The Alternative to Vaccination
Editor’s note
So much for Generation Chillstand, as our guest author Milosz Matuschek describes the so-called “Millennials” in his book of the same title, which is well worth reading. They still exist: young, committed people, who do not reduce their lives to culinary and intellectual fast food, clicks and likes, but are seriously and sustainably engaged with profound topics. If you look around, you might indeed think that they have been lost to us, the people who prefer to deal with reality rather than illusion. We are all the more grateful that we have recently added a young talent to our team in the form of Sascha Schlüter, who is really stirring things up with his sensitivity and young verve. We hope you enjoy reading his first contribution to Expressis-Verbis.
Is there an alternative to vaccination? If one exposes oneself to the dominant media discourse, one might think not.
Interfering with physical integrity is being viewed as the magical remedy for this pandemic. But is this really true? This article aims to question this widespread view, by referring to scientific findings that suggest an alternative approach, because of its higher effectiveness and mildness.
Let’s begin with the vaccine against Covid-19. It protects, according to some studies and data, with a certain probability and for a certain time against a severe disease progression. There are no notable effects in the areas of infectivity and virus mutation. Nor does vaccination contribute to preventing new pandemic outbreaks, let alone to the further treatment of patients once they have become ill. Furthermore, the vaccine is associated with risks and negative side effects for the individual, complications cannot be ruled out and regularly occur to a greater or lesser extent.[1] In addition, time resources, financial and material sources, as well as human capital have to be used for vaccine development and further marketing.
Now onwards to the alternative approach. It tries to look at the root causes of the problem: Why do so many people have pre-existing conditions and weakened immune systems that make them vulnerable to becoming seriously ill after an infection with corona? How can the transmission of the virus and the emergence of new variants be prevented naturally? Are there treatments that work better than the current ones, which do not have any undesirable side effects? And why do outbreaks of new pandemics happen in the first place?
The evidence examined below may not be as easy for the individual to implement as a shot in the arm, but that does not make it any less effective from a purely scientific perspective, on the contrary. It is often the case that only profound changes achieve truly impressive results.
What are we talking about now? About a healthier lifestyle. Real preventive health care has played almost no role in the public debate since the declaration of the corona crisis. Yet, it offers a directly applicable toolbox, especially during a health emergency.
However, the health emergency declared over the last two years is nothing new in terms of society as a whole. Since the end of the Second World War in particular, there has been an increase in chronic diseases of epidemic proportion in industrialized countries.[2] Disorders such as diseases of the cardiovascular system, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune diseases, general obesity and others have found their way into the center of society. Previously labeled the ‘diseases of kings’, they are nowadays predominantly responsible for health impairments and premature deaths in industrial societies.[3]
Could it be that both the chronic and the infectious crises have a common denominator? The answer, based on the latest scientific findings, must be clearly stated: Yes. An adequate preventive health care strategy is missing.
As a prove, it is sufficient to look at nutrition as an example of a preventive factor. A direct causal relationship can be established between poor nutrition and all aspects of a lacking pandemic control, as well as regarding the vast majority of chronic diseases. Even the WHO, quoted by the German weekly newspaper ‘Die Zeit’, admits in July, 2021:
“Obesity is the greatest risk factor for a severe coronavirus ailment,” says Francesco Branca, Director of the WHO’s Nutrition Program. A high weight is thus weakening the immune defense against the virus, and also leads to many other diseases that make a severe coronavirus disease progression more likely.[4]
Epidemiologist Karl Lauterbach made similar comments in January, 2020 when he was asked a specific question about the link between diet and health, almost two years before he was appointed Germany’s Federal Minister of Health: “[…] Many diseases of civilization are actually linked to obesity […]”.[5] According to him, a healthier diet would protect society significantly better from most of the pre-existing conditions, that are often predominantly responsible for severe corona disease progressions. Why then does this information not appear as a priority in the media debate? After all, we are talking about a health factor that has no risks or unwanted side effects, but which is said to have such a strong effect in combating a pandemic.
