Tag: virology

Anecdotal evidence

The evidence is from my own personal experience. I hardly ever get ill and cannot remember the last time I visited a GP. I will, however, get the occasional mild cold and the circumstances are almost always the same.

My wife, ‘J’, who almost never gets ill, will visit London for a day trip and return, more often than not, feeling tired and unwell. The following day she will announce that she has a cold and I will likely start to feel unwell too. I will admit to having a cold the following day and take a day or so off work. This pattern has been fairly consistent for the last 40 years.

I used to think that the unusual viral flora in London was the initial cause and that maybe some apprehension on my part contributed to a lowering of the immune system. I no longer believe in viral transfer and am confident each time she returns, that I will not get sick as a consequence; and yet I still get sick.

This has happened one too many times now for me to think that it is a coincidence and so I am prepared to entertain the idea of some sort of contagion.

I will occasionally contract a cold by some other means and J will often then succumb the next day. I can’t remember an occasion when we both got a cold at the same time and it seems to me that the first person to get the cold suffers a little more, with the ‘recipient’ having a milder complaint.

The pattern is so distinctive and persistent that some explanation is demanded.

Hypothesis

• A cold is a disturbance of the bio-field, a regulatory disorder
• It can be transmitted by sustained proximity e.g. sleeping in the same bed
• Contact between areas of skin may be a factor in transmission
• There is no incubation period as such
• The transmissibility of the disease is related to its intensity

Key points

The lack of incubation period helps to limit the spread of the disease; people get sick within hours and stay at home instead of spending 10 days wandering round in an asymptomatic state infecting other people.

The idea that intensity of disease is related to transmissibility is new and not quite the same as that of ‘viral load’. A major disturbance of the bio-field leads to ‘stronger’ or ‘more destabilising’ emissions which are more likely to affect another person. People who have the stronger emissions, however, are also those who are more likely to stay at home, thereby further restricting the spread.

On the other hand, those who remain active are the ones with the milder disturbances which are now less contagious. This is somewhat counter to the viral hypothesis where even an asymptomatic ‘super-spreader’ can trigger a global pandemic.

The above points are likely major confounding factors in the epidemiology; ‘spread’ is very limited.

Transmission requires sustained periods of exposure to an antipathetic bio-field, thereby further reducing the chances of transmission. The Common Cold Unit did all they could to prevent transmission this way by insisting upon a separate bedroom for each patient.

Transmission via droplets either on surfaces or in the air may be possible if there is some bio-field activity left in the droplet, but close, sustained contact with an entire human body will have more of an effect.

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Biological synchronisation

The idea that biological information can be transferred from one person to another independently of the transfer of any material substance will be hard for some to accept. However, there are multiple papers on this, for example:

Human Heart Rhythms Synchronize While Co-sleeping – Yoon, Choi, Kim et al.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6421336/

The authors found that not only did heart rhythms synchronise, but sleep phases as well. The coupling between individuals was found to be not a phenomenon of mere resonance, but a interaction between the complex systems regulating such processes: “Synchronization is a phenomenon of adjustment of rhythms due to interaction between periodic or weakly chaotic systems (Pikovsky et al., 2003)”

This is the transfer of meaningful biological information.

Sleep synchrony was greatest when couples shared a bed: “A recent study demonstrated significantly more synchronization of sleep stages when couples slept together than when they slept in separate rooms “

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More anecdotal evidence

A woman has four children, all boys and the two youngest share a double bed. The children will invariably get sick one at a time about 24 hours apart.

When my (4) kids get the flu, they all catch it one after the other; I take care of them while ill, but rarely catch it myself although it might occasionally happen; my husband whom we share the house and the meals with, but has his own routines and rhythms (that is – acts per se in the family rhythms), never ever “catches” our kids’ flu.

1. The second kid that “catches the cold” after his brother shares a double bed with him.

2. Then – and not always! – and with much less intensity gets ill the other kid that doesn’t share room with the first two but does share everyday life experiences with his brothers.

