126 Comments

This article conveys a priceless distillation of medical and microbiological history that should be summarized in any discussion of pandemics and vaccines.

There are also complex technical models, and predictions about the limitations of vaccinations for coronavirus or influenza pandemics.

The parallels drawn from the long history of fighting influenza with vaccines, and how influenza pandemics progress, is incredibly important and missing from most other public discussions of COVID. Even more so, the warnings about fighting the IBV coronavirus with vaccines should be given way more attention.

This should be posted above every lab bench:

And yet modern science seems to have forgotten about one of the older lessons in magic, which was likely rooted in a fundamental understanding of the natural order of things: Nothing comes without its price.

There are a number of tidbits of Microbiological history and medical history, that should be in every article about pandemics.

These are just priceless, a great analogy:

would roughly represent the genetic activity of a tribe of several hundred people attempting to survive in their environment over the course of dozens of generations.

This also brings a smile:

the winner is just declared one generation at a time.

I love this:

This fundamentally amorphous nature of RNA virus genomes means that the quasispecies approach invalidates the idea of a singular “wild type” isolate genome with one immutable nucleotide sequence described as the contagion at any one moment in time,[xv] since under this approach every RNA virus is by definition a swarming ever-changing mutant cloud of quasispecies variant virions.

Expand full comment

Excellent and refreshing writing, Dan. Swarm behavior is a fascinating way to model this pandemic. The historical context you layout for all this is well presented and very appreciated. Thank you, and those who helped edit and work on this, for taking the time to write this out! I hope you continue sharing your work and ideas.

Expand full comment

Thanks so much for the feedback, sorry for the late reply - Substack hasn't been pinging me!!

Expand full comment

Hey Dan, really great article, especially learned a lot about attenuation.

I was curious what your opinion is on the best way to stop the pandemic. I understand that vaccine development can be very risky and the poliomyetis (spell check) cases you mentioned were pretty disturbing to hear about.

What is your opinion on the mRNA technology? If you believe it shouldn't be used, how else can we stop this other than trying to mitigate the amount of time and tries it has to mutate more and more.

Expand full comment

Yeah unfortunately I don't see any easy fixes and certainly vaccines aren't gonna do it - even if they weren't just covering one-protein, we know from poultry farms that crowded commercial settings can make all vaccine programs fail, even will 100% compliance and surveillance, which is obviously impossible in a human population.

So we're going to need far more ventilation in ever single public space whether it's a Starbucks or a school or a stadium, and possible to lace the air with antivirals - sulfur is one candidate, I'll explain more in part three of "dreams down from the mountains."

This mRNA technology may well also be seeding ADE down the road, and is one of the most idiotic and irresponsible displaces of the intersection of science and public policy in human history. Doomed to fail, and quite possibly seeding further disaster down the road.

Expand full comment

cryogenic? Thoughts on ivermectin? Hcq? Zinc/d/quercetin...or what is your personal plan for surviving zombie apocalypse? (I have to have a little sense of humor with re to zombies, I know we are the chickens)

Expand full comment

Zinc/D/Quercetin/CBD/Nicotine/Asparagus/I'm not a doctor. And trying to find as resilient a community as possible.

Expand full comment

Amen to that... I am in coastal south carolina and a very quiet area near forests... I am hoping that will be enough

Expand full comment

Yeah that's pretty ideal, lots of food in the marshes and no huge urban centers nearby. Just be ready for a hurricane to wreck shit and for the government to not respond at all for several weeks.

Expand full comment

The v-1000 analogy will never leave me and I have so many questions about this...all in agreement and in amazement

Expand full comment

Probably the best description of what is actually going on with the pandemic.

Phylogenic tree analyses fail to accurately explain the deattenuation of this LAV and do not recognise the swarming behaviour of the quasi species that leads to the virus gatekeeping its way back to its original highly pathogenic form.

Epistatic analyses seem to take us closer to our understanding of what is going on as we see a clearer picture of the convergent evolution within the swarm. However, from a classical point of view, researchers seem torn over the matter of recombination, believing that this is also part of the explaination for the same mutations appearing within diverse broad samples that have been sequenced and studied.

