Please remember that The Atlantic is in the hands of the establishment. The facts are never presented truthfully here. Nevertheless, this article seems interesting.
Meet the New Luddites
PART -1
Activists are organizing to combat generative AI and other technologies—and reclaiming a misunderstood label in the process.
By Brian Merchant
https://archive.is/NKElR#selection-667.0-683.14
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Meet the New Luddites
PART -1
Activists are organizing to combat generative AI and other technologies—and reclaiming a misunderstood label in the process.
By Brian Merchant
https://archive.is/NKElR#selection-667.0-683.14
Join 👉 https://t.me/QueueForBrain
...
Meet the New Luddites
PART - 2
https://archive.is/NKElR#selection-667.0-683.14
Activists are organizing to combat generative AI and other technologies—and reclaiming a misunderstood label in the process.
In 2023, the biggest story in tech was the rise of OpenAI and Silicon Valley’s embrace of generative AI. This year, the technology may grow only further entrenched: OpenAI is attempting to make its flagship product, ChatGPT, a stickier part of daily life with the launch of a new app store, and the company has inked deals with institutions such as Axel Springer and Arizona State University to broaden its reach. But in contrast to many previous tech trends, this story includes a grassroots movement amassing to resist the change. Many of those who have joined proudly embrace the mantle of Luddite. Yes, the industry continues on its march, collecting huge investments to rapidly accelerate the development of this controversial technology. But the events of the past several months have demonstrated that, on some key fronts, the Luddites are winning.
The first Luddites were artisans and cloth workers in England who, at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, protested the way factory owners used machinery to undercut their status and wages. Contrary to popular belief, they did not dislike technology; most were skilled technicians.
At the time, some entrepreneurs had started to deploy automated machines that unskilled workers—many of them children—could use to churn out cheap, low-quality goods. And while the price of garments fell and the industrial economy boomed, hundreds of thousands of working people fell into poverty. When petitioning Parliament and appealing to the industrialists for minimum wages and basic protections failed, many organized under the banner of a Robin Hood–like figure, Ned Ludd, and took up hammers to smash the industrialists’ machines. They became the Luddites.
The government mobilized what was then the largest-ever domestic military occupation of England to crush the uprising—the Luddites had won the approval of the working class, and were celebrated in popular songs and poems—and then passed a law that made machine-breaking a capital offense. They painted Luddites as “deluded” and backward. Ever since, Luddite has been a derogatory word—shorthand for one who blindly hates or doesn’t understand technology.
That’s starting to change.
One way to consider the Luddites, new and old, is as a movement seeking to widen the scope of who gets to participate in technological development. To more radically democratize the creation of technologies, in a manner that Silicon Valley pays only lip service to. And if the Luddites continue apace, encouraging more of us to participate, to become Luddites too—to not merely be consumers or users of technology, but shapers—they might not even need the hammers.
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Meet the New Luddites
PART - 2
https://archive.is/NKElR#selection-667.0-683.14
Activists are organizing to combat generative AI and other technologies—and reclaiming a misunderstood label in the process.
In 2023, the biggest story in tech was the rise of OpenAI and Silicon Valley’s embrace of generative AI. This year, the technology may grow only further entrenched: OpenAI is attempting to make its flagship product, ChatGPT, a stickier part of daily life with the launch of a new app store, and the company has inked deals with institutions such as Axel Springer and Arizona State University to broaden its reach. But in contrast to many previous tech trends, this story includes a grassroots movement amassing to resist the change. Many of those who have joined proudly embrace the mantle of Luddite. Yes, the industry continues on its march, collecting huge investments to rapidly accelerate the development of this controversial technology. But the events of the past several months have demonstrated that, on some key fronts, the Luddites are winning.
The first Luddites were artisans and cloth workers in England who, at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, protested the way factory owners used machinery to undercut their status and wages. Contrary to popular belief, they did not dislike technology; most were skilled technicians.
