a chemical constituent of flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD), which helps convert choline in the mitochondrial matrix.10
There is a close relationship between adenine and choline — so much so that some also refer to adenine as vitamin B411 and others use the terms interchangeably.12 However, it doesn’t matter what term is used, choline is a crucial nutrient for health and wellness.
Choline Is Crucial to Cognitive Function and Liver Health

According to a paper in Nutrition Today, the adequate intake (AI) for choline was calculated when the population levels of it were relatively unknown. Rather than being calculated based on experimental determinations or estimations of intake, it was calculated in part based on a study of adult men who developed liver damage after becoming deficient in it.13
The AI levels for others were then extrapolated based on standard reference weights. However, recent analysis has shown nearly 90% of people living in the U.S. do not eat enough choline-rich foods. Added to this, the 2015 to 2020 dietary guidelines for Americans did not recommend sufficient choline-rich foods to meet your needs.
A deficiency in choline can have wide-ranging effects. For example, there are indications that cholinergic dysfunction impacts the development of dementia. Studies and reviews of the literature supported the hypothesis that cholinergic dysfunction contributes to Alzheimer’s disease.14,15
Subsequently, it was discovered acetylcholine plays a central role in the nervous system, which requires an enzyme to synthesize it from acetyl-CoA and choline.16 The enzyme is called acetyltransferase. This connection likely explains, at least in part, the effect that anticholinergic drugs have on short-term cognitive impairment in the elderly.17
The medications act on acetylcholine, which sends messages that affect muscle contraction and the part of the brain that handles memory and learning. In one study, 347 participants who had experienced a stroke were given citicoline for 12 months. This is a supplemental combination of choline and cytidine.18
At the end of 12 months, the researchers found the supplement improved cognitive decline in the participants and “appears to be a promising agent to improve recovery after stroke.” Choline may also be a key factor in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is one of the most common forms of liver disease in the U.S.19
In part, NAFLD is triggered by obesity and insulin resistance, which scientists find leads to fibrosis and then cirrhosis or liver cancer. There are two forms that are not associated with alcohol consumption. The first is simple fatty liver or nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) and the second is called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
NAFL involves little inflammation or cellular damage, while NASH can lead to fibrosis, cirrhosis or liver cancer. In one study published in the Journal of Nutrition, researchers found women of normal weight who had the highest dietary intake of choline had a lower risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.20
Choline Has a Significant Impact on More Body Systems

According to Chris Masterjohn, Ph.D., choline deficiency may be more significant in the development of NAFLD than consuming too much fructose. His degree is in nutritional science and he believes the rise in fatty liver conditions is largely due to dietary changes.
In his review of the medical literature, Masterjohn found a link between choline and fatty liver, which was initially discovered in research into Type 1 diabetes. He describes the relationship:21

“In 1949, however, researchers showed that sucrose and ethanol had equal potential to cause fatty liver and the resulting inflammatory damage, and that increases in dietary protein, extra methionine, and extra choline could all completely protect against this effect.

Conversely, much more recent research has shown that sucrose is a requirement for the development of fatty liver disease in a methionine- and choline-deficient (MCD) model. The MCD model of fatty liver disease is the oldest and most widely used dietary model.

The MCD model produces not only the accumulation of liver fat, but massive inflammation similar to the worst forms of fatty liver disease seen in humans. What no one ever mentions about this diet is that it is primarily composed of sucrose and its fat is composed entirely of corn oil!

The picture that is clearly emerging from all of these studies is that fat, or anything from which fat is made in the liver, such as fructose and ethanol, are required for the development of fatty liver. But in addition to this [same] factor — overwhelmingly, it appears to be choline deficiency — must deprive the liver of its ability to export that fat.”

In one study published in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism, researchers enrolled 866 patients with newly diagnosed hepatocellular carcinoma to test survival rates as compared to serum choline levels.22 The data showed patients with higher serum choline levels had better survival rates from liver cancer than those with lower levels.
Choline is a building block of acetylcholine and phosphatidylcholine, a component of very low density lipoproteins.23 The brain uses phosphatidylcholine to make acetylcholine, which affects cognitive function. Phosphatidylcholine is also used in the treatment of several health conditions, including gallbladder disease, premenstrual syndrome and hepatitis.24
Krill Oil Supports Choline Levels and Physical Performance

Donald Layman, Ph.D., from the department of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois, talked about the relationship between exercise performance and choline, saying:25

“Exercise increases energy expenditure, helps maintain body composition, and controls body weight. We all know that routine daily exercise is important, but we often forget that good nutrition choices are essential for optimal muscle performance.

Specifically, choline is part of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine—the signal that stimulates muscle contraction, which supports muscle movement and performance. We also know that choline losses occur after exercise of only an hour, with a long run, cycling or a competitive tennis match.”

Choline plays a role in maintaining muscle function. Serum concentrations may be depleted during high-intensity exercise. In one study, researchers engaged 47 triathletes from age 25 to 61 from Ironman distance and Olympic distance triathlons. The group was split into two: 24 received daily krill supplements for five weeks before the race and 23 received a daily placebo of mixed vegetable oils.26
The athletes’ blood was tested before the race, immediately after and the following day. The researchers were analyzing serum choline levels and its metabolites. The data showed serum concentrations decreased significantly in all the races, but those receiving krill oil maintained more of their serum choline than those getting the placebo.
In one lab analysis, researchers found 69 choline-containing phospholipids in krill oil, which confirmed “the complexity of the phospholipid composition of krill oil.”27 The choline composition of krill oil may also be more bioavailable since “It has been suggested that 60% of choline in inorganic salts is lost to conversion to trimethylamine (TMA) by intestinal bacteria.”28
Enzymes may then turn TMA into trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), a potential biomarker for insulin resistance and heart problems. As noted by the researchers, “Choline in the form of PC is considerably less converted to TMA as demonstrated in a single-dose study with krill oil, potentially resulting in more efficient delivery of choline.”29
For example, evidence has shown that 28 days of krill oil supplementation increased choline levels in healthy young adults.30 Additionally, the researchers in this study noted: “no adverse effects on plasma levels of TMAO and carnitine were found.”
How to Get More Choline

In a study comparing phosphatidylcholine, present in krill oil, and choline bitartrate salt, it was found that the krill oil led to higher levels of the important metabolites betaine and dimethylglycine (DMG) along with lower levels of TMAO, which can lead to health issues, compared to the other choline sources.31
Krill oil also offers more nutrients, including eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which are beneficial for heart health and have been shown to improve blood pressure,32 reduce overall inflammation, reduce the effects of rheumatoid arthritis33 and depression34 and help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.35
Egg yolks are another excellent choline source. Among egg consumers, approximately 57% met the adequate intake levels for choline, compared to just 2.4% of people who consumed no eggs.36
In fact, the researchers in this same analysis concluded that it’s “extremely difficult” to get enough choline unless you eat eggs or take a dietary supplement, though it’s preferable to get nutrients from dietary sources whenever possible. Other dietary sources of choline include:37,38

Grass fed beef liver
Organic pasture raised chicken
Wild-caught Alaskan salmon

Roe fish eggs
Atlantic cod
Kidney beans

Quinoa
Brussels sprouts
Broccoli

Shiitake mushroom
Cauliflower
Sunflower seeds

1 Certain enzymes may be useful for COVID-19 because they help:
Support quick weight loss
Degrade fibrin, which is a key factor in clot formation
Extracted from earthworms, lumbrokinase is a highly effective antithrombotic agent that reduces blood viscosity and platelet aggregation while also degrading fibrin, which is a key factor in clot formation. Learn more.
Reduce your exposure to infectious agents
COVID-19 mutate into a less virulent virus

2 Which of the following are currently working to eliminate “anti-vaccine propaganda” from public discussion using sophisticated cyberwarfare tools?
Facebook and Twitter
Google
British and American intelligence agencies
All of the above
British and American intelligence agencies are collaborating with Google, Facebook and Twitter to eliminate “anti-vaccine propaganda” from public discussion using sophisticated cyberwarfare tools. Learn more.

3 Taking carnosine is one way to help stop the oxidative damage caused by iron intake in the presence of too many omega-6s. This is especially important if you’re:
Low on sleep
Under high stress
A vegetarian or vegan
Taking carnosine is one way to help stop the oxidative damage caused by iron intake in the presence of too many omega-6s … Eating beef is known to efficiently raise carnosine levels in your muscle, which is why if you’re a vegetarian or vegan this supplement may be particularly important. Learn more.
An office worker

4 The first randomized controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found:
Masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection
The first randomized controlled trial of more than 6,000 individuals to assess the effectiveness of surgical face masks against SARS-CoV-2 infection found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection. Learn more.
Masks significantly reduced the incidence of infection
Masks marginally reduced the incidence of severe infection
Masks eliminated the risk of infection

5 Recent research looking at data from nearly 10 million Chinese people in Wuhan, China, found people who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 but had no symptoms (asymptomatic) were:
Highly infectious and responsible for majority of infectious spread
Not infectious and had not spread the infection to anyone
A study looking at PCR test data from 9,899,828 residents in Wuhan city found that not a single one of those who had been in close contact with an asymptomatic individual tested positive. According to the authors, asymptomatic individuals have low viral load and are not infectious. Learn more.
As infectious as symptomatic patients
Infectious but to a lesser degree than symptomatic patients

6 Evidence suggests PCR testing for COVID-19 is being used to:
Accurately identify super-spreaders
Accurately identify infected people who need to be isolated
Incite fear in order to benefit an agenda developed by private corporations
The flaws of PCR testing have been capitalized upon to incite fear in order to benefit an agenda developed by private corporations, which include not only Big Tech companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, but also the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. Learn more.
Strengthen public trust that government is protecting us

7 Which of the following helps support your immune function?
Nutrients such as vitamin D, magnesium, zinc and selenium
Sauna bathing with or without exercise
Time-restricted eating
All of the above
Diet and nutritional supplementation are two key strategies that can help support your immune function. Topping the list of nutrients required are vitamin D, magnesium, zinc and selenium. Other strategies that help support your immunity through a variety of means include time-restricted eating, exercise and sauna. Learn more.