Prior to my questions please consider the following.

Consider superspreading events. We know that in crowded group settings this virus thrives. It is likely that when multiple infected people (asymptomatic, symptomatic or a latent carriers) are put in an enclosed space the unventilated air they breathe is contaminated with virions from multiple swarms.

Please consider this from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160318181610.htm,

"In experiments based at Mpala Research Centre in Kenya, researchers instigated ant wars by tying unrelated colonies' trees together, counting casualties in tarps placed below. By simulating the browsing of a large mammal, they discovered that victorious colonies are less able to defend their host trees after fights. After analyzing the DNA of nearly 800 ants, they discovered that fighting changes the genetic make-up of victorious colonies."

In this example we have ant colonies which behave as a swarm. When two colonies, or two swarms, go to war they are able to change the genetic diversity of the resultant swarm whether that be a truce, or a win/lose scenario. The new swarm after this war will continue to behave as one.

So when we consider the superspreading events mentioned above is there not an analogous effect happening to the ant war?

Whereby multiple swarms interact. The swarms may not be at war but on some level the resultant infections produced after these swarms collided must contribute to the gatekeeping effect. This is not recombination of genetic material and it is also not purely two independent swarms converging to the same point.

If the collision of two ant Swarms can lead to an increase in gentic diversity would the same be happening with the RNA quasi species?

If this is the case then the speed, rate or frequency of the gatekeeping is not solely bound by the number of transmission events, rather, the rate of gatekeeping/convergence could be enhanced depending on the nature of how the swarms collide and intercept each other. Essentially modern global travel is networking the swarms in ways that certainly wouldnt be seen prior to the industrial revolution.

Expand full comment

That's a really neat example of competing swarms, but the reason it doesn't translate to the pandemic is because it's about two competing swarms, where as the pandemic is one giant swarm "competing" with the collective human immune system.

COVID and influenza might definitely be doing something akin to that, it might be part of why all of the opportunistic fungi are popping up - the general immune exhaustion - but in the case of COVID it was one "identical" genome that was seeded in Wuhan as a LAV.

So if the COVID-LAV had been seeded simultaneously in Wuhan, NYC, and Bogota for whatever reason, assuming all three metropolitan areas would've had enough population density to spark the FCS jump into mammalian airborne spread right when the LAV was given, from there things would've really have been too much different.

Once the swarm left Wuhan via international airliner, that was it, and there was something of a shared heartbeat because just about every airport on earth is near some kind of metropolitan area with the commercial buildings needed to increase transmission.

So no, COVID can't fight with itself (but it might fight with the flu and other endogenous viruses in us, so the human body is the tree being fought over), and in related news: All attempts to short-circuit a viruses genome by introducing LAVs into a real-world infected population has ended very poorly.

See Wuhan in December 2019.

Expand full comment

This is intended to add only a minor additional feature as to the reason supers-spreader events occur. Because there are non structural proteins that knock our intra cellular defenses, the greater the average number of viruses (MOI) that infect a cell, the more likely that infection will proceed, in an exponential fashion and the worse that infection will be. supers-spreader events likely involve a high concentration of virus per volume of air.

Expand full comment

Many thanks to both for your time and replies. I may be over thinking a process in an overly abstract manner.

On my original question I was looking to nature to find an example of swarms colliding but didnt mean to imply that I thought with cov2 the multiple host swarms in an unventilated space would be competing.

On the macro level of existance for the Ant's their swarm collision manifests as a battle, sadly for the Ants many individuals perish. However on their species level the process, while leading to loss of life of individuals, seems to lead to net benefits.

Expand full comment

Section 2.2 re temperature..does it flourish or diminish in higher Temps? Or does the body temp just signify the virus burrowing deeper into the tissue? Should we consider cryogenics?

Expand full comment

Can't see cryogenics doing much at scale, and yes the deeper your body is the hotter it is so the virus has to get the ability to infect those deeper hotter tissues.

