This is a response to Clare Craig’s essay in the Daily Sceptic titled: The Unsolved Mystery of How Viruses Spread – and Why Germ Theory Isn’t the Whole Answer which asks why the epidemiology of influenza does not support the idea of viral transmission.
Clare is highly unusual amongst virus believers in taking an interest in the epidemiology of influenza and in attempting to explain it. However, this is the correct way to proceed. Evidence must be explained; this is an immutable rule of scientific endeavour. It is no good having a nice sounding theory of small particles, genetic sequences and immunity theory, if your predictions simply do not accord with reality.
If the predictions of virology are insufficient to explain the epidemiology, then there must be some additional or alternative cause of disease which leads to the patterns we see. Clare gives some plausible mechanisms for these.
Compare with the views of the emerging ‘no-virus’ movement who have worked out that no virus has ever been isolated but take no interest whatsoever in the epidemiology of disease. Andrew Kaufman has stated in his interview with Steve Kirsch that “Epidemiology is not science” and Tom Cowan is claiming that there is “no such thing as disease” but that all symptoms are really just signs of the body healing itself and are therefore beneficial.
This is no way to make progress. The epidemiology of influenza is key to its cause, as we have nothing else to work with.
The Unsolved Mystery of How Viruses Spread – and Why Germ Theory Isn’t the Whole Answer – Clare Craig [link]
The essay makes some key claims and presents arguments for each:
- Viruses exist and are the cause of disease (this post disagrees)
- The epidemiology of influenza does not support the orthodox view of viral spread (correct)
- Some other seasonal influence is at work (this post agrees and identifies such influence as some sort of disturbance of the Earth’s magnetic field)
Evidence for viral contagion
Viral genetic material turns up in clusters of sick people. The sequences match. They change over time with new mutations in consistent ways without reverting. Even though testing is not perfect, people with positive tests are far more likely to be sick than not. – Clare Craig
This is not evidence for viral contagion.
The existence of viruses has not been proven and so it is premature to talk of ‘viral genetic material’. Moreover, ‘genetic material’ is said to be present in tissue cultures and not within living organisms; this is the whole aim of so-called viral isolation.
No virus has adequately isolated and so we can never say with any certainty whether or not a particular genetic sequence originated in a virus or somewhere else.
As a consequence of this we can never say with any certainty that changes in measured sequences are the result of ‘mutation’. All that we know is that the results of certain laboratory procedures and software routines produce somewhat reproducible results which vary over time and seem to correlate with disease. Everything else is mere interpretation.
One alternative interpretation is that the body is responding to seasonal variations of the Earth’s electromagnetic field in a stereotypical way. Sick people are in a ‘state’ where metabolism, regulatory processes and gene expression are significantly altered and something of this new state persists in the tissue culture. It is this regulatory persistence which then gives rise to the patterns we see with PCR tests and sequencing results.
Such patterns in the results are then misinterpreted as mutations. The lack of reversion may be caused by the ever changing magnetic field or by the body’s tendency to adapt to almost any stimulus and to produce a noticeably different response when it next encounters a similar stimulus.
The lack of reversion is thereby explained along with the apparent rapid global spread of novel variations in sequences which is now not caused by transmission at all but by the propagation of electromagnetic effects across the globe.
Another interpretation is that a tissue culture forms a biological system of itself which is capable of receiving and interpreting seasonal cues from the environment. In this case, the resulting sequencing results are less related to the state of the original host and more related to the laboratory procedures.
Disease correlates with season and so PCR tests correspond with both season and disease.
PCR and sequencing equipment work by measuring small changes in electrical voltage and so we cannot rule out that seasonal phenomena in the Earth’s magnetic field may have some effect upon the outcome of these procedures by directly influencing the mechanics of the equipment itself. Magnetic variations can be very strong; see the Carrington Event.
Viruses have been well described. Even if isolation methods are not flawless, electron microscopy and crystallography have shown fine-grained details including the shape of structures like the surface of the spike protein.
Viruses have not been adequately isolated and we therefore cannot say that any image seen through an electron microscope is a virus, no matter how well described the morphology. There is little point in looking at a ‘spike protein’ if you can’t demonstrate its function and can’t demonstrate transmission.
Spike proteins may be present in sick individuals but the protein arises from the regulatory status and not the other way around. The spike is a result of sickness, not the cause of it and does not itself constitute a virus.
Morphology, no matter how distinctive, is not proof of function, not proof of virus and not proof of causation of disease.