 

With COVID-19 vaccines on the precipice of mass distribution, news media are on fire as they talk about who will get the vaccine first and how it will be distributed. The one thing they aren’t discussing, however, is the definition of “effective” when it comes to these vaccines.

Early November 2020, Pfizer sent the stock market soaring1 when it announced its vaccine is more than 90% effective.2 One week later, Moderna — which designed its vaccine candidate in just two days3 — boasted a 94.5% effectiveness rating.4

However, if you read Pfizer’s and Moderna’s press releases and other clinical trial information, you’ll see that they have left out some really crucial information. For example:5

They don’t say how many cycles they used for the PCR tests they gave to count COVID-19 cases, which is crucial for determining the accuracy of those tests
They don’t say whether the “cases” had symptoms or not
They don’t mention anything about hospitalizations or deaths, meaning there is no indication it prevents either
There is no indication about how long the vaccine lasts if it truly is effective and protective. Some indications suggest you might need to take this vaccine every three to six months in order for it to be effective

Odds Ratios Can Be Misleading
In an article published by the Mises Institute, Dr. Gilbert Berdine, associate professor of medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, writes:6

“The Pfizer study had 43,538 participants and was analyzed after 164 cases. So, roughly 150 out 21,750 participants (less than 0.7%) became PCR positive in the control group and about one-tenth that number in the vaccine group became PCR positive.
The Moderna trial had 30,000 participants. There were 95 ‘cases’ in the 15,000 control participants (about 0.6%) and five ‘cases’ in the 15,000 vaccine participants (about one-twentieth of 0.6%). The ‘efficacy’ figures quoted in these announcements are odds ratios …
When the risks of an event are small, odds ratios can be misleading about absolute risk. A more meaningful measure of efficacy would be the number [needed] to vaccinate to prevent one hospitalization or one death. Those numbers are not available.
An estimate of the number [needed] to treat from the Moderna trial to prevent a single ‘case’ would be 15,000 vaccinations to prevent 90 ‘cases’ or 167 vaccinations per ‘case’ prevented, which does not sound nearly as good as 94.5% effective.”

Pfizer’s Number Needed to Vaccinate = 256

In a letter to the editor, Dr. Allan Cunningham, a retired pediatrician in New York, also points out that Pfizer’s 90% effectiveness rating fails to tell the story in a way that people can understand, and goes on to estimate the number needed to vaccinate for Pfizer’s vaccine. He writes:7

“Specific data are not given but it is easy enough to approximate the numbers involved, based on the 94 cases in a trial that has enrolled about 40,000 subjects: 8 cases in a vaccine group of 20,000 and 86 cases in a placebo group of 20,000.
This yields a COVID-19 attack rate of 0.0004 in the vaccine group and 0.0043 in the placebo group. Relative risk (RR) for vaccination = 0.093, which translates into a ‘vaccine effectiveness’ of 90.7% [100(1-0.093)]. This sounds impressive, but the absolute risk reduction for an individual is only about 0.4% (0.0043-0.0004=0.0039).
The Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNTV) = 256 (1/0.0039), which means that to prevent just one COVID-19 case 256 individuals must get the vaccine; the other 255 individuals derive no benefit, but are subject to vaccine adverse effects, whatever they may be and whenever we learn about them.”

Major Safety Questions Still Remain
Indeed, when it comes to safety, it’s important to realize that since only a few thousand verified healthy volunteers have been exposed to the actual vaccine, the real beta testers will be the masses of people who line up first to take the vaccines when they come to market.

In his article, Berdine stresses he has yet to find a medical colleague who is willing to be among the first to take the experimental vaccine. Most say they want to review the safety data after a year or so of use before they’ll consider getting it.

“These colleagues are concerned about possible autoimmune side effects that may not appear for months after vaccination,” Berdine writes. It’s worth noting that none of the trials currently underway include immunocompromised volunteers, so the effects of these vaccines on people with suppressed immune function is wholly unknown.

This is a significant problem, seeing how an estimated 14.7 million to 23.5 million Americans suffer from some form of autoimmune disease,8 and these people are also at increased risk for COVID-19 complications and death.

If the vaccine exacerbates autoimmune problems, the outcome could be devastating for an extraordinary number of people. The volunteers currently enrolled in trials are all healthier than the average American, yet side effects appear commonplace even among this “elite” group.
What You Can Expect From the COVID-19 Vaccine
An October 20, 2020, article9 in the Observer lists the known side effects that have emerged in the various trials. Chills, fever, body aches and headache are the most commonplace, but at least two cases of transverse myelitis — inflammation of the spinal cord — have also occurred.

Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that the vaccine’s side effects are “no walk in the park,”10 and Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, has stressed the need for a broad-based outreach campaign to discuss the reality of side effects, as patients might not come back for the required second dose if the side effects take them by surprise.11
Dr. Eli Perencevich, a professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa Health Care, has suggested essential workers should be granted three days of paid leave after they’re vaccinated, as many will feel too sick to work.12

A December 1, 2020, CNBC article,13 which looked at the frequency of adverse reactions, noted that 10% to 15% of participants in the Pfizer and Moderna trials reported “significantly noticeable” side effects.

Buried way down at the bottom of the article is a suggestion from a past advisory committee member, who proposes the nomenclature of “serious adverse reaction” be changed to “immune response,” so they can reprogram how people think about these side effects, even if they end up having to stay home from work because of them.
The article also admits they have no idea what, if any, long-term reactions there might be, which means (as we already knew) that this is a great big public health experiment and, of course, anything that happens post-marketing will be labeled a “coincidence.”

In related news, a participant in India’s AstraZeneca trial is now suing the company claiming the vaccine caused “serious neurological damage,”14 and a group of researchers warn the COVID-19 vaccines could potentially increase your risk of HIV infection.15 Then there are the concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine permanently altering your DNA, effectively turning you into a transhuman.16 As you can see, there’s a lot to consider before taking this vaccine.
Do We Really Need a COVID-19 Vaccine?
Berdine also points out that most of his colleagues believe “the uncertainties about safety exceed what they perceive to be a small benefit.”17 Indeed, at this point, a range of data suggest the COVID-19 vaccine may be completely unnecessary. For example:

• COVID-19 mortality is extremely low outside of nursing homes — 99.7% of people recover from COVID-19.18 If you’re under 60 years of age, your chance of dying from seasonal influenza is greater than your chance of dying from COVID-19.19
• Data clearly show that COVID-19 has not resulted in excess mortality, meaning the same number of people who die in any given year, on average, have died in this year of the pandemic.20,21 This is true even among the elderly, as evidenced in a Johns Hopkins University article published just before Thanksgiving. According to the article:22

“The deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.”

As soon as the article started trending on Twitter, Johns Hopkins deleted it saying it “was being used to support false and dangerous inaccuracies about the impact of the pandemic.”23

• Studies24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31 suggest immunity against SARS-CoV-2 infection is more widespread than suspected, thanks to cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses that cause the common cold.

• Asymptomatic people are highly unlikely to spread SARS-CoV-2 — A study32 looking at PCR test data from nearly 10 million residents in Wuhan city found that not a single one of those who had been in close contact with an asymptomatic individual (someone who tested positive but had no symptoms) had been infected with the virus. In all instances, virus cultures from people who tested positive but had no symptoms also came up negative for live virus. 

Will COVID-19 Vaccine Save Lives?
Peter Doshi, associate editor of The BMJ, also questions the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines, pointing out that current trials are not designed to tell us whether the vaccines will actually save lives. And, if they don’t, are they really worth the risks involved? Doshi writes:33

“What will it mean exactly when a vaccine is declared ‘effective’? To the public this seems fairly obvious. ‘The primary goal of a COVID-19 vaccine is to keep people from getting very sick and dying,’ a National Public Radio broadcast said bluntly …
Yet the current phase III trials are not actually set up to prove either. None of the trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus.”

Doshi points out that when Dr. Paul Offit was asked in an interview whether a recorded “event” in these trials meant moderate to severe illness, he replied yes, “that’s right.” But that’s not, in fact, correct. All Phase 3 trials count mild symptoms, such as a cough, as a “COVID-19 event,” and all will finalize their analyses after a mere 150 or 160 of the volunteers develop symptomatic COVID-19 — regardless of severity.

“Part of the reason may be numbers. Severe illness requiring hospital admission, which happens in only a small fraction of symptomatic COVID-19 cases, would be unlikely to occur in significant numbers in trials.
Data published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late April reported a symptomatic case hospitalization ratio of 3.4% overall, varying from 1.7% in 0-49 year olds and 4.5% in 50-64 year olds to 7.4% in those 65 and over. 
Because most people with symptomatic COVID-19 experience only mild symptoms even trials involving 30,000 or more patients would turn up relatively few cases of severe disease,” Doshi writes.34
“Hospital admissions and deaths from COVID-19 are simply too uncommon in the population being studied for an effective vaccine to demonstrate statistically significant differences in a trial of 30,000 people.”

