Our Misleading and Superstitious notion of Contagion and the Fraudulent Basic Reproduction Number in Epidemiology (+ New Perspectives):
Let's have a look to the notion of contagion first:
*August 2, 1919
EXPERIMENTS TO DETERMINE MODE OF SPREAD OF INFLUENZA
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/221687
"there are factors, or a factor, in the transmission of influenza that we do not know.
As a matter of fact, we entered the outbreak with a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from person to person. Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease."
*The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vol. 25, No. 5 (Nov., 1919)
Some Experiments on the Transmission of Influenza
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30082102?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
"The nasal application of a filtrate from a pneumonic lung of an individual dead from typical influenza bronchopneumonia failed to call forth any abnormal symptoms.
The application to the mucous membrane of the nares and nasopharynx of five healthy men (four inoculated from 4-6 weeks ago against influenza with a polyvalent influenza vaccine, one uninoculated) of freshly prepared suspension of four different live strains of B. influenzae (one, in the second generation from the fatally infected human host) even in the massive doses, failed to produce any abnormal symptoms."
*Washington : Government Printing Office, 1924
A review of the literature on influenza and the common cold /
by J. G. Townsend, surgeon, United States Public Health Service.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102609951
-"In 1920 Schmidt, from a series of 196 filtrate inoculations from 16 different subject suffering with coryza, concludes that his investigations do not support the filtrable virus theory of "colds"."
-"In 1921 Branham and Hall, from their experiments, concluded that there is no evidence whatever to support the theory that the cause of common colds and influenza is a filtrable virus."
-"The latest observers to express their opinion in the negative are Robertson and Groves, who reported in April, 1924, the following:
Results of the 100 human inoculations are: Positive for bronchitis, 1 case (1 per cent); coryza, 1 case (1 per cent); influenza, 1 case (1 per cent); laryngitis, 2 cases (2 per cent). There were 95 negative cases (95 per cent) free from any respiratory infection following inoculation."
-"In this series of experiments nasal secretions were secured from 11 persons suffering with acute uncomplicated coryza. After being diluted and passed through a Berkefield filter these secretions were sprayed onto the nasal mucosa of 100 volunteers.
The experiments presented no convincing evidence indicative of a filter-passing organism as the exciting factor in acute coryza. We believe the cases recorded as positive to be the result of factors independent of the inoculations."
-"The nasal application of a filtrate from a pneumonic lung of an individual dead from typical influenza broncho-pneumonia failed to call forth any abnormal symptoms."
*July 11, 1930
STUDIES IN THE COMMON COLD : IV. EXPERIMENTAL TRANSMISSION OF THE COMMON COLD TO ANTHROPOID APES AND HUMAN BEINGS BY MEANS OF A FILTRABLE AGENT
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19869798/
[Report on psychosomatic event]
"That evening and night the subject reported severe symptomatology, including sneezing, cough, sore throat and stuffiness of the nose. The next morning he was told that he had been misinformed in regard to the nature of the filtrate and his symptoms subsided within the hour. It is important to note that there was an entire absence of objective pathological changes."
[Which could explain many of the positive results, as they conclude the following]
"3. Certain types of infectious colds are caused by a filtrable agent."
*December 29, 1930 [Some positive results]
THE ETIOLOGY OF ACUTE UPPER RESPIRATORY INFECTION (COMMON COLD)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19869857/
Methods
"Healthy, intelligent young women were selected as volunteers for the test."
"Experimental upper respiratory infections similar to "common colds" were transmitted singly and in series through two and four passages in nine out of fifteen persons, by intransal inoculations with bacteria-free filtrates of nasopharyngeal washings obtained from individuals ill with natural "colds"."
[NOTE: In relation to potential psychosomatic effects that may affect the results, I think this line, from their methods section is important. We have to remember that we are talking about the 1930s. Pay attention to the language they use "intelligent young women"!?.]
Now let's take a look to the notion of Basic Reproduction number:
Basic Reproduction Number
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number
"In epidemiology, the basic reproduction number, or basic reproductive number (sometimes called basic reproduction ratio or basic reproductive rate), denoted R_0 (pronounced R nought or R zero), of an infection is the expected number of cases directly generated by one case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection"
[Therefore, it seems to be an imaginary concept from an ideal and imaginary world in which you have a population where all individuals have the exact same outcome, regardless of any other factor (age, gender, previous comorbidities, previous general health, environmental toxins, contaminants, pharmacological products usage, nutrition levels, living conditions, livelihood, poverty levels, hygiene, climate/weather, latitude, geography, local flora, local fauna, air quality, water quality, food quality, immunological memory/strength, culture, behaviour, genetic variation, population density, location within the urban environment, dynamics, temporal variations, humidity, solar radiation, temperatures, electromagnetic fields...).