Expand full comment

I would love it if you would say more about what people can do to weather this storm or prepare for what's to come? Doom and gloom may be the reality but besides sinus irrigation and gargling, what can we practically, do?

Expand full comment

I've put all the practical advice I could think of here, not sure how to send a general message to people beyond this advice and to generally prepare for a collapse in government services:

https://harvard2thebighouse.substack.com/p/tips-for-surviving-humanitys-darkest

Expand full comment

I think I missed this one, thank you!

Expand full comment

Hi Dan - First i want to thank you for all the tireless work you do to offer clarity to the public about this historical period of life. I hope some of live long enough to see it through...You mention H1N1 and V-1000... I'm wondering if this flu variant made an appearance before Covid in late December 2019? I was deathly ill like never before and a trusted doctor/researcher said there was an appearance of this like- flu at that time. Not Covid yet. Thoughts? Cyndy (I follow you on Twitter too!)

Expand full comment

Hey welcome to the party!!

And I'm definitely not a doctor, but without doing an anal swab nobody knows whether or not they are positive with Covid, so it could've been a false negative or it could've been the virus weakening your immune system which seems to be happening all over the place, since fungus is cropping up in tropical places and RSV in more temperate places.

I'm not sure what exactly else you're asking, so please try again I'm sorry!!

Expand full comment

Thanks for the reply Dan. I was just wondering if you were aware of any H1N1 like virus at that time? Also, why is the anal swab the only reliable test? I'm confused about what it means when I hear the virus has never been isolated. So if that is true, how can you test for it? Thanks

Expand full comment

Nope that doesn't make sense, and you should read the article it explains all your questions!!

Expand full comment

Sec #3 tests..is 2pm really the optimal time? Also I guess the ch I n ese knew what they were doing with anal swabs lol

Expand full comment

Ques 1..are we in the gatekeeper phase w/the 3 mutations? Is that stage 3?

Is the super variant after that?

Should we all start clucking because we are on the chicken farm?

Expand full comment

As far as I can tell we're still gatekeeping because of the virus's temperature affinity, and since the gatekeeping mutations seem to still be occurring across the globe. Once epistatic mutations stop happening harmonically all across the globe, then I'd assume the mutations are headed towards a highly-pathogenic state instead.

So once the original V-1000 form is reached, then it'll start heading toward highly-pathogenic escape, which leads to the fifty-percent mortality.

And yes, anyone forced into a commercial building for eight hours a day is very much on the chicken farm. GOBBLE GOBBLE MOTHERFUCKERS!!

Expand full comment

Time frame on the v-1000? Or 50% ?

Expand full comment

Depends on transmission rate, not sure it matters since parts of America are already getting overwhelmed. We're losing, the speed will only accelerate from here.

Expand full comment

Thank you

Expand full comment

You are a great writer You should write a one act play combining the history of viruses like you do and our current virus. I think it would be very powerful. We could look for a way to get it produced.

Expand full comment

Thanks so much for the vote of confidence, but I have absolutely zero experience playwrighting so that would be an entire other barrel of monkeys. 

But that does remind me I'm going to start doing audio versions of some of these articles, which will have commentary and stuff so at least be a little more engaging than only reading.

But I have at least one other really long piece to get done before I worry about anything other than just more writing

Expand full comment

https://www.virology.ws/2009/05/11/the-quasispecies-concept/

This article above reiterates the importance of quasi species concepts.

When lookong at the global sequence databases eventually the consensus sequence changes.

We saw this with Omicron and it is happening faster each time for it to come to dominant the samples.

What would you say is happening within the swarm that causes the consensus sequences to realign everywhere all at once?

Is there some sort of messaging within the swarm that builds up over time? Perhaps it is sampling its host environments and seeding messenger mutants across the transmission events. Once these messenger mutants reach a critical threshold the consensus sequence realigns.

Expand full comment

I think it's just like water flowing down a hillside that finds the most optimal way to do it, if you haven't read the dreamer's down from the mountains series that has a long explanation of convergent evolution throughout.