These trials also do not tell us anything about the vaccine’s ability to prevent transmission, as this would require testing volunteers twice a week for long periods of time — a strategy that is “operationally untenable,” according to Tal Zaks, chief medical officer at Moderna.35

COVID-19 Vaccine Poses Rare Distribution Challenges
Questions have also been raised about the potential for the COVID-19 vaccines to “go bad” due to improper storage. Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has to be stored at an unheard of cold temperature even for Antarctica — minus 70 degrees Celsius, or 94 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit. Moderna’s can be kept a bit warmer, at “just” minus 20 degrees C, or 4 below zero F. Both pose a problem for providers who will be administering the shots.

To get an idea of why the vaccines have to be frozen, NPR compares them to chocolates that melt easily.36 The reason the vaccines are so fragile is because they’re made with messenger RNA (mRNA), which turn your own cells into little factories that produce SARS-CoV-2 protein that in turn trigger antibody production.

The problem is that mRNA is easily broken down, so it needs the freezing temperatures to keep stable. Pfizer said its special packaging keeps the vaccines frozen with the help of dry ice. Even so, providers will still have to abide by strict guidelines, one of which says the freezer compartment storing the vaccines cannot be opened more than twice a day, and when opened, must be closed within one minute. Once thawed, the vaccine can be kept refrigerated for five days.

The whole situation makes distribution a challenge, too since the smallest amount you can order is 975 doses. That means the vaccines most likely will have to go to places capable of administering large numbers of vaccines in a short period of time to avoid spoilage. What happens if the vaccine is mishandled and spoils? No one knows. At best, it may be ineffective. At worst, it may cause completely unexpected side effects.
The Gold Rush of Vaccines and Indemnity

The risk of side effects is particularly troubling in light of the fact that vaccine manufacturers are indemnified against any harm that occurs from the use of their vaccines. In the video above, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., highlights the gold rush that occurred for pharmaceutical companies when the World Health Organization declared swine flu a pandemic in 2009.

In 2011, the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix (used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked to childhood narcolepsy.

Several experimental vaccines were hastily rushed to market following the WHO’s pandemic declaration, one of which resulted in thousands of European children and teens developing chronic narcolepsy and cataplexy (the sudden collapse due to loss of voluntary muscle control triggered by strong emotions or laughter).
In 2011, the ASO3-adjuvanted swine flu vaccine Pandemrix (used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked37 to childhood narcolepsy, which had abruptly skyrocketed in several countries.38,39 Children and teens in Finland,40 the U.K.41 and Sweden42 were among the hardest hit.
Further analyses also discerned a rise in narcolepsy among adults who received the vaccine, although the link wasn’t as obvious as that in children and adolescents.43

A 2019 study44 reported finding a “novel association between Pandemrix-associated narcolepsy and the non-coding RNA gene GDNF-AS1” — a gene thought to regulate the production of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor or GDNF, a protein that plays an important role in neuronal survival. 

They also confirmed a strong association between vaccine-induced narcolepsy and a certain haplotype, suggesting “variation in genes related to immunity and neuronal survival may interact to increase the susceptibility to Pandemrix-induced narcolepsy in certain individuals.”

Now, in the midst of another controversial pandemic, we’re facing an eerily similar playbook — with pharmaceutical companies eager to cash in on the first COVID-19 vaccine, which begs the question, “Are we are being played — again?”
Not the First Hoax — Practice Makes Perfect
Pandemics have come and gone around the globe for centuries, but in recent history they’ve been used as points of manipulation that have profited corporations, particularly pharmaceutical companies.
The 2005 bird flu epidemic, for example, was predicted to kill from 2 million to 150 million people. It killed just 98 people, globally, in 2005, 115 in 2006 and 86 in 2007.45 No one in the U.S. died from this infection. The brazenness of the hoax prompted me to write my New York Times best seller book “The Great Bird Flu Hoax.”
In 2006, 2007 and again in 2008, hyped warnings over the bird flu were repeatedly exposed as little more than a cruel hoax, designed to instill fear and line the pocketbooks of industry and various vested individuals. In 2009, there was the swine flu hoax, the vaccination campaign for which, as mentioned, turned into a disaster.
The summer of 2012 was again filled with dire predictions of bird flu sufficiently mutating to cause a human pandemic, immediately followed by urgent calls for fast-tracked vaccines. None of these pandemics ever turned into global killers, and COVID-19 is no different. As mentioned earlier, there’s no evidence of excess deaths due to this novel virus.
The COVID-19 pandemic differs from previous ones, however, in that it’s being used not just to enrich drug companies and justify the existence of gain-of-function research, but also to usher in a “reset” of the entire global economy by the technocrats. While failing economies around the world are blamed on the pandemic, the central bank system has been faltering for some time and is now on its last leg.
The global debt load is now so high, countries cannot even pay off the interest, and thus the system no longer works. It needs to be “reset,” but rather than ditching the central bank system and resetting it to something stable (such as returning to a gold-backed system), the technocrats in charge are ushering in an all-digital centralized currency that will give them total control over the finances of every human on earth.
What’s more, the economic reset is only one part of this all-encompassing totalitarian takeover. The COVID-19 vaccine fits into the scheme by providing an excuse to track and trace everyone’s whereabouts, and connect this medical surveillance together with the digital economy. You can learn more about this in “What You Need to Know About the Great Reset.”
No Accountability for Vaccine Harms

As noted by Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), based on the historical failures of past coronavirus vaccines, a fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine could become one of the biggest public health disasters in history.

And, no one involved will be held accountable or face any repercussions, just as GlaxoSmithKline was not held accountable for the narcolepsy cases caused by Pandemrix. Instead, they will all continue to profit while an unsuspecting public will beta test yet another potentially dangerous vaccine.

Even if severe side effects are rare, when you’re talking about vaccinating some 7 billion people, even a tiny percentage will translate into millions of people affected.

Davos is a city in Switzerland, known as much for its excellent skiing as it is for hosting the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting. The meeting is formally described as “the most creative force for engaging the world’s top leaders in collaborative activities to shape the global, regional and industry agendas at the beginning of each year.”1
This elite oligarchy, however, is behind a technocratic plan to govern society through technology, programmed by scientists and technicians and automated through the use of artificial intelligence, rather than through democratically elected politicians and government leaders. The video above shows snippets of the World Economic Forum’s 2016 meeting, with narrative by Truthstream Media.2
It’s compared to the meetings of the secretive Bilderberg Group, created by Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands in 1954 to “foster dialogue between Europe and North America,”3 but unlike Bilderberg meetings — the details of which are not made public, but which have reportedly referred to protestors as “cockroaches”4 — WEF is an open forum that may be filmed and released to the public.
This particular discussion, therefore, is eerily polite, but that doesn’t make its content any less chilling.
Scientists Scheming How to Use Your Own Thoughts Against You

What if, one day in the next decade, it becomes possible to read your thoughts? The WEF panelists suggest that different ways of scanning the brain and brain mapping could be incorporated into the legal system, used by lawyers as part of trials, including against you.
Apparently, according to one of the panelists, Jack Gallant, head of The Gallant Lab at UC Berkeley, “Anything that’s in current conscious awareness can be decoded, it’s just a matter of [finding the] technologies”5 to do so.
If brain mapping became mainstream, it could have major applications applicable to the law, such that even if a person chooses not to confess, their brain could be tapped to do it for them. This has already occurred in India, when brain scan technology was used to criminally convict someone based on the data received from their brain, not via their spoken words.6,7
It’s possible, for instance, to decode signals in the brain in such detail that you could reconstruct a movie a person has seen, including not only the objects and actions in the movie, but also how that person felt about the movie — whether it made them feel happy, sad or otherwise.
Already, in 2017, researchers with Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories and Kyoto University created a program to reconstruct images from brain activity.8 In one example, a person saw or imagined an image of a cheetah, which led the program to reconstruct an image of a cheetah, albeit one with a dreamlike, somewhat abstract aura.9
Further, every emotion you feel leaves a signature in your brain that can be “read.” Mindreading, then, is no longer a work of science fiction. WEF cited a study by Carnegie Mellon University researchers who are using mindreading technology to decode complex thoughts.10,11 According to WEF:12

“The technology, the researchers say, is able to understand complex events, expressed as sentences, and semantic features, such as people, places and actions, to predict what types of thoughts are being contemplated. After accessing the mental triggers for 239 sentences, the program was able to predict a 240th phrase with 87% accuracy …

Marcel Just, who is leading the research, said … ‘This advance makes it possible for the first time to decode thoughts containing several concepts. That’s what most human thoughts are composed of.’”

‘The Worst Possible Brain Decoding Device’

There is currently no such thing as protection of “freedom of thought” the way there is protection for freedom of speech, and the notion of “mental privacy” isn’t even on the radar. Yet, this brain decoding technology is being slated for use against the public.
Gallant stated, “There’s a huge government program now to increase measurement technology for neuroscience … as it helps basic research so we can measure the brain better, that will have applications in brain decoding and interpretational brain function that will be applicable to the law.”13
Another panelist, Brian Knutson, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford, describes thoughts and feelings that you may not be able to verbalize, or may not want to verbalize, that still leave a signature in your brain. “And we might be able to decode that,” he said.14
One goal, it appears, may be to decode a person’s brain even without their consent. Rana Foroohar, TIME magazine’s assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business, also a panelist, said:15

“If we could get to the point, where either you can have an unwilling suspect or an unwilling individual having their brain decoded in some sense … legal systems don’t bake in any presumption that we can do that and so there’s no legal protections that can be afforded to you.

So if you look nationally, internationally at whether or not there are any human rights … if there are constitutional protections for something like freedom of thought or mental privacy or cognitive liberty, nothing like that exists yet.”