R_0 seems to support the idea of a Petri Dish Growth Medium were every single so called "pathogen" has free passage. Hence, from every given infected cell/individual, we will have on average a given expected number of cases ad infinitum, until some drastic measure ("social" distancing, lockdowns, mask usage, mass culling - like they do in poultry -, mass vaccination...) is enforced, because reaching the so called "natural immunity" - another magical and fantastical term - is unacceptable.
I must emphasize here why I call "natural immunity" a magical term. The reality of contagion is absolutely complex, it is not properly understood. The mechanisms by which it happens, if it does, are not known, and the same can be said about the absolutely fabulous heterogeneity of the immune system, not only within each individual but within the population. At the same time I am absolutely positive that elements of the immune system are capable of information transfer within the ecosystem, between individuals and even between different species (very little research has been done in that regard). Therefore, our concept of "we have reached natural immunity", or the insulting term “herd immunity”, is yet another absurd simplification that has nothing to do with reality but can be very useful to make toy models on epidemiology and sell narratives within the public health system and among policy makers.]
[Continuing our introduction to the Basic Reproduction Number - same source]
"R_0 is not a biological constant for a pathogen as it is also affected by other factors such as environmental conditions and the behaviour of the infected population. values are usually estimated from mathematical models"
[Hence, as I said, it is very useful to make fraudulent, unrealistic and absurdly simplified models of how a contagion is suppose to happen within so called "transmission chains".]
Effective Reproduction Number
"In reality, varying proportions of the population are immune to any given disease at any given time. To account for this, the effective reproduction number R_e or R is used. R_t is the average number of new infections caused by a single infected individual at time t in the partially susceptible population. It can be found by multiplying R_0 by the fraction S of the population that is susceptible. When the fraction of the population that is immune increases (i. e. the susceptible population S decreases) so much that R_e drops below 1 in a basic SIR simulation, "herd immunity" has been achieved and the number of cases occurring in the population will gradually decrease to zero."
[This new fraudulent definition, which attempts to be more "realistic" allows epidemiologists to play with their toy models and predict how many people have to be inoculated, wear masks, social distance... or for how long they must be in lockdown.]
The SEIRS model for infectious disease dynamics
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-020-0856-2
"The basic SIR model has three groups: susceptible (S), infectious (I) and recovered (R)"
[Why is this new Effective Reproduction Number still a fraud? Let me put it simply and let's have a real estimate of the real reproduction number. It would be a function depending on the following functions, all of which also depend on each other and time, as well as several constants, as variables. Let's call it RR, i.e. Real Reproduction Number:
RR =
Φ[Ψ_1( Ψ_2(), Ψ_3(), ... , Ψ_n(), Time, Physical Constants, Biological Constants, Local Constants, Constants Dependent on Time - C(t));
Ψ_2( Ψ_1(), Ψ_3(), ... , Ψ_n(), Time, Physical Constants, Biological Constants, Local Constants, Constants Dependent on Time - C(t)); ... ;
Ψ_n( Ψ_1(), Ψ_2(), ... , Ψ_(n-1)(), Time, Physical Constants, Biological Constants, Local Constants, Constants Dependent on Time - C(t));
Time, Physical Constants, Biological Constants, Local Constants, Constants Dependent on Time - C(t)); ]
where the primary variables (Ψ_1(), Ψ_2(), ... , Ψ_n()), which are variables of each other and time, and some of the constants, are:
(age, gender, previous comorbidities, previous general health, environmental toxins, contaminants, pharmacological products usage, nutrition levels, living conditions, livelihood, poverty levels, hygiene, climate/weather, latitude, geography, local flora, local fauna, air quality, water quality, food quality, immunological memory/strength - at the ecosystemic level and at the individual level -, culture, behaviour, genetic variation, population density, location within the urban environment, dynamics, temporal variations, humidity, solar radiation, temperatures, electromagnetic fields, fitness levels, time of the year, time of the day/week, ad infinitum...)
And the reality of it is that there is no possible way in which anyone can work with that in any mathematical model, or any kind of simulation. Therefore, the absurd simplifications that are done within epidemiology CANNOT be apply to reality or policy making. The theory of contagion that they derived from those simplifications only fits propaganda narratives and has nothing to do with the world we live in.]
Look at the GIF image below. Here you have some perspective on how a contagion event may actually happen. Like an emergent pattern formation moving through breaking points of the system, with cascade events, phase transitions on the boundaries, and even resonant synchronous events allowed via the potential landscape of the whole ecosystem, including all flora and fauna, plus the microbiome. Nothing to do with our R_0 and SIR absurd models.
I leave you here with a group of medical doctors and experts making a universal vaccine for fear of a contagion that could kill us all:
NOTE: I am the cat on the picture (^_ ^
