Definitely not the first to post on this but am completely …

In the paper the authors question the cause of mortality during the 1918 pandemic and those which follow. They go on to hypothesize and prove that bacterial pneumonia is actually the prominent causative factor during viral respiratory pandemics. 2/11

Part of the methodology was examining several histological specimens which had been preserved from the pandemic. They found that in essentially every single case there was evidence of severe acute bacterial pneumonia either as predominant or in conjunction with virus. 3/11

The paper notes that previous post mortem cultures picked up bacterial colonization with more than half of those being pathognomonic. 4/11

Morens et al. note that subsequent pandemic deaths were also attributable to secondary bacterial pneumonia following primary viral infection despite significant advancements in medicine. 5/11

The paper concludes that ample evidence from influenza pandemics (and similar viruses) spanning almost a century indicates that viral deaths are actually due to bacterial infection. 6/11

The authors even provide a solid explanation for why we might be masking bacterial pneumonia deaths in this context, and note that primary viral pneumonia deaths are exceptionally rare “even in pandemic peaks”. 7/11

There’s then this throw forward to the “next pandemic” in which the authors note that a human-adapted virus (Influenza; SARS-CoV-2) will cause severe disease by bacterial colonization in the background of viral infection. 8/11

The paper was published in 2008 by 3 leading scientists at least one of whom now seems to have forgotten he ever wrote this. It’s available for viewing and download here:

https://t.co/urpWqLFpij

9/11

If we knew in 2008 that co-infection during respiratory pandemics is the major driver of mortality, then why are we basically ignoring this entirely in 2020?

New variant and less than perfect vaccine, or bacterial infection we’re not treating properly for viral obsession? 10/11

There are so many questions to be asked given the existence of this paper and the people who published it. We are treating pandemic science as if it started in March of this year when in fact we have lots of good data prior to this - if only we’d read it. 11/11