At the time, some entrepreneurs had started to deploy automated machines that unskilled workers—many of them children—could use to churn out cheap, low-quality goods. And while the price of garments fell and the industrial economy boomed, hundreds of thousands of working people fell into poverty. When petitioning Parliament and appealing to the industrialists for minimum wages and basic protections failed, many organized under the banner of a Robin Hood–like figure, Ned Ludd, and took up hammers to smash the industrialists’ machines. They became the Luddites.
The government mobilized what was then the largest-ever domestic military occupation of England to crush the uprising—the Luddites had won the approval of the working class, and were celebrated in popular songs and poems—and then passed a law that made machine-breaking a capital offense. They painted Luddites as “deluded” and backward. Ever since, Luddite has been a derogatory word—shorthand for one who blindly hates or doesn’t understand technology.
That’s starting to change.
One way to consider the Luddites, new and old, is as a movement seeking to widen the scope of who gets to participate in technological development. To more radically democratize the creation of technologies, in a manner that Silicon Valley pays only lip service to. And if the Luddites continue apace, encouraging more of us to participate, to become Luddites too—to not merely be consumers or users of technology, but shapers—they might not even need the hammers.
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Tourist shocked by what he sees in Paris.
Media is too big
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Former Pharma insider tells Tucker Carlson that the true goal of pharma ads on TV is not to sell drugs but to BUY OFF the news media.
PART 1
The interview presents us with a false picture of reality. It acts as if the pharmaceutical industry wants to take power over our countries. I am convinced that this industry merely serves as a battering ram for the US military-financial complex.
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PART 1
The interview presents us with a false picture of reality. It acts as if the pharmaceutical industry wants to take power over our countries. I am convinced that this industry merely serves as a battering ram for the US military-financial complex.
Join 👉 https://t.me/QueueForBrain
Former Pharma insider tells Tucker Carlson that the true goal of pharma ads on TV is not to sell drugs but to BUY OFF the news media.
PART 2
Former Pharma insider tells Tucker Carlson that the true goal of pharma ads on TV is not to sell drugs but to BUY OFF the news media.
This is described as an "open secret" within the pharmaceutical industry.
TUCKER: You're saying that pharma buys TV spots not to convince people to ask for specific drugs from their physicians, but to subvert the news business?
CALLEY MEANS: This is an open secret working for pharma. This is an open secret. The kind of silly ads you see between the news breaks, the points of that is not — it's largely to impact the customer. But the pharma has already got that. They've already bought off the doctors. They're good on that.
No, this is an open secret. The news ad spending from pharma is a public relations lobbying tactic, essentially to buy off the news. They're not investigating pharma. The news has become basically a referee. That you are a terrible anti-science luddite for asking why the shots that we require our kids to get, that fundamentally by their own advertising change the immune system of that child for life...
To even ask that question, the news referees that and calls you anti-science. When the two largest vaccine makers in the country are literally criminal enterprises, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, in the past five years, have settled two of the largest criminal penalties in American corporate history for bribing doctors and creating misleading research for the two largest vaccine makers. So you literally have the media playing referee that you can't even ask a question.
TUCKER: If you have a vaccine injury and many people have, including some I know very well, even a profound vaccine injury, you're not allowed to complain about it.
CALLEY MEANS: No, you're "anti-science."
TUCKER: Even if it can be shown to us that this is a vaccine injury?
CALLEY MEANS: The media plays referee because they're funded by so, on all levels.
TUCKER: This is very dark, Calley Means.
Join 👉 https://t.me/QueueForBrain
PART 2
Former Pharma insider tells Tucker Carlson that the true goal of pharma ads on TV is not to sell drugs but to BUY OFF the news media.
This is described as an "open secret" within the pharmaceutical industry.
TUCKER: You're saying that pharma buys TV spots not to convince people to ask for specific drugs from their physicians, but to subvert the news business?
CALLEY MEANS: This is an open secret working for pharma. This is an open secret. The kind of silly ads you see between the news breaks, the points of that is not — it's largely to impact the customer. But the pharma has already got that. They've already bought off the doctors. They're good on that.