Scientists have already decoded various aspects of language, such as phonetics, syntax and semantics. From there, it’s just a matter of time before internal speech — your very thoughts and mind — can also be decoded.
“Once you have those models,” Gallant said, “you can actually decode language. Now, of course, the obvious application of that is decoding internal speech. And once you decode internal speech, then you essentially have the sort of worst possible brain decoding device, or best possible, depending on your view. Certainly, the most controversial brain decoding device.”16 Then the panelists laugh.
Are Portable Brain Decoding Devices a Few Years Away?

Gallant said he believes it’s just a matter of time before there will be portable brain decoding technology that decodes language as fast as you can text on your cellphone: “Everyone will wear them, because people have shown that they’re quite willing to give up privacy for convenience.” A prototype could be here in the next decade.
While they bring up the “scary” ethical and privacy questions this raises, there’s no question of whether or not they should move forward. This is already occurring.
“Technology is about to openly bring us an era where government authorities can read people’s minds without their permission and use it against them including in court, pre-crime, thought police/thought crime and labeling people including children as potential criminals based on their brainwaves and all of this was discussed casually at Davos,” Truthstream Media noted.17
In fact, Kent Kiehl, of the University of New Mexico and the MIND Research Network, has used brain scans to uncover what he believes is a specific brain signature for psychopathy.18,19 He’s also noted, “A great deal of research suggests that the core, precipitating features of psychopathy are developmental in nature, with relatively persistent traits becoming apparent before the age of 10.”20
If it turns out you can decipher who may become a psychopath via brain decoding, and identify them by the age of 10 — then what? Scientists are also trying to use brain decoding to figure out how likely it is that someone may commit a crime again, in order to influence criminal sentencing.
The WEF panel even put out a public poll to find out who people would trust with access to their thoughts and memories — government, police, your doctor, your employer, your spouse or none of them? Three percent said they would give over access to the government, compared to 25% to their spouse.
False Memories Can Be Implanted

Part of what makes brain decoding, and the use of mindreading, so terrifying is that memories can be manipulated. Elizabeth Loftus, a professor of psychology at UC Irvine, has done extensive research showing that memory is not only not reliable, but easily manipulated.
“We can easily distort memories for the details of an event that you did experience,” she told The Guardian in 2003. “And we can also go so far as to plant entirely false memories — we call them rich false memories because they are so detailed and so big.”21 What her decades of research have shown is that memory doesn’t always work like a recording device that simply plays back scenarios as they occurred.
“Memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page,” she told NPR. “You can go in there and change it, but so can other people.”22 False memories, then, can be implanted in people’s minds, and that’s not all.
Another area of research is pain detection — understanding the circuitries that cause pain. If that can be manipulated, it’s possible that instilling pain could also be used as a coercive measure in the legal system, the WEF panelists noted. “That’s amazing,” one of them responded.
US Government Has History of Mind Control Experiments

If this sounds too conspiratorial, too outlandish to be real life, consider the CIA’s top-secret MK-Ultra project, which engaged in mind control experiments, human torture and other medical studies, including how much LSD it would take to “shatter the mind and blast away consciousness.”23
In decades past, the technocrats — the global, mostly unelected, elite that steer the management of nations worldwide — called for a “new world order.” Currently, terms like “the Great Reset,” “the Fourth Industrial Revolution” and “Build Back Better” are being thrown around, as fear and social control, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, grow.
All of these terms refer to the same long-term globalist agenda to dismantle democracy and national borders in favor of a global governance by unelected leaders, and the reliance on technological surveillance, i.e., brain decoding, digital “health passports” and more, rather than the rule of law to maintain public order.
The warning signs are all around us, if we’re willing to see them for what they actually are. The only question now is whether enough people are willing to resist it to make a difference.

More than 1 million years ago, geologic actions created what is now known as the Ogallala aquifer, also known as the High Plains aquifer. Spanning 174,000 miles and eight states — Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming — the reservoir supports the water needs of nearly one-fifth of wheat, corn, cotton and cattle production in the U.S.,1 but it’s quickly becoming depleted.
The aquifer, which underlies about 112 million acres,2 is being tapped by farmers at rates that can’t be naturally sustained. The water-intensive needs of irrigated crops and concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) livestock are much greater than the replenishment offered by rain and snow.
The result is that 89 trillion gallons of water were drained from the Ogallala from 1900 to 2008, and in some areas, like Kansas, “‘Day Zero’ — the day wells run dry — has arrived for about 30% of the aquifer,” according to a report in The Conversation,3 and researchers have predicted that, if current trends continue, another 39% will be depleted over the next 50 years.4
Crop production worth an estimated $35 billion depends on water from the Ogallala, but it’s all at risk if the aquifer runs dry. Already, the water level has been dropping by an average of 6 feet per year, while the natural recharge rate is 1 inch or less.5 It’s estimated that, once drained, it will be 6,000 years before the Ogallala will naturally refill.6
What’s more, investigations by Matthew Sanderson, a professor of sociology and geography and geospatial sciences at Kansas State University, and colleagues suggest the aquifer isn’t becoming depleted due to occasional droughts, but because misguided agricultural policies encourage farmers to do it.
“Forty years is long enough to learn that the Ogallala aquifer’s decline is not driven by weather or by individual farmers’ preferences,” they write in The Conversation. “Depletion is a structural problem embedded in agricultural policies. Groundwater depletion is a policy choice made by federal, state and local officials.”7
Farm Policies Encourage Excessive Water Usage

Farm subsidies, which once began as a safety net focused on food security, are now contributing to environmental destruction that could lead to food scarcity via the draining of aquifers.
In 2020, farm incomes were up 5.7% compared to 2019, but that’s only because of government payments to farmers. “Corn prices were too low to cover the cost of growing it this year, with federal subsidies making up the difference,” the report notes, pointing out that federal subsidies increased by 65% in 2020, bringing them up to $37.2 billion.8
There are many problems with farm subsidies. One such program, the Market Facilitation Program (MFP), is available to producers of certain commodities, including wheat, cotton, corn and soybeans, with an average adjusted gross income of less than $900,000.9
According to the Environmental Working Group, 54% of MFP payments from 2018 through April 2019 went to the top one-tenth of recipients. And while there are supposed to be caps of $125,000 on MFP payments, rules allow relatives to also receive farm payments, even if they’re not meaningfully involved in farming.10 At a more foundational level, Sanderson and colleagues wrote:11

“Our research finds that subsidies put farmers on a treadmill, working harder to produce more while draining the resource that supports their livelihood. Government payments create a vicious cycle of overproduction that intensifies water use. Subsidies encourage farmers to expand and buy expensive equipment to irrigate larger areas.”

Low market prices for crops make is nearly impossible for farmers to be profitable, leading many to expand their acreage. The increase in crops can flood the market, causing crop prices to drop further, along with farm incomes. Subsidies bail them out, and the cycle continues.
But research by Sanderson, published in 2019, revealed that expanding into ever-greater irrigated acreage does not lead to increases in income for farmers or benefits to residents’ well-being.12 Conservation efforts, meanwhile, often target individual farmers, encouraging reductions in water usage and more efficient irrigation. But such efforts haven’t been enough to stop the aquifer’s decline.
Farm Subsidies Encourage Water-Intensive Crops

Since the 1970s, farm policies have favored the consolidation and industrialization of agriculture and the food supply. Federal farm subsidies, tax credits, crop insurance, price supports and disaster payments favor industrial agriculture and the streamlined production of cheap food.
The top commodities receiving subsidies, including corn, wheat, soybeans and cotton,13 as of 2016 are also among the most water-intensive crops. It takes 2,700 liters of water to grow enough cotton to make one T-shirt (and this doesn’t account for the water used for dyeing and finishing).14
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 80% of U.S. consumptive water (and more than 90% in many Western states) is used for agricultural purposes.15 In an article examining water scarcity and food security in the U.S., Jenny Kehl of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, notes that much of it is flowing to water-intensive crops being grown in regions with extreme levels of water stress, a clearly unsustainable combination:16

“Water scarcity and food security are inextricably linked with environmental sustainability … corn, wheat, soybeans and cottons have been the dominant crops in the USA for a long time. This is not surprising as the USA is the largest producer and exporter of these three grains in the world, and a large domestic consumer of the cotton.

What is surprising, however, is that this cannot persist economically or environmentally if the USA continues to grow its most water-intensive crops in its most water-stressed regions; it is, by definition, not sustainable.”

With drought and hot conditions occurring regularly in the Plains, farm subsidies that encourage continued planting of water-intensive monocrops could easily lead to another Dust Bowl. Further, in a 2017 report by EWG, it’s explained that a provision in the Federal Crop Insurance Program could be paving the way for an environmental catastrophe similar to the Dust Bowl:17

“[A] provision in the Federal Crop Insurance Program, snuck into the 2014 Farm Bill, encourages farmers to plant the same crops and use the same methods, year after year, repeating the mistakes that led to the Dust Bowl.

The program guarantees farmers’ earnings from their crops won’t fall below a percentage of their usual income. The percentage is set based on a multi-year average of a farmer’s actual crop yields, and averaging good and bad years grounds the program in reality.

But under the new provision, called Actual Production History Yield Exclusion, the government pretends bad years didn’t happen. In some cases, more than 15 bad years can be thrown out when calculating the average yield, resulting in artificially inflated insurance payouts, year after year. The distortion is worst in the very same counties that were hardest hit by the Dust Bowl and are now suffering from severe drought.”

