Was SARS-CoV-2 or Pneumonia the primary cause of respiratory Covid-19 deaths?

Summary

We have investigated the pneumonia hypothesis: that a proportion of covid-19 deaths, those with associated respiratory symptoms (rather than deaths coded as covid-19 because of a positive PCR test, that are absent symptoms), were caused by bacterial pneumonia, and that bacterial pneumonia was the primary, not the secondary, infection.

Our argument in favour of the hypothesis is:

Conflating pneumonia & covid-19 repeats an official longstanding tactic of conflating the attribution of influenza and pneumonia. The reduction in the public’s perceived threat of flu may have prompted the pharmaceutical industry to attempt a rebranding of the threat along with a new suite of marketable products to respond to that threat.

We investigated the hypothesis that a proportion of covid-19 deaths, those with associated respiratory symptoms (rather than deaths coded as covid-19 because of a positive PCR test, that are absent symptoms), were caused by bacterial pneumonia, and that maybe bacterial pneumonia was the primary, not the secondary, infection.

Does pre-existing exposure to bacterial pneumonia lead to a higher propensity to acquire a viral infection, such as SARS-CoV-2? And we suggest that SARS-Cov-2 infection may mask or be secondary to pneumonia infection and not necessarily the other way around, in whichSARS-CoV-2 is assumed to lead to bacterial pneumonia as a secondary infection.

Given this the actual burden of risk to hospitalized patients may not have been SARS-CoV-2 (or other viruses) at all but bacterial pneumonia.

High rates of ventilator induced pneumonia are confounded by changes in protocols, delays in admission, and overuse of ventilation etc. and estimates of rates of attribution to SARS-CoV-2 cannot therefore be relied upon. Respiratory deaths in hospitals may therefore have been caused by bacterial pneumonia but wrongly attributed to SARS-CoV-2.

The pattern of spread of SARS-CoV-2 in spring 2020, and the geographical concentration of the SARS-CoV-2 mortality toll is not what one would expect from a spreading respiratory virus. It is highly localised in specific geographically distant regions and cities. It is a pin-point pandemic.

Under modern sanitary conditions large scale pneumonia outbreaks in highly concentrated areas are unlikely to occur naturally. We must look elsewhere for explanations, including the possibility of human agency.

Given that rates of pneumonia deaths in 2020 were similar to those seen in previous years, changes in ventilation policy and practices coupled with new PCR testing, would be enough to cause the pin-point pandemic effect.

The central question is therefore: Was SARS-CoV-2 a bystander or decoy virus and were bacterial pneumonia deaths mistakenly or intentionally used as proof that SARS-CoV-2 was a deadly respiratory pathogen?

Events are akin to a scene from an Agatha Christie novel where SARS-CoV-2, a bystander used as a decoy, is guilty of the crime, with ventilation as the accomplice, but the actual criminal, who has got off scot-free, is in fact bacterial pneumonia. In other words, SARS-CoV-2 has been framed.

Introduction

After three years of research, we find ourselves as akin to the role of the “eccentric, amateur, or semi-professional detective” in a whodunnit detective thriller, trying to identify the pathogen that caused the respiratory deaths in hospitals that were attributed to Covid-19. Was the culprit, that is, the primary cause, a new novel, deadly virus called SARS-CoV-2, secondary bacterial pneumonia, brought on by exposure to one or both above?

In a series of previous posts, we have looked at what happened with flu (the latest post is here), finding that there was a collective and systemic failure in (if not manipulation of) flu surveillance and flu death reporting systems. We also found that deaths from influenza/ pneumonia continued during 2020 and, in the UK and USA, were reported at levels similar to previous years, proving that influenza/pneumonia did not actually disappear as a cause of death, despite the appearance of SARS-CoV-2.

This investigation looks at bacterial pneumonia specifically and presents the ‘pneumonia hypothesis’ that a proportion of Covid-19 deaths - namely those with associated respiratory symptoms (rather than deaths coded as covid-19 because of a positive PCR test, that are absent symptoms) – were caused by pneumonia, and that pneumonia was the primary, not the secondary, infection.

This hypothesis is important because it challenges what the true causative agent behind the ‘pandemic’ was – a bacterium or a virus, both or neither? It also brings into question how the agent was spread, and challenges how and if it was appropriately treated. Ultimately, we ask: do we really know what happened and is there a risk we have everything wrong or back to front?