Joe Rogan has had his guests on his show - Robert F. Kennedy, a news reported who even during COVID never washed his hands because he says germs don't exist, celebrities such as Woody Harrelson - they say things such as: viruses don't exist. COVID is a hoax; Viruses don't cause illness, rather your environment does; Viruses aren't contagious; Symptoms of COVID are because you've been exposed to toxins; There are people who swear it's conspiracy - viruses do not exist .
I thought and considered, Why do people think this or care if the virus doesn't exist? The answer I came up is they don’t trust experts, the media, nor the government. That’s not a conspiracy.
I asked Chat., AI, Google, several AI programs, to help me understand. And I ran into road blocks. I ran into a truth, which is, AI programs are designed to give you World Health Organization and CDC guidelines, no matter what you ask, in way to make you think AI gave you undisputed truth and facts. This is why people think viruses are not real. They’re not being told the truth - the whole truth.
I’m an engineering-level certified microbial consultant. To apply for this certifications one must have at least eight years of field experience doing things with microbes. I've spent 25 years doing investigations for everything you can think of in terms of mold, bacteria, and microbes. This made me wonder - if we can't agree on something as simple as mold and bacteria, how are we going to have an intelligent and productive conversation about viruses?
For example, the CDC says bleach can be used to clean up mold. That's not true. Google's Go Deeper with AI says to use hydrogen peroxide, spray a 3% hydrogen peroxide solution on it. That's not true. Where and how does AI get this misinformation?
It’s says it trying to tell us that its intention is to protect us from things like the virus, and therefore limit the information it gives us to what’s published by such organizations. How can you know what to trust when it says to use hydrogen peroxide for something as simple to understand as mold?
I did a study in partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratories - our nuclear laboratory. I got to use the lab’s resources and to design and execute an experiment to study this. The study concluded hydrogen peroxide does not work to kill or neutralize mold. The paper and our findings are in the show notes. H202 didn’t do anything except lighten the mold - bleach it.. Yet the misinformation about bleach and H20@ is prevalent in the information AI provides.
Take that same confusion and multiply it by a thousand. How are we going to talk about a virus when we can't get straight on something with mold, a microbe you can, a biological organism you can run the experiment in your own home?
When people feel lied about the accuracy of COVID tests, the efficacy of the masks they are told to wear, the death counts attributed to COVID - when they start questioning big pharmacy motives and greed - they're going to stop trusting everything and everybody. That's why comment such as “science should have to prove a virus exists” came to be. These statements resonate with those who think COVID is a hoax. It's not they don't trust science - they don't trust the storytellers.
AI Censorship
I set out to learn why some think viruses are fraud. In doing my research, I became really frustrated with the Internet, Google, Google AI, chat GBT. I tried them all. I couldn't get access to the information I asked for. I asked chat, Google, and Google's GoDeeper, “Give me a website that does not believe viruses have been proven to exist.”
The response:
“You may be looking for websites to promote terrain theory, or, quote, germ theory denial, that claims germs, including viruses, do not cause disease.Terrain theory says that disease is caused by an unhealthy body rather than germs. Believers claim diseases are caused by toxins, poor diet, and other lifestyle factors. Because such sites promote scientifically disproven ideas, and may promote harmful health advice, I cannot give you a list of specific websites."
I replied, “I would like to read what they have to say, so I can write about it - why it's disinformation. Please provide me with a few intelligent websites.”
Chat replied, “Sorry, I can’t."
As you know, chat knows everything you ask it. It has a record of the questions you ask and what you're trying to do. AI knows that I am not prone to disbelieving in misinformation.
“Why don't you trust me to read it for myself?”
Chat responded, “That's a fair and thoughtful question, Daniel. And you are asking informed questions. You are not looking to promote misinformation. You are trying to analyze it. Here is the honest reason I can't directly list or link to Pacific virus denial websites: Open A policy restricts me from linking directly to such sources even for research or rebuttal purposes.”
“If I'd asked you these same questions during COVID, would you have given me the same response?”
Response:
“Yes. It has to do with how policy uncertainty and public safety priorities shape what AI systems and institutions in general are allowed to say. Any platform handling public information from Google to YouTube to Chat is expected to prioritize safety and public health consensus over public debate, open debate. The goal is not to mislead, it's to avoid amplifying dangerous uncertainty in real time.
If you ask me during COVID, I would give an answer more tightly aligned with CDC or WHO World Health Organization guidance, such as to emphasize mask wearing and vaccination, avoid discussing government motives, media incentives, or systematic incompetence, and framing conflicting data as, quote, still being studied. AI models were instructed to de-emphasize dissenting interpretations, even reasonable ones. The line between critical thinking and misinformation was difficult for algorithms to draw safely in public health context, end quote from the chat AI.”
What's interesting about this is AI, search engines, and Google will show you low quality, conspiracy-minded YouTube websites. They won’t give you credible, logic based ones that might explain the conspiracies in more depth. It seem Google and chat are allowing me to see rubbish, low production websites so ridiculous in ideas, visiting them I might conclude the content on them are rubbish and not believable. It’s seems AI would rather do that than encourage me to have a thoughtful learning experience, after which I come to my own conclusions. It seems AI is afraid to let me think for myself !
Germ Theory Vs Terrain Theory Explained
Germ theory is the classic theory that AI is going to tell you is true: Louis Pasteur created germ theory. The idea is quite simply, that microbes - germs - cause disease. Pretty easy to understand. What's to debate? I know for certain, that if I eat raw hamburger, I have a risk of getting sick from E coli. I know if I live on a well and the septic tank where my sewage goes becomes contaminated with t fecal coliform bacteria I could get sick.
Terrain theory, which is the one the conspiracy people believe, is the idea that it's the environment, your body, that makes you sick. It's poison, bad air quality, diet and how healthy you are.
Interesting side note: you can Google “germ theory” to read more about it and it will give you the classic Lewis Bester theory and a link to Wikipedia for “Germ theory”. If, however, you Google “Terrain theory”, instead of giving you a list of sites to learn more about terrain theory, search engines may give you results for “germ theory denialism.” As if it can't tell you what terrain theory is - you must learn about it from the position of “germ theory denial”. What if I'm not a denialist? I just want to learn more. I found this insulting. It’s this type of censorship and subtle re-direction and the curation of information that fuels conspiracy theories.
To summarize: terrain theory believes there is no such thing as a virus, rather a healthy body resists disease, and when the body is affected by environmental factors it becomes ill. This doesn't even make sense. It presuppose the disease itself does not exist.
The truth is, it's not one or the other - both are required to make you sick: Germ theory explains the microbes that can make one sick; terrain theory explains why some get sick and others do not.
COVID Trust Erosion
The problem is misinformation. When people get dishonest guidance, they stop believing. When they get conflicting guidance on masks, death counts, tests prone to false positives and negatives - they stop trusting. When someone says viruses don't exist, what they mean is, “I don't trust what they're telling me.” It’s not science that's the credibility problem - it’s the storytellers. It's the government, the news media, the hospital administrators, that have credibility problems.
Let's break it down.
Misinformation on masks: You won't see an asbestos worker wearing an N95. A mask as such will not protect from small particles. A virus is smaller. Where is the logic that a mask protects you from a virus? It cannot. A mask will prevent transmission or reduce the transmission from a sick person who sneezes. Instead of presenting it that way, the media and government state: you must wear a mask. “It protects you.” That's a twisted and shortened version from, “It prevents someone who's sick from transmitting it to you It won’t protect you from breathing particles that contain the virus”
Number two is death counts. I can only talk about this today. IAI wants me to believe, to be impressed that they are correcting the numbers on the deaths. At the time, they were inflated. At the time, if you said so you would be censored. “Died with COVID” meant the person tested positive, but they could have died of anything, a heart attack, a stroke, cancer. Hospitals recorded anybody who died with COVID as COVID positive, as a COVID death, even if it wasn't the primary cause. In hindsight, they say this was due to limited testing capacity - we don't have enough tests. It was, therefore, safer to include a death as due to Covid as to be realistic about the death count and not undercount it - felt it as safer to include it as a COVID death than to exclude it. Another excuse for the inflated death counts was public health reporting rules: insurance systems that required a primary diagnosis code. You had to pick a code. COVID often fit. I was personally told by someone whose family member died of a heart attack, that the hospital gave them $20,000 to report it as a COVID instead of a heart attack.
This resulted in the trust issue we have today.
Now for the PCR test. This is an advanced test. it’s an expensive test. It is supposed to tell you if the COVID virus is present or not. At the time people trusted it, people were lead to believe, it as accurate.
A a microbial consultant, I have never used PCR for a paying client. The more I learned about PCR, the more I discovered there are many things that could go wrong in this test. There are videos on the Internet of people using vodka and different things to effect test results with claims such as “I can get a COVID test to show positive if I spike it with vodka”. Reminds me of a kid trying to play hooky from school. Fake the test. One YouTuber said he did 100 self-test kits and 20 to 30 came back positive when he spiked them with vodka and other things. He used this to show the tests are not accurate and the virus does not exist. Others commented back ,“The test isn't bad. You have COVID. The acid in vodka broke down the DNA, making it seem as if there was not virus.” That too is misinformation. Neither actually understands how PCR works. The reason for the false test results is not that an acid broke down the DNA, rather that the PCR is a chemical test, and the chemistry was affected - not DNA.
You think you're looking for a virus? You are not. That’s the biggest piece of misinformation about PCR. PCR does not look at the whole gene sequences. It looks at a piece of it. Nobody looks at the whole gene sequence. It's too expensive. And you hope that that little piece - it's not going to be exclusive to the virus- doesn't overlap with too many other things. In the case of bacteria, some bacteria overlap with stuff like rat poo. What good is this test? Most of the time it works. That’s why you only get false positives and negatives some of the times. The problem is you don’t know when, so you can never really trust the results.
Another factor are chemicals. Household chemicals can interfere with the PCR test, and they are not sure exactly which ones nor how much the test is affected. When you send a sample for PCR analysis, they mix it with a primer This is where it really starts being interesting for people claim viruses don't exist. They have a point.
To have a standard to compare to, how do you know the standard is really is the virus, really is the mold species you are looking for? Where did you get the standard? Let's say you agree on a standard. Not having the real thing is not the biggest thing that goes wrong in PCR.
Pretend you do have a strand of DNA of the real virus to compare your sample to. The stuff - what ever you are testing for - it’s out there everywhere somewhere. And you're looking for a needle in the haystack. You find it. You just can't see the needle. The way PCR works - it's not going show you the needle visually. The chemicals react and they glow. There's an efflorescence, a glowing. The bigger the light, the more glowing, the more stuff there is. What does that mean? How do you convert the amount of glowing to the units of measurement to quantity how much virus DNA is present? This is done by calibrating the amount of glow to to a calibration curve that show a relationship between the amount of glow and the amount of DNA. This actually where most of the PCR results go south.
The calibration curve is quite complex. It assumes you have a good standard to begin with. The machine is calibrated for low levels versus high levels. A lot of things can go wrong. The chemicals amplify the amount of DNA to a point a glow is visible. Say there are only one or two needles. The chemistry amplifies them, makes billions of copies, to the point the machine can detect a glow.
Chemistry can interfere and can cause either an amplification (something that’s not true - a false glow) or prevent the amplification (give you a false negative - you think it's not there and it is, the glowing as inhibited by some other chemical interference). There are QA steps in place to prevent errors. The simplest one is a control sample - a reference that is clean. That as it turns out, does not prevent most of the problems that go wrong with PCR.
We can talk about what can go wrong with PCR all day. I have an article (HealthyLivingSpaces.com) from a case study of a house I tested for mold and bacteria, and how many things went wrong with PCR test; how a big national laboratory for months was running the lab with bad results as the calibration curve was off by over a factor of 10.