It has been shown that most so-called viral morphologies can be produced in a clean culture without the presence of a virus. ttps://substack.com/@controlstudies/note/c-192514695
The possibility exists that the images seen in an electron microscope are not even present in the sample but instead are merely artefacts of the microscopy process: https://library-of-atlantis.com/2025/09/07/harold-hillmans-artefacts/
At high doses, transmission works. Human challenge trials demonstrate that viral exposure can cause illness when the dose is high enough.
The referenced link shows no human to human transmission, no transmission via breath and no transmission via droplet. It did not isolate a virus properly and therefore did not demonstrate viral exposure via any means at all.
All these arguments presuppose that the existence a virus has already been established and that such a virus has been successfully isolated. Neither of these has happened and so no transmission study is worth anything in this respect.
Genetic tracing of viruses during outbreaks shows that distinct lineages spread from person to person in predictable clusters, confirming person-to-person transmission.
No lineage has been seen to ‘spread from person to person’. Influenza occurs in geographic clusters and such a clustering is merely assumed to have been produced by transmission.
Genetic sequences are assumed to come from a virus but this is not yet proven. The tracing of a sequence is, of itself, not proof of the existence of a sub-microscopic particle containing genetic material and is not proof of any causal link between such sequences and any actual disease.
If individuals are responding in predictable ways to disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field for example, then this will give the impression of transmission. Whole communities will get sunburn at the beach but this does not confirm person to person transmission.
This evidence explains the mechanism of viral infection. But it does not explain the timing of the waves of infection that are characteristic of many viruses like influenza and COVID-19.
No, the evidence does not explain the mechanism of viral infection.
- Genetic tracing looked at group clustering, not individual mechanisms
- Genetic coincidences in clusters says nothing about a mechanism
- Purported morphology of viruses has no relevance to mechanism
- High dose nasal inoculation is not a natural transmission mechanism
Big Fail.
Where the traditional model fails
Normal-dose challenge trials often fail. The evidence here is strong: under experimental conditions, exposure frequently does not result in illness. A recent study confirmed this again.
“Often fail”? – “Invariably fail” is closer to the truth.
Influenza comes in seasonal waves at specific locations and that is that. If you arrange a trial outside of flu season you will get no new patients. If you attempt a trial during flu season then either nobody gets ill (wrong location) or a reliable 10% of patients will get ill.
Proving actual transmission will be another Big Fail though as control groups will get as ill as the rest of them. See studies in Antarctica, submarines, cruise liners and space stations.
Hospital-acquired infections peak at the same time as cases in the community. If spread were primarily driven by close contact, we would expect a lag, as community infections peak then admissions then within hospital infections. But the expected lag does not occur. In fact, hospital-acquired infections peak before the admissions to the hospital.
Influenza is caused by exposure to antipathetic EMF whether it be from natural or man-made sources. These are invariably localised, can entrain to a single individual and can penetrate the roof of a building. There is no escape from them: Influenza is a regulatory disorder caused by changes in the weather
The conditions in hospitals with a high degree of ambient EMF, 5G monitoring equipment, patients in close proximity and lack of fresh oxygen (What causes pneumonia?) further weakens patients and expedites outbreaks in hospitals.
I asked a local covid nurse if she was worried about catching the disease. She replied: “No, nurses have very good hand hygiene” She was not worried about transmission by breath.
Doctors, nurses, dentists, care workers, shop till assistants have theoretically far greater exposure than the rest of us and should therefore be sick almost all of the time. This never happens.
Waves occur with seasonal regularity. Epidemic peaks in the UK often occur with peak deaths at predictable times of year before falling away for a time
This is the first big clue to the cause of influenza. If millions of people get sick at certain times of the year, then the time of the year has something to do with getting sick: Influenza is a regulatory disorder caused by changes in the weather
The illusion of viral timing
It is often claimed that respiratory virus waves are driven by viral evolution or viral interference. In this view, waves happen when new variants arise that can evade existing immunity, which increases transmissibility and allows the virus to reinfect previously exposed populations.
The reality is .. much harder to explain by mutation or interference alone.
The timing is too consistent
In the UK and many other temperate countries, waves have arrived roughly every 13 weeks, across multiple years and virus types. This rhythm has held steady through variant shifts, travel restrictions and mass behavioural changes. Random events like mutation and competition do not produce this kind of precision.
Influenza arrives with a seasonal rhythm, strongest at winter solstice, but with smaller waves in summer, spring and autumn. The timing is slightly different for different regions and there are latitudinal patterns. Influenza and weather
Submariners are not protected from infections
Quite. Seasonal changes have an effect even when under water or in space. This suggests the presence of electromagnetic scalar waves (Tesla waves) which can penetrate all forms of matter.