No, this is an open secret. The news ad spending from pharma is a public relations lobbying tactic, essentially to buy off the news. They're not investigating pharma. The news has become basically a referee. That you are a terrible anti-science luddite for asking why the shots that we require our kids to get, that fundamentally by their own advertising change the immune system of that child for life...
To even ask that question, the news referees that and calls you anti-science. When the two largest vaccine makers in the country are literally criminal enterprises, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, in the past five years, have settled two of the largest criminal penalties in American corporate history for bribing doctors and creating misleading research for the two largest vaccine makers. So you literally have the media playing referee that you can't even ask a question.
TUCKER: If you have a vaccine injury and many people have, including some I know very well, even a profound vaccine injury, you're not allowed to complain about it.
CALLEY MEANS: No, you're "anti-science."
TUCKER: Even if it can be shown to us that this is a vaccine injury?
CALLEY MEANS: The media plays referee because they're funded by so, on all levels.
TUCKER: This is very dark, Calley Means.
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...
The New York Times writes :
In his February 2022 speech that announced the invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin said that the purpose of the “special military operation,” as Russia has called the war, was to “protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/world/europe/ukraine-un-court-genocide-russia.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SU0.c2su.vJf2Or5RXY8f&smid=tel-nytimes
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The New York Times writes :
In his February 2022 speech that announced the invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin said that the purpose of the “special military operation,” as Russia has called the war, was to “protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/world/europe/ukraine-un-court-genocide-russia.html?unlocked_article_code=1.SU0.c2su.vJf2Or5RXY8f&smid=tel-nytimes
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NY Times
U.N. Court to Rule on Whether Ukraine Committed Genocide (Gift Article)
The highest court of the United Nations will render a verdict on a claim that has been used by Russia to justify its invasion.
Forwarded from The New York Times
U.S. and U.K. Launch Heavy Strikes on Houthi Sites in Yemen
The United States and Britain carried out large-scale military strikes on Saturday against multiple sites in Yemen controlled by Houthi militants, according to a statement from the two countries and six allies, as the Biden administration continued its reprisal campaign in the Middle East targeting Iran-backed militias.
The attacks against 36 Houthi targets at 13 sites in northern Yemen came barely 24 hours after the United States carried out a series of military strikes against Iranian forces and the militias they support at seven sites in Syria and Iraq. Read more
@nytimes
The United States and Britain carried out large-scale military strikes on Saturday against multiple sites in Yemen controlled by Houthi militants, according to a statement from the two countries and six allies, as the Biden administration continued its reprisal campaign in the Middle East targeting Iran-backed militias.
The attacks against 36 Houthi targets at 13 sites in northern Yemen came barely 24 hours after the United States carried out a series of military strikes against Iranian forces and the militias they support at seven sites in Syria and Iraq. Read more
@nytimes
Forwarded from Dr Mike Yeadon solo channel (Mike Yeadon)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZgEZqMju2M
If you thought the greatest challenge to our liberty anywhere was from faked pandemics, economy- and society-wrecking “countermeasures” and intentionally injurious, sometimes lethal, false vaccines, I have worrisome news for you.
This utter nonsense about climate change has such heavyweight momentum behind it, with absolutely every stakeholder who has access to mass audiences already roped in, that I regard the billionaires desire to use it as a battering ram in the form of a “planetary health emergency” is every bit as bad if not worse.
In a fake pandemic, you could declare that you’re not prepared to play along and prefer isolation with other, unconcerned people.
In an “anthropogenic climate emergency”, despite nothing happening at all, there’s no such scenario possible, because everything you do involves you adding to the “already unacceptable burdens upon our global commons”.
Get out of that one, if you can.
Dr Jacob Nordangard takes us through the 75+ years of the “elites” painstaking planning that has brought us here.
