Gabor Szendi:
About flu, vitamin D, and the ineffectiveness of vaccinations

"The most effective defense against influenza infection is to vaccinate, prevent droplet infections, and taking antiviral drugs that are started immediately after the onset of the disease which can alleviate the disease." Such statements can be heard and read by medical and public health professionals. Unfortunately, not a single word of this sentence is true, except that flu is a real disease.

 

 

Is flu contagious?

In the issue of flu, the picture is complicated by the fact that in winter both lay people and professionals tend to consider feverish illness as influenza. However, the subject of scientific studies is laboratory-confirmed influenza, so the results quoted here refer to true flu.

Hundreds of years of influenza observations have often called this into question. An observer on the influenza epidemic in Exeter, England in 1729 wrote that, "At least two thousand people became ill in one night" (Hope-Simpson, 1985). August Hirsch, quoting others in his handbook of 1883 on infectious diseases, stated that influenza does not seem contagious because the spread of the epidemic is independent of human contact, and the accelerated traffic did not alter the rate of transmission seen in previous centuries (Hope-Simpson, 1985). Edgar Hope-Simpson, from records of parishes in Gloucestershire, South West England, proved that flu in the county always occurred at the same time as epidemics in other parts of England (Hope-Simpson, 1983). Hope-Simpson confirmed co-occurrence with mortality data from far-flung counties (Hope-Simpson, 1986). Analyzing outbreaks for twenty six years confirmed that outbreaks in the US and France always occurred at the same time (Viboud et al., 2004).

The person-to-person spread is actually a dogma that masks the obscurity which circulates around flu. It's easy to believe today that many travelers are spreading flu. We would only be in trouble if we were to calculate how fast infectious people would have to move through space, and what lightning-fast chain of encounters would be needed to infect a country or continent of thousands of settlements in a very short period of time. Only Santa's performance is comparable, as hevisits all the children of the world in one night, distributing millions of tons of gifts among them. And it is also puzzling why there is always an epidemic in one hemisphere, even though travel is not restricted to that hemisphere. How can it be that travelers do not infect people in the other hemisphere, if flu is so contagious?

But we do not even need to think globally. Hope-Simpson monitored families for 8 years, and in 70% of these cases only one family member became infected, and the disease did not spread to other family members (Hope-Simpson, 1979). In another study, 60 families were followed during the 1957 Asian flu epidemic, and if a family member became ill, no "family epidemic" occurred (Jordan et al., 1958).

This does not mean that the influenza virus is not detectable in exhaled tiny saliva droplets and on surfaces affected by patients, and that it is not possible to get infected by these (Yan et al., 2018). But the flu is not "brought in" from one place to another, and in the case of pandemics, the same virus appears everywhere. However, it is not clear why one person gets sick and another doesn't.

The disappearance and appearance of virus subtypes is also mysterious. For example, between 1947 and 1957, the H1N1 A type was responsible for epidemics, then this virus suddenly disappeared and was replaced by H2N2, which spiked in 1968, after which it was replaced by H3N2.

According to Edgar Hope-Simpson's theory, the flu virus lives in humans and when it is "in season," it resurrects and infects people who are vulnerable to it. When the epidemic is over, the viruses will hide in the body until the next season. The dead virus mutates and becomes the most viable of the mutants against which few people are protected. Virus researcher Maurice Hilleman has shown that each strain of flu appears again every 68 years. This cycle time is roughly equivalent to average human life expectancy, meaning that those who have encountered a particular strain will "run out" during this time (Hilleman, 2002). The weak point in Hope-Simpson's latent virus theory is that their hiding place has not yet been found. However, it is well known that 5-8% of the human genome is made up of so-called endogenous retroviral fragments, which are the remains of hundreds of thousands of millions of years of infections (Belshaw et al., 2004). But we can also think of the chickenpox virus, which waits for "better times" in the nerve endings to cause shingles - and by the way, this trick was revealed by Hope-Simpson. So the idea of a hiding flu virus is not completely out of the grounds, and its assumption explains a lot.

Hope-Simpson's greatest recognition of flu was to shed light on the real cause of its seasonal occurrence. But more about that later.

Are vaccines effective?

Public health, in conjunction with the vaccine industry, tries to persuade more people to vaccinate before each flu season, saying that this protects against serious, even fatal complications.

It is worth clarifying that efficacy and efficiency are different. Efficacy is assessed as whether the immune response to the vaccine is detectable in vaccinated subjects. However, effectiveness is different, because it shows how much vaccination in real life protects against flu. Efficacy is a prerequisite for placing a vaccine on the market, but efficiency always comes later.

It is common that the virus produced in hen's eggs is mutated during vaccine production, and so the vaccine does not protect against what it was designed for. This happened to the vaccine industry in 2012-13, 2014-15 and 2016-17 (Skowronski et al., 2014; Xie et al., 2015; Zost et al., 2017). But even if you can determine the virus circulating in the population, the vaccines do not demonstrate the effectiveness that the public health authorities and vaccine industry claim in their propaganda.

According to an analysis of a study of forty one children aged over two years, vaccination with live attenuated virus provided 14% protection against influenza, and vaccination with inert virus provided 20% protection (Jefferson et al., 2018). In children younger than two years of age, the effectiveness and safety of vaccination was not tested, but vaccination is now recommended for infants.

In one study, children who were vaccinated with the three-component inactivated virus- if they still got flu - were 3.6 times more likely to be hospitalized than those that were not vaccinated (Joshi et al., 2012). In another study, the three-component vaccine did not protect children from flu, in addition, they were 4.34 times more likely to have non-influenza viral respiratory infections than the placebo group (Cowling et al., 2012).

The effectiveness of influenza vaccination in adults was 1.4% based on analysis of 52 studies, and reduced the proportion of cases requiring hospitalization by 0.6% (Demicheli et al., 2018a).

In pregnant women, vaccination was 1% effective and protected the new-born from infection in 3.7% of vaccinated women (Demicheli et al., 2014).

Lone Simonsen et al, analyzing data from 33 influenza seasons in 2005, found that while vaccination rates for people aged 65 and over in the US increased from 15% to 65% in 2001, flu-related mortality did not decrease (Simonsen et al., 2005). This is especially strange because meanwhile the standards of intensive care had improved significantly. An Italian study also did not recognize any reduction in mortality despite increasing vaccination rates for those over 65 years old (Rizzo et al., 2006).

A 2018 study found influenza vaccination over 65 years of age to be 3% effective based on 8 clinical trials (Demicheli et al., 2018b).

The recurring conclusion of analyses of vaccine effectiveness reviews is that most of the analysis studies are biased, so the results are unreliable.

One thing is certain: the effectiveness and benefits of vaccination against influenza can be fundamentally questioned.

Vaccination side effects

All treatments, including vaccination, can have side effects. Because vaccines offer little protection, serious side effects should be weighed against this. In the history of flu vaccinations the 1976 US flu pandemic is memorable, when 35 million people were hastily vaccinated. It then turned out that some people developed Guillain-Barré syndrome (a nervous system disease with partial or complete paralysis) after vaccination. Following the vaccination campaign, 532 patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome were identified, 32 of whom died (Schonberger et al., 1979). Today, there are 3 cases per one million vaccinations (Romio et al., 2014). Between 1999 and 2015, 841 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome were reported in the US (Veitia et al., 2016).

Fear marketing of the 2009-10 pandemic convinced millions of people about the importance of vaccination. 30 million people were vaccinated with the Pandemrix vaccine. Soon, Swedish and Finnish authorities reported that, among young people in particular, there were 5-14 times more cases of narcolepsy reported by country. Narcolepsy is an incurable disease in which the patient is somnolent and can collapse and fall asleep at any moment (Sarkanen et al., 2018). Mercury in flu vaccination can be harmful to the fetus. One study compared the rate of stillbirths reported as a side effect between 2008 and 2011. Usually there are 7 fetal deaths per million pregnant women, but double vaccinations were given in 2009-10, resulting in an 11.4 times increase in reported cases (Goldman, 2013). The side effect report is voluntary, so it is estimated that the actual number of cases may be up to ten times that number.

Antivirals prevent or alleviate influenza

Under the pretext of the 2009-2010 fake pandemic, the WHO classified Tamiflu (oseltamivir) as a basic medicine, and governments around the world have amassed huge stocks to deal with early victims of a fatal epidemic even before the flu vaccine becomes available. Another such antiviral agent is Relenza (zanamivir). However, a 2014 analysis showed that both Tamiflu and Relenza are virtually ineffective in clinical terms, shortening the disease by less than a day, and did not reduce the risk of pneumonia and other serious complications or the need for hospitalization, although these drugs have been called life-saving agents. When taken for prevention, they were found to have an effect of 2-3%. Because of the serious side effects of medicines, the authors say that no one should take it for minimal benefits, not governments should amass it (Jefferson et al., 2014). The manufacturer alone made Tamiflu 20 billion (Abbasi, 2014).

About the cause of the flu epidemics

Hope-Simpson recognized that the cold was not the cause of the flu, but a decrease in the intensity of UV radiation. This explains why flu appears in the tropics in the rainy season. He also recognized that an average of 11 years of increased sunspot activity, which results in a 4-13% reduction in the annual amount of UVB radiation to Earth, coincides with more severe pandemics in the 20th century (Hope-Simpson, 1978). The relationship was also proved by John Yeung for 18th and 19th century pandemics (Yeung, 2006). As for the 2009-2010 "pandemic," as sunspot activity was minimal during this period, so if Hope-Simpson were still alive, he would have predicted a mild epidemic, and so it was.

John Cannell et al. have clarified the relationship between UV radiation and influenza: sunlight generates vitamin D in the summer, and with the onset of autumn, the level of vitamin D in humans begins to decline. When vitamin D falls below a critical level in the population, the influenza virus becomes active and the epidemic develops (Cannell et al., 2006). Flu can be detected in the summer, but epidemic never develops. Studies have shown that people with higher levels of vitamin D were 10 to 80 times less likely to develop disease with live viruses than those with vitamin D deficiencies (Cannell et al., 2006). Vitamin D causes the antimicrobial proteins of the innate immune system (defensives and catelicidins) to be produced in the trachea increasingly, killing influenza and other upper respiratory viruses and bacteria. Therefore, high levels of vitamin D generally protect against upper respiratory diseases (Ginde et al., 2009).

William Grant and Edward Giovannucci showed that in the 1918-19 Spanish flu epidemic in New London, USA, people died four times more in the Spanish flu than in San Antonio 11 degrees south (Grant and Giovannucci, 2009). Even today, influenza-related deaths in the southern states of the United States are half as high as in the northern states (Szendi, 2018b).

Melissa Li-Ng and John Aloia, reading the study of Cannells, re-analyzed data from their study, which originally looked at the effect of vitamin D on osteoporosis. Women taking 800 IU vitamin D daily had a significant reduction in influenza illness, while women taking 2000 IU had virtually no flu (Aloia and Li-Ng, 2007).

In six-month-old infants it has been proved that compared to 400 IU vitamin D daily, 1200 IU of vitamin D daily halved the number of influenza cases, and the disease developed was milder and shorter (Zhou et al., 2018). In a Japanese study, 1200 IU of vitamin D daily for school children between December and March reduced the number of influenza illnesses by 62% (Urashima et al., 2010).

Pooled analysis of clinical trials in children showed double protective effects in vitamin D users against upper respiratory viral infections (Charan et al., 2012).

Analyses generally show a 40-50% reduction in risk for influenza and other upper respiratory tract disease in people who take vitamin D or those with higher levels of vitamin D (Szendi, 2018b).

Vitamin D defenses against upper respiratory tract infections and its relationship to influenza epidemics are explained by convincing theory, as well as observations and studies. Despite this, official medicine and public health are ignoring it. It is worth taking much more than vitamin D given in studies (see box), and high vitamin D levels will/would protect most people safely from influenza and other respiratory infections.

As we have seen, the annual vaccination -recommended every year- does not offer much protection, but it can have risks - even if they are rare. When comparing 1-3% protection for adults or 14-20% protection for children with 40-50% protection for vitamin D, it is clear that vitamin D is the winner. Unlike vaccinations, taking the right dose of vitamin D has no risk. However, it is not worth comparing the two prevention methods; everyone who wants can have vaccination, taking vitamin D in addition to the vaccine will only increase their defense.

How much vitamin D can we take?

There is a lot of confusion around the vitamin D recommendation, which are generated by official bodies. Known for its conservative views, the american Institute of Medicine (IOM) considers 600 IU daily of vitamin D sufficient for everyone, and has stated the maximum dose that can be safely taken at 4000 IU. Two researchers re-analyzed the studies on which the IOM based its recommendation and found that a gross calculation error occurred: in fact, 10-12 times more, that is, at least 6-8000 IU of vitamin D, would be needed to achieve the really low (20 ng / ml) vitamin D level given by IOM (Veugelers and Ekwaru, 2014). However, the IOM, as if nothing had happened, still considers its recommendation to be valid. In clinical trials, to date, they are giving almost ineffective low doses because they follow IOM's recommendation. When researching the effects of different doses over months, in adults 10000 IU of vitamin D raised the level of vitamin D in the blood to 70 ng / ml. Because the ideal value is 50-70 ng / ml, in the winter when we do not get vitamin D from sunbathing, an adult can reach the ideal level of vitamin D by 8-10,000 IU daily (Szendi, 2018a). According to John Cannell, 1000 IU can be safely given to children by every 13 kg, however, in the event of illness, this dose may be increased by 2 to 3 times for a few days. In adults, the method that can be recommended is to take 50,000 IU of vitamin D daily for 3-4 days from the onset of upper respiratory tract disease, as this significantly speeds up recovery (Veugelers and Ekwaru, 2014).

 

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