The (Rileyesque) Glasgow Virus Study

The (asymptomatic) flu vs rhinovirus with swine flu and (asymptomatic) coronavirus(!) sides

I have often cited the Glasgow virus study’s 9 year virus time series chart that clearly shows the virome is hugely complex and full of interactions and seasonality including for the not-so-novel cold-causing coronaviruses. The study was published last year but ended population sampling in 2013 so as far as we know there’s no C19 in there … but the C19 timeline keeps receding back into the mists now doesn’t it?

Just blow it up and look at it. It’s a time machine back to Bridget Riley paintings!

The chart I always throw up is this version I uglified with black markup of the coronavirus color to make it stand out. Squinting may or may not help with perception — also just like with Bridget ;) Here it is again.

One thing that’s obvious when you zoom in is that except for the swine flu in 2009, there’s a high coincidence of the coronaviruses with influenza A and B (the winter flu season). This makes for added speculation about the recent “where has the flu gone” questions with C19!

With the ongoing C19 PCR test nightmare the “vanishing flu” could still could be a testing artifact and not an actual Houdini disappearing act but read on…

Then you roll back up in the study and read my highlight below.

They are actually more focused on the battle between flu and cold causing rhinoviruses (the huge red) than with cold causing coronaviruses which have a much smaller area more consistent with estimates that they’re responsible for “only” 20% of colds (that “only” would be 200M of the 1B yearly cold infections in the US!).

But this raises the question of what happens when there is a “new kid in town” coronavirus that seems to jump into action on the tail of a mild traditional flu season in March/April?

Interlude: Now go back and look at the black and white sub-chart. The grey areas are co-infections which seem to maximize in winter flu season! I need to dig up my reference to the study that claimed that everyone was harboring an average of 5 simultaneous viruses — which starts to make more sense of the Alex Berenson story of a cold outbreak happening at an Antarctic station after 17 weeks of isolation! Crazy, right? Did I forget to mention that there could even be N decillions of virus particles in the world?

The highlighted commentary below from the ending discussion would seem to have some relevance? Not just asymptomatic C19 but also asymptomatic flu may be in play here in admixture!

After all, the infection numbers that are used to justify the flu’s relatively low IFR are already driven by a large proportion of asymptomatic cases! For instance the idea of flu IFR only being at 0.1% is derived from examples like 60K deaths from 60M infections.

Anyway, if you even just scan through the rest of the paper it will quickly dawn on you that we are at best Lilliputians in our understanding of the scope and complexity of the virome and even just its viral interactions never mind our witch-doctor-like treatment understanding. Or is that purposeful suppression of treatments — did I also forget to mention that Fauci takes 6000 units of vitamin D? — but I digress…

But I’m certain our newly annointed iatrocratic Faucistic Nomenklatura is fully cognizant of our limitations — and vast scope for debate as is easily recognized by any sane investigator — based on their demonstrated consistent pronouncements and good judgment to date.

Or not.

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” — Richard Feynman

(1965 Nobel Prize for Quantum Electrodynamics — but what did he know compared to Fauci after all? Really now…)