3. The older one, who shares room but not bed, neither activities with his younger brothers rarely “catches” it. A few years ago, before entering the teenage years, he was also “part of the pack” and the contagion patterns were different, that is: much more similar to point 2.

Can you say anything about the timeline? Do kids catch it within days, hours or weeks?

Roughly 1 day (20-24 hours) apart.

Another anecdote

A young man works with disabled children and spends a large proportion of his time with one child in particular. There is a lot pf physical contact and as winter approaches the child will succumb to diseases typical of care homes such as colds, flu and vomiting sickness. His carer will invariably succumb soon afterwards, with the same specific symptoms.

The carer will take some time off to visit his family and the following day his mother will display symptoms but never his stepfather. Some family connection, emotional closeness or maybe bio-field similarity seems to be implicated.

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Similarity to shedding

These stories seem very similar to those narrated by victims of vaccine shedding: Vaccine shedding. Certain individuals seem to transmit and others receive, whilst proximity and relationships seem implicated. In some cases of shedding a woman will suffer symptoms immediately upon being close to her husband in the evenings, only to feel relief when he goes back to work the next day, only to repeat the next evening.

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Clinical trials

If catching a cold is so easy, there should be plenty of clinical trials demonstrating this. However, things are not quite that simple, as almost all studies will assume at the outset that contagion is likely and in addition, that the cause is viral transmission.

Almost any coincidence is interpreted as transmission, seasonal factors are ignored and attention is focused upon a restricted range of specific vectors (surface droplets, aerosol) to the exclusion of others. If surface transmission fails then airborne transmission is assumed and if sustained proximity is a factor then airborne transmission is assumed.

Nevertheless, we can still glean something from these studies once these biases are recognised and adjusted for. If sustained proximity is claimed as a factor but no virus was isolated, then we are nevertheless permitted to conclude that: sustained proximity was a factor.

Shared air, holiday colds and fresher’s flu

Shared air seems to be a factor in the transmission of colds and again viral transmission is usually assumed, but other explanations are available.

If a classroom of children are breathing the same air over and again then one possibility is simply that the air has become stale or depleted in some sense. The post: What causes pneumonia? suggests precisely this, that some vital energy has been removed from the air and it is this lack of energy that is responsible for deterioration of the respiratory tract.

Is this phenomenon partly responsible for ‘holiday’ colds, whereby people will succumb either before or after a break, but in either case, after spending a few hours breathing shared and recycled air on a plane in close proximity to a host of other passengers?

Is ‘fresher’s flu’ the same phenomenon?

Seasonal factors

Colds are heavily seasonal but this is never considered a factor in studies as it it always assumed that transmission is via a virus which can spread more or less independently of the time of year. This has never been demonstrated of course and never will be if the existence of a virus is always assumed at the outset, as this assumption automatically invalidates the proof.

An alternative cause for a common cold should at least be considered and since there is a strong seasonal pattern, this alternative should have something to do with the seasons. Associations with changes in the weather further suggest that such changes may actually be causal somehow, particularly if we are now doubting viral infection as a cause.

The post: Influenza and weather suggests a direct destabilising of the regulatory system by atmospheric EMF which produces outbreaks of disease which are geographically and temporally limited in their scope.

This possibility needs to be taken into account when performing clinical trials. The hypothesis here is that a cold is caught and produces symptoms within a few hours and that there is no such thing as asymptomatic transmission. Studies which appear to show contagion over several days or weeks are likely just picking up random cases caused by the seasonal effects mentioned above.

This is not contagion, but a primal cause and patients can be isolated all you like, but nothing will stop them getting a cold short of a solid lead Faraday cage.

Longer periods of study will necessarily yield more cases during flu season, but an off-season study will likely fail in this respect and for these reasons. From the point of view of viral transmission trials then, we expect to find studies that seem inconsistent and hard to interpret and we do in fact find them.

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AI research

Time to look at clinical trials for support or contradiction.