It is all fakery. We’re not “damaging the earth’s climate” one bit. The earth is not overpopulated. Despite fake modelling from the Club of Rome, there’s not a single unmanageable problem and in any case, population was already set to fall hard later this century in any case, now being given a firm push by “covid”. Some say we’re running out of “fossil fuels”, but oddly enough, it gets not a single mention except to point out its dominant claimed contribution to “climate emergency”.
In my opinion, there is no doubt that depopulation is the overarching objective of all of this, together with permanent, real-time, totalitarian control of earths peons, which is you, me and everyone not in The Big Club.
As I’m often drawn to retort, “There is a conspiracy. There’s nothing theoretical about it”.
Best wishes
Mike
Ps: “It’s for your safety” is the tyrants excuse for time immemorial.
If you thought the greatest challenge to our liberty anywhere was from faked pandemics, economy- and society-wrecking “countermeasures” and intentionally injurious, sometimes lethal, false vaccines, I have worrisome news for you.
This utter nonsense about climate change has such heavyweight momentum behind it, with absolutely every stakeholder who has access to mass audiences already roped in, that I regard the billionaires desire to use it as a battering ram in the form of a “planetary health emergency” is every bit as bad if not worse.
In a fake pandemic, you could declare that you’re not prepared to play along and prefer isolation with other, unconcerned people.
In an “anthropogenic climate emergency”, despite nothing happening at all, there’s no such scenario possible, because everything you do involves you adding to the “already unacceptable burdens upon our global commons”.
Get out of that one, if you can.
Dr Jacob Nordangard takes us through the 75+ years of the “elites” painstaking planning that has brought us here.
It is all fakery. We’re not “damaging the earth’s climate” one bit. The earth is not overpopulated. Despite fake modelling from the Club of Rome, there’s not a single unmanageable problem and in any case, population was already set to fall hard later this century in any case, now being given a firm push by “covid”. Some say we’re running out of “fossil fuels”, but oddly enough, it gets not a single mention except to point out its dominant claimed contribution to “climate emergency”.
In my opinion, there is no doubt that depopulation is the overarching objective of all of this, together with permanent, real-time, totalitarian control of earths peons, which is you, me and everyone not in The Big Club.
As I’m often drawn to retort, “There is a conspiracy. There’s nothing theoretical about it”.
Best wishes
Mike
Ps: “It’s for your safety” is the tyrants excuse for time immemorial.
From the series "The Interesting Comments":
https://t.me/DrMikeYeadonsolochannelChat/35133
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https://t.me/DrMikeYeadonsolochannelChat/35133
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Telegram
Adrian H in Dr Mike Yeadon solo channel Chat
.This is just a continuation of the treason of the UK Parliament against the people. A previous law passed a while back gave the State aparatos impunity to commit any crime against the people that these criminals saw fit.
1984 in full, is now upon us.
1984 in full, is now upon us.
Positive qualities of the Rat: Devotion, loyalty, tenderness, insight, intelligence, generosity, ambition, sociability, speculative skills, diplomacy, humor, originality, passion, impulsiveness, cleverness, creativity, ambition and tenacity.
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Dr.Michael Nehl
Forwarded from The Vigilant Fox 🦊
Media is too big
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“It [burying COVID vax deaths] is not just the intent to defraud ... it’s also felony murder,” says John Beaudoin.
• 12-year-old Amaya received four vaccines at once, including her third COVID shot. She died 26 days later from a stroke.
• Eden (17), Brianna (30), and Dianne (62) also died from a stroke. No one is investigating the vaccine link.
Beaudoin argues:
“It’s not willful ignorance; it’s not anything benign like that. This is intentional withholding of information from the public that would save the lives of the public.”
Full Interview: https://t.co/jHCTwkLNpM
Related Stories:
Whoopsie: The CDC Drafted a Vaccine-Related Myocarditis Alert But Never Sent It
Dr. Pierre Kory Drops Sudden Death Bombshell
Emails Prove Biden White House Hid COVID Vaccine Harms from the Public
Ed Dowd Drops Bombshell Data: Hematological (Blood-Related) Claims Up 522% Above Trend in 2022
Follow @VigilantFox 🦊
• 12-year-old Amaya received four vaccines at once, including her third COVID shot. She died 26 days later from a stroke.
• Eden (17), Brianna (30), and Dianne (62) also died from a stroke. No one is investigating the vaccine link.
Beaudoin argues:
“It’s not willful ignorance; it’s not anything benign like that. This is intentional withholding of information from the public that would save the lives of the public.”
Full Interview: https://t.co/jHCTwkLNpM
Related Stories:
Whoopsie: The CDC Drafted a Vaccine-Related Myocarditis Alert But Never Sent It
Dr. Pierre Kory Drops Sudden Death Bombshell
Emails Prove Biden White House Hid COVID Vaccine Harms from the Public
Ed Dowd Drops Bombshell Data: Hematological (Blood-Related) Claims Up 522% Above Trend in 2022
Follow @VigilantFox 🦊
...
“Pandemic”, “Covid” and “SARS-CoV-2” were the illusions.
The official statistics in Germany in the picture show no correlation of those allegedly suffering from “Covid” who are undergoing medical treatment ( BROWN LINE ) with the PCR tests.
YELLOW LINE - Number of PCR tests
RED LINE - Number of positive PCR tests
Conclusion: The false positive results of the PCR tests correlate with the number of these tests and are the basis for the illusion of a “pandemic”. The number of sick people who receive medical treatment contradicts this illusion and the reliability of the tests : this number of sick people does not correlate at all with the positive tests!
https://sites.google.com/view/cidm-online/cidm-folien-komplett
Join 👉 https://t.me/QueueForBrain
“Pandemic”, “Covid” and “SARS-CoV-2” were the illusions.
The official statistics in Germany in the picture show no correlation of those allegedly suffering from “Covid” who are undergoing medical treatment ( BROWN LINE ) with the PCR tests.
YELLOW LINE - Number of PCR tests
RED LINE - Number of positive PCR tests
Conclusion: The false positive results of the PCR tests correlate with the number of these tests and are the basis for the illusion of a “pandemic”. The number of sick people who receive medical treatment contradicts this illusion and the reliability of the tests : this number of sick people does not correlate at all with the positive tests!
https://sites.google.com/view/cidm-online/cidm-folien-komplett
Join 👉 https://t.me/QueueForBrain
...
Here is the text version from Dr. Mike Yeadon's comment under the Substack article linked below. This is easier to translate, save and share than the screenshots. The development of a respiratory disease in several people at the same time takes on an alternative form that also sounds very credible to any layperson :
PART - 1
...........................................................
Source :
https://open.substack.com/pub/interestofjustice/p/dr-yeadon-explains-for-first-time
........................
Dr Mike Yeadon
IOJ, Sasha and anyone else who wishes to quote me, please do. I grant everyone to use, in full or excepted, anything I write or say, providing your intentions are to attempt to wake people up!
Exactly! I find that kind of thing incredibly frustrating. When I point out that there have been many clinical experiments, attempting to demonstrate contagion of acute respiratory illnesses, and all have failed, it is demanded of me that I provide alternative explanations for contagion within, for example, a family. Actually, I have no such responsibility! Pointing out that we’ve been deliberately misled for a very long time is sufficient in my to prompt anyone & everyone to think about the implications & what that means for understanding our own health. Without prejudice, below I chose to offer alternative explanations.
Here is the text version from Dr. Mike Yeadon's comment under the Substack article linked below. This is easier to translate, save and share than the screenshots. The development of a respiratory disease in several people at the same time takes on an alternative form that also sounds very credible to any layperson :
PART - 1
...........................................................
Source :
https://open.substack.com/pub/interestofjustice/p/dr-yeadon-explains-for-first-time
........................
Dr Mike Yeadon
IOJ, Sasha and anyone else who wishes to quote me, please do. I grant everyone to use, in full or excepted, anything I write or say, providing your intentions are to attempt to wake people up!
Exactly! I find that kind of thing incredibly frustrating. When I point out that there have been many clinical experiments, attempting to demonstrate contagion of acute respiratory illnesses, and all have failed, it is demanded of me that I provide alternative explanations for contagion within, for example, a family. Actually, I have no such responsibility! Pointing out that we’ve been deliberately misled for a very long time is sufficient in my to prompt anyone & everyone to think about the implications & what that means for understanding our own health. Without prejudice, below I chose to offer alternative explanations.
PART - 2
If we believe certain things, we’re apt to interpret events as if those things are true. So if one person in a household, workplace or social group “comes down with a cold” and then, if another person in that group also falls ill shortly afterwards, this is taken as PROOF of contagion.
It’s not, of course, proof of any such thing, it’s merely “consistent with contagion”. Given contagion doesn’t happen, alternative explanations apply. I suggest shared / common environmental triggers for illness, such as changing temperature / humidity or pollutants such as gases, dusts, stressors etc. Also, how often do we notice the obverse, that one member of a group falls acutely unwell with a respiratory malady, and nobody else “catches” it?
Personally, I think these acute respiratory illnesses are the result of disordered equilibrium, probably in airway surface liquid volume, ionic (dissolved salts) and proteinaceous composition, including its volume, mucocilliary escalator function, secretion of surfactant etc etc.
If we believe certain things, we’re apt to interpret events as if those things are true. So if one person in a household, workplace or social group “comes down with a cold” and then, if another person in that group also falls ill shortly afterwards, this is taken as PROOF of contagion.
It’s not, of course, proof of any such thing, it’s merely “consistent with contagion”. Given contagion doesn’t happen, alternative explanations apply. I suggest shared / common environmental triggers for illness, such as changing temperature / humidity or pollutants such as gases, dusts, stressors etc. Also, how often do we notice the obverse, that one member of a group falls acutely unwell with a respiratory malady, and nobody else “catches” it?
Personally, I think these acute respiratory illnesses are the result of disordered equilibrium, probably in airway surface liquid volume, ionic (dissolved salts) and proteinaceous composition, including its volume, mucocilliary escalator function, secretion of surfactant etc etc.
PART - 3
Consider how unwell certain people with cystic fibrosis can be. CF results from mutations in the gene encoding the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Regulator (CFTR) protein product. CFTR controls the concentration of certain ions, such as chloride Cl- ions, in the layer of fluid that sits atop the air-facing airway lining cells, collectively called the respiratory epithelium. Mutations can occur anywhere in the gene & there is remarkable diversity in the specific mutations that a child with CF has. Some mutations result in severe disease, affecting not only the airways, but also the gastrointestinal tract. Other mutations produce much more subtle changes to phenotype.
What this establishes, to my mind anyway, is that quite modest changes in the dynamic equilibrium of airway surface liquid and protecting the airway from malfunction, are plausibly capable of yielding symptoms of the illnesses we call colds and “flu”. Such changes might plausibly occur in many but by no means all people in response to event’s & environments which we routinely encounter.
As seasons & weather oscillate between high and low atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature, dusts, pollen, pollution with such as nitrogen oxides at sea level, a person who is unable to briskly alter their composition of airway surface liquid might plausibly develop rapid-onset symptoms of respiratory disorder.
Depending upon where in the airway “tree” the acute failure of homeostasis occurs, so a person might display mostly upper airway symptoms which we call a cold. In other anatomical locations, such failures of homeopathy in central or lower airways could result in symptoms which are far more severe & we call that “flu”.
In this model of “endogenous” illness, timeline to recovery could vary tremendously from an all but overnight event to something that persists for weeks, leaving person somewhat breathless, even at rest. In the case of a hypothetical episode of flu, the functions of your epithelial cells could become further deranged and cause quite worrisome symptoms. These cells are very large in number (note it’s said that the surface area of your gas-exchanging lungs are large enough to more or less cover a tennis court. It doesn’t take much by way of cytokine / chemokine / inflammatory mediators response of those epithelial cells in order to produce systemic symptoms, such as muscle & joint pain, tremendous fatigue, reduced efficiency gas-exchange etc. on top of this, your healthy epithelial cells normally secrete anti-microbial compounds such as trefoil peptides, which make it difficult for microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi to infect you. When damaged, however, I think it very likely that overgrowth of usually benign bacterial infections could occur and be the aetiological explanation for pneumonias, requiring antibiotics to prevent a spiralling down to death, especially in elderly, already chronically unwell individuals. Even without invoking bacterial infection, the release from airway epithelium of pro-inflammatory chemicals will result in recruitment to the lungs & into the luminal compartment of the lungs of very large numbers of several kinds of inflammatory cells, such as neutrophils, eosinophils and macrophages (the latter themselves are normally found as the dominant surveillance cell type in airway washings, obtained using an unpleasant technique called endoscopic pulmonary lavage). These cells, in large enough numbers, are the cause of production of purulent secretions, coughed up as phlegm.
I’m not pretending that this is all correct & explains every facet of the acute respiratory illnesses called colds and influenza, but it’s a better model than the contagious respiratory virus narrative.
Consider how unwell certain people with cystic fibrosis can be. CF results from mutations in the gene encoding the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Regulator (CFTR) protein product. CFTR controls the concentration of certain ions, such as chloride Cl- ions, in the layer of fluid that sits atop the air-facing airway lining cells, collectively called the respiratory epithelium. Mutations can occur anywhere in the gene & there is remarkable diversity in the specific mutations that a child with CF has. Some mutations result in severe disease, affecting not only the airways, but also the gastrointestinal tract. Other mutations produce much more subtle changes to phenotype.
What this establishes, to my mind anyway, is that quite modest changes in the dynamic equilibrium of airway surface liquid and protecting the airway from malfunction, are plausibly capable of yielding symptoms of the illnesses we call colds and “flu”. Such changes might plausibly occur in many but by no means all people in response to event’s & environments which we routinely encounter.
As seasons & weather oscillate between high and low atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature, dusts, pollen, pollution with such as nitrogen oxides at sea level, a person who is unable to briskly alter their composition of airway surface liquid might plausibly develop rapid-onset symptoms of respiratory disorder.
Depending upon where in the airway “tree” the acute failure of homeostasis occurs, so a person might display mostly upper airway symptoms which we call a cold. In other anatomical locations, such failures of homeopathy in central or lower airways could result in symptoms which are far more severe & we call that “flu”.
In this model of “endogenous” illness, timeline to recovery could vary tremendously from an all but overnight event to something that persists for weeks, leaving person somewhat breathless, even at rest. In the case of a hypothetical episode of flu, the functions of your epithelial cells could become further deranged and cause quite worrisome symptoms. These cells are very large in number (note it’s said that the surface area of your gas-exchanging lungs are large enough to more or less cover a tennis court. It doesn’t take much by way of cytokine / chemokine / inflammatory mediators response of those epithelial cells in order to produce systemic symptoms, such as muscle & joint pain, tremendous fatigue, reduced efficiency gas-exchange etc. on top of this, your healthy epithelial cells normally secrete anti-microbial compounds such as trefoil peptides, which make it difficult for microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi to infect you. When damaged, however, I think it very likely that overgrowth of usually benign bacterial infections could occur and be the aetiological explanation for pneumonias, requiring antibiotics to prevent a spiralling down to death, especially in elderly, already chronically unwell individuals. Even without invoking bacterial infection, the release from airway epithelium of pro-inflammatory chemicals will result in recruitment to the lungs & into the luminal compartment of the lungs of very large numbers of several kinds of inflammatory cells, such as neutrophils, eosinophils and macrophages (the latter themselves are normally found as the dominant surveillance cell type in airway washings, obtained using an unpleasant technique called endoscopic pulmonary lavage). These cells, in large enough numbers, are the cause of production of purulent secretions, coughed up as phlegm.
I’m not pretending that this is all correct & explains every facet of the acute respiratory illnesses called colds and influenza, but it’s a better model than the contagious respiratory virus narrative.