Faster mutation does not speed things up
In the 24 months before December 2021, pre-Omicron SARS-CoV-2 accumulated around 20 mutations per year. From January 2022 to mid-2025, Omicron accumulated approximately 25 per year. Despite this 25% increase in mutation speed, the waves kept arriving on the same seasonal schedule.
This is because mutation is an illusion. Sequences are downstream of disease states and disease states vary strictly with the seasons. See above.
Hospitals are full of virus aerosols year-round but infections still peak and fall
An AI engine could not find an experiment that claims this and so this is likely to be an incorrect inference drawn from an unproven theory.
Viruses have not been shown to exist in hospitals or anywhere else.
Spread skips regions
Each variant of SARS-CoV-2 spread country to country following the same seasonal susceptibility patterns as influenza. Large regions were skipped entirely in early waves e.g. Eastern Europe in spring 2020 and UK, Portugal, Ireland (i.e., the west of Western Europe) in spring 2021.
This is further support for the idea that the cause of influenza comes directly from the atmosphere. We need a cause which can, at the same time coordinate a disease over a large area but which may also have definite boundaries. An outbreak may cover an area the size of a cruise liner or a whole continent.
Weather systems are a good candidate for this, being organised along the lines of cyclonic vortex structures. Such structures may cover a continent or may be focused down to something a few yards across.
The susceptibility model
The model that makes sense of these observations is one where infectious agents are necessary but not sufficient. The timing of illness must be due to something else.
Infectious agents have not been shown to exist and so cannot be considered necessary.
There must be a third factor that:
- Peaks once each season (always in autumn and winter and not always in spring and summer)
- Affects only a fraction of the population each season
- Can spare certain regions entirely in any given wave
- Is capable of synchronising illness peaks across hospitals and communities
Yes, at last we have some agreement.
The necessary factor is some sort of disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field. Supporting evidence is that influenza outbreaks are sometimes synchronous along lines of latitude and exhibit a general movement from tropics to poles in winter. Exposure to man made EM disturbances such as 5G causes influenza in trials and the initial outbreaks of covid correlated strongly with the rollout of 5G in Wuhan, Italy and New York.
The evidence excludes certain possibilities:
Other environmental factors like electromagnetic or space weather effects have cyclical differences but these track annually, not quarterly.
No. Big mistake here to exclude space weather effects. We have:
- Seasonal effects of the magnetic field including those in summer, spring and fall
- Correlations between season and disease
- Correlations between season and bio-markers
- Correlations between solar activity and pandemics Sunspots and ‘pandemics’
- Correlations between magnetic field strength and covid cases
- Correlations between covid bio-markers and phases of the moon
- Correlations between specific weather events and influenza Influenza and weather
- Weather itself as highly seasonal
- Papers claiming sferics as a cause of regulatory disturbance
- 7-day harmonics on covid cases
- Distinctly different behaviour of magnetic flux ropes in winter and summer Magnetic flux ropes
- Eclipses and comets implicated in disease outbreaks Neutrinos, eclipses and plagues
- More..
The chart shows a clear correlation between the Kp index of the Earth’s magnetic field and covid cases. Covid cases in red with Earth’s magnetic field in blue (trendline in black)
This chart from Nasirpour et al. shows a clear association between pandemics and solar activity.
The immune clock
Our immune systems change with the seasons. Gene expression studies show clear and consistent shifts in immune pathways across the year – with January and July as polar opposites and transitional patterns in April and October. These changes are not subtle – nearly a quarter of genes are affected. The pattern is the opposite in Europe to Australia. In some cases, the winter and summer immune profiles are as different as those seen in entirely distinct disease states.
If there are no viruses then there is no immune system as there is nothing to be immune to!
So what are they measuring?
What is being measured is some parameters of the regulatory system and these are seen to vary across the seasons. The system gets its cues from external sources such as light, temperature and electromagnetic events. Biomarkers have been seen to vary according to the phase of the moon but nobody believes that this is because of gravity or even moonlight and so the only remaining candidate is an electromagnetic signal. See: Magnetic flux ropes The Shnoll Effect Birth date, lifespan and disease Frank Brown Giorgio Piccardi
Now, as gene expression is involved, then anything involving gene expression is involved and that means almost anything.
The ‘immune system’ is regulatory in nature and phenomena such as the coordination of symptoms and sustained high temperature in influenza are surely managed by such a system as opposed to a small viral particle.
Disease is therefore a problem of regulation and regulation is receptive to cosmic rhythms: Frank Brown
Susceptibility and dose
Whatever the factors are that lead to susceptibility they must overcome the mucus barrier of the respiratory tract which is normally impenetrable to viruses.
