How convenient. People who "now Moderna, but used to be BionTech" - see from 5:00 trying to make their amyloidogenic products. Thanks to Dr. Fauchi. We are all idiots.
'Lots of things in life are risky; lots of commonplace infections would probably be associated with surprising long-term effects if science had enough money to look at them all. By suddenly focusing so intensely on this virus, before our understanding of “baseline viral risk” was anything near accurate, we collectively ensured that SARS-CoV-2 was scored against an absurd standard where viruses (and life) are expected not to carry any risk at all.'
Or, more succinctly, 'Compared to what?'
If only more people would consider this. I keep trying to point out to my friends who are obsessed with boosting and masking and social distancing and closing down the local library, this isn't really much different from the flu in terms of impact on the average person, and we never did all this stuff for that.
And then they say 'Look at all the people who died!' And I point out that it was mostly old and/or sick people who were going to die soon anyway, and of course then I am a heartless misanthrope.
But also previously demonstrated the same for LPS, a common component of bacterial cell walls and part of household dust,
2016 Acute induction of anomalous and amyloidogenic blood clotting by molecular amplification of highly substoichiometric levels of bacterial lipopolysaccharide
"I think current investigations into the virus and the Covid vaccines don’t really offer either the writer or the reader a high 'return on time-invested - compared to, you know, just waiting and seeing what happens in the coming months."
Spot on.
My father had a saying: "Time heals and time reveals."
He stated it in the context of relationships. But, its probably apropos to Covid and the vaccines. Time may reveal that these vaccines are the biggest medical blunder/disaster in history. Or, time may heal the injuries and compromised immune systems of the vaccinated. Regardless of what it will reveal and whether it will heal, continued analysis and speculation at this junction in time would not be very productive. We will have more evidence and data soon enough. In the meantime, as you expressed, we need to live our lives.
Looking forward to your next post, whenever there is something pertinent to write about.
Nice. 👏👏👏👏👏❤❤❤🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏Thanks for pushing the needle back a little bit from the "Priloid#panic" direction.
I've mentioned before that it's a bodies coping mechanism to toxic substances (likely even the byproducts of ROS creation). Which is why they can be created in many organs, not just brain. But the body has also evolved many mechanisms to clear them. The ones that don't, it's because the body is coping with more toxins than it can isolate, process and remove, causing overwhelm to said organs. Hence the shot effect.
I still find it strange that no one is asking what is missing, that causes the body to not deal with them?
Your on the right path though in mentioning NAD+ and ATP, but it's not the answer. Look further along....
NAD+, ATP, and ROS caught my attention because my main focus of reading is metabolic chemistry at the mitochondrial level. Long ago, in trying to better understand a chronic disease I enjoy hosting (not), I concluded that with most human complaints, it's all about the mitochondria, because they provide most of the energy upon which all other processes depend.
It's unfortunate that in the current era (around 50 years), the baseline of "normal" human metabolism is a state of evolutionarily abnormal mitochondrial dysfunction, which I've been focusing on through the lens of diet and, secondarily, environmental toxins. Viewing any pathologic process without taking evolution into account can lead to glaring oversights and mistakes.
💯👏👏 so focusing on mitochondria is an excellent start. I'm assuming your familiar with Dr Doug Wallace then? Especially in your instance, I'm judging by your comments, perhaps Lyme? That is another example of natures compensatory response. But that's another story.
But re the amyloid and prion compensatory response to the shots-
So what inhibits mitochondrial distress? We know WHY they are sending distress signals. But there are other things that stress our mitochondria and they adapt to a point. So what's missing in this equation, that is tipping the mitochondria overboard, causing immediate cellular breakdown at a rate faster than they can adapt to?
Well, I did have Lyme a few years ago, but that's not what got me interested. A mystery autoimmune disease got me started down this path.
I'm mostly interested in is how fats are chemically processed in the mitochondrial membrane. Yes, metabolism can adapt up to a point. Where things start to get wonky is when it's subjected to conditions that are evolutionarily unprecedented, for which we haven't developed compensatory mechanisms. Large amounts of polyunsaturated fats are one good example, large amounts of glucose are another.