Three Policy Changes to Curb the Drainage
Sanderson and colleagues argued that policy changes will be necessary to stop pressuring farmers to expand production which leads to overconsumption of water and excessive production of monocrops. They suggested targeting the following three initiatives as follows:18

1. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program — This program pays farmers to leave environmentally sensitive farmland fallow for at least 10 years. “With new provisions, the program could reduce water use by prohibiting expansion of irrigated acreage, permanently retiring marginal lands and linking subsidies to production of less water-intensive crops.”
2. Federal Farm Credit Rates — Favorable federal farm credit rates encourage farmers to go into debt to purchase irrigation equipment, then farm more land to pay off that debt. “Offering lower rates for equipment that reduces water use and withholding loans for standard, wasteful equipment could nudge farmers toward conservation.”
3. Amending Tax Code — This may be the most powerful tool of all, they suggested, as farmers receive deductions for declining groundwater levels and can write off depreciation on irrigation equipment. “Replacing these perks with a tax credit for stabilizing groundwater and substituting a depreciation schedule favoring more efficient irrigation equipment could provide strong incentives to conserve water.”

Sanderson’s research has shown that most farmers want to conserve groundwater rather than deplete it, in large part to benefit future generations in the community. Yet, most farmers feel they have little personal power to conserve groundwater on their farms, and few of them enrolled in voluntary initiatives aimed at conservation.19 Instead, “They will need help from policymakers to do it.”20
Lawsuits Over Water Rights, Land Sinking in California
Only about 3% of the water on Earth is fresh water,21 which is dependent on rain for replenishment. As the fresh water stored in aquifers is being increasingly depleted, at a rate that cannot be naturally restored,22 the stakes are growing higher for those being faced with water scarcity.
In southwestern Kansas, where many wells are already dry, the state uses a “first-in-tie, first-in-right” water rights system, which means those who have owned wells the longest get first dibs on water. In 2012, a farmer filed a lawsuit alleging that his neighbor’s pumping was impairing his own water supply.
The farmer who filed the suit also held “senior” water rights over the neighbor. In 2017, a judge ruled in the filing farmer’s favor, calling for two wells to be shut down in order to protect the water rights of the plaintiff. Ultimately, however, the issue is one of too much demand for water and too little supply in return, and one that’s only slated to get worse is something doesn’t change.23
Meanwhile in California, expanding agriculture as well as urban growth are leading to increased pumping of groundwater that, in turn, is causing land to sink. Land subsidence, or the sinking of the Earth’s surface, has since become a serious problem in areas of California.24 In the San Joaquin Valley, an agricultural mecca, groundwater pumping has caused land to sink by as much as 28 feet in some areas, and by as much as 2 feet a year in particularly troubled areas.25
The resulting sinking is uneven, which means drops upstream or downstream can affect surface water canals that carry snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada to area farmers, essentially crippling the delivery of surface water that’s available.26 The U.S. Geological Survey California Water Science Center explained:27

“Reduced surface-water availability during 1976-77, 1986-92, 2007-09, and 2012-2015 caused groundwater-pumping increases in the San Joaquin Valley, declines in water-levels to near or beyond historic lows, and renewed aquifer compaction.

The resulting land subsidence has reduced the freeboard and flow capacity of the Delta-Mendota Canal — as well as the California Aqueduct and other canals that transport floodwater and deliver irrigation water — requiring expensive repairs.”

Restoring Soil, Grasslands Essential for Water Conservation

In order to save underground aquifers from what appears to be inevitable depletion, farmers must change their practices so their crops persevere with less groundwater. Some farmers have not only been succeeding at this, but have turned portions of the Ogallala underlying their property into a “rechargeable” resource that has risen in recent years instead of declining.28
Civil Eats described Chris Grotegut’s success at his farm in the High Plains of the Texas Panhandle, which is supported by the Ogallala:29

“According to data provided by the High Plains Water District, the water levels in all of the nine monitored wells on Grotegut’s land have been steadily rising. Between 2014 and 2019, one well, located on the southeast part of his property, even rose as much as 12.55 feet. On average, Grotegut’s wells rose by 6.97 feet during this period, slightly over 1 foot per year.”

Grotegut’s successes can be attributed to his adoption of permaculture, which epitomizes sustainability by harnessing mutually beneficial relationships to create synergistic, self-supporting ecosystems. Its principles incorporate the best of organic, biodynamic and regenerative agriculture.
“To this end, he adopted a permaculture practice known as pasture cropping or intermixing crops with grassland pasture. This method helps him keep more roots in the ground, building the health of the soil. And as the soil grows richer in organic matter, it can also hold more water,” Civil Eats reported.30 About 7,600 acres on Grotegut’s farm have been converted to perennial grassland.
Other Texas farmers are also adopting no-till practices aimed at building soil health. With more organic matter in soil, it can hold more water naturally. Such practices look beyond the immediate future to rebuilding an agricultural system that’s truly sustainable. “We’re trying to get away from a 10-year business plan to move to a 100- or 1,000-year business plan,” Grotegut told Civil Eats. “People are going to need to eat. [The Ogallala] should be able to work for a very long timeline.”31

According to Dr. Roger Hodkinson, one of Canada’s top pathologists and an expert in virology, the COVID-19 pandemic is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.” Hodkinson made these blunt statements during a zoom conference with an Alberta Community and Public Services Committee (see video above).
Hodkinson is the CEO of Western Medical Assessments, a biotech company that manufactures COVID-19 PCR tests, so “I might know a little bit about all this,” he said, adding that the entire situation represents “politics playing medicine,” which is “a very dangerous game.”1
He stressed that PCR tests simply cannot diagnose infection and mass testing should therefore cease immediately. He also pointed out that social distancing is useless as the virus “is spread by aerosols which travel 30 meters or so.” As for face masks, Hodkinson stated that:

“Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever. Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue signaling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time.
It’s utterly ridiculous. Seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people — I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense — seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge base to put the mask on their face … Nothing could be done to stop the spread of the virus besides protecting older more vulnerable people.”

Former Pfizer Science Officer Claims COVID-19 Is a Scam

Hodkinson is far from alone in his assertions. For example, Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., a former vice-president and chief scientific adviser of the drug company Pfizer and founder and CEO of the biotech company Ziarco, has spoken out about how fraudulent PCR testing is being used to manufacture the appearance of a pandemic that doesn’t really exist.
As I explained in “Asymptomatic ‘Casedemic’ Is a Perpetuation of Needless Fear,” by using PCR testing, which cannot diagnose active infection, a false narrative has been created.
I’m calling out the statistics, and even the claim that there is an ongoing pandemic, as false. ~ Michael Yeadon, Ph.D.
Currently, rising “cases,” meaning positive tests, are being used yet again as the justification to impose more severe restrictions, including lockdowns and mandatory mask wearing, when in fact positive tests have nothing to do with the actual spread of illness, and nothing to do with the risk of death.
Like several other scientists, doctors and researchers, Yeadon has pointed out that there are no excess deaths due to COVID-19.2,3,4 According to Yeadon, who has analyzed the statistics, about 1,700 people die each day in the U.K. in any given year. Many of these deaths are now falsely attributed to COVID-19.
“I’m calling out the statistics, and even the claim that there is an ongoing pandemic, as false,” he said in a recent interview with British journalist Anna Brees (see video above). He challenges anyone who doesn’t believe him to seek out any database on total mortality. If you do that, you will find that the daily death count is “absolutely bang-on normal,” Yeadon said.

Like Hodkinson, Yeadon is concerned about the fact that the laws of immunology are being completely ignored — apparently in order to fit some hidden agenda.
While Yeadon is unwilling to guess at what might be behind the creation of these false narratives, or why scientific truth is being censored, others have linked together evidence pointing to the pandemic being used as an excuse for the redistribution of wealth and the technocratic takeover of the whole world under the banner of a “Great Reset.”
It’s being used to usher in social and economic changes that simply could never be introduced without some sort of calamity, be it war or a biological threat, because they involve a radical limitation of personal freedoms, including medical and financial freedom, and the elimination of privacy and private ownership. In short, no one in their right mind would agree to the changes that are coming, which is why fear is being used as a tool to coerce compliance.
As noted in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences paper5 “COVID-19 Emergency Measures and the Impending Authoritarian Pandemic,” written by Stephen Thompson and Eric C. Ip, both from the University of Hong Kong:

“This Article demonstrates — with diverse examples drawn from across the world — there are unmistakable regressions into authoritarianism in governmental efforts to contain the virus.
Despite the unprecedented nature of this challenge, there is no sound justification for systemic erosion of rights-protective democratic ideals and institutions beyond that which is strictly demanded by the exigencies of the pandemic …
With a gratuitous toll being inflicted on democracy, civil liberties, fundamental freedoms, healthcare ethics, and human dignity, this has the potential to unleash humanitarian crises no less devastating than COVID-19 in the long run.”

German Lawyers Gear Up to Expose the Hoax

Others who have identified the COVID-19 pandemic as a global hoax of unprecedented proportions include a group of German lawyers who founded the German Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee.6,7 They are now preparing the biggest class-action lawsuit in history,8,9,10,11 in which they seek to prove that fraudulent PCR tests are being misused to engineer the appearance of a dangerous pandemic.

“This corona crisis, according to all we know today, must be renamed a corona scandal; and those responsible for it must be criminally prosecuted and sued for civil damages,” Reiner Fuellmich said during a video announcement of the committee’s tort case (see video above).

Key questions the committee seeks to answer through judicial means include:

Is there a COVID-19 pandemic or is there only a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test pandemic? — Specifically, does a positive PCR test result mean that the individual is infected with SARS-CoV-2 and has COVID-19, or does it mean absolutely nothing in connection with the COVID-19 infection?

Do pandemic response measures such as lockdowns, mask mandates, social distancing and quarantine regulations serve to protect the world’s population from COVID-19, or do these measures serve only to make people panic and therefore comply with liberty-eroding edicts?

