Our previous article, entitled The Germ Theory: A Deadly Fallacy, revealed that there is no scientific basis for the idea that ‘germs’ cause disease.
This revelation raises a fundamental question about the transmission of diseases claimed to be infectious; a question that is answered by the statement that because diseases are not caused by germs, they cannot be transmissible.

The vast majority of people will consider this statement to be highly controversial as it contradicts their everyday experience of seeing people with the same symptoms at the same time; an experience that is invariably interpreted to provide ‘proof’ that those people have all ‘caught’ the same disease that has been spread by germs. Although a popular interpretation of simultaneous ill-health, it is nevertheless an erroneous one.

This statement will inevitably raise yet further questions in people’s minds, the main ones being: why do diseases appear to be infectious; and what causes them if not germs? The answer to the first question is that appearances are deceptive. The answer to the second question is that people are exposed to complex combinations of harmful substances and influences that induce the symptoms associated with disease. Furthermore, as we explain in our book What Really Makes You Ill? Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Disease Is Wrong, symptoms represent the body’s innate self-healing processes; they are the body’s efforts to expel toxins, repair damage and restore health. The reason that people in close proximity to each other experience similar symptoms is because they have been exposed to similar combinations of harmful substances and influences.

The best way to expand on these explanations is through an example: the most pertinent example, in view of the current alleged ‘pandemic’, is the 1918 Flu.

Influenza is defined on the November 2018 WHO fact sheet entitled Influenza (Seasonal) as a seasonal illness that is said to be characterised by certain symptoms, especially fever, cough, headache, muscle and joint pain, sore throat and runny nose. Although not regarded as inherently dangerous, influenza is said to be potentially fatal for people ‘at high risk’, which refers to children under 5, adults over 65, pregnant women and people with certain other medical conditions.

It is claimed that the pandemic of 1918 was responsible for the deaths of 20 to 100 million people. However, unlike the ‘seasonal’ variety, the 1918 flu affected a completely different demographic; the majority of deaths occurred in adults in the 20 to 40 age range. In addition, the symptoms they experienced are reported to have been very different from those described by the WHO. A Stanford University article entitled The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 refers to physicians’ reports and states that,

“Others told stories of people on their way to work suddenly developing the flu and dying within hours.”

Nevertheless, this illness is claimed to be merely a variation of ordinary influenza; as indicated by a 2006 CDC article entitled 1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics that claims,

“All influenza A pandemics since that time, and indeed almost all cases of influenza A worldwide…have been caused by descendants of the 1918 virus…”

It should be emphasised that viruses are not alive; they cannot therefore have descendants.

A significant aspect of the 1918 ‘pandemic’ is that it occurred towards the end of WWI. Although military personnel are usually amongst the fittest and healthiest members of the population, it is reported that soldiers were often the most severely affected, especially in the US; as indicated by a 2014 article entitled Death from 1918 pandemic influenza during the First World War that states,

“Pandemic influenza struck all the armies, but the highest morbidity rate was found among the Americans as the disease sickened 26% of the US Army, over one million men.”

The article also claims that,

“The origin of the influenza pandemic has been inextricably linked with the men who occupied the military camps and trenches during the First World War.”

There are reasons that these men became ill or died; one key reason is the use of medicines and vaccines, both of which have been directly linked to morbidity and mortality. In her booklet entitled Swine Flu Exposé, Eleanor McBean refers to the 1918 Flu and explains that,

“It was a common expression during the war that ‘more soldiers were killed by vaccine shots than by shots from enemy guns.’ The vaccines, in addition to the poison drugs given in the hospitals, made healing impossible in too many cases. If the men had not been young and healthy to begin with, they would all have succumbed to the mass poisoning in the Army.”

The medicine commonly prescribed for the treatment of influenza during the early 20th century was aspirin, the dangers of which were unknown at the time, but have since been recognised to include respiratory problems; as indicated by a November 2009 article entitled Salicylates and Pandemic Influenza Mortality, 1918-1919 Pharmacology, Pathology and Historic Evidence that states,

“Pharmacokinetic data, which were unavailable in 1918, indicate that the aspirin regimens recommended for the ‘Spanish influenza’ predispose to severe pulmonary toxicity.”

The disease was originally believed to be caused by a bacterium, against which a number of vaccines were developed; as discussed in a 2009 article entitled The fog of research: Influenza vaccine trials during the 1918-19 pandemic which states that,

“Bacterial vaccines of various sorts were widely used for both preventive and therapeutic purposes during the great influenza pandemic of 1918-19.”