I asked an AI engine: “Please list all studies where sustained close proximity was a salient factor in the transmission of the common cold”

AI summary

• Sustained proximity (hours of being in the same room, regular contacts in household or school) tends to increase risk significantly. The card‑playing experiments and the household transmission studies are prime examples.
• However, some studies show that even when people cannot touch their face (so reducing contact route), being in close proximity (shared air) over time still leads to infection. E.g. Aerosol transmission of rhinovirus colds with 12 h shared time. PubMed
• The school study shows that even tens of minutes of close proximity per day can matter, but in that setting, the cumulative exposure in shared classroom air (many hours) seems more important than just minutes of close contact. PMC+1
• The review (Transmission route of rhinovirus) also notes that while contact/fomite routes are proven, in many indoor settings airborne/small aerosol transmission with proximity and shared space seems to dominate. ScienceDirect

References from AI search

Aerosol transmission of rhinovirus colds (playing cards together for 12 hours) PubMed+1

Donors (infected) and recipients (susceptible) played cards together for ~12 h in enclosed setting. Some recipients were restrained (couldn’t touch their faces) to isolate aerosol vs contact routes. PubMed

High rates of transmission even among those who could not touch faces. Results suggested that over sustained close-proximity (12 h in same room, shared activity), aerosol transmission was strong; fomite-only route (via surfaces heavily used for 12 h) showed no transmissions in that particular experiment. PubMed

Rhinovirus transmission within families with children PubMed

Families were monitored for ~3 weeks after an index child had rhinovirus; includes frequent, close interactions among siblings and parents in a home environment. PubMed

Transmission was common: siblings had ≈1 case per person when index positive; parents lower but substantial rates. Suggests that in household settings (which imply sustained close proximity), spread is frequent. PubMed

Hand‑to‑hand transmission of rhinovirus colds PubMed

Short hand‑contact exposures (10 seconds) between infected & susceptible; this is more immediate than “sustained”, but still implicates repeated close interactions. Not so much long‑duration proximity but frequent enough contact. PubMed

Found that hand contact is very efficient in causing infection compared to large/ small particle aerosols in their setup. PubMed

Systematic review: Transmission route of rhinovirus (2022) PubMed+1

Surveyed many studies, some in natural settings (homes, schools, workplaces) where people share space over sustained periods. The review seeks evidence of how close proximity plays a role. ScienceDirect+1

Conclusion: moderate evidence that airborne transmission (large or small aerosols) is a major route; less strong evidence that hand/fomite + self‑inoculation dominates in real indoor settings. But many studies in shared spaces (which by necessity include sustained proximity) show transmission. ScienceDirect

“Relative contribution of close‑proximity contacts, shared classroom exposure and indoor air quality to respiratory virus transmission in schools” (Swiss secondary school) PubMed+1

Over 6 weeks, students (14‑15 y) wore sensors that recorded daily time spent within ~1.5 m of others (“close proximity”); also shared classroom hours and monitored air quality. Students spent ~21 min/day in close proximity; many more hours in shared classroom. PubMed+1

Time in close proximity modestly associated with higher transmission risk (rate ratio of ~1.16 per doubling of close‑proximity time). But shared classroom time (sustained exposure in closed space) and poor air quality were stronger predictors. This suggests that sustained shared‑space exposure matters more than fleeting close proximity. PubMed+1

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Summary

Evidence which is anecdotal but nevertheless forms a distinctive epidemiology leads to novel hypotheses for the mechanisms of initial acquisition and transmission of a common cold. These hypotheses lead to predictions for the general epidemiology that seem consistent with existing studies.

These mechanisms predict that:

• Contagion is related to prolonged contact or close proximity
• Infectiousness increases with severity of symptoms
• Each transmission reduces infectiousness thereby limiting spread
• Seasonal effects appear spontaneously in a population
• There is little to no incubation period
• Droplet transmission is irrelevant
• The sustained breathing of depleted air causes sickness
• The sharing of air in classrooms leads to depletion
• The phenomenon of group sickness gives the impression of contagion

Note that one of the main reasons that people believe in contagion is that many people are observed getting sick at the same time. However, here we find that major outbreaks are in fact caused by non-infective agents (atmospheric effects) and that cases of actual transmission have a lesser impact on the overall epidemiology. Unsurprising, then, if there has been some confusion over this issue.