Fuellmich’s team also stress that SARS-CoV-2 — which is touted as one of the most serious threats to life in modern history — “has not caused any excess mortality anywhere in the world.” Pandemic measures, on the other hand, have “caused the loss of innumerable human lives, and have destroyed the economic existence of countless companies and individuals worldwide,” Fuellmich noted in his announcement.
As I discussed in yesterday’s article, “Emergency COVID-19 Vaccines May Cause Massive Side Effects,” modern history is filled with pandemic scares, none of which has panned out and lived up to projected death tolls. The technocrats in charge have had plenty of practice, and COVID-19 appears to be the crown jewel of their pandemic war arsenal.
Everything was in place this time. The mainstream media, Big Tech, key government leaders, nongovernmental organizations and their chosen health “experts” — all have worked in tandem to manufacture unreasonable and illogical fear. Together, they’ve effectively promoted falsehoods while simultaneously censoring truth. The end result is devastating to democracy, freedom and public health.

Others Speaking Out About COVID Hoax
One medical professional who is now speaking openly about the COVID-19 pandemic being a brazen power-grab by the technocratic elite is Dr. Lee Merritt, an orthopedic spinal surgeon with a medical practice in Logan, Iowa.12
August 16, 2020, she delivered a speech at the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness13 convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, featured in “How Medical Technocracy Made the Plandemic Possible,” in which she dissected the many fear-inducing lies we’ve been told about this pandemic.
When you look at the actual data and statistics available, and compare them to what we’re being told by government officials and the media, it becomes evident that there’s a gulf between the two. The data tell us SARS-CoV-2 is not the existential threat it’s been made out to be so, clearly, they want us to be fearful for some other reason.
Merritt suggests it’s because a fearful public will not put up a fight when their human rights are stripped away. Indeed, many who are fearful will gladly relinquish any and all freedoms. As noted by British Supreme Court Judge Lord Sumption in a March 30, 2020, interview with The Post:14

“The real problem is that when human societies lose their freedom, it’s not usually because tyrants have taken it away. It’s usually because people willingly surrender their freedom in return for protection against some external threat. And the threat is usually a real threat but usually exaggerated.
That’s what I fear we are seeing now. The pressure on politicians has come from the public. They want action. They don’t pause to ask whether the action will work. They don’t ask themselves whether the cost will be worth paying …
Anyone who has studied history will recognize here the classic symptoms of collective hysteria. Hysteria is infectious. We are working ourselves up into a lather in which we exaggerate the threat and stop asking ourselves whether the cure may be worse than the disease.”

The End Goal Is Total Control

Vladimir Kvachkov, a former colonel of Russian military intelligence, would probably agree with the assessment that the fearmongering has a purpose other than keeping us safe from a respiratory virus. In the video above, Kvachkov refers to COVID-19 as a false pandemic, planned and implemented with the goal of gaining totalitarian control over the world population.

“It’s all a lie and needs to be considered as a global, strategic special operation,” Kvachkov says. “These are command and staff exercises of the world’s behind-the-scenes powers on controlling humanity.”

Comparing it to a military exercise, Kvachkov says the ultimate aim is to reduce the world’s population to 1 billion “ordinary” people and just 100 million of those in control — with the ordinary people being there to serve the 100 million.

In short, he says, the “artificially created” and “purposely spread” coronavirus has four dimensions. The first is religion and population reduction; the second is to establish political control over humanity; the third is to deflate the world economy; and the fourth is to eliminate geo-economic competition.

It’s important to remember that the World Health Organization, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations are all private corporations, yet they wield tremendous power over the governments of the world and act above the law of any given nation.
Big Tech also plays an enormous role in this usurpation of power. The power grab probably couldn’t succeed without them, because the greatest threat to would-be totalitarian rulers is an informed and educated public. By banding together to censor certain information and segments of the global population, Big Tech is instrumental in undermining the foundation for democracy around the world.
What Can You Do?
More and more people around the world are now starting to wake up to the fact that the restrictions put into place under the guise of protecting public health are here to stay. They’re part of a much larger, long-term plan, and the end goal is to usher in a new way of life, devoid of our previous freedoms. This means that, eventually, everyone must decide which is more important: Personal liberty or false security?
To derail the technocrats plan, we have to make full use of the judicial system, which is why Fuellmich and his team are suing to expose the fraud, put an end to pandemic restrictions and restore our human rights. Class-action lawsuits are currently being prepared in the U.S. and Canada.
Lawsuits are also being prepared in Germany, and the Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee is working on the creation of legal guidelines and data caches that attorneys around the world will be able to use to file their own legal challenges. Fuellmich can be contacted via www.fuellmich.com, and the Corona Inquiry Committee via corona-ausschuss.de.
In closing, here’s a summary list of suggestions compiled from Fuellmich, Yeadon and others as to how you can resist and be part of the solution:

• Turn off mainstream media news and turn to independent experts — Do the research. Read through the science. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s The Defender newsletter is one reliable source for “banned” news. Other sources include America’s Frontline Doctors and Doctors for the Truth (Medicos por la verdad — a group of more than 600 doctors in Spain).
• Continue to counter the censorship by asking questions — The more questions are asked, the more answers will come to light. Arm yourself with mortality statistics and the facts on PCR testing, so you can explain how and why this pandemic simply isn’t a pandemic anymore.
• If you are a medical professional, especially if you’re a member of a professional society, write an open letter to your government, urging them to speak to and heed recommendations from independent experts.
• Sign The Great Barrington Declaration,15 which calls for an end to lockdowns.
• Join a group so that you can have support. Examples of groups formed to fight against government overreach include:

? Us for Them, a group campaigning for reopening schools and protecting children’s rights in the U.K.
? The COVID Recovery Group (CRG), founded by 50 conservative British MPs to fight lockdown restrictions16
? The Freedom to Breathe Agency, a U.S. team of attorneys, doctors, business owners and parents who are fighting to protect freedom and liberty

Alzheimer’s disease continues to be a leading cause of death in the U.S., with 1 in 3 seniors dying with Alzheimer’s or dementia — more than the number killed by breast and prostate cancers combined.1
While a cure has remained elusive, the connection between brain health and gut microbiota has grown clearer, and research suggests that the bacteria in your intestines may influence brain functioning and can even promote neurodegeneration.2
A team of Swiss and Italian researchers has taken the correlation a step further, with research showing a connection between imbalanced gut microbiota and the development of amyloid plaques in the brain;3 Alzheimer’s is characterized by an accumulation of beta-amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain.
Proteins Produced by Gut Bacteria May Trigger Alzheimer’s

The study involved a cohort of 89 people between 65 and 85 years of age. Some of them suffered from Alzheimer’s disease or other neurodegenerative diseases while others were healthy with no memory problems.
The researchers used PET imaging to measure amyloid deposition in their brains, then measured markers of inflammation and proteins produced by intestinal bacteria, such as lipopolysaccharides and short-chain fatty acids, in their blood.
Lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) are dead bacteria or, more specifically, the cell walls of dead bacteria. Your immune system treats them as living bacteria and mounts immune defenses against the perceived invaders. LPSs are pro-inflammatory and have been found in amyloid plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.4
The study revealed that high blood levels of LPSs and the short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) acetate and valerate were associated with large amyloid deposits in the brain. Other SCFAs, namely butyrate, appeared to have a protective effect; high levels of butyrate were associated with less amyloid.
Butyrate — an SCFA produced when gut bacteria ferment fiber — activates the secretion of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF),5 reduced levels of which have been linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
“Our results are indisputable: Certain bacterial products of the intestinal microbiota are correlated with the quantity of amyloid plaques in the brain,” explains Moira Marizzoni, a study author with the Fatebenefratelli Center in Brescia, Italy.6
Probiotic ‘Cocktail’ May Act as an Early Preventative

The study represents a continuation of prior research by the team, which found that the gut microbiota in people with Alzheimer’s disease differs from those without the condition. In those with Alzheimer’s, microbial diversity is reduced, with certain bacteria being overrepresented and other microbes decreased.
“Furthermore,” said neurologist Giovanni Frisoni, study author and director of the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) Memory Center in Switzerland, “we have also discovered an association between an inflammatory phenomenon detected in the blood, certain intestinal bacteria and Alzheimer’s disease; hence the hypothesis that we wanted to test here: Could inflammation in the blood be a mediator between the microbiota and the brain?”7
With the connection growing stronger, the team is planning further research to reveal which specific bacteria or groups of bacteria may be responsible for the effect, which could ultimately lead to a preventive treatment “cocktail.” Frisoni said in a news release:8

“Indeed, we must first identify the strains of the cocktail. Then, a neuroprotective effect could only be effective at a very early stage of the disease, with a view to prevention rather than therapy.

However, early diagnosis is still one of the main challenges in the management of neurodegenerative diseases, as protocols must be developed to identify high-risk individuals and treat them well before the appearance of detectable symptoms.”

The Fasting Connection

One reason why fasting is so beneficial for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s is because it helps your body to cycle through autophagy and the rebuilding phase.
Autophagy is the process by which your body cleans out damaged organelles, encouraging proliferation of new, healthy cells, which relates to Alzheimer’s because the refolding process is one of several factors that need to work in order for your brain to function.
Importantly, fasting activates autophagy, which is your body’s way of taking out the trash, and will also trigger the regeneration of stem cells. In our 2017 interview, Dr. Steven Gundry explained that this also may have a direct connection with LPSs, and giving your gut a rest from these pro-inflammatory proteins via fasting may be healing:

“We have an amazing repair system that goes to work when you’re fasting. Not the least of which is [letting] your gut rest. It’s probably one of the smartest things that any of us can do — putting the wall of your gut at rest, not having to absorb nutrients, not having to deal with the constant inflow of lectins or toxins. But I think more importantly, it gives [your body] a chance to finally do some serious cleaning of your brain …

Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s have a unifying cause, and that is the brain is defending itself against perceived threat, a lot of which are LPSs. If you put your gut at rest and don’t have LPSs coming into your system, and the longer you can maintain that, realistically, the better off you are.

