Halt Vaccine Passports!

When you can find a single paper that fulfills Koch’s or Rivers postulates, let me know.

https://www.natureinstitute.org/article/craig-holdrege-and-jon-mcalice/some-comments-on-the-contagion-myth

Cowan and Fallon Morell are centrally interested in convincing their readers that bacteria and viruses do not cause disease; hence the title: The Contagion Myth.
Before they deal with Koch’s research on tuberculosis, they refer to the famous “Koch’s postulates.” These are drawn from Koch’s research and have historically provided a conceptual framework for assessing whether a specific bacterial species can be considered the cause of the disease. Koch’s postulates have been expressed in a variety of ways. Koch himself did not speak of postulates and presented his views on criteria for evidence of causation differently in different publications and at different times in his career (Carter 1985; Evans 1976 and 1993; Gillies 2016; Gradmann 2014). Cowan and Fallon Morell, however, choose to present one particular formulation: 
Koch’s postulates are as follows:

1. The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease but not found in healthy organisms.
2. The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in a pure culture.
3. The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
4. The microorganisms must be re-isolated from the now diseased experimental host which received the inoculation of the microorganisms and identified as identical to the original specific causative agent.

If all four conditions are met, you have proven the infectious cause for a specific set of symptoms. This is the only way to prove causation. (p. 3)
For their overall argument, it is important for Cowan and Fallon Morell to categorically state that the fulfillment of these four postulates is the only way to prove causation. Holding on to this claim as if it were a self-evident truth, they can go on to “show” that Koch and others have never proved that a disease is caused by bacteria or other microorganisms. This can be for a number of reasons, but especially postulate #1, in the way they formulate it, is rarely (or ever?) fulfilled. This is because bacteria that are implicated in a given disease can be found in some or even many healthy individuals. This was known to Koch, and it has been widely known since his time. We all harbor bacteria that, in other people, or at a different time or in different circumstances in us, can be implicated in a disease. One example is Helicobacter pylori, which can persist in the stomach of a person who is healthy, but can also be connected with gastric ulcers (for a number of examples, see: Monack et al. 2004; Fisher et al. 2017). 
So Cowan and Fallon Morell have a neat solution to a complex issue: Because Koch’s postulates are never completely fulfilled, scientists have not proven that bacteria cause disease. The problem with this neat solution is that they set a fixed standard against which everything, for all times, needs to be assessed. They rail against scientists who state that Koch’s postulates are outdated (pp. 73ff.). As I said above, Koch himself never spoke of postulates and “his” postulates have been formulated in a variety of ways by different scientists. As Cowan and Fallon Morell themselves point out (p. 3), Koch knew that the criteria for causation he had articulated in his tuberculosis experiments could not all be fulfilled, for example, in cholera; experimental animals did not become ill when injected with cholera bacteria that had been cultured from ill humans. Nonetheless, Koch gave a variety of reasons why he thought bacteria are causal agents in cholera.
Cowan and Fallon Morell pick out one formulation of Koch’s postulates as their universal measuring stick. They even compare the postulates to Newton’s laws of gravity (p. 75). They don’t allow for an evolution of scientific thought in relation to the variety of phenomena scientists encounter. This is a convenient and pretty iron-clad way to make sure that no one can claim to have proven causation for a purported bacteria-related disease. Unfortunately, it also means not dealing with the complexities of biological realities, research, and the nature of understanding.
When Cowan and Fallon Morell address diseases that are purported to be related to viruses, they implement the same strategy. Koch’s postulates have to be modified for viruses because viruses only reproduce within living cells of another organism. They cannot be grown on nutrient media, but need to be grown in cell cultures. They then have to be separated from tissues (which is an involved process) before scientists speak of “viral isolates” that can then be used in inoculation experiments.
As they did with Koch’s postulates, Cowan and Fallon Morell take one set of criteria against which they judge all experiments relating to viral causation of disease. They enumerate “River’s postulates,” which are based on a 1937 article by bacteriologist and virologist Thomas Rivers (Rivers 1937). They present one formulation of Rivers’ postulates:

