Scientists Resurrect the Spanish Flu - Stop the Idiots!

A team of gain-of-function scientists in Canada and the US report
that they have re-created the 1918 influenza virus and used it to
infect macaques.
Spanish Flu infected more than one-third of the global population
and killed 50 million people just after World War I. Epidemiologists
regard it as the worst plague since the Black Death in the 14th
century.
In a piece titled, "Scientists Have Re-Created The Deadly 1918 Flu
Virus. Why?" (https://bit.ly/3wHJn2v) Forbes contributor Steven
Salzberg examines what could possibly have lead scientists to
do this.
Salzberg begins by noting the controversy regarding gain-of-function
research after the COVID-19 pandemic that looks more and more likely
to have its origins at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, which
was coincidentally conducting gain-of-function research on bat
coronaviruses just before the first case of COVID-19 were reported
in the Wuhan area.
So why are scientists performing gain-of-function research on
a long-gone and deadly flu virus that killed tens of millions of
people over one hundred year ago?
"In the latest news, a team of scientists in Canada and the U.S.
report that they have re-created the 1918 influenza virus and used
it to infect macaques," says Salzberg. "Let's be clear here: the 1918
flu vanished from the Earth, long ago. It's simply not a threat, or
it least it wasn't, until someone figured out a way to bring it
back."
Salzberg doesn't mention this in his article, but the thing about
the Spanish Flu was that it was unlike other flu viruses that are
more deadly to the very young and the very old - this one had an
unusually high mortality rate among young adults.
Via Clash Daily (https://bit.ly/3ABfS4w): The SARS-CoV-2 virus
was also somewhat unusual in that it was very little threat to the
young, but the vast majority of deaths have been in elderly patients
who are already susceptible to other respiratory viruses.
Comparisons to the 1918 Flu and COVID-19 have been around since
early 2020, but it was often in a comforting way - "At least it's not
the Spanish Flu!"
Were the public health officials upset that SARS-CoV-2 was
"disproportionately affecting" elderly people and wanted to make sure
that there was mortality "equity" among younger age groups? Someone
cynical might think that, but no… it's much worse than that. The
gain-of-function scientists did it just because they could.
In 2007, only two years after the 1918 flu sequence was completely
decoded, influenza researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University
of Tokyo and the University of Wisconsin described, in a paper in
Nature, how he and his colleagues used the sequence to create live,
infectious 1918 flu viruses. To test them on more human-like
subjects, they infected 7 macaques with them. Not surprisingly, the
macaques got severely ill, and the scientists eventually euthanized
all of them.
We could have had another outbreak of the Spanish Flu in 2007, and
thank God, we didn't! No thanks to these geniuses.
But the Big Brains couldn't just leave it at that, could they?
No, they had to do it all again - you know, just to make sure that
their findings were right.
In the new paper, a team of researchers at the Public Health Agency
of Canada, the University of Manitoba, and Oregon Health & Science
University re-created the 1918 flu virus again, and infected 15
macaques. This time they used more realistic doses, and the macaques
didn't get so sick, suffering only "mild" or "moderate" disease.
Maybe macaques "are not ideal for the development and testing
of novel pandemic influenza-specific vaccines and therapies," they
concluded.
Salzberg makes the point that the stated reason for the need for
gain-of-function research is always the same - to help develop
vaccines.
But why create a vaccine for a strain of flu that is no longer
a threat?
"The 1918 flu disappeared long ago, and there's no way it could
possibly re-appear naturally. There's only one way that the 1918 flu
becomes a threat to human health again: through a lab leak," writes
Salzberg. "Re-creating the virus in a lab makes that possible."
Exactly.
There is still the question about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus
and whether or not it leaked from a lab, and because of the
stonewalling by China, we may never know for certain.
It seems likely that the place that was conducting bat coronavirus
research and wasn't exactly known for being particularly careful in
their practices when collecting samples might have had a lab leak.
And investigations into the "wet market" hasn't found a single host
animal that the virus could have jumped to humans from.
Even if it was natural in origin, the entire premise of
gain-of-function seems to be to predict which viruses could spread
and learn how to create vaccines for them… which increases the
likelihood of an outbreak of something that could be incredibly
deadly.
Salzberg makes a great point near the end of his article:
Most of the recent controversy over gain-of-function research has
focused on research that makes viruses more deadly. I hope it's clear
that re-creating a deadly virus from scratch is another form of
gain-of-function research, one that carries equally great risks with
little or no potential benefit. We should put a halt to both types
of work.
(Emphasis added)
People need to tell these researchers, "Just because you can do
something, it doesn't mean that you should do it." Stop the madness.