As Jason Fung would say, intermittent fasting is great; doing a modified calorie-restricted diet is great, but it technically is so much easier to just stop eating … The second level of my modified food pyramid is ‘Don’t eat anything.'”

Probiotics Show Promise for Alzheimer’s
The effect of beneficial bacteria on brain health is well-established, including in people with Alzheimer’s disease. A 2016 study of 60 Alzheimer’s patients looked into the effect of probiotic supplements on cognitive function, with promising results.9 Those who drank milk containing probiotics experienced significant improvements in cognitive function.
While average Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores increased among the probiotics group and the control group, which drank plain milk, had a decrease in scores.
The probiotics group also had beneficial metabolic changes, including lowered triglycerides, very low-density lipoprotein and C-reactive protein, a measure of inflammation, as well as reduced markers for insulin resistance.
The researchers suggested the beneficial metabolic changes may be responsible for the cognitive improvements. Walter Lukiw, a professor at Louisiana State University who was not involved in the study, further explained to Medical News Today that your gut and brain are intricately connected:10

“This is in line with some of our recent studies which indicate that the GI [gastrointestinal] tract microbiome in Alzheimer’s is significantly altered in composition when compared to age-matched controls …

… and that both the GI tract and blood-brain barriers become significantly more leaky with aging, thus allowing GI tract microbial exudates (e.g. amyloids, lipopolysaccharides, endotoxins and small non-coding RNAs) to access central nervous system compartments.”

Probiotics May Inhibit Neurodegeneration
Probiotics are thought to influence the central nervous system and behavior via the microbiota-gut-brain-axis, and researchers have suggested they may have both preventive and therapeutic potential for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by modulating the inflammatory process and counteracting oxidative stress, among other mechanisms.11 Writing in the open-access Impact Journal on Aging, researchers explained:12

“It has been found that dysfunction in behavior and cognition is associated with GM [gut microbiota] dysbiosis. Activation of gut inflammation has been regarded as a possible pathogenic cofactor in cognitive deterioration and dementia.

Moreover, the most distinctive alterations in the GM of AD patients are decreased abundance of anti-inflammatory bacterial species (e.g. Bifidobacterium brevestrain A1) and increased abundance of pro-inflammatory flora phyla (e.g. Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes).

And restoring GM homeostasis could slow down the progression of AD. Therefore, the GM has been proposed as a key player in the pathogenesis of AD and might be a new potential therapeutic target for the prevention and treatment of AD.”

They conducted a meta-analysis involving five studies and 297 subjects, which revealed a significant improvement in cognition and a significant reduction in malondialdehyde and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein — inflammatory and oxidative biomarkers — in probiotic groups compared to controls.13
Research is still uncovering which bacteria are most beneficial, but the Bifidobacterium breve strain A1 may be of particular use in Alzheimer’s treatment. Using Alzheimer’s disease model mice, researchers were able to confirm that daily oral administration of B. breve A1 reduced the cognitive dysfunction normally induced by amyloid beta.14
One of the mechanisms behind these protective effects was found to be suppression of amyloid-beta-induced changes in gene expression in the hippocampus. In short, the bacterium had an ameliorating effect on amyloid-beta toxicity.
Still other research suggests gut microbiota may contribute to Alzheimer’s risk via multiple avenues, including by influencing aging, diabetes, sleep and circadian rhythm.15
It’s also possible, researchers hypothesize, that decades of factors such as diet, stress, aging and genetics, combine to disrupt gut permeability and the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, allowing the entry of inflammatory agents and pathogens and inducing an inflammatory response that triggers a neuroinflammatory response in the brain.16
“There is mounting evidence that the gut microbiota interacts with AD pathogenesis by disrupting neuroinflammation and metabolic homeostasis,” they noted, adding that “the gut microbiota has gone from being the forgotten organ to a potential key player in the AD pathology.”17
Alzheimer’s Prevention Strategies
Optimizing your gut flora is a key strategy to preventing Alzheimer’s and a host of other chronic diseases. To do this, avoid processed foods, antibiotics and antibacterial products, fluoridated and chlorinated water, and be sure to eat traditionally fermented and cultured foods, along with taking a high-quality probiotic if needed.
Maintaining a healthy gut is one of the healthy lifestyle parameters outlined by Dr. Dale Bredesen, professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, and author of “The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Program to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline.”18
Bredesen’s ReCODE protocol evaluates 150 factors, including biochemistry, genetics and historical imaging, known to contribute to Alzheimer’s disease. This identifies your disease subtype or combination of subtypes so an effective treatment protocol can be devised.
Time-restricted eating, or fasting, is another important strategy, as is reducing your intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids, also called PUFAs, found in vegetable oils, edible oils, seed oils, trans fat and plant oils. A high-fat, moderate-protein, low net-carb ketogenic diet is ideal for preventing degeneration that can lead to Alzheimer’s,19 and this will also help to nourish a healthy gut.
Overall, nourishing your brain health is best done with a comprehensively healthy lifestyle. By leveraging 36 healthy lifestyle parameters, Bredesen was able to reverse Alzheimer’s in 9 out of 10 patients.
This included the use of exercise, ketogenic diet, optimizing vitamin D and other hormones, increasing sleep, meditation, detoxification and eliminating gluten and processed food. For more details, you can download Bredesen’s full-text case paper online, which details the full program.20

Mid-March 2020 predictions said COVID-19 would kill 2.2 million Americans if allowed to run its course.1 By the end of March, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, downgraded the projected death toll, saying we were probably looking at 100,000 to 240,000 Americans dying.2
April 8, 2020, a new model referred to as the Murray Model3 downgraded the threat further, predicting COVID-19 will kill 60,000 in the U.S. by August 20204 — a number that is still 20,000 lower than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s death toll numbers attributed to the seasonal flu the winter of 2017/2018.5
Now, nine months into the pandemic, mortality statistics clearly show the truth: The COVID-19 pandemic is a pandemic in name only. In reality, there’s no excess mortality,6,7,8 and had it not been for the World Health Organization changing the definition of “pandemic,” COVID-19 would no longer be an issue.
I know some will balk at the concept of no excess mortality but the truth is the truth, and when you examine the existing numbers, that is what you find. If you integrate the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention’s comments that 94% of those who died had comorbidities, which could easily be the real cause of the reported “COVID-19 deaths,” it then becomes obvious that the numbers were highly inflated.
Definition of Pandemic Substantially Altered

The WHO’s original definition of a pandemic was:9,10

“… when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in several, simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.”

The key portion of that definition is “enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” This definition was changed in the month leading up to the 2009 swine flu pandemic. The change was a simple but substantial one: They merely removed the severity and high mortality criteria, leaving the definition of a pandemic as “a worldwide epidemic of a disease.”11

This switch in definition allowed the WHO to declare swine flu a pandemic after a mere 144 people had died from the infection, worldwide, and it’s why COVID-19 is still promoted as a pandemic even though it has caused no excess mortality in nine months.12,13,14
We now have plenty of data showing the lethality of COVID-19 is on par with the seasonal flu.15,16,17,18,19 It may be different in terms of symptoms and complications, but the actual lethality is about the same. The absolute risk of death is equivalent to the risk of dying in a car accident.20,21
By removing the criteria of severe illness causing high morbidity, leaving geographically widespread infection as the only criteria for a pandemic, the WHO and technocratic leaders of the world were able to bamboozle the global population into giving up our lives and livelihoods.
As noted by Reiner Fuellmich, an attorney and founding member of the German Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, the COVID-19 pandemic is “probably the greatest crime against humanity ever committed.”22,23,24,25
This certainly isn’t the first time doom and gloom predictions of mass casualties have completely collapsed. It’s also not the first time that fast-tracked pandemic vaccines have been issued, with devastating effect.
In that regard, we can learn a lot from the 1976 swine flu pandemic, detailed in the 1979 “60 Minutes” episode featured above. This was also the first time drug companies were indemnified against liability for any harm that might result from a fast-tracked vaccine. 
The Swine Flu Fraud of 1976

In February 1976, secretary of health F. David Matthews warned the American people there were indications that the virus responsible for the deadly 1918 flu pandemic had returned. In January that year, a 19-year-old Army private had died from flu-related pneumonia, despite being in good health, and by the end of the month, 155 soldiers at Fort Dix tested positive for swine flu antibodies.
Projections suggested the dreaded virus would kill 1 million Americans before the end of 1976.26 “The government propaganda machine cranked into action,” “60 Minutes” says, urging all Americans to get vaccinated against the swine flu.
Americans who got the swine flu vaccine were told it had been properly field tested. What they were not told was that the vaccine they received was not the actual vaccine that had undergone testing.
According to “60 Minutes,” 46 million Americans got the vaccine, and over the next few years, thousands of Americans filed vaccine damage claims with the federal government.27
This was well before the 1986 Vaccine Compensation Act, so vaccines were still liable for damages at that time. Congress did grant the swine flu vaccine special immunity, though, and wound up paying (actually U.S. taxpayers did) for the $3.5 billion in damages the vaccine caused. A 1981 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office to Sen. John Durkin reads, in part:28

“Before the swine flu program there were comparatively few vaccine-related claims made against the Government. Since 1963, Public Health Service records showed that only 27 non-swine flu claims were filed.
However, as of December 31, 1979, we found that 3,839 claims and 988 lawsuits had been filed against the Government alleging injury, death, or other damage resulting from the 45 million swine flu immunizations given under the program.
A Justice official told us that as of October 2, 1980, 3,965 claims and 1,384 lawsuits had been filed. Of the 3,965 claims filed, the Justice official said 316 claims had been settled for about $12.3 million …”

$3.5 Billion Dollars in Damages Paid for Vaccine Injuries

According to “60 Minutes,” the final claims amount for the nearly 4,000 claimants ended up totaling $3.5 billion. Two-thirds of the claimants suffered neurological damage and at least 300 of them died from vaccine side effects. In the end, the pandemic itself never materialized.29 An article by Real Clear Politics described the timeline of the pandemic that wasn’t, and the circumstances that led to the indemnification of vaccine makers:30

“All of the reported swine flu cases had been limited to the soldiers in Private Lewis’ camp. The virus wasn’t spreading. For some reason this information did not mollify the doctors, and on Feb. 14, 1976, the CDC issued a notice to all U.S. hospitals to be on the lookout for any cases of swine flu.