My understanding about prions is that they cause misfolded proteins. I'm not sure this is mitochondria-specific, but happens elsewhere, including extracellularly. According to Jessica Rose, prions aren't just mad cow disease – they're actually much more common throughout the body than most people realize, and perform some useful functions I think.
Not very familiar with Wallace — my primary source is Hyperlipid.
Lyme is a very interesting condition. With many mimic presentations, strains and confounding side effects. As im sure you know. It also often hides and or triggers underlying issues, in a very chicken or egg situation, thats hard to tease out. Re metabolism chemistry, You might find it helpful to look at what the mitochondria change fats, carbs and proteins all into...
Yes, I've noticed prion fever raging over the internet recently after Walter Chesnut etc Substacks and interviews. Im glad she is helping people understand that they are common and it's one of the body's adaption and compensation paths. No one seems to be asking the why beyond this though, which is getting frustrating. Im not familiar with Hyperlipid, but am always curious about others perspectives, so I'll have a look😊
So, then, the answer is "this is complicated", right? I know a large number of people who had Covid and have not changed cognitively.
That said, another side of this is formation of fibrous clots in blood, which does seem to have plenty of confirmation in literature about Covid and embalmer reports and videos.
I consider the amyloid theory as something interesting that I need to follow with open mind.
The two extremes are, on the one side, amyloid formations are a normal host response to all microbes, and *only* a pre-primed pro-inflammatory condition (ie diabetes etc) leads to a problem handling spike-induced amyloids, or on the other, spike is sui generis super-amyloidogenic. So in the first extreme it could be the case that a healthy individual can shrug off all the clotting from the virus / vaccine spike and a primed individual is in big trouble. In the middle, and I think more likely to be the case, is something like "we normally encounter these antigens as children, and as adults are more protected by antibodies; but it's still pretty common to get sick from something for the first time as an adult and experience plaques as a part of aging"
Congrats Brian, may the lifting of draconian measures not lead to further hindrances down the line! One can only hope!
I would like to investigate all of this further, but I personally find it strange how so many people have begun to latch onto ideas that I otherwise don't think are substantiated from the literature. It just stokes more fear than really provide and proper analysis.
I'll try viewing the video sometime in the future, but anyways all the best to you Brian! Hopefully we'll see you pop around every now and then
It is I, and I have returned from the future, or is it the present? I'm working on my Parkinson's series and looking into parkinsonism, and the remarks here and in the video appear to overlap with alpha-synuclein serving as a antimicrobial peptide as well, which is extremely fascinating. It appears that a host of otherwise neurodegenerative proteins are involved with otherwise protective measures. Really interesting to consider all of this in such a context.
I'm behind on the series - but if you haven't seen it, there is a recent amyloid paper Amyloidogenic proteins in the SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 proteomes https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36234-4
The one released yesterday was a general overview on Parkinson's so nothing too specific to the current situation. The next one will be on viral parkinsonism and so I finally got to watching the video which made me look up even more. I wish I did more work beforehand because I find the neuroprotective aspect so fascinating. It's strange that many of these studies haven't looked at this mechanism as being intentionally protective, but accidentally neurodegenerative.
Another factor to consider is cerebral folate deficiency (CFD). CFD can result in dysfunction of the immune system in the brain, making infection damage more prevalent.
Right, I have previously cited Pretorius et al. (2016) “Acute induction” as an example of a “compared-to-what” point of context for her team’s findings on spike protein. It may be that amyloid blood clotting is also ubiquitous (promoted not just by spike but any novel glycrotein, especially during childhood); and/or that clotting is an evolutionary repurposing of antimicrobial peptides. In both the case of fibrinogen and Amyloid-beta there is a pro-inflammatory risk, but a strong chance that youth and healing normally takes care of the damage.
I was worried about you. Good to know you are ok. Hope you will be able to keep your impressive brain functioning with renewed freedom to socialize. The profound loneliness experienced by so many surely accelerated brain "decay" in ways that will be profoundly evident for years. I appreciate your contribution to the narrative and will look forward to your next post however infrequent they are now that I know you are ok.
Thanks for this,. I tipped a coffee. Clear thoughts. You should have hiatus more often. The novaxosphere is panicking right now. Soon they are going to wear masks around vaccinated because amyloids.
