During the Spanish Flu of 1918, the worst “pandemic” we have seen in the last 100 years, an estimated 500 million people were infected, and an estimated 20-50 million people died around the world (when our modes of travel were much slower than today). To find out if it was contagious, doctors from the US Public Health Service tried to infect one hundred healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 25 at a naval facility in Gallops Island in Boston Harbour.
First, they collected mucous secretions from the noses, throats, and upper respiratory tracts of those infected and transferred these secretions to the noses, mouths, and lungs of the healthy volunteers; but nothing happened.
Second, the doctors withdrew blood from the infected and injected it into the healthy volunteers; but still nothing happened.
Lastly, the doctors instructed the infected to breathe and cough on the healthy volunteers (to imitate the “natural spread” of “contagion”); but again nothing happened.
They even took the secretions from sick horses and tried to infect healthy horses; but as with the humans, nothing happened.
A sense of frustration pervades the report, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This frustration is well warranted. As early as 1799, when the world was not as globalized as it is today, researchers became puzzled over the cause of Influenza, which would appear suddenly in diverse places at the same time. The “contagion theory” simply does not hold any water. Observe these quotes, which are a deathblow to the “contagion theory” of spread from person to person:
“Perhaps no disease has ever been observed to affect so many people in so short a time, as the Influenza, almost a whole city, town, or neighborhood becoming affected in a few days, indeed much sooner than could be supposed to spread from contagion. Mercatus relates, that when it prevailed in Spain, in 1557, the greatest part of the people were seized in one day. Dr. Glass says, when it was rife in Exeter, in 1729, two thousand were attacked in one night.”
—Shadrach Ricketson, M.D. (1808), A Brief History of the Influenza (Shadrach Ricketson, A Brief History of the Influenza 1808, p.4)“The simple fact is to be recollected that this epidemic affects a whole region in the space of a week; nay, a whole continent as large as North America, together with all the West Indies, in the course of a few weeks, where the inhabitants over such vast extent of country, could not, within so short a lapse of a time, have had the least communication or intercourse whatever. This fact alone is sufficient to put all idea of its being propagated by contagion from one individual to another out of the question.”
—Alexander Jones, M.D. (1827), Philadelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical Sciences (Richard Sisley, “Epidemic Influenza: Notes on Its Origin and Method of Spread”, Longmans Green and Co., p.22)“Unlike cholera, it outstrips in its course the speed of human intercourse”
—Theophilus Thompson, M.D. (1852), Annals of Influenza or Epidemic Catarrhal Fever in Great Britain from 1510 to 1837“Contagion alone is inadequate to explain the sudden outbreak of the disease in widely distant countries at the same time, and the curious way in which it has been known to attack the crews of ships at sea, where communication with infected places or persons was out of the question.”
—Sir Morell Mackenzie, M.D. (1893), Fortnightly Review (Mackenzie, Morell. “Fortnightly Review 55:877–86)“Usually influenza travels at the same speed as man but at times it apparently breaks out simultaneously in widely separated parts of the globe”
—Jorgen Birkeland (1949), Microbiology and Man (H. E. Bowen, “Microbiology and Man," Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, p.445)“[Before 1918] there are records of two other major epidemics of influenza in North America during the past two centuries. The first of these occurred in 1789, the year in which George Washington was inaugurated President. The first steamboat did not cross the Atlantic until 1819, and the first steam train did not run until 1830. Thus, this outbreak occurred when man’s fastest conveyance was the galloping horse. Despite this fact, the influenza outbreak of 1789 spread with great rapidity; many times faster and many times farther than a horse could gallop.”
—James Bordley III, M.D. and A. McGehee Harvey, M.D. (1976), Two Centuries of American Medicine, 1776–1976, p.214“Flu virus may be communicated from person to person in droplets of moisture from the respiratory tract. However, direct communication cannot account for simultaneous outbreaks of influenza in widely separated places.”
—Roderick E. McGrew (1985), Encyclopedia of Medical History, p.151“Why have epidemic patterns in Great Britain not altered in four centuries, centuries that have seen great increases in the speed of human transport?”
—Cannell, J. J., Zasloff, M., Garland, C. F. et al. On the Epidemiology of Influenza. Virol J 5, 29 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1743-422X-5-29
Here are some other experiments that have been performed involving the common cold / flu, which were not able to prove viral causation or contagion:
- In March of 1919, Rosenau & Keegan conducted 9 separate experiments in a group of 49 healthy men, to prove contagion. In all 9 experiments, 0/49 men became sick after being exposed to sick people or the bodily fluids of sick people.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/221687- In November 1919, 8 separate experiments were conducted by Rosenau et al. in a group of 62 men trying to prove that influenza is contagious and causes disease. In all 8 experiments, 0/62 men became sick.
- Another set of 8 experiments were undertaken in December of 1919 by McCoy et al. in 50 men to try and prove contagion. Once again, all 8 experiments failed to prove people with influenza, or their bodily fluids cause illness. 0/50 men became sick.
- In 1919, Wahl et al. conducted 3 separate experiments to infect 6 healthy men with influenza by exposing them to mucous secretions and lung tissue from sick people. 0/6 men contracted influenza in any of the three studies- .
https://www.jstor.org/stable/30082102?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents- In 1920, Schmidt et al conducted two controlled experiments, exposing healthy people to the bodily fluids of sick people. Of 196 people exposed to the mucous secretions of sick people, 21 (10.7%) developed colds and three developed grippe (1.5%). In the second group, of the 84 healthy people exposed to mucous secretions of sick people, five developed grippe (5.9%) and four colds (4.7%). Of forty-three controls who had been inoculated with sterile physiological salt solutions eight (18.6%) developed colds. A higher percentage of people got sick after being exposed to saline compared to those being exposed to the “virus.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19869857/
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102609951- In 1921, Williams et al. tried to experimentally infect 45 healthy men with the common cold and influenza, by exposing them to mucous secretions from sick people. 0/45 became ill.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19869857/- In 1924, Robertson & Groves exposed 100 healthy individuals to the bodily secretions from 16 different people suffering from influenza. The authors concluded that 0/100 became sick as a result of being exposed to the bodily secretions.
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article-abstract/34/4/400/832936?redirectedFrom=fulltext- In 1930, Dochez et al. attempted to infect a group of men experimentally with the common cold. The authors stated in their results, something that is nothing short of amazing.
“It was apparent very early that this individual was more or less unreliable and from the start it was possible to keep him in the dark regarding our procedure. He had inconspicuous symptoms after his test injection of sterile broth and no more striking results from the cold filtrate, until an assistant, on the second day after injection, inadvertently referred to this failure to contract a cold.
That evening and night the subject reported severe symptomatology, including sneezing, cough, sore throat and stuffiness in 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”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19869798/- In 1937, Burnet & Lush conducted an experiment exposing 200 healthy people to bodily secretions from people infected with influenza. 0/200 became sick.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2065253/- In 1940, Burnet and Foley tried to experimentally infect 15 university students with influenza. The authors concluded their experiment was a failure.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.5694/j.1326-5377.1940.tb79929.x
As you can see, there is absolutely no way that Influenza could be contagious and spread from person to person. At a time when travel was slow and limited to horses, how does one expect to explain how Influenza could be in so many varied places all at the same time? To suppose “contagion” is illogical and begs the facts. Obviously something else contributes to the cause of Influenza, something science has not figured out yet. (Or has it? With the pseudo-science of “Germ Theory” occupying the foreground, the legitimate science gets silenced and pushed to the background.)
One person wrote:
The role of the virus, which infects only the respiratory tract, has baffled some virologists because influenza is not only, or even mainly, a respiratory disease. Why the headache, the eye pain, the muscle soreness, the prostration, the occasional visual impairment, the reports of encephalitis, myocarditis, and pericarditis? Why the abortions, stillbirths, and birth defects? (Beveridge, p.15–16)
There were also reports of neurological symptoms during the initial influenza pandemics of previous centuries. Most of Medical Officer Röhring’s 239 flu patients at Erlangen, Bavaria, had neurological and cardiovascular symptoms and no respiratory disease. Nearly one-quarter of the 41,500 cases of flu reported in Pennsylvania as of May 1, 1890 were classified as primarily neurological and not respiratory. (Firstenberg, p.89)
Few of David Brakenridge’s patients in Edinburgh, or Julius Althaus’ patients in London, had respiratory symptoms. Instead they had dizziness, insomnia, indigestion, constipation, vomiting, diarrhea, “utter prostration of mental and bodily strength,” neuralgia, delirium, coma, and convulsions. Upon recovery many were left with neurasthenia, or even paralysis or epilepsy. Anton Schmitz published an article titled “Insanity After Influenza” and concluded that influenza was primarily an epidemic nervous disease. C. H. Hughes called influenza a “toxic neurosis.” Morell Mackenzie agreed:
“In my opinion the answer to the riddle of influenza is poisoned nerves… In some cases it seizes on that part of (the nervous system) which governs the machinery of respiration, in others on that which presides over the digestive functions; in others again it seems, as it were, to run up and down the nervous keyboard, jarring the delicate mechanism and stirring up disorder and pain in different parts of the body with what almost seems malicious caprice… As the nourishment of every tissue and organ in the body is under the direct control of the nervous system, it follows that anything which affects the latter has a prejudicial effect on the former; hence it is not surprising that influenza in many cases leaves its mark in damaged structure. Not only the lungs, but the kidneys, the heart, and other internal organs and the nervous matter itself may suffer in this way.” (Mackenzie, p.299–30)
Insane asylums filled up with patients who had had influenza, people suffering variously from profound depression, mania, paranoia, or hallucinations. “The number of admissions reached unprecedented proportions,” reported Albert Leledy at the Beauregard Lunatic Asylum, at Bourges, in 1891. “Admissions for the year exceed those of any previous year,” reported Thomas Clouston, superintending physician of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the Insane, in 1892. “No epidemic of any disease on record has had such mental effects,” he wrote. (Firstenberg, 88–89)
William Beveridge, who lived through to the 1918 pandemic, also noted that half of all Spanish influenza victims did not have any visible influenza symptoms such as nasal discharge, sneezing, or sore throat. (Beveridge, p.11)
Another indication that such pandemics have an atmospheric source is the fact that during such pandemics through history, animals also experienced similar symptoms — from swine to birds. There are multiple examples of this. For instance, when the army of King Karlmann of Bavaria was seized by influenza in 876 A.D., the same disease also decimated the dogs and the birds. (Firstenberg 89)
In later epidemics, up to and including the twentieth century, illness was commonly reported to break out among dogs, cats, horses, mules, sheep, cows, birds, deer, rabbits, and even fish at the same time as humans. (Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 1848, p.173)
Beveridge listed twelve epidemics during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which horses caught the flu, usually one or two months before the humans. In fact, this association was considered so reliable that in early December 1889, Symes Thompson, observing flu-like illness in British horses, wrote to the British Medical Journal predicting an imminent outbreak in humans, a forecast which shortly proved true. (Beveridge, p.56)
Similar deaths in other animals also occurred during the Spanish flu pandemic. (The Lancet, “Medical Influenza Victims in South Africa”, Volume 193, Issue 4976, 11 January 1919, Pages 75–78)
The fact that increased incidences of death is also observed in animals during pandemics is a major blow to the contagion theory. The deaths of other species strongly suggests that pandemics are largely a result of atmospheric and/or technological shocks to the ecosystem.
Seventeen years of surveillance by Hope-Simpson in and around the community of Cirencester, England, revealed that despite popular belief, influenza is not readily communicated from one person to another within a household. Seventy percent of the time, even during the “Hong Kong flu” pandemic of 1968, only one person in a household would get the flu. If a second person had the flu, both often caught it on the same day, which meant that they did not catch it from each other. Sometimes different minor variants of the virus were circulating in the same village, even in the same household, and on one occasion two young brothers who shared a bed had different variants of the virus, proving that they could not have caught it from each other, or even from the same third person. (HOPE-SIMPSON, R. E. (1979) Epidemic mechanisms of type A influenza. Journal of Hygiene v. 83, p. 18).
The embarrassing secret among virologists is that from 1933 until the present day, there have been no experimental studies proving that influenza — either the "virus" or the disease — is ever transmitted from person to person by normal contact. All efforts to transmit the disease from one person to another — even during a pandemic — have been unsuccessful (as you have witnessed from the above experiments/studies).