This is the same phenomenon, the quasispecies swarm describes convergent evolution in viral infections which is what is really going on, and there's plenty of convergent evolution in DNA biology that is ignored as well

Expand full comment

I have read the dreamers and the sea snake thing converging.

I guess I see the point that it will happen regardless but the virus isn't a snake.

And for millennia viruses weren't subject to being flown around the world with super spreading humans creating societies that are essentially like chicken farms. The chicken farm connects all hosts in one big giant mutant cloud of constant transmission.

So if there's a chance that the swarm is able to carry information in what I am dubbing 'messenger mutants' and we are unwittingly connecting these together in ways that were only previously seen in extreme overcrowding then perhaps we are well and truly fucked. We may have pressed the virus evolution warp button.

Expand full comment

It's an interesting thought but there's no evidence whatsoever that happens, and it's completely unneeded because the convergence happens due to the fact it is the most efficient reproducible solution, the heat snakes find the same solution because it's optimal.

They don't need to communicate, the best answer in nature is the best answer regardless

The swarm is racing back to the best answer, you don't need whatever you're talking about to be totally fucked, we've been fucked the entire time

Expand full comment

No no the virus totally can do this. It finds a cool trick and bookmarks it for later.

There is 100% no evidence that this isn't happening either.

The heat snakes can suck it

Expand full comment

🤣😭

Expand full comment

Hi Harvard. Sorry for not posting on here, I saw your post on twitter and wanted to catch you there.

I understand (well attempting to understand) swarm theory but does that always lead to negative scenarios? What data are you seeing that makes you think it is happening now?

Why do you think Governments are suddenly changing their tune, why not continue the panic?

Expand full comment

Wow I thought you were just trolling, thanks for joining the party!!

So although swarm theory overall doesn't necessarily lead to negative outcomes, as the article above attempts to explain: When a LAV is deattenuating towards it's original state this process in inevitable so long as transmission is ongoing, and in the case of COVID it's heading towards a V-1000 form that's highly-pathogenic be definition since it had to be able to infect mice with human genes spliced in, which by definition is a two-species chimeric construct, being able to infect two species with virulent infections simultaneously is the hallmark of highly pathogenic viral swarms.

As far as the behavior of governments goes, I'm not going to be able to pretend the untangle the web of propaganda and bullshit they're spinning, or figure out which Big Pharma rep of corporate gangsters they're currently obeying.

And as far as raw data, although yes the really bad stats are low, right now the only people left are the healthiest in society who have lived this far through the pandemic, so of course at the start all those metrics will be low. Besides the fact it takes people several weeks to die in general.

Also there's the fact kids are starting to get hospitalized really quickly already, that's being reported all over the place, because COVID has moved up the antigenic ladder to a place where it can infect kids - it takes a stronger more complete virus to be able to make kids really sick, they fundamentally have more resilient and responsive immune systems.

And finally in case you're into that kind of thing, here's a bunch of genomic studies that outline how at a molecular level the swarm is getting stronger - reading these you have to keep in mind that there's never just one variant infecting a host, it's always a swarm, and Omicron is very clearly working alongside Delta and the rest of the existing swarms to make them more virulent, resisting vaccines and antibodies and yeah it's bad:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.28.474380v1

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-12-omicron-variant-largely-resistant-current.html

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.27.474250v1

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01374-X?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS009286742101374X%3Fshowall%3Dtrue#.Ycn266gnTts.twitter

Expand full comment

Thanks for the reply, I’ll have a read of your links now. No trolling involved, just trying to make sense of the clear lies that have been told from day 1.

Once the attenuated virus was out, what would you have done? Do you think the current vaccines are making the situation worse with negative infection efficacy whilst masking symptoms which would make them stay at home and avoid people?

What would you look out for to know the shit is really hitting the fan?

Expand full comment

Gotcha, sorry it can be hard to tell on Twitter with the limited space, and that place is generally a cesspool so I tend to assume the worst.