Things get very horseshoe-theory-y at times, with germaphobes injecting a lot of the energy into both the provax and the antivax movements, as demonstrated by the Virus Truthers. I’ll stick with “I don’t want to wear a mask because it looks stupid.”
the mask might not help much in any case, and if this shedding is real who knows where one can get it ... I' ll stick with the fate is written ... if is meant to be will happen, no way to escape it.
There's been several people arguing that vaccinated individuals are shedding spike protein. I personally don't believe there's substantial evidence of such a feat occurring, mostly since that would require shuttling of spike to the lungs and other tissues which can then aerosolize- I haven't seen anyone provide a mechanism for this occurring., but many people have commented that they don't feel well around people who have just been vaccinated.
Personally, I believe many COVID skeptic people may be starting to engage in extreme psychosomatic behavior where they don't have substantial evidence to substantiate their claims but may be stoking their own fears and anxiety.
Not to say all COVID skeptics are like this, but there's certainly happening within the Substack COVID skeptic sphere that just seems rather strange.
Anyways, I believe KLni's comment is that the logical flow of thought would then argue that vaccinated people are essentially spreading prion disease via the spike, which once again would be a strange claim to make without substantial proof.
Anecdotal but in the first wave of vaccinations here in Canada, my family met with friends who had just been vaccinated a day or two earlier. All 3 of us (wife, toddler, and myself) felt sick in the evening and the following day, it was a weird feeling of lethargy and nausea.
i see and you might have a point there as far as psychosomatic behavior.
the claim that vaxxed might be spreading prion disease via spike, assumes that virus+spike have been lab developed intentionally.
but if that was the case, and if it is possible to spread via shedding then none is safe even the people who created (assuming it is true) ... isnt it? or as fauci said once the first thing i ask is where is the antidote when someone proposes some sort of enhanced disease sort of thing ... i remember his saying it exactly, because it was sort of strange thing to say ... but it makes sense.
i suppose it is all speculations at this point and we have to wait and see ... i presume if the worse happens bossche's theories will be used to justify creation of some super virus ... none will blame it on spike, amyloids or shedding ... just a thought ... who knows, but as malone once said these things have been gamed 20 years ago ... lots of planning goes into these things ... nothing happens by chance.
Well that's one of my qualms with this sudden doomsday prophecies coming from quite a few of the COVID skeptic Substacks. I don't find there any evidence of the aerosolized amyloidosis because we don't even know if the spike is aerosolized. But I see people using these types of arguments to infer some type of inevitable horror coming our way.
I think bossche's arguments are interesting but I still have issues of my own with respect to them. I don't think Bossche has articulated what role that Omicron plays in vaccination. Omicron came out of nowhere and is more indicative of antigenic shift more than antigenic drift, but instead he- and many others, have used Omicron as an implication that vaccines are causing these sudden mutations. Again, Omicron shouldn't be worked into people's original working model but should be examined as an outlier and understand why it came to be.
Oh that's really interesting, I may want to look a bit into that bubonic plague story and see if it's accurate.
Irrespective of whether he plays a role, I want to stick to the facts and one of my criticisms is that I don't find it appropriate to include Omicron in the discussion of viral mutations and vaccine since it just came out of nowhere. Again, the model needs to account for such discrepancies rather than just include it, and Bossche just uses Omicron as a validation that the vaccines are causing these mutations. It's the main crux of his "greater infection, lower virulence" argument, and it's intended to bolster how high virulence should be coming next.
How convenient. People who "now Moderna, but used to be BionTech" - see from 5:00 trying to make their amyloidogenic products. Thanks to Dr. Fauchi. We are all idiots.
That's exactly how these DOD-front biowarfare agencies get away with it. Releasing false-flag youtubes to Proal's dozens of subscribers.
'Lots of things in life are risky; lots of commonplace infections would probably be associated with surprising long-term effects if science had enough money to look at them all. By suddenly focusing so intensely on this virus, before our understanding of “baseline viral risk” was anything near accurate, we collectively ensured that SARS-CoV-2 was scored against an absurd standard where viruses (and life) are expected not to carry any risk at all.'
Or, more succinctly, 'Compared to what?'
If only more people would consider this. I keep trying to point out to my friends who are obsessed with boosting and masking and social distancing and closing down the local library, this isn't really much different from the flu in terms of impact on the average person, and we never did all this stuff for that.
And then they say 'Look at all the people who died!' And I point out that it was mostly old and/or sick people who were going to die soon anyway, and of course then I am a heartless misanthrope.
“You know who else thought libraries should stay open during flu season? That’s right, Hitler.”
Brian, sorry if I asked this question before, but what about fibrin blood clots?
So, that’s semi-addressed in my reply to Hartmut below. Pretorius and co have confirmed spike as amyloidogenic in blood,
Prevalence of readily detected amyloid
blood clots in ‘unclotted’ Type 2 Diabetes
Mellitus and COVID-19 plasma: a
preliminary report
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articl
es/PMC7670290/
But also previously demonstrated the same for LPS, a common component of bacterial cell walls and part of household dust,
2016 Acute induction of anomalous and amyloidogenic blood clotting by molecular amplification of highly substoichiometric levels of bacterial lipopolysaccharide
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC5046953/
So it could be really really bad or could be a pretty mundane biological feature, the context once again is unknown due to human ignorance
Thanks for this post, the interview with Dr. Amy Proal & Dr. Rudy Tanzi was fascinating. Hope you enjoy a bit of respite as well.
Thank you - I am glad you appreciated the video!
"I think current investigations into the virus and the Covid vaccines don’t really offer either the writer or the reader a high 'return on time-invested - compared to, you know, just waiting and seeing what happens in the coming months."
Spot on.
My father had a saying: "Time heals and time reveals."
He stated it in the context of relationships. But, its probably apropos to Covid and the vaccines. Time may reveal that these vaccines are the biggest medical blunder/disaster in history. Or, time may heal the injuries and compromised immune systems of the vaccinated. Regardless of what it will reveal and whether it will heal, continued analysis and speculation at this junction in time would not be very productive. We will have more evidence and data soon enough. In the meantime, as you expressed, we need to live our lives.
Looking forward to your next post, whenever there is something pertinent to write about.
Nice. 👏👏👏👏👏❤❤❤🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏Thanks for pushing the needle back a little bit from the "Priloid#panic" direction.
I've mentioned before that it's a bodies coping mechanism to toxic substances (likely even the byproducts of ROS creation). Which is why they can be created in many organs, not just brain. But the body has also evolved many mechanisms to clear them. The ones that don't, it's because the body is coping with more toxins than it can isolate, process and remove, causing overwhelm to said organs. Hence the shot effect.
I still find it strange that no one is asking what is missing, that causes the body to not deal with them?
Your on the right path though in mentioning NAD+ and ATP, but it's not the answer. Look further along....
NAD+, ATP, and ROS caught my attention because my main focus of reading is metabolic chemistry at the mitochondrial level. Long ago, in trying to better understand a chronic disease I enjoy hosting (not), I concluded that with most human complaints, it's all about the mitochondria, because they provide most of the energy upon which all other processes depend.
It's unfortunate that in the current era (around 50 years), the baseline of "normal" human metabolism is a state of evolutionarily abnormal mitochondrial dysfunction, which I've been focusing on through the lens of diet and, secondarily, environmental toxins. Viewing any pathologic process without taking evolution into account can lead to glaring oversights and mistakes.
💯👏👏 so focusing on mitochondria is an excellent start. I'm assuming your familiar with Dr Doug Wallace then? Especially in your instance, I'm judging by your comments, perhaps Lyme? That is another example of natures compensatory response. But that's another story.
But re the amyloid and prion compensatory response to the shots-
So what inhibits mitochondrial distress? We know WHY they are sending distress signals. But there are other things that stress our mitochondria and they adapt to a point. So what's missing in this equation, that is tipping the mitochondria overboard, causing immediate cellular breakdown at a rate faster than they can adapt to?
Well, I did have Lyme a few years ago, but that's not what got me interested. A mystery autoimmune disease got me started down this path.
I'm mostly interested in is how fats are chemically processed in the mitochondrial membrane. Yes, metabolism can adapt up to a point. Where things start to get wonky is when it's subjected to conditions that are evolutionarily unprecedented, for which we haven't developed compensatory mechanisms. Large amounts of polyunsaturated fats are one good example, large amounts of glucose are another.
My understanding about prions is that they cause misfolded proteins. I'm not sure this is mitochondria-specific, but happens elsewhere, including extracellularly. According to Jessica Rose, prions aren't just mad cow disease – they're actually much more common throughout the body than most people realize, and perform some useful functions I think.
Not very familiar with Wallace — my primary source is Hyperlipid.
Lyme is a very interesting condition. With many mimic presentations, strains and confounding side effects. As im sure you know. It also often hides and or triggers underlying issues, in a very chicken or egg situation, thats hard to tease out. Re metabolism chemistry, You might find it helpful to look at what the mitochondria change fats, carbs and proteins all into...
Yes, I've noticed prion fever raging over the internet recently after Walter Chesnut etc Substacks and interviews. Im glad she is helping people understand that they are common and it's one of the body's adaption and compensation paths. No one seems to be asking the why beyond this though, which is getting frustrating. Im not familiar with Hyperlipid, but am always curious about others perspectives, so I'll have a look😊
It's pretty geeky. http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com
So, then, the answer is "this is complicated", right? I know a large number of people who had Covid and have not changed cognitively.
That said, another side of this is formation of fibrous clots in blood, which does seem to have plenty of confirmation in literature about Covid and embalmer reports and videos.
I consider the amyloid theory as something interesting that I need to follow with open mind.
After the macaque study early last year showing lewy bodies in 100% of infected macaques (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.23.432474v2.full), I expected all of us to be in obvious decline by now. Apparently the human immune system is superior to the monkeys’ in this case, although there are modest declines (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04569-5#Fig1 ). Hopefully they are temporary!
The two extremes are, on the one side, amyloid formations are a normal host response to all microbes, and *only* a pre-primed pro-inflammatory condition (ie diabetes etc) leads to a problem handling spike-induced amyloids, or on the other, spike is sui generis super-amyloidogenic. So in the first extreme it could be the case that a healthy individual can shrug off all the clotting from the virus / vaccine spike and a primed individual is in big trouble. In the middle, and I think more likely to be the case, is something like "we normally encounter these antigens as children, and as adults are more protected by antibodies; but it's still pretty common to get sick from something for the first time as an adult and experience plaques as a part of aging"
Congrats Brian, may the lifting of draconian measures not lead to further hindrances down the line! One can only hope!
I would like to investigate all of this further, but I personally find it strange how so many people have begun to latch onto ideas that I otherwise don't think are substantiated from the literature. It just stokes more fear than really provide and proper analysis.
I'll try viewing the video sometime in the future, but anyways all the best to you Brian! Hopefully we'll see you pop around every now and then
It is I, and I have returned from the future, or is it the present? I'm working on my Parkinson's series and looking into parkinsonism, and the remarks here and in the video appear to overlap with alpha-synuclein serving as a antimicrobial peptide as well, which is extremely fascinating. It appears that a host of otherwise neurodegenerative proteins are involved with otherwise protective measures. Really interesting to consider all of this in such a context.
I'm behind on the series - but if you haven't seen it, there is a recent amyloid paper Amyloidogenic proteins in the SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 proteomes https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-36234-4
The one released yesterday was a general overview on Parkinson's so nothing too specific to the current situation. The next one will be on viral parkinsonism and so I finally got to watching the video which made me look up even more. I wish I did more work beforehand because I find the neuroprotective aspect so fascinating. It's strange that many of these studies haven't looked at this mechanism as being intentionally protective, but accidentally neurodegenerative.
Another factor to consider is cerebral folate deficiency (CFD). CFD can result in dysfunction of the immune system in the brain, making infection damage more prevalent.
https://vinuarumugham.substack.com/p/cows-milk-protein-contaminated-vaccines
Brian, you pould consult the Pretorius papers-starting with LPS ( several years ago )and most recently experiments with the spike...
Right, I have previously cited Pretorius et al. (2016) “Acute induction” as an example of a “compared-to-what” point of context for her team’s findings on spike protein. It may be that amyloid blood clotting is also ubiquitous (promoted not just by spike but any novel glycrotein, especially during childhood); and/or that clotting is an evolutionary repurposing of antimicrobial peptides. In both the case of fibrinogen and Amyloid-beta there is a pro-inflammatory risk, but a strong chance that youth and healing normally takes care of the damage.
I was worried about you. Good to know you are ok. Hope you will be able to keep your impressive brain functioning with renewed freedom to socialize. The profound loneliness experienced by so many surely accelerated brain "decay" in ways that will be profoundly evident for years. I appreciate your contribution to the narrative and will look forward to your next post however infrequent they are now that I know you are ok.
Thanks for this,. I tipped a coffee. Clear thoughts. You should have hiatus more often. The novaxosphere is panicking right now. Soon they are going to wear masks around vaccinated because amyloids.
Meanwhile life continues.
Things get very horseshoe-theory-y at times, with germaphobes injecting a lot of the energy into both the provax and the antivax movements, as demonstrated by the Virus Truthers. I’ll stick with “I don’t want to wear a mask because it looks stupid.”
the mask might not help much in any case, and if this shedding is real who knows where one can get it ... I' ll stick with the fate is written ... if is meant to be will happen, no way to escape it.
what do you mean by "wearing masks around vaxxed because of amyloids"? are you saying vaxxed are spreading smt?
There's been several people arguing that vaccinated individuals are shedding spike protein. I personally don't believe there's substantial evidence of such a feat occurring, mostly since that would require shuttling of spike to the lungs and other tissues which can then aerosolize- I haven't seen anyone provide a mechanism for this occurring., but many people have commented that they don't feel well around people who have just been vaccinated.
Personally, I believe many COVID skeptic people may be starting to engage in extreme psychosomatic behavior where they don't have substantial evidence to substantiate their claims but may be stoking their own fears and anxiety.
Not to say all COVID skeptics are like this, but there's certainly happening within the Substack COVID skeptic sphere that just seems rather strange.
Anyways, I believe KLni's comment is that the logical flow of thought would then argue that vaccinated people are essentially spreading prion disease via the spike, which once again would be a strange claim to make without substantial proof.
Anecdotal but in the first wave of vaccinations here in Canada, my family met with friends who had just been vaccinated a day or two earlier. All 3 of us (wife, toddler, and myself) felt sick in the evening and the following day, it was a weird feeling of lethargy and nausea.
i see and you might have a point there as far as psychosomatic behavior.
the claim that vaxxed might be spreading prion disease via spike, assumes that virus+spike have been lab developed intentionally.
but if that was the case, and if it is possible to spread via shedding then none is safe even the people who created (assuming it is true) ... isnt it? or as fauci said once the first thing i ask is where is the antidote when someone proposes some sort of enhanced disease sort of thing ... i remember his saying it exactly, because it was sort of strange thing to say ... but it makes sense.
i suppose it is all speculations at this point and we have to wait and see ... i presume if the worse happens bossche's theories will be used to justify creation of some super virus ... none will blame it on spike, amyloids or shedding ... just a thought ... who knows, but as malone once said these things have been gamed 20 years ago ... lots of planning goes into these things ... nothing happens by chance.
Well that's one of my qualms with this sudden doomsday prophecies coming from quite a few of the COVID skeptic Substacks. I don't find there any evidence of the aerosolized amyloidosis because we don't even know if the spike is aerosolized. But I see people using these types of arguments to infer some type of inevitable horror coming our way.
I think bossche's arguments are interesting but I still have issues of my own with respect to them. I don't think Bossche has articulated what role that Omicron plays in vaccination. Omicron came out of nowhere and is more indicative of antigenic shift more than antigenic drift, but instead he- and many others, have used Omicron as an implication that vaccines are causing these sudden mutations. Again, Omicron shouldn't be worked into people's original working model but should be examined as an outlier and understand why it came to be.
bossche was a gates employee in africa, not an easy job to get given gates background on vaxx.
truth be told there is nothing new under the sun ...
Oh that's really interesting, I may want to look a bit into that bubonic plague story and see if it's accurate.
Irrespective of whether he plays a role, I want to stick to the facts and one of my criticisms is that I don't find it appropriate to include Omicron in the discussion of viral mutations and vaccine since it just came out of nowhere. Again, the model needs to account for such discrepancies rather than just include it, and Bossche just uses Omicron as a validation that the vaccines are causing these mutations. It's the main crux of his "greater infection, lower virulence" argument, and it's intended to bolster how high virulence should be coming next.