89 Comments
May 6, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

This makes a whole lot of sense to my smooth brain.

Would be interested your thoughts on Geert's interview on most recent Highwire.

If I had an income there are many excellent substackers I would happily pay for, you being at the very top.

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May 6, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

Very interesting theory! I recently attended an event with several of the "freedom doctors" during which one of them mentioned something about smokers possibly being less vulnerable to infection (although still vulnerable and still at risk for serious complications) because the nicotinic receptors are already occupied.... Pardon, I'm not a biologist and likely fumbling the terminology, but I believe it was that these receptors were, like ACE2, amenable to the virus receptor binding domain, so having niccotine in the bloodstream could be protective - at least for those sites.

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Hum - ever heard of NAChR? Neurotoxins & NAChR? Zinc ionophores & Ivermectin?

All known since 1998 in Europe? & Since before 1492 here, where what you now call tobacco is a fundamental item of indigenous medecine.

Cheers.

1998 Krause - Ivermectin: A Positive Allosteric Effector of the a7 Neuronal Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor

https://sci-hub.st/10.1124/mol.53.2.283

Structure of the native muscle-type nicotinic receptor and inhibition by snake venom toxins. Neuron 106, 952–962.

Unwin, N. (2000). The Croonian Lecture

https://archive.is/KGrVf

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627320302191

2004 Bioactivity of a peptide derived from acetylcholinesterase: involvement of an ivermectin-sensitive site on the alpha 7 nicotinic receptor.

https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/j.nbd.2004.02.009

A poor paper, but still:

Among therapeutic options6–8, the use of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin (IVM), has been proposed, given its possible anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity9. Ivermectin is a positive allosteric modulator of the α-7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor 10, which has been suggested to represent a target for the control of Covid-19 infection11, with a potential immunomodulatory activity12.

Anti-COVID-19 efficacy of ivermectin in the golden hamster

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.21.392639v1

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There’s a chart somewhere from the beginning of 2020-ish showing flu-like deaths from 2017-18 being an ordinary out-of-the-ordinary spike in the chart of flu deaths. Ordinary because such a spike happens every so many flu seasons, and it was roughly on schedule. Out-of-the-ordinary because it was taller than the others. I can’t seem to find it now. And back then I didn’t know all this type of stuff needed to be screen grabbed.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking along the lines of this article for some time due to that flu chart, and because of my own experiences through the last five years. I got “pneumonia” in 2017, and so did many around me in the small town I lived in at the time (pacific northwest). The people I know that got that sickness or similar to it at that time didn’t get COVID at all over the last 2 years. Despite several exposures. Our own conversations have included speculation of cross-immunity with respect to the underlying cause of that 2017 sickness. Consider also, that in the US, the Pacific Northwest has shown more resilience to COVID, when looking at the data. Even though the data are corrupt, it is roughly apples to apples in this way. I wonder where else that mystery pneumonia blew up and how the COVID numbers look there now?

Back in 2017, I was convinced that we had a “cousin” of MERS, because the experience closely matched what I read about it, and we were exposed to vectors for MERS, even though it was considered no big deal by then. My current hypothesis is that they’ve been trying to “burn the house down” since at least 2003-4 with SARS-CoV, 2008-9 with H1N1, 2013-4 MERS and avian flu, 2017-8 no-name, 2019+ SARS-CoV-[x]. But something always put the fire out (because they’re not actually in control like they like to think they are). The conspirators in this hypothesis didn’t realize that a perception that the house was burning down was more effective and easier to pull off. Thus, COVID-19 was born.

Extending the conspiracy theory further, one might conclude that the jabs were a fire they could guarantee because it’s going straight into the blood - OR - that it was a money grab, seizing the opportunity presented by everyone running out of the house panicked, but will nevertheless burn the house down as an unintended intended consequence. Like an arsonist that keeps failing, then decides to dupe the homeowners into letting him inside to “fix” a problem that doesn’t exist. He either intends to set the house ablaze from within, or maybe he changed his intention to merely stealing everything valuable but then clumsily bumps a candle into a curtain and burns the house down anyway, having unintentionally succeeded in his original endeavor. Or maybe a little of both. I’m not sure yet, because Moderna folks seem to act like the first type, while Pfizer folks seem to act like the second. Every once in a while, I get the distinct feeling that animal doctor Bourla isn’t happy with his role in this. His guilt and humanity occasionally leak.

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May 6, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

This theory would also explain why ~80% of the population seems to be immune. Case in point, the USS Roosevelt, where even in the tight quarters, only 20% of the crew contracted the virus. There have been many other instances showing that only about 20% of the population is actually susceptible, or capable of "catching COVID".

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May 6, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

Heard about the quasispecies swarm from Dan Sorotkin at Harvard2TheBigHouse substack a while back. His theory was that the virus was originally a Live Attenuated Virus Vaccine that was released at the Chinese Military Games or possibly earlier and is mutating back to a more virulent/original form prior to the attenuation procedure. This would fit in nicely with your musings here, Matthew.

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You used my favorite word, "lofty"!

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May 8, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

Nice sleuthing (that is the right work for investigative work?)!

To add on: where are the vaping equipment manufactured? I'd guess that PRC gets you your money back minus commission. Are they put together in a sterile workc environment? Anyone thinks that about chinese manufacturing, I've got a bridge to sell you in Tamanrasset.

What I'm saying is, could it be so simple that the soon-to-be-the-Covid we know virus was initially spread by contaminated shipments of vaping gear?

After all, people needing oral stimulation suck those things. What if workers putting them together had colds? I don't think you get sick days with pay in chinese factories, meaning you work until you can't (ain't capitalism grand?).

So a lot of the people sucking the fashionable pacifiers might of simply licked themselves a little prior infection, and that way developing as you say better prtection but higher susceptibility (kind like how a person who's had the clap multiple times is more susceptible to infection, should the condom break).

Again, great detective work.

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Great theory! And I love a great theory that comes with a side of cute furry animals.

Science is so cool, it's unfortunate that people don't know how creative it is, to come up with problem solving theories about our world that can be discussed and proven true or false or unknown. 💫

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May 6, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

At a US county level, smoking rates were more predictive of Covid deaths than vax rates. My intuition was that smoking was simply a marker of poorer general health.

https://inumero.substack.com/p/best-predictor-of-covid-deaths-in?r=tv61s&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=direct

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May 6, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

What would the curve look like for an inhalation product?

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I've always wondered if the vaping illness wasn't just part of some experiment, not with the actual virus, but perhaps spike protein, or graphene dioxide, or different combinations.

Perhaps an artificial self replicating "vaccine?"

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May 6, 2022Liked by Mathew Crawford

Here is a great two part on the quasi species https://harvard2thebighouse.substack.com/p/understanding-covid-19-and-seasonal. Or just search pandoras golden silkworm

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You add an interesting twist to the theory. I know early on in France they had noticed smokers seemed to face lower covid incidence rates, so were set to conduct a study, nicotine focused I believe. Not sure if the study was conducted. (Anti-smoking groups which became aware of the proposed study immediately went into action to fight that narrative.) But that covid, before we knew of the outbreak, could be selectively targeting weakened lungs of smokers, so seeming to provide smokers with lower infection rates because they'd already naturally gained immunity from previous infection is an interesting thought. One issue though, if I remember correctly, EVALI (e-cigarette or vaping associated lung injury) was affecting predominantly the young, which goes against our early experience with known covid. There were about 2600 EVALI US cases. I don't remember, so someone correct me, were there cases in other countries? And this was for vapers; tobacco or THC. Did we also see unusual respiratory issues in analog cigarette smokers during the pre-covid period when EVALI occurred?

Not that I don't think covid seems to have been with us well before it was first announced. There's the European sewage samples showing early 2019 contamination. And the Italy stored lung tissue for the cancer study from early Semptember-ish 2019.

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May 6, 2022·edited May 6, 2022

Smoking and vaping are different. Smoking puts hot air and nicotine down into the oral cavity and lungs and maybe nasal one and heat tends to kill the virus. Also nicotine has been found to interfere with the virus attaching to the cells because it attaches to the same receptors and was shown in one study to help heal long Covid. I doubt vaping interferes with a SARS-CoV-2 viral infections the same way smoking does. I do not recommend smoking, which has other downsides.

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