And yeah everyone really has been gaslit extremely hard for awhile now.

When it first got out the first thing to do was figure out what it was, which never happened, and so here we are. Now that we know what it is, the only way forward is totally redoing ventilation in public spaces akin to what they had to do with public sewage to fight off cholera.

Everything urban is going to have to change.

And yeah the vaccines are giving people a false sense of security at the very least, giving them a lobster-bib and telling them they're safe against an AK-47, and in the study with cats linked here with the 80% mortality - that was from a spike-protein only vaccine against an airborne coronavirus as well.

So as COVID gets stronger it'll likely be causing more ADE as it goes, and yeah things seem to be hitting the fan right now - the fact that 95 wasn't plowed out at all south of DC creating that traffic jam I think is very telling in terms of what's going to happen to government services. There's going to be periods where they fail, and hospitals are almost certainly being overrun as I type this.

I keep an eye on a few Reddit boards, /shortages, /collapse, /preppers, /nursing, and there's been a steady drumbeat of shit hitting the fan. Wow that's one mixed metaphor that really works!!

Also beyond the pandemic, the supply-chain crisis isn't going anywhere but will be amplified as COVID gets worse, and in the background it's pretty obvious that the weather ain't really right in a lot of places.

So yeah you prob wanna start buckling-up if you haven't already.

Expand full comment

Also do you have any links/ info about what you think is going on with the weather?

Expand full comment

I don't file those away, just the reality that the old climatic system seems to be cycling into something new, and it's not gonna be good. Don't know enough of the science to talk intelligently about all the different artic systems of water flow and all that to really project much, just yeah crop failures are already starting up all over the place.

Expand full comment

You want some really bad news?

http://www.holmestead.ca/chemtrails/shieldproject.html

http://www.holmestead.ca/chemtrails/r+z.html

Industrial civilization was a poisoned chalice - the resultant pollution has been chipping away at the ozone layer until now most of it has depleted letting in far more UV including UVC. Insects all over the world have been decimated - you may have noticed how few nighttime flying insects show up on uncovered windows at night with a bright light inside. Insects are vulnerable to higher UV.

Those chemtrail nuts were right but most of them don't know what they are really for. 5G controlled nanobots isn't what is about!

Methane is really letting go in the Arctic as well, you might check out Malcolm LIght.

Then stock up on your favorite booze.

Expand full comment

I wrote an article in which I compared last year’s hospitalisations with COVID by age and it has been higher all year in younger age groups compared with last year so maybe has been happening for a while.

https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/vaccine-efficacy-in-young-age-groups

This is probably complete nonsense but just a thought I had when thinking of viruses in the quantum realm. Is there enough information in the spike protein itself (from the vaccine) to allow it to join the swarm (some kind or entanglement with the full virus) and deattenuate, making things worse even if natural infection cases weren’t high?

Expand full comment

Yup that would make sense, because we're not doing anal swabs we have no idea what the full swarm looks like in a given host, nor who is actually infected or not since anal swabs are the only way to measure full viral clearance.

And there was something out of Indiana the other day about the rate of blue collar deaths increasing forty-percent, insurance companies are noticing and it's going to accelerate probably.

And yup absolutely, the model my dad and I have talked about is that the spike-protein vaccines act both as blasting-charges for extant infections to blow cells open and allow full virions to more easily penetrate more cells, and act as distractions to your natural immune system to make it operate less optimally. Then in this article you'll learn about Original Antigenic Sin and the long-term issues that'll likely emerge, and the HIV links - oh yeah and check the About page since a few different articles all talk about the swarm.

Expand full comment

Hi Dan, I've read most things on your substack a few time but have a lot of questions. I'll start with the easier definition ones that I'm not 100% sure on. What are bottlenecks and gatekeepers? Can you give an example of them and where you see them with Covid?

Expand full comment

Event 201 ..could it be short for event 2020-2021?

Expand full comment

No idea, not sure it matters

Expand full comment

holy cow.

Expand full comment

MOO-VE OUT THE WAY!!

Expand full comment