TRIBUNE – On Christmas Eve, I was affected by a strange flu syndrome: an illness less violent than the flu, but which persisted for several weeks, with wet cough and abnormal fatigue. Intrigued, I shared my symptoms with readers of my website.
To my surprise, I received over 1,200 comments, most of which told me they had experienced the same thing as me. Here is a tiny sample, to give you an idea:
“Indeed, I also contracted this new unnamed virus. I feel a fatigue like I have never known.” (Didier)
“I’m still on antibiotics because of a cough that won’t go away. I’ve never had such symptoms in my life.” (Schedule)
“Still not recovered. I’m 60 years old and I’ve never been sick like this! Very very strange this state.” (Evelyne)
“I am entering the third week of a kind of flu – bronchitis, which does not want to dislodge. It continues, I have never seen that.” (Trish)
You can read on my site a selection of the 100 most significant testimonials, but I add here that of Véronique, medical assistant:
“I have seen for several weeks many cases similar to your description. As if there is a hybrid virus which resembles both Covid and flu symptoms but which does not show up with the new tests.
Is a strange new virus circulating? We will examine this hypothesis very carefully.
But one thing is certain: there is clearly something unusual going on. Here’s why :
– First, several hundred readers told me they had a strange flu syndrome in December. Of course, having the flu in December is nothing new, but they almost always made it clear that it was not a typical flu: less virulent than the flu… but lasts longer.
– They are very numerous to have written “never been sick like this” (and that means something because many of them are of respectable age);
– They are also a certain number to have specified that, usually, they are never sick;
– Another disturbing fact, some said that none of the natural remedies that usually get them out of trouble quickly, seemed to have no effect this time.
Now let’s come to the most important: the symptoms.
In almost everyone, the illness begins with flu-like symptoms (even a simple cold). Then, and this is what is very abnormal, it persists over time, sometimes several weeks with always:
– cough (usually oily);
– and abnormal fatigue.
These are the common points of most of those who have told me that they have had this strange disease.
But there are also several symptoms experienced by some, but not everyone:
– Loss of appetite
– Loss of voice
– Sore throat
– Stuffy nose
– Headache
– Temporary and relative loss of taste
– Night sweats
– Back pain
Another important point: a certain number of readers had complications.
The two most common complications reported are:
– bronchitis ;
– and pneumonia.
But there were also sinusitis, conjunctivitis, tracheitis, angina. In many cases, this led to antibiotic treatment… which usually solved the problem (but not always).
What is going on ? Four possible explanations
First, let’s recall some certainties:
– This strange illness is clearly not the Covid: all those who tested themselves were negative (and having experienced the Covid twice, I can testify that it has nothing to do).
– It’s not a flu either. “usual” : again, everyone who had it clearly felt that it was not a normal flu (and not a common cold or flu syndrome either).
So what is it?
A first hypothesis – the simplest – is that it would not be a new virus.
It could be a common winter virus, which has been around for a long time… but which generally does not have much success.
But this winter, it would have infected many more people than usual:
– Possibly because the weather was exceptionally mild around Christmas, and that would have favored this specific virus;
– And/or because the three years that we have just experienced, with the new coronavirus and its variants, confinements and social distancing, have weakened the immunity of the population and perhaps upset the usual hierarchy of winter viruses.
But we can also make the hypothesis that it would indeed be a new virus.
This would be consistent with an article published in October 2022, of which Top Health echoed under this title: “A new hybrid virus discovered: it was born from the fusion of influenza and bronchiolitis”.
In fact, this new virus was not discovered, but induced in the laboratory.
Researchers have infected human cells with two viruses: the influenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which causes bronchiolitis.
Result: they observed that the two viruses have “merged” to form a “new hybrid virus”.
This is intriguing, as the symptoms of “strange Christmas sickness” are reminiscent of a mixture of flu and bronchiolitis (notably the persistent cough and frequent bronchitis that follows).
In the article of Top Healthit even says this:
“This new hybrid virus would be able to access a wider range of lung cells. lungs, causing a more severe infection.”
Which could explain the pneumonia reported by many of my readers.
And, by a strange coincidence, a recent phenomenon could have favored a “hybridization” of the influenza virus and RSV (bronchiolitis).
Because last fall, we had an unusual superimposition of the flu and bronchiolitis epidemic:
– The bronchiolitis epidemic was particularly severe in November…
– And the flu epidemic started earlier than usual, mid-November… which made it superimposed on that of bronchiolitis.
Here we have the necessary ingredients for the creation of a hybrid virus.
That said, there is an important objection. Influenza and RSV have been around for hundreds of years. Why did it take until 2022 for them to hybridize?
This is why another hypothesis must be addressed: the role of anti-Covid vaccination.
Over the past two years, more than a billion people have been injected with messenger RNA vaccines.
These vaccines, as we know, are very special: not only do they contain the genetic code for part of the coronavirus (the spike protein)… but they lead our own cells to produce this spike protein.
Therefore, if we vaccinate an individual already infected with another virus, this creates a real risk of viral recombination, and therefore of the creation of a new virus.
The geneticist Christian Vélot had very early warned of this major risk linked to mass vaccination.
So, could the “new virus” be a recombinant Covid-influenza virus (or Covid-RSV), caused by messenger RNA anti-Covid vaccines?
This is a plausible hypothesis, because these three viruses are RNA viruses, therefore more likely to recombine with each other.
Finally, there is one last hypothesis.
Over the past ten years, dangerous experiments in the laboratory have multiplied.
Today, it is clear that the madness of some virologists has no limits.
The proof: even though it is now clear that Sars-CoV-2 was artificially manufactured in the laboratory, researchers at Boston University recently had “fun” to create a dangerous mutant coronavirus by:
– Taking the spike protein of the Omicron BA-1 variant (more infectious)…
– And merging it with the rest of the (more deadly) Wuhan coronavirus.
Risky manipulations like this happen all over the world. Often, they are carried out under the seal of “secret defense”, in connection with the search for biological weapons.
We cannot therefore rule out the hypothesis that the “strange virus” is directly the result of a laboratory experiment.
These are the hypotheses that seem to me the most plausible, to date.
I encourage readers to FranceEvening to add here their testimony and/or their interpretation of this strange phenomenon. Collective intelligence is always enlightening.
Xavier Bazin, freelance science writer and journalist, is the author of Antivax yourself! Let’s find a critical mind on vaccination, published by Éditions Trédaniel. His articles can be viewed on his website here.