If one invokes the media-dominant communication, protection against a severe corona disease progression can so far only be made possible by vaccination. However, a healthy diet that counteracts obesity and chronic diseases, relativizes this main argument of the Covid-19 vaccine, and represents an effective and mild approach that offers reliable protection against a severe corona disease progression, while its application leads to solely positive side effects. The public communication strategy to date becomes all the more incomprehensible, when one looks at the other factors of an effective pandemic management.
The Underlying Causes
When one takes a look at the other fields of effective pandemic control, one inevitably has to deal with the transmission of the virus. According to the WHO, the infectivity of a person is of significant relevance only shortly before and during the development of symptoms. If the person becomes seriously ill, he or she is infectious for longer. If, on the other hand, no symptoms appear, the probability of the virus spreading is low. The following can be read on the WHO website:
Laboratory data suggests that infected people appear to be most infectious just before they develop symptoms […] and early in their illness. People who develop severe disease can be infectious for longer. While someone who never develops symptoms can pass the virus to others, it is still not clear how frequently this occurs […].[6]
The generally accepted medical factor that determines whether a person develops symptoms and is thus more contagious, or remains asymptomatic and is thus less infectious, is the strength of the immune system. If one follows the argumentation of the WHO laid out earlier in this article, an unhealthy diet is primarily responsible for “weakening the body’s immune defenses”, and therefore indirectly causes a significantly higher overall infection rate in society.[7]
Moving on to the mutation of the virus, it can be seen that new variants also primarily occur where the pathogen cannot be fought against quickly and sufficiently, due to a weakened immune system. Karl Lauterbach expressed the following shortly after his appointment as Germany’s Federal Minister of Health in December, 2021:
We will not completely succeed at defeating the coronavirus in the foreseeable future. You have to be realistic. We have a situation in which new variants will regularly appear. Mutations often arise in people who have immune deficiencies, autoimmune diseases, or cancer. These variants will keep on developing for now.[8]
At least if the causes of these immune deficiencies and chronic diseases are not eliminated. As described earlier, Karl Lauterbach points towards an unhealthy diet as the main cause for the increased emergence of weakened immune systems and diseases of civilization such as autoimmune diseases or cancer. In turn, when asked specifically on diet, he points to a more wholesome approach with a tendency towards plant-based foods so that “people become significantly healthier on average.”[9]
According to the WHO and Karl Lauterbach, a healthy diet is therefore an effective and mild approach for society as a whole, which would result in significant positive impacts on the state of the pandemic, while posing no health risks in return. It not only protects against a severe corona disease progression, but also helps to reduce the spread and mutation of the virus, while simultaneously preventing many chronic diseases from emerging. All this put together would lead to a significant reduction of the overall burden on intensive care units, thus bringing the repeatedly communicated primary issue of the coronavirus pandemic under control.
This alone would be reason enough to steer public communication and health strategy away from risky and symptom-treating technologies such as vaccines and medications, and towards real preventive health care for the whole of society. This is all the more true because real preventive health care does not stop at nutrition as the only determining factor. Keywords such as sufficient exercise, enough sleep, fresh air, a clean environment or stress reduction should be mentioned in the same breath. Preventive measures in this sense would all contribute to a drastically improved pandemic management and a general increase in the health of the public, and in doing so, they would not harbor similar potential dangers as most pharmaceutical treatments.
But the choice for nutrition as the overarching health factor in this article is not an arbitrary one. Beyond the general strengthening of the immune system, a unique pandemic-fighting potential can be discerned here. Could nutrition also be the key to a successful treatment of Covid-19 patients? How could an adequate food supply contribute to the prevention of future pandemic outbreaks?
The Laws of Nature
We live in a time of revolutionary insights in medicine. An unprecedented knowledge base about the development of diseases and their treatment lies at our feet. Nevertheless, some scientific findings are not as widely disseminated and discussed, possibly because of their poorer marketability and lack of technological complexity. But this matter of fact does not touch on the potential relevance of such novel findings for society as a whole.