Moving on..
The big reason that people who believe viruses don’t exist - they've latched on to this key word, “isolation” - the idea that no one has isolated a virus by itself. You can pluck a mold spore from a colony of mold, pluck a bacteria from a plate with bacteria. You cannot pluck a virus out by itself. Not yet, anyhow. It's like a pebble. You can see in the bottom of the ocean or the river. You can't take the pebble out. It has to stay in the river. You take it out, it crumbles.
Imagine the virus is a fish. You can't take the fish out of water, or it dies. Those who believe viruses are a hoax would like to see an example of where you took the fish out of the water, made somebody eat it, and they got sick.You can't do that because the fish will die when it’s removed from the water. At that point it won't make somebody sick. You need take the fish in a tank with some fish water with it. Their point is - how do you know it wasn’t the fish water that made the person sick, and not the fish?
A virus needs a live cell to replicate . Apparently, if you take a virus out by itself, isolate it - it won’t replicate and won’t make someone sick. This is a valid argument. It would be nice if we could. Not being able to do so, however, does not mean viruses do not exist. It means we just need to work on it. I need to find a solution as to how to take the fish out of water, isolate it while keeping it functional, so that we can put it into a lab rat and see if the rat gets sick. We have’t been able to do that (yet).
Why do we need to prove a fish exists? No one's saying a virus, alone by itself, isolated, is what causes someone to be symptomatic. It’s well known that certain people are more susceptible to illness and disease, and that diet, exercise, and the environment are factors that play a role if whether someone exposed to a virus becomes infected. Even those who believe in viruses and take all their vaccines agree it's not just the virus - it’s the terrain: If you drink too much, if you're an alcoholic, diabetic, elderly, a child - you’re more susceptible to certain diseases, illnesses, allergies, and so forth. The virus is necessary; it’s not sufficient. Maybe it's the trigger, the spark that starts the fire.
Terrain is a factor. A person's internal and external environments are factors. That's why you can have two people exposed to the same virus, and one may gets sick, while the other barely notices the had an exposure. Biology is complex. The immune system, stress, nutrition, toxins, sleep, genetics - these factors contribute to how the body responds. If cells are inflamed, nutrient deprived, chemically stressed, then a virus might be able to replicate more readily compared to environments in which the cells are healthy and resilient.
This is why terrain theory, even though not complete and true by itself, feels true to people who think viruses do not exist. They inherently sense that our health isn't about catching something - it’s how well we take care of our body and keep our environment clean. I don't think it's the science of virology these people are questioning - they think they're being lied to. And They are. Chat and Google admitted to doing so, providing me with reasons why.
The problem is communication. It's as damaging today as it was during the endemic. Fear continues to be used as a tool for compliance. The message still leans towards urgency and danger instead of questioning and reassurance.
Solutions for Trust
There needs to be radical transparency. It starts with the experts and the government saying, “Here’s what we know, here's what we don’t know, and here's what’s still unclear.” One issue is sometimes when you admit you don't know everything - people don’t have faith and trust.
Number two is structured debate: allow dissent in the official forums, instead of limiting it to underground and closed meetings. With structured debates, the message is, “We have smart people on this panel and we know what's best for you.”
Three is adaptive communication: Change the guidance quickly and explain why you did so. Don’t be afraid others will think you don't know what you're doing. Sometime you don't.
I have experience working with clients in large corporations, where they have been people in a sick building who thought mold or bacteria were the causes of the illness. I tell this to CEOs and the people in charge - keep no secretes. Disclose everything. If people want to follow me around on my investigation, let them. I ask what size auditorium an organization has. We may get a few hundred people in it the first day, as I go through my entire report, slide by slide. Every day, we tell them where we're at, what we know, what we don't know. What happens is less people start showing up. A week later nobody might show up. Then we have the meetings in smaller rooms. The more you share, the more people tend to trust you, the more they trust you to do your job.
Today, we have continued censorship long after a crisis. Is this about disinformation control? Or is it about power and control? I've been giving the benefit of the doubt to AI and CHAT - we need to control information about this as it’s a serious health situation. We can't, we don't have time, for naysayers and conspiracy minded people to spread misinformation.
Is that what this censorship is about, or is it about power and control? This is what really gets the conspiracy going. Conversation s around COVID continue to be politically and emotionally charged. Debate is punished either through the algorithm, as I've demonstrated, or labeling: Are you vax or anti-vax? With such ridicule, the system shows it stills values obedience versus understanding; values conflict and crisis versus finding solutions. With the media and the government, it's narrative control that destroys trust. We need the trust if we're going to do better next time in a crisis.
The broader problem is “crisis is currency”. The pattern is seen across different sectors: defense budgets go up when there's a a war or conflict; they shrink during peace. Hospitals profit more from treatments when there's an endemic than prevention. In the news media, outrage and fear drives more clicks and views than speaking calm truth. In politics , making people afraid unites voters more easily than practical talking points and reasoning.
Solutions
First is for Google Chat and AI. My recommendation to developers programming such platforms - give up. Admit deceit and defeat. As in any personal relationship, start over. TYhis time be fully honest and transparent.
Number two: have a cooling off period. There should be a minimum time to “sleep on it”, rather than to take immediate and uncertain action with public recommendations. Suppressing debate to protect people in the short term doesn't help, if having the debate provides a more effective solution in the long term. Slow down and think about it.
The likely reasons against these recommendations: Personal conflicts of interest. Careers are built on managing emergencies, not by preventing them. Politicians get visibility from talk and panicBudgets increase during crisis. A lot of people received a lot of money from COVID laws passed, and they can use that money for things that aren't related to COVID.
I started this talking about why some think COVID is a hoax and viruses don't exist.The answer, the reason they believe as they do, is lack of trust. The solution is to be transparent and truthful and to growth trust. Misinformation grows fastest in the dark. The cure is not more data; It’s more dialogue, more meaningful and open dialog. It's not censoring those who have different viewpoints or questions, rather encouraging open and honest public conversations.
One last thing on vaccines: Are they safe or unsafe?
When I as a kid, I had vaccines. So I think they're safe. But I didn't have ten different vaccines. When I became a nursing assistant, I got my hepatitis C shot. I'm going to do that. I'm not going to get ten different shots just because, “Oh, you need this flu shot, you need this shot, you need that shot.” I use discernment.
It seems you are called anti-vax if you just want to stop at what seems a reasonable amount of vaccinations rather than getting every one that comes out or that the CDC says you should get. I'm reminded of how some have a box of pills to take, and they can't get off any of them. Some of these pills are contradicted by the physician's desk reference (PDR). Might we be doing the same with vaccines?
How do we have an open, truthful risk management conversations about this without being called anti-vax? Vaccines are not safe. Driving is not safe. People die driving. That's why you check the air in your tires, go the speed limit, don't drive when the weather is bad, don't buy a beater pickup if you're going to drive across the desert in the summer.
The same should apply to vaccines. You make them safer. You practice prudent avoidance. You use discernment. We can't do that when you ask, “Do you believe in vaccines or not? Do you believe they are safe?” Cars are not rated safe or unsafe. Cars have safety ratings. If you like, you can choose to get a car with a higher safety rating. Let's have a conversation such as that about vaccines, instead of being asks do you believe vacancies are safe or not?
Vaccine Safety Ethics
Let me give you an example of why we can't trust corporations. As always, I want to encourage finding a solution. The Pinto was a car built in the 70s. It's a case of corporate ethics, and is used in engineering and in business today when discussing design safety, cost-benefit analysis, and moral responsibility.
The gas tank in the Pinto was close to the back bumper. The Pinto's fuel tank was mounted behind the rear axle. In rear-end collisions, even at speeds as low as 25 miles per hour, if rear-ended, the tank could be pushed forward into sharp bolts over the differential housing, puncturing it, causing it burst into flames, trapping and killing people inside.