1. The virus can be isolated from diseased hosts.
2. The virus can be cultivated in host cells.
3. Proof of filterability — the virus can be filtered from a medium that also contains bacteria.
4. The filtered virus will produce a comparable disease when the cultivated virus is used to infect experimental animals.
5. The virus can be re-isolated from the infected experimental animal.
6. A specific immune response to the virus can be detected. (p. 4)

This list doesn’t come directly from Rivers, whose discussion of the task of establishing causality is remarkably nuanced. Writing about the necessity of moving beyond Koch’s postulates, both for some bacterial diseases and for viral diseases, Rivers remarks that “progress having left behind old rules requires new ones which some day without doubt will also be declared obsolete” (p. 4). He knew that his new criteria for establishing viruses as agents in infectious diseases were tentative and that changes “will in the future undoubtedly occur in the methods of establishing the specific relation of viruses to disease” (p. 11). A variety of methods have been developed and other criteria formulated in the 83 years since Rivers’ article (for example: Byrd and Segre 2016; Carter 1985; Evans 1976 and 1993; Fredericks & Relman 1996; Gillies 2016; Gradmann 2014). Science hasn’t stopped.
But for Cowan and Fallon Morell, Rivers’ postulates are the criteria to assess causation related to viruses. They refer to a number of studies related to SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19, and claim that none of them have fulfilled the postulates (pp. 50 ff.). This is for them proof that viruses don’t cause disease:
Again, this book’s central claim is that no disease attributed to bacteria or viruses has met all of Koch’s postulates or all of Rivers’ criteria. This is not because the postulates are incorrect or obsolete (in fact, they are entirely logical) but rather because bacteria and viruses don’t cause disease, at least not in any way that we currently understand. (p. 4)
Cowan and Fallon Morell continue in a similar vein when it comes to the question of the isolation of viruses. They present one “gold standard” technique from a thesis of a German virologist, Stefan Lanka (1989). The hundreds or probably thousands of virologists who claim to have isolated viruses are all wrong, according to Cowan and Fallon Morell, because they use other methods to isolate viruses than the one Lanka developed. Lanka’s technique is impressive, but it is not the only one. If you look in the literature, you find that there is no one “gold standard” for viral isolation (see, for example, Eisfeld et al. 2014; Hematian et al. 2016; Hsiung 1984; Leland & Ginnochio 2007). We are not virologists and cannot assess their respective strengths and weaknesses. But we see no reason to think that all these scientists are deluded or making fraudulent claims, which is what Cowan and Fallon Morell believe they have shown.
Cowan and Fallon Morell write that “the entire world of medicine, virology, and immunology” is mistaken in believing that “many of our common diseases are viral in origin” (p. 67). Is there reason to believe that people who say “a disease is caused by infectious agents” are oversimplifying a highly complex relationship between a virus, its host organism, and the environment? Absolutely. Is it justified to dismiss 150 years of research that focuses on one aspect of that relationship? We don’t think so.
We do not agree with the widespread, all-too uncritical use of the terms “cause” and “causation” that one finds in the scientific literature, or with the one-sided focus on infectious agents that often ignores the larger questions of health, resiliency, and dispositions for becoming ill. The problem is even worse in mainstream media and politics, where viruses become “the enemy.” We have presented a broader, ecological view of viruses elsewhere (Holdrege 2020). We are open to considering perspectives that challenge the monolithic mainstream narrative. But when this is done by grossly distorting scientific findings of others and crafting an argument that only appears to work, then more harm than good is done in the search for a balanced and nuanced understanding of infectious disease and the current pandemic.

“If you aren’t aware that the statistics for iatrogenic murder are far greater than any other cause of death” -evidence, please.

I already broke my other leg, in 2012.

Still waiting for you to tell me where I should have my surgery done – I never mentioned contagion in my posts? You say ridiculous things like hospitals are dangerous places, and I simply ask you where else you suggest I should go if I need surgery.