The SARS-CoV-2 transmission riddle - Part 15 - The Global Influenza Programme (GIP)
From public health intervention to trough
One of the essential components of creating the influenza market was the consequences of setting up the Global Influenza Programme in 1947 (yes, you have to go back to understand).
Here’s how Sir Christopher Andrewes, one of the three scientists who first isolated the human influenza virus in 1933, described what happened:
The truth of this first became apparent in 1945 when an unusual activity of Influenza B in several countries around the Pacific was followed by similar happenings in America and then in Europe. As a result of this I was instrumental in getting interested people to discuss the whole question during an International Congress in Copenhagen in 1947; the meeting had the blessing of the World Health Organization (WHO). This led to the setting up of a network of WHO influenza laboratories around the world, with headquarters at a World Influenza Centre at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill and another co-ordinating laboratory in the United States. The object of it all was to collect information about flu from different countries, to isolate and compare the strains which were recovered and to see if our suspicion was correct, that new viruses were appearing in certain places and then spreading around the world. Confirmatory evidence was not slow in appear-ing: a rather novel strain turned up in Sardinia in 1948, was soon afterwards isolated from all over Western Europe and crossed the Atlantic in the following year.
Readers should remember the historical context of Sir Christopher’s statement. This was two years after the end of WWII, which, alongside its predecessor, WWI, had devastated large parts of the globe. The heavy human toll meant that it was essential to keep the war industry going and not lose working days through what they called influenza, or flu. Men had to fight, women work in factories, neither could stay in bed with a fever.
Influenza was considered the main culprit of the F word “flu” at the time, as none of the other agents had been identified. For example, rhinovirus, most commonly associated with the common cold, was only identified in 1956. June Almeyda and David Tyrrell identified and first used the term coronavirus in 1968.
So, in 1947, the creation of a network centred around the UK’s MRC and made up of observation centres around the globe to report possible mutations (so-called shifts and drifts) of the influenza virus made a lot of sense if you thought it was the main culprit of influenza (in reality, F-word epidemics).
Why? Because there is no point in surveillance unless you are going to do something about it. The word “influenza” then attracted manufacturers of antivirals and vaccines, none of which have so far produced particularly effective products. Antivirals were, of course, hailed as miracle drugs or waters from the fountain of Zum Zum. As we have shown, they were massively marketed, and their effects were massively overblown. But their effectiveness and toxicity are forgotten when “you have to do something, anything” or, more importantly, you have to be seen to be doing it.
The Covid disaster is a direct consequence of the box thinking of most “experts” who continued to see only one agent, either because they were ignorant or in a system created by real scientists and public health workers, which had its roots in the immediate post-war era. They also benefited from hefty commercial sponsorship.
Parallel to this was the transformation of the GIP into a very articulated and impressive network of laboratories with committees and all the bells and whistles of bureaucracy, automatism, and box vision, which the threadbare actors of the 1947 initiative could not foresee.
It’s good for careers and labels, but does it make any difference to your daily life? The heavy commercial marketing of anti-influenza products is a red flag to its real population benefit.
Taxpayers of all nations, ask your rulers if they are still stockpiling influenza antivirals and what good evidence shows about the effects of influenza vaccines.
Please read this:
Why have three long-running Cochrane Reviews on influenza vaccines been stabilised?
And our antivirals series summing up:
As people started losing faith while comparing the noise vs the benefits of yearly influenza vaccination, the expert-industry consortium was saved by the arrival of Covid. Now that most people are still worried by viral respiratory agents, the mainstream media keeps the pressure cooker going: avian, Covid “variants”, and all sorts of other threats are paraded on the near the front pages.
The DHSC believes that its evidence-free policies kept you alive. According to Prof Sir Chris Whitty, another pandemic is “a certainty.” So watch out: lockdown is just around the corner.
This post was written by two old geezers who believe that panic, social and economic butchery are not the right approach to public health problems. Defending wrong decisions 4 years on cannot be justified. The two old geezers also believe that their saviours are the date stamps on the 2020 articles pointing out the obvious.
References:
Tyrrell DAJ. Common Cold and Related Diseases. Edward Arnold, London 1965.
Andrewes C: The Common Cold. Weidenfield and Nicholson. London 1965.
I learned something new today: the discovery of the influenza virus and subsequent setting-up of research networks - aim the first years after WWII. This was the time of the outbreak of the Cold War, and governments/parties tried desperately to keep the command economy of the war going, in a more palatable guise without going down the road of plain sovietisation. That mindset is still with us, thanks to 'education'.
Regarding the vaccinationitis against flu and all: anecdotal but interesting nevertheless. GPs and especially pharmacists were clear, in the late noughts and early 10s of this millennium that there was nothing to be done except take Lemsip, lots of fluids and don't bother the doctor with your sniffles. A pharmacist told me to grin and bear it because there were over 200 coronaviruses causing the common cold, so just put up with it and take Lemsip, Streusels, drink tea ... The first supplements became more widely available, e.g. echinacea, and one was encouraged to take those by pharmacists, without being regarded as some old-fashioned herbalist nut job ...
Well, what can I tell you - being old and stuck in my ways I'm still doing as I was told a dozen years ago by the then medical professionals, covid or not ...
One might wonder the kind of world we get when we don't take the time to be sick when we need to be. It's this one.
"Readers should remember the historical context of Sir Christopher’s statement. This was two years after the end of WWII, which, alongside its predecessor, WWI, had devastated large parts of the globe. The heavy human toll meant that it was essential to keep the war industry going and not lose working days through what they called influenza, or flu. Men had to fight, women work in factories, neither could stay in bed with a fever."