The Strange Case of the Selective ‘Superflu’

Ignorant people or profiteers on respiratory viruses have written wagonloads of nonsense.

We have sought to expose as many as possible. For example, some of these ‘experts’ write that this or that virus ‘behaves’ like this or that. Does a chair in your home ‘behave’ in a certain way? Of course not. Neither do viruses, as they are not living beings lacking the capacity to reproduce autonomously (Year 2 medical school lesson).

But there is another, more insidious characteristic which is bubbling to the surface and is looking increasingly fake: Anglophilia.

The UK and Canada (apologies to the native and Francophone populations) seem to be subject to the ‘superflu’ carnage. A brief phone call to colleagues in the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain has confirmed that the ‘superflu’ has not been observed with any such commotion.

Oh, sure, you get the usual ILI winter spike, but no ‘carnage’. In Italy, the main topic was the war in Ukraine yesterday. Switzerland, which has joined the list of ‘superflu’ paupers, is more worried about the cuckoo clocks being on time.

The WHO’s take on the global situation reports “an increased proportion of seasonal influenza A(H3N2) viruses being detected”.

The WHO is a bastion of calm: “This rise coincides with the onset of winter in the northern hemisphere and an increase in acute respiratory infections caused by influenza and other respiratory viruses typically observed at this time of year”. It reports a rapid increase in A(H3N2) J.2.4.1, also known as the K subclade. The assortment of numbers is meaningless; what matters is the impact on disease severity. The WHO states the “current epidemiological data do not indicate an increase in disease severity”. So, what’s the problem?

We must ask once again: what is going on in the Sceptred Isle? The Government’s own data do not support any of the terror stories emanating from the UK or Canada. We have no answer; we can only put forward hypotheses which should stimulate comments from our readers. Here are 10 in no particular order.

1. Dysfunctional NHS that drains taxpayer funds: A smokescreen is required to hide this from those who are being fleeced.
2. The need to empty stockpiles to replenish them and to pass more government subsidies to the private sector under the guise of joint partnerships.
3. Misinformation as a component of hybrid warfare is used to destabilise a country.
4. Rule of pharma, as shown by the front page of Canadian surveillance. The front only mentions respiratory agents for which vaccines are licensed. Other agents’ data are there, but you have to dig and click.

5. Incompetence, Teflon shoulder and the need to justify positions and paycheques.
6. Corruption and theft.
7. Opportunism: a shift towards research funding for major killers (cancer, cardiovascular disease, etc.) means less or no funding for infectious disease research. We need to jump up and down whenever possible, as we are running out of funds.
8. Powerseeking, with a return to means of controlling the great unwashed through fear.
9. A lack of ideas and strategy: the only one we can think of is to vaccinate, vaccinate and vaccinate.
10. A mixture thereof.

This is an ugly list, but we cannot find any rational explanation for what we are currently witnessing.

Any ideas?

Dr Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust the Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.