The following treatment method is based on such a novel insight, it acts as a rather contrary approach to current medical practice: the process of medically supervised water-only fasting has proven itself in almost every case of chronic illness, because it simultaneously removes the main cause of a weakened immune system, while also allowing the body to put all its focus on the healing process, undisturbed by an energy-intensive digestion. [10] In the clinic ‘True North Health Center’ in Santa Rosa (California/USA), more than 20,000 patients over a period of almost 40 years have been water-fasted for 5 to 40 days, i.e. they have refrained from consuming any calories for a given time frame.[11] The success achieved thereby is unprecedented. With high predictability, diseases of the cardiovascular system, diabetes, cancer, autoimmune diseases, obesity and other clinical disorders are successfully being reversed by applying this treatment. The clinic’s research center publishes in renowned medical journals such as the British Medical Journal.[12] Detailed and long-term safety studies of the clinic’s specific fasting protocol have been published, the method can be made use of in a safe and effective manner under medical supervision.[13]
Now the question certainly arises in what way this form of therapy can be utilized to successfully combat a pandemic: Water-only fasting lets the patient rest physically and mentally, while shifting the body’s entire focus on the self-healing process. It is not coincidental that people who are in line with the signals of their body often report a loss of appetite in the course of a more severe viral infection, or during other serious progressions of illness.[14] A complete abstinence from food is able to initiate great healing responses in people. The benefits of this treatment linger for longer if the water-only fasting is followed up by a long-term change in diet and lifestyle. The above mentioned clinic recommends a diet consisting predominantly of unprocessed cooked or raw plant foods, without the addition of industrial additives such as sugar, oil or salt. According to the clinic, these flavor carriers should not be part of an optimally health-promoting diet, and, on the contrary, are responsible for many diet-related ailments. A change to such a more wholesome diet is dramatically made easier after a prolonged fasting process in the clinic, because the sensitivity of the taste buds is reset.[15]
The fasting protocol described here is recommended only for patients who adhere to a strict physical and mental resting state, while being under constant medical supervision. This is not something one should spontaneously try at home. At least not for more than a few days. However, the director of the clinic points out that, biologically speaking, the human species is able to drink solely water for a long period of time.[16] Among other things, this ability would have enabled us to conquer the entire planet, without having a constant food supply to rely on.
That still leaves us with the question of how to prevent future pandemic outbreaks. Even regarding this aspect of pandemic management, nutrition can contribute something as a preventive measure. Viruses and pathogens are in most research works brought into context with an irresponsible handling of animals, apart from the fact that such pathogens can also always originate in a laboratory. The scientific term for a pathogen with such an origin is ‘zoonosis’. If the food on our plates stems from such animal factories, the risk of emergence and spread of a virus or pathogen from animals to humans is increased.[17] Historical instances, where such a cause of origin circulates in the scientific discourse are, e.g., the avian and swine flu, Ebola (bats)[18], AIDS (monkey meat)[19], measles (cattle plague)[20], tuberculosis (goats)[21] or the current coronavirus (wild animal market)[22].
Both theories, the release of the coronavirus from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, and the origin via the wild animal market in the same city, are the subject of controversial and critical scientific debate, as can be discerned by taking a closer look at the article of the last mentioned footnote, which was published in the prestigious scientific journal ‘Nature’. The thesis of the laboratory origin, which is sometimes underrepresented in media discourses, is thereby gaining momentum. Today, even established experts, such as the head of the COVID-19 commission of the world-renowned medical journal ‘The Lancet’, refer to the accumulating arguments in favor of the laboratory thesis. However, regardless of what was actually the case with the current coronavirus: according to many studies, factory farming and the increasing invasion of wild animal populations both lead to a general endangerment concerning the outbreak of future pandemics.