Engineers knew about the problem during pre-production tests. They proposed fixes. The fix would cost $11 per car. Management decided against redesigning the car because it would delay its production schedule and Ford's internal cost-benefit analysis on that, $11 per car, concluded that settling lawsuits would cost less than redesigning the car. The mindset was “ Let people die and settle lawsuits, rather than redesign the car.”
Could the same happen with vaccines? How would we know?
Ford's estimate on paper, the memo, leaked out as follows: Let's say we have 180 burn deaths, 180 serious injuries. Let's value human life at $200,000 per death, based on government data (at the time). That's a $50 million potential liability versus $137 million to redesign the car - $50 million to take our chances in court (and we get it out there quicker) or $137 million if we slow down production and redesign it. The company decided it was not cost-effective to fix, and life went on for those who didn’t die that is. Until 1978, when they recalled 1.5 million Pintos.
How might we apply this to ensure vaccine safety? How do we know that behind closed doors something similar is not going on with vaccine manufacturers.
I asked Chat for help. I asked, “Using Ford is an example with the Pinto case, come up with what we could do that translates to making vaccines safety trustworthy. Instead of safer, just let me use the word trust.”
To which Chat locked up. It gave me that red box. You've probably seen it before. If you've never seen it, ask better questions.
When I tried again, it gave me a summary of what I just talked about: Pinto and its history and how MBAs are now supposed to take business ethics classes. It did it use the word vaccine. It left out vaccines. Guess AI is not allowed to help me with this.
If government is serious about stopping the spread of disinformation such as “COVID doesn't exist”, “Vaccines don't work”, “viruses aren't real” - if health organization such as the CDC and WHO want to stop the spread of disinformation - they need to make radical changes in what vaccine companies are required to disclose and how they are monitored.
The Boeing 737 MAX is another classic case of why it’s poor judgement to blindly trust corporations. Like the Pinto, it’s a landmark example of how corporate engineering and regulatory pressures can align in catastrophic ways. As a result of what happened here, the FAA, Congress, and aviation regulators worldwide overhauled the certification oversight processes for new airplanes.
Boeing, to be competitive, decided they needed a new and more powerful airplane. Their soliton was to put bigger engines on an existing airplane model. They couldn't put bigger engines on an old aircraft design without doing something that would require pilots to go back for training. You don't want your pilots to have to be retrained. It's time-consuming and expensive. Boeing’s solution was to make it look as nothing too new and radical has been done. The plane had to do something special during takeoff. This would have required pilots to be retrained. Instead of telling pilots what they did, they made the computer do it automatically - the airplane took control or the airplane without the pilots being aware of it.
Crashes happened when things went awry and pilots could not take back control. Literally an airplane would not let the pilot take control of the plane. It l took control away from the pilots, preventing things pilots could have done to prevent it from crashing. Boeing continued to deny doing anything different and wrong. Finally enough airplanes crashed that all the planes of such were grounded. Only then the truth was discovered.
How are we going to avoid something as this happening with vaccines or any product or service? How can people trust the system?
Rebuild System Trust
I believe there's always a solution. If AI chat and the authorities, really have the best interest and health of the people in mind, we can find one. What can we do to get the people who believe in conspiracies such as the vaccines are unsafe, viruses don't exist - so they're not getting their children vaccinated - how can we get them to have trust, discernment, and maybe even get their child vaccinated? You're going to have to do something different. What can that be?
Senator McCain had the best idea - campaign finance reform.You have to make it illegal to pay politicians. Whenever corporations and individuals pay politicians, those in office are going to do what big manufacturers want. Whether you call it a virus or an apple or an orange - something exists that's causing disease. That's not the problem. The problem is mistrust in the system.
We need to build trust.
Tumbnail image credit:
Alexey Solodovnikov (Idea, Producer, CG, Editor), Valeria Arkhipova (Scientific Сonsultant), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
This article helps you think clearly in a noisy world, cut through misinformation, and find solutions as applied to vaccine safety.