No, because no virus is involved. Disease is the direct result of atmospheric disturbances on the regulatory system. No material substance is involved.
There are three main explanations for the seasonal cycling seen in human immune gene expression:
- The viral mutation model. Immune cycling is downstream of viral exposure. Seasonal waves of infection, with everyone exposed to airborne viruses, drive immune activation, while gene expression shifts reflect that exposure.
Alternatively, gene expression, ‘mutation’ and ‘immune evolution’ are all downstream effects of atmospheric disturbances which are slightly different each year. Affected individuals adapt to specific disturbances and produce different sequencing results thereby creating the illusion of mutation. The illusion of immunity is similarly created as, having adapted to a stimulus, they will likely not succumb to a similar stimulus the following year.
Immunity studies can, to some extent, be ‘repurposed’.
- Innate biological rhythm. Each person’s immune system runs on a built‑in annual clock, independent of environment or exposure.
- Environmental entrainment. Immune function responds gradually to sustained environmental inputs – atmospheric, electro-magnetic or otherwise – which vary by season and location.
This one is tempting I will admit but I think that it is again incorrect; there are no built-in clocks in the human body and even the idea of ‘entrainment’ is highly doubtful.
Influenza outbreaks conform to a characteristic pattern with narrow peaks which occur close to the winter solstice but which vary in their timing from year. Such variation is not characteristic of entrainment where we would expect very precise timings with any variation taking several annual cycles to develop.
There is disease following tornadoes and earthquakes, both associated with electromagnetic output. There are associations between sferics and headaches and there are almost instantaneous outbreaks associated with humidity changes or the rollout of cell-phone technologies. These rapid responses to randomly timed exposure show that population entrainment is certainly not necessary for the production of disease.
What seems to happen is that our bodies know approximately what sort of rhythm is required and will pick one from the available sources as a timekeeper. Speeding up the metabolism of laboratory animals will not speed up the timekeeping and so the time keeping does not arise from any metabolic process.
Our bodies seem to be able to select and receive any desired rhythm from the environment but unable to produce it internally. See: Frank Brown
The fact that people in Australia have the opposite cycle of immune gene expression indicates that the rhythm is not innate.
Told you so!
Experiments on students in deep underground caves show that they can sustain circadian rhythms with no exposure to light and this has led scientists to think that the rhythm is innate. However, the experiences of astronauts and submarine crew suggest that some influence is still reaching them somehow.
The electromagnetic scalar waves as described by Tesla are said to be capable of penetrating water or rock and so these must be considered as a prime candidate for transmission of environmental or maybe ‘cosmic’ information.
Note that sferics are said to be measurable thousands of kilometres away from the source with little to no attenuation. This is a defining characteristic of a Tesla wave.
This lack of attenuation can only be achieved if the energy of the pulse is strictly contained in a finite footprint. This will clearly result in exposure to only a certain percentage of the population and will confine such exposure to limited geographical regions at any one time.
However, it could well be something we simply have not measured e.g. a seasonal atmospheric phenomenon that is invisible to our current tools.
Yes. This is the way to go.
Contemporary physics is unable to describe biological systems despite the best efforts of both physicists and biologists. Moreover, there are so many anomalies and unexplained phenomena in the world that we must conclude that physics cannot even explain physics!
This incompleteness is important. We must expect to find things that we cannot explain in conventional terms and must not panic too much. The temptation to ignore anomalies must be resisted as must the temptation to use terms such as ‘pseudo-science’ for almost anything outside of orthodoxy. Arguments such as “This cannot be true because there is no physical explanation” are now invalid.
This raises the salience of experimental observations and emphasises the importance of epidemiology. The study of pure correlation is science without a mechanism, it enables us to uncover some aspect of truth even when we have little to no idea of how things work.
References
The Unsolved Mystery of How Viruses Spread – and Why Germ Theory Isn’t the Whole Answer – Clare Craig
https://dailysceptic.org/2026/01/27/the-unsolved-mystery-of-how-viruses-spread-and-why-germ-theory-isnt-the-whole-answer
The spread of the Sars CoV-2 virus depends on the Earth’s magnetic field – M.I. Orlyuk, A.O. Romenets, 2022
Scalar Waves – Konstantin Meyl
https://www.meyl.eu/go/index92d2.html
Revealing the relationship between solar activity and COVID-19 and forecasting of possible future viruses using multi-step autoregression (MSAR) – Nasirpour et al.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33725302/
Natural very-low-frequency sferics and headache – Vaitl et al.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11594631/