By March … not one case of swine flu had been reported outside of Fort Dix. For some reason this news did not placate the doctors either, and on March 13, 1976, the director of the CDC asked Congress for money to develop and test enough swine flu vaccine to immunize at least 80% of the population of the United States …
By July, [scientists] were pretty much agreed that a flu pandemic in 1976 would not lead to 1 million U.S. dead. The flu strain extracted from Private Lewis, they learned, was much less virulent that the 1918 strain …
The World Health Organization ordered hospitals to keep a global lookout for swine flu, but it did not request mass immunization … But the U.S. government was unstoppable. Congress began to pressure the drug companies to work faster toward development of a swine flu vaccine …
The drug companies suggested that they could work faster if they were given immunity from lawsuits in the event something went wrong with the vaccine. Congress refused. The issue of legal liability remained at an impasse until Aug. 2, 1976.
On that day, two members of the American Legion died of a strange respiratory disease they acquired at the Legion’s convention in Philadelphia. Congress collectively freaked.
Panicky news reports out of Philadelphia hinted that the deaths were the beginning of the Great Swine Flu Epidemic of 1976. On Aug. 3, Congress agreed to completely indemnify the drug companies against any and all lawsuits they might incur as a result of the distribution of swine flu vaccine.”

CDC Lied About Swine Flu Vaccine Safety

According to “60 Minutes,” Americans who got the swine flu vaccine were told it had been properly field tested. What they were not told was that the vaccine they received was not the actual vaccine that had undergone testing.
What’s more, according to Dr. Michael Hattwick, who directed the surveillance team for the 1976 swine flu vaccination program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there was evidence showing influenza vaccinations could, and had, caused neurological complications in the past.
He claims he warned his superiors of this possibility, as it pertained to the swine flu campaign. Yet the CDC denied the evidence and the American public was never informed of this risk. “60 Minutes” also reveals the CDC was proven to have lied in its marketing materials for the vaccine.
Judy Roberts was one of the victims of that 1976 vaccination campaign. She was paralyzed by the vaccine, and suffered permanent damage. Her husband, who also was vaccinated and suffered no ill effects, ends the “60 Minute” segment saying:

“I told Judy to take the shot … I’m mad with my government. They knew the facts but they didn’t release those facts, because if they had released them, people wouldn’t have taken it.
And they can come out tomorrow and tell me there’s going to be an epidemic, and they can drop off like flies next to me, and I will not take another shot that my government tells me to take.”

The Origin of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

The 1976 swine flu vaccine program has sometimes been cited as the origin of the anti-vaccine movement, and for good reason. Thousands were seriously injured and hundreds died after placing their trust in scientists and the government. Many of them, just like Roberts in the “60 Minutes” segment, vowed never to be that naïve again. As reported by Smithsonian Magazine in 2017:31

“In the spring of 1976, it looked like that year’s flu was the real thing. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t, and rushed response led to a medical debacle that hasn’t gone away.
‘Some of the American public’s hesitance to embrace vaccines — the flu vaccine in particular — can be attributed to the long-lasting effects of a failed 1976 campaign to mass-vaccinate the public against a strain of the swine flu virus,’ writes Rebecca Kreston for Discover.
‘This government-led campaign was widely viewed as a debacle and put an irreparable dent in future public health initiative, as well as negatively influenced the public’s perception of both the flu and the flu shot in this country.'”

Pandemic Threats Have Repeatedly Turned to Naught

Sadly, the embarrassment of the 1976 swine flu debacle did not put an end to faux pandemics. In the last 15 years alone we’ve had to defend against wave upon wave of pandemic pandemonium, none of which turned out to be the global killer that “experts” predicted.
The 2005 bird flu outbreak, for example, was predicted to kill anywhere from 2 million to 150 million people. In reality, the death toll topped out at just 98 people, globally, in 2005; 115 in 2006; and 86 in 2007.32 No one in the U.S. died from this infection, and the sheer brazenness of this fake pandemic prompted me to write my New York Times best seller book “The Great Bird Flu Hoax.”
In 2006, 2007 and again in 2008, hyped warnings over the bird flu were repeatedly exposed as little more than a cruel hoax, designed to instill fear and line the pocketbooks of industry and various vested individuals.
Then came the now infamous H1N1 swine flu of 2009.33 The CDC estimates that from April 12, 2009, to April 10, 2010, there were 60.8 million cases of H1N1 infection, 274,000 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths in the United States. The infection fatality rate was a mere 0.02%. Then, as now, vaccines were fast-tracked. Lo and behold, within months, cases of disability and death from the H1N1 vaccine were reported in various parts of the world.
In 2010, the ASO3-adjuvanted swine flu vaccine Pandemrix (used in Europe but not in the U.S. during 2009-2010) was causally linked34 to childhood narcolepsy, which had abruptly skyrocketed in several countries during the vaccination campaign.35,36

In the aftermath, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) raised serious questions about the WHO’s handling of the pandemic and the role drug companies may have played in its drug and vaccine recommendations.
In June 2010, PACE concluded “the handling of the pandemic by the WHO, EU health agencies and national governments led to a ‘waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public.'”37
Specifically, PACE concluded there was “overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO,” and that the drug industry had influenced the organization’s decision-making.38
The sad reality is that the WHO is little more than a front group for Big Pharma and the technocratic elite that seek to “reset” the global economic and social structure. It would indeed be naïve to expect this private organization to do what’s right for public health while simultaneously taking direction from Bill Gates (its primary funder) and the drug industry.
While the 2009 swine flu pandemic was the most significant in terms of the fearmongering brought to bear, in the summer of 2012, dire predictions of mutating bird flu again filled the media, followed by urgent calls for yet another fast-tracked vaccine.

Two years later, in 2014, the Ebola virus turned into a global health emergency after epidemics in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone had been largely ignored. Interestingly enough, a UN resolution called for no restrictions on international travel to Ebola-stricken countries — a decision that led to an infected passenger bringing the infection to the U.S.
Another two years after that, in 2016, Zika virus hit pandemic status,39 triggering travel alerts and restrictions in and out of affected regions. All of these pandemics defied experts’ predictions of mass casualties. None turned into a global killer, and COVID-19 is no different.40,41,42
Why We Must End Gain-of-Function Research

Time and again, serious safety breaches have been identified at laboratories working with the most lethal and dangerous pathogens in the world,43,44,45,46,47,48,49 and mounting evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 may be a lab creation as well.

Scientists defend and promote gain-of-function research by insisting it allows us to prepare for pandemics.50 In reality, this kind of research does not appear to have improved governments’ pandemic responses in the least. If anything, it’s a curious coincidence that the very viruses undergoing gain-of-function research are the ones causing pandemics.

As just one example, an article51 by Mark Denison, editor of mBio, presents a hypothesis for the 1977-1978 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, often referred to as the Russian flu, as the first cases were reported in the USSR. According to Denison, the pandemic “was probably not a natural event, as the genetic sequence of the virus was nearly identical to the sequences of decades-old strains.”

The lab hypothesis has “gained popularity in discussions about the biosafety risks of gain-of-function influenza virus research, as an argument for why this research should not be performed,” he writes. Another possibility being kicked around is that the infection spread through a live-vaccine trial. A third option: a deliberate release as a bioweapon.
As noted in a 2009 New England Journal of Medicine review article, which provided a historical perspective on the emergence of H1N1 viruses:52

“Even though human influenza A (H1N1) virus had not circulated since 1957 and the swine influenza A (H1N1) virus that had been identified at Fort Dix did not extend outside the base, in November 1977, the H1N1 strain reemerged in the former Soviet Union, Hong Kong, and northeastern China.
This strain affected primarily young people in a relatively mild presentation. Careful study of the genetic origin of the virus showed that it was closely related to a 1950 strain but dissimilar to influenza A (H1N1) strains from both 1947 and 1957.
This finding suggested that the 1977 outbreak strain had been preserved since 1950. The reemergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to H1 and N1 antigens.”

Can history repeat itself? There are no guarantees that it can’t or won’t, which is why it’s so important we find out where SARS-CoV-2 really came from. As noted by the National Review,53 getting to the bottom of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is crucial if we want to prevent a similar pandemic in the future:

“If it originated from a person eating bat or pangolin at a wet market, then we need to take steps to ensure that bat and pangolin consumption and trade stops …
Bat guano is used as fertilizer in many countries, and that guano can be full of viruses … If this is the source of the virus, we need to get people to stop going into caves and using the guano as fertilizer …
In a strange way, the ‘lab accident’ scenario is one of the most reassuring explanations. It means that if we want to ensure we never experience this again, we simply need to get every lab in the world working on contagious viruses to ensure 100% compliance with safety protocols, all the time.”