In his book, The Hygienic System: Vol VI Orthopathy, Herbert Shelton refers to epidemics as ‘mass sickness’ and adds that,

“In the training camp where the writer was stationed, hundreds of cases of mumps developed during the influenza pandemic. But these did not make the front page. During this pandemic there were as many or more colds as ever, but almost nobody had a cold. Colds were influenza. Influenza was a blanket term that covered whatever the patient had.”

The similarity to the 2020 ‘pandemic’ is striking!

Although the vaccines of the early 20th century differed from those of the early 21st century, their ingredients share many characteristics, most notably toxicity and neurotoxicity. The 20th century vaccines were associated with many adverse effects, including lethargic encephalitis; as described by Annie Riley Hale in her book entitled The Medical Voodoo,

“In the British Journal of Experimental Pathology August 1926, two well-known London medical professors, Drs Turnbull and McIntosh, reported several cases of encephalitis lethargica – ‘sleeping sickness’ – following vaccination which had come under their observation.”

Post-vaccination encephalitis is a recognised phenomenon; as indicated by a September 1931 article entitled Post-Vaccination Encephalitis that states,

“Post-vaccination encephalitis is a disease of unknown etiology that has appeared in recent years and which occurs without regard to the existence of known factors other than the presence of a recent vaccination against smallpox.”

The adverse effects of medicines and vaccines are unsurprising, considering the toxic nature of their ingredients; as explained by the authors of Virus Mania,

“Additionally, the medications and vaccines applied in masses at that time contained highly toxic substances like heavy metals, arsenic, formaldehyde and chloroform…”

Medicines and vaccines were not the only hazardous material to which soldiers were exposed. In his book entitled Pandora’s Poison, Joe Thornton discusses chlorine, which, in its natural state within a chloride salt, is stable and relatively harmless. Chlorine gas, by comparison, is highly reactive, destructive and deadly; as he explains,

“If released into the environment, chlorine gas will travel slowly over the ground in a coherent cloud, a phenomenon familiar to World War I soldiers who faced it as a chemical weapon, one of chlorine’s first large-scale applications.”

Survivors of a chlorine gas attack would have suffered respiratory problems for the rest of their lives; Joe Thornton describes the effects,

“Chlorinated chemicals were particularly effective chemical weapons because they were highly toxic and oil soluble, so they could cross cell membranes and destroy the tissues of lungs, eyes and skin, incapacitating soldiers and causing extreme pain.”

There were other toxic chemicals that could induce respiratory problems that may have been mistakenly identified as ‘influenza’, such as Nitroglycerin, which was manufactured in large quantities and used extensively during WWI. Its significance is explained by Nicholas Ashford PhD and Dr Claudia Miller MD in their book entitled Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes, in which they state that,

“Nitroglycerin, used to manufacture gunpowder, rocket fuels and dynamite, may cause severe headaches, breathing difficulties, weakness, drowsiness, nausea and vomiting as a result of inhalation.”

The ‘war effort’ inevitably created a substantially increased demand for the industrial manufacture of machinery, equipment and weapons, many of which needed to be welded; welding is a hazardous occupation as the authors explain,

“Welding and galvanised metal causes evolution of zinc oxide fumes that, when inhaled, provoke an influenza-like syndrome with headaches, nausea, weakness, myalgia, coughing, dyspnea and fever.”

Dyspnoea refers to breathing difficulties.

Influenza of the seasonal variety is said to affect millions of people worldwide every year; as the WHO fact sheet states,

“Worldwide, these annual epidemics are estimated to result in about 3 to 5 million cases of severe illness and about 290,000 to 650,000 respiratory deaths.”

Many countries were affected by the 1918 ‘pandemic’, although India is claimed to have been the most severely affected; a 2014 article entitled The evolution of pandemic influenza: evidence from India 1918-19 states that,

“The focal point of the epidemic in terms of mortality was India, with an estimated death toll range of 10-20 million…”

In 1918, India had an established pharmaceutical industry and a growing vaccination programme; as described in a 2014 article entitled A brief history of vaccines and vaccination in India that states,

“The early twentieth century witnessed the challenges in expansion of smallpox vaccination, typhoid vaccine trial in Indian personnel, and setting up of vaccine institutes in almost each of the then Indian states.”

Cholera and plague vaccines were also used in India. The article also refers to one of the common explanations for the alleged ‘spread’ of the flu throughout the population in the comment that,

“The pandemic is believed to have originated from influenza-infected World War I troops returning home.”

There is little, if any, evidence to support this claim; but there is a major flaw in the idea that returning troops were responsible for the spread of the ‘1918 Flu’. This disease is claimed to have been so deadly that it could kill within days, or even hours. It is clear therefore that Indian soldiers afflicted by this deadly form of ‘influenza’ would not have survived the long journey from a European war zone back to their home country.

Another particularly interesting circumstance that would have affected the health of large numbers of people is the ‘crippling drought’ that India experienced in 1918-19, which is said to have been the result of the El Niño Southern Climatic Oscillation (ENSO). This is reported in a December 2014 article entitled Malaria’s contribution to World War One – the unexpected adversary that states,

“The ENSO for 1918-1919 was one of the strongest in the twentieth century.”

India is not the only country to have been affected by the strong ENSO of 1918-19; many regions in the southern hemisphere were also affected. Parts of Australia, for example, are reported to have experienced severe droughts between 1918 and 1920. Other regions known to have been affected by the ENSO of 1918-19 include Brazil, Central America, Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as parts of Africa. Yet adverse health problems in these countries during that period are invariably attributed to influenza; as indicated by a July 2013 article entitled Mortality from the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 in Indonesia, which states that,

“For Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, the most widely used estimate of mortality from that pandemic is 1.5 million.”

The article makes no reference to the ENSO of 1918-19 and only discusses the decline in the population due to influenza.

WWI also involved men drawn from African countries that were colonies of European countries; as discussed in an article entitled War Losses (Africa) that refers to the,

“…vast mobilization of African soldiers and laborers for service in Europe between 1914 and 1918…”

It should be noted that soldiers and labourers were not the only casualties; the article also states that,

“…very large, but unknown numbers of African civilians perished during the war.”

The article refers to some of the reasons that African civilians died and these include,

“…famine prompted by a lack of manpower to till the fields, and diseases exacerbated by malnourishment…”

Famines throughout the regions of the southern hemisphere are likely to have been triggered by the droughts that are frequently associated with an ENSO, and especially the strong ENSO of 1918-19.

It is abundantly obvious that the ‘pandemic’ referred to as the 1918 Flu occurred during a unique time in history. The refutation of the ‘germ theory’ means, however, that the high levels of morbidity and mortality experienced during that time cannot be attributed to an ‘infectious virus’.
Instead, as we have shown in this article and as we show in depth in our book, that worldwide phenomenon can be explained by a number of causal factors that include, but are not restricted to: the stresses of war and combat; multiple toxic vaccinations; toxic medicines; the appalling conditions in which soldiers lived and fought; exposures to deadly chlorine gas and other toxic materials; and the effects of a strong ENSO.

These factors, occurring simultaneously and acting synergistically, provide a far more compelling explanation for the morbidity and mortality suffered during 1918 than that of an infection by a non-living particle of genetic material in a protein coating that has been labelled ‘virus’.

Dawn Lester
6th May 2020

References:
BOOKS
ASHFORD, N & Miller, C – Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes.
ENGELBRECHT, T & Köhnlein, C – Virus Mania
MCBEAN, E – Swine Flu Exposé.
RILEY, A – The Medical Voodoo
SHELTON, H. – The Hygienic System: Vol VI Orthopathy.
THORNTON, J. – Pandora’s Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy.

ARTICLES
WHO fact sheet Influenza (Seasonal) https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/influenza-(seasonal)
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-0979_article
Death from 1918 pandemic influenza during the First World War http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irv.12267/abstract
Karen M. Starko, Salicylates and Pandemic Influenza Mortality, 1918–1919 Pharmacology, Pathology, and Historic Evidence, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 49, Issue 9, 15 November 2009, Pages 1405–1410, https://doi.org/10.1086/606060
The fog of research: Influenza vaccine trials during the 1918-19 pandemic https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19525296
Post-Vaccination Encephalitis http://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/669860/post-vaccination-encephalitis
The evolution of pandemic influenza: evidence from India 1918-19 https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2334-14-510
Lahariya C. A brief history of vaccines & vaccination in India. Indian J Med Res. 2014 Apr;139(4):491-511. PMID: 24927336; PMCID: PMC4078488.
Malaria’s contribution to World war One – the unexpected adversary https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2875-13-497
Chandra S. Mortality from the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 in Indonesia. Popul Stud (Camb). 2013 Jul;67(2):185-93. doi: 10.1080/00324728.2012.754486. Epub 2013 Jan 23. PMID: 23339482; PMCID: PMC3687026.
War Losses (Africa) https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_losses_africa