A New Perspective
The conclusion to be drawn from all these scientific findings seems to be clear: We are going down the wrong path. As a society, we are not trying to tackle the underlying causes of health crises such as the corona pandemic. Instead, we are trying to continue with our current lifestyle, without drastic changes in behavior, and we are developing symptom-treating drugs and vaccines, which, however, always bring new risks and unwanted side effects with them. In the process, we do our best to ignore the physical laws of cause and effect. A technology like the Covid-19 vaccine can never solve a problem that has its cause in a specific (preventable) human behavior, as is the case with diet and other lifestyle choices. This is the same insight we need in relation to emerging ecological challenges. The social divide on the web also results, among other things, from a certain way of using technology, a lack of new technical possibilities is not the underlying causal problem in these instances.
If we become aware of the true causes of the corona pandemic in the near future, we will also have to rethink our political package of measures.
Behind the corona crisis lies a deeper health crisis. Far too many people are not living in a way that is conducive to their overall health. As a result, the parameters of virus emergence, spread, mutation, burden and treatment are all affected negatively to a great extent. The measures imposed over the last two years only exacerbate these issues. Lockdowns, contact restrictions and negotiations of space between people reduce opportunities for social contact. This social contact however is essential for our health. Our psyche needs human proximity and our body requires regular contact with the outside world to train its immune system. The constant wearing of masks makes a carefree, everyday social contact even more difficult. Not to mention the obstruction of the respiratory tract, as well as the possibility of developing headaches and skin irritations.[23]
Disinfectants and corona tests unnecessarily interfere with our natural skin flora when used continuously. They also merely scratch the surface of the problem. Vaccines, medications, masks, disinfectants, and corona tests also consume limited resources and continue to pollute the environment. We should finally dare and look the real causes of the problem in the eye.
Sascha Schlüter
Sources
[1] Vaccine adverse reaction articles (substack.com)
[2] Cardiovascular diseases during and after World War II: A comparison of the Federal Republic of Germany with other European countries – ScienceDirect
[3] Lisle, Douglas J. und Alan Goldhamer (2006): The Pleasure Trap. Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness. Healthy Living Publications, S. 47-49
[4] Corona und Übergewicht: Schwere Zeiten | ZEIT ONLINE
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXgoXXgMLio#t=04m51s%20an
[6] Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): How is it transmitted? (who.int)
[7] Corona und Übergewicht: Schwere Zeiten | ZEIT ONLINE
[8] Karl Lauterbach über Imfpflicht, Booster-Impfung und Angriffe auf sein Büro | BILD Live – YouTube
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXgoXXgMLio#t=04m51s%20an
[10] Fasting: Molecular Mechanisms and Clinical Applications: Cell Metabolism
[11] Your Stay at the Center | TrueNorth Health Center (healthpromoting.com)
[12] Our Publications | TrueNorth Health Foundation
[13] Is fasting safe? A chart review of adverse events during medically supervised, water-only fasting – PMC (nih.gov)
[14] Is a loss of appetite a symptom of COVID-19? (joinzoe.com)
[15] Potential Effects of Prolonged Water-Only Fasting Followed by a Whole-Plant-Food Diet on Salty and Sweet Taste Sensitivity and Perceived Intensity, Food Liking, and Dietary Intake – PubMed (nih.gov)
[16] Lisle, Douglas J. und Alan Goldhamer (2006): The Pleasure Trap. Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness. Healthy Living Publications, S. 181-182
[17] siehe u.a. How to Survive a Pandemic | NutritionFacts.org
[18] Bats as putative Zaire ebolavirus reservoir hosts and their habitat suitability in Africa | Scientific Reports (nature.com)
[19] Dangerous Monkey Business | Science | AAAS
[20] Measles virus and rinderpest virus divergence dated to the rise of large cities – PMC (nih.gov)
[21] Allele-specific PCR method based on pncA and oxyR sequences for distinguishing Mycobacterium bovis from Mycobacