Is COVID More Dangerous Than the Flu?

Recently, I was consulted by a public figure to answer a seemingly simple question — is COVID-19 less deadly than the flu now?

Unfortunately, this is actually a very difficult question to answer. After I reviewed the data with the individual, I realized that there is a lot of value in exploring that answer as it cuts to the heart of the pandemic industrial complex.

The Influenza Industry

For more years than I can count, I’ve watched the same script be re-enacted:

1. We are warned it’s going to be a bad flu season.
2. We are told it is thus essential to get our flu shots by every media network and health authority we encounter (along with the majority of healthcare workers we see).
3. The flu shot to varying degrees “fails” because it doesn’t quite match the circulating strain of influenza.
4. We are told the flu season will be extra bad because the flu-shot isn’t for the correct strain, but it is nonetheless essential to get your flu shot because the partial protection it provides is still lifesaving.
5. In bad years (which is many of them), understaffed hospitals get over crowded, which in turn is used to whip up a hysteria to justify doing even more to push that year’s vaccines.
6. The flu season ends and we are told it killed a lot of people and that we must work harder to vaccinate next year so this does not happen again.

Note: Points 4 and 5 are frequent but do not happen every year.

The most recent example of this occurred right before COVID-19:

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Note: As the above article shows, hospitals running out of beds like we saw throughout COVID-19 (which was the initial justification for the disastrous lockdowns) is a longstanding issue resulting from chronic understaffing issues.

In accordance with the sales script, during the 2017-2018 flu season every health authority promoted the vaccine — despite noting it had once again not correctly predicted that year’s strain. Yet, was this actually a good idea?

“Between September 2017 and February 2018, influenza A(H1N1)pdm09, A(H3N2) and B viruses (mainly B/Yamagata, not included in 2017/18 trivalent vaccines) co-circulated in Europe.

Interim results from five European studies indicate that, in all age groups, 2017/18 influenza vaccine effectiveness was 25 to 52% against any influenza, 55 to 68% against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09, -42 to 7% against influenza A(H3N2) and 36 to 54% against influenza B. 2017/18 influenza vaccine should be promoted where influenza still circulates.”

During that flu season, I clearly recalled that each patient I saw who had been hospitalized or put onto a ventilator had received that year’s flu shot, whereas no one I knew who had not vaccinated had any issues with that year’s flu. While my observations may have been anecdotal, they are in fact supported by the previously cited study because:

“The most identified strain of the virus is influenza A (H3N2). According to a CDC emergency health advisory released Dec. 27, 83 percent of reported cases were H3N2, a strain associated with more hospitalizations and deaths in those over 65 years of age and in young children compared to other age groups.”

Or put differently, the vaccine made you roughly 17.5% more likely to catch the dangerous strain that characterized most of the flu season. However, this did not in any way stop anyone from pushing that vaccine — and I still remember the numerous mind-boggling debates I had with pulmonologists about it, something I believe illustrates how invested their profession is in this approach.

Likewise, it seems no degree of data can change their minds. For example, a 2013 Cochrane Review (which was the most definitive way to assess the existing medical evidence — at least until the group got bought out by the Gates Foundation) found:

“We could find no convincing evidence that [giving children] vaccines [for influenza] can reduce mortality, hospital admissions, serious complications or community transmission of influenza …

Despite the great variety of method variations, the reviews all have similar conclusions to those of our 2005 Cochrane Review: Trivalent inactivated vaccination has few effects and there is no evidence that it affects deaths, complications or transmission of influenza. Live attenuated vaccination performed a little better at the expense of safety.”

Likewise, numerous studies (some of which were compiled in this article illustrating how vaccines frequently increase rather than decrease infectious diseases) have shown that influenza vaccines increase your risk of catching influenza, catching other respiratory viral infections, and developing a severe influenza infection. Worse still, that elevated risk of illness persists in the years that follow receiving an influenza vaccine.

“Treating” Influenza

Given the total inefficacy of the vaccine, this suggests that a better approach might be to:

• Reduce individual susceptibility to the flu.
• Have home treatments (e.g., over the counter ones) for the flu available to the populace.
• Have effective treatments be available to healthcare providers to treat patients with the flu.

However while many such treatments exist, they are always marginalized and often attacked by the medical community.

For example, it has been repeatedly observed that influenza outbreaks tend to occur in tandem with low levels of sunlight, suggesting a vitamin D deficiency is a causative factor for influenza. In turn, a significant amount of research has been done between vitamin D levels and the flu. Consider the following:

“A study measured the vitamin D concentrations in 198 healthy adults each month during the fall and winter of 2009-2010. It found the incidence of infection was 2.7 times lower and the percentage of days ill was 4.9 times lower in the group that maintained vitamin D levels of 38 ng/mL or higher during the entire study period as compared to the group with levels below 38 ng/mL.

A meta-analysis of eleven placebo-controlled studies containing 5,660 participants (of 6 months to 75 years of age) found that oral vitamin D supplementation caused a 36% reduction in the risk of both upper and lower respiratory tract infections (e.g., influenza and Streptococcus pneumoniae).

A meta-analysis of five placebo trials found vitamin D supplementation reduced the number of respiratory tract infections in adults by 35% and in children by 42% when compared to groups that did not receive supplementation.”

Yet, vitamin D is never suggested for the flu, and frequently the recommendation is attacked. A similar treatment is also extended by the medical profession to many other long used natural treatments for influenza (many of which I have found to be extremely useful — to the point I have never viewed the infection as being problematic). Conversely, the conventional management of influenza typically consists of:

• Telling the patients to stay hydrated.
• Telling the patients to take the doctor’s preferred fever medicine (which is typically tylenol or ibuprofen).
• If the patient has had the flu for two days or less, prescribing tamiflu.

Unfortunately there are some issues with these approaches.

Suppressing Fevers

In the case of fevers, a long standing belief in the natural medicine community has been that suppressing fevers worsens your body’s immune response and its attempts to expel an infection, so the natural medicine field strongly advises against suppressing fevers. This for example was clearly demonstrated throughout the devastating 1918 influenza pandemic and many reports at the time showed it determined if a patient would live or die.

From reading all of these reports, (provided the fever is not too high) I’ve adopted the practice of instead often encouraging fevers during these types of infections and found it frequently significantly improves how quickly the patient recovers.

Furthermore, I also found that for some patients, a significant amount of the discomfort they experience during an illness comes not from its fever, but rather the body struggling to heat itself up to the target temperature needed for the fever.

For this reason, I often find (provided the patient is not on the frail end), that to reduce discomfort it is more effective to heat the body up (e.g., with an infrared mat) than it is to use a medicine which suppresses the fever by turning off the body’s signal to heat itself up.

However, since the response with a fever reducing medication is immediate and dramatic (thus being something simple to do which showcases the efficacy of pharmaceutical focused medicine), the medical profession has always been attached to treating fevers.

In turn, a variety of conflicting data exists on if suppressing a fever worsens the course of an illness or makes it more likely to be transmitted, and as you might expect, whenever data emerges suggesting fever suppression is harmful, it’s repeatedly attacked. For example, this study, this study and this study support my position while this study (from a very orthodox journal) opposes it.

Since there is so much conflicting data, I’ve gone off my own personal experience where it’s often been quite clear that suppressing fevers worsens the course of these illnesses while doing things like going in a sauna greatly accelerates the speed with which you clear them.

Note: Early in the pandemic, the French health ministry warned against using ibuprofen to treat COVID-19 after observing numerous cases where it worsened the course of a COVID-19 infection — a decision that was repeatedly criticized by the medical community.

My own experience matches that of the ministry, as I’ve seen quite a few patients become much worse after they started a medication to suppress their fever and I’ve also seen others respond to their bodies being warmed up.

Tamiflu

The more I study medicine, the more I’ve come to believe that business rather than science dictates what governs how medicine is practiced. For instance, any illness that regularly affects a large number of people represents a huge potential market to sell medical products, and as a result, the industry has a vested interest in keeping anything which actually solves a health issue (and thereby destroys that market) from becoming available to the public.

In the case of the flu (and related viral illnesses) since people get it every year and feel miserable (hence wanting something to be done for them), there has been a longstanding need to protect that market. As a result, each therapy that is sanctioned for “solving” it (e.g., the annual vaccines) at best does a small enough amount that the market is not threatened.

Conversely, ways to treat the illness (many of which, like vitamin D, can be obtained for minimal cost) are continually suppressed. Because of this, I live in a bit of a surreal reality — I do not feel the flu is a big deal and am never worried if I or my friends get it; but I simultaneously recognize many of my physician colleagues are terrified of it and that in a susceptible person, if it is not handled correctly, it can become a huge problem.

In 1999, Roche’s Oseltamivir (Tamiflu), an influenza treatment was approved by the FDA and in 2002, by the EMA.

When Tamiflu first hit the market, it was enthusiastically endorsed by the medical profession, while its significant rate of side effects was glossed over — 1 in every 19 to 22 people (depending on age) treated experienced vomiting, 1 in 28 experienced nausea, 1 in 94 experienced a significant psychiatric event, and a variety of rarer but more severe side effects like kidney or liver damage were also observed with the drug.

Because of the fanfare surrounding Tamiflu, by 2009, Roche had been able to convince the European and American governments to spend billions stockpiling it. However, most of that fanfare was based upon studies Roche had conducted that they refused to reveal to the public or independent researchers.

When the Cochrane Collaboration eventually obtained access to that data (e.g., through FOIA requests) they discovered that Roche’s data showed Tamiflu offered almost no benefit to patients while simultaneously presented a moderate risk to them.

One of my longterm observations has been that once the government invests a lot of money in something (e.g., more than a billion dollars to buy the entire supply of remdesivir and over 30 billion on the COVID vaccines), it becomes extremely committed to the investment.

This means that it will do everything it can to utilize that investment (e.g., by administering the purchased pharmaceuticals to the population) and if evidence comes up suggesting the investment was a bad idea, the government will willfully disregard it.

In the case of Tamiflu, once evidence started emerging it was a scam, rather than acknowledge it, the healthcare authorities like the CDC chose to ignore it. This has created the curious situation where Tamiflu (and related medications) are the standard of care for treating influenza, but, there is no evidence to justify that position.

As a result, when you read the CDC’s most current guidelines, you will notice a curious contradiction. They advocate for the medication, but simultaneously use speculative language to avoid being caught in a lie:

“If you get sick with flu, influenza antiviral drugs may be a treatment option … Check with your doctor promptly if you are at higher risk of serious flu complications and you get flu symptoms … When treatment is started within 1-2 days after flu symptoms begin, influenza antiviral drugs can lessen symptoms and shorten the time you are sick by 1 or 2 days. They might also prevent some flu complications, like pneumonia.

For people at higher risk of serious flu complications, treatment with influenza antiviral drugs can mean the difference between milder or more serious illness possibly resulting in a hospital stay.”

Note: The above language is potentially appropriate for a brand new drug approved under emergency situations — Tamiflu however has been on the market for 24 years.

When COVID started in December 2019, I correctly predicted give or take everything that would happen in the years to come. At the time my colleagues didn’t believe me (and often attacked me for my position), but have since come around and apologized since the predicted events did come to pass.

On the surface, it seems nearly impossible I actually could have made the predictions I just claimed to have made. However, if you consider the medical community’s insistence on making the flu out to be an existential threat and its steadfast refusal to turn influenza into an easily manageable condition, it’s not much of a stretch to assume the exact same thing would happen with COVID.

For instance, this was why I strongly suspected adequate vitamin D would be critical for COVID but nonetheless be ridiculed and attacked regardless of how much evidence was put forward supporting its use.

Likewise, I thought the Tamiflu saga would essential repeat with the new antiviral drugs they made for COVID (which is what then happened with remdesivir, paxlovid and molnupiravir), especially given that Fauci, who was in charge of the COVID-19 response had used a similar playbook during the early days of HIV to push through the toxic and ineffective drug AZT.

Overall, the strongest case for this argument can be found from Vaccine Zombie, a 2010 music video poking fun at the 2009 swine flu vaccination campaign. At the time it was made, it was meant to be an over-the-top caricature that highlighted the absurdity of the previous year.

However, because the relentless greed of the industry was allowed to run unchecked, what had been unthinkable then became the new normal a mere decade later, and as a result, to a very eerie degree, Vaccine Zombie perfectly predicted what happened throughout the COVID-19 vaccination campaign.

What Drives the Vaccine Industry?

If we take a step back, it’s worth considering how effective the vaccine approach is. For example, in 1980, we gave 12 million flu shots each year in the United States, while in 2020, we gave nearly 200 million. Given this huge investment, you would expect to see a pretty large public benefit from it:

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At this point, over half of the American population receives an annual flu shot, yet despite its clear failure to do anything (as the above graph shows — at best mass influenza vaccination has mitigated the effect of an aging population), the mantra is always the same. Not enough people are vaccinating and the most important thing you can do each year is to get vaccinated.

Given the abysmal failure of this program, I’ve always wondered why those vaccines are pushed so aggressively. At this point, I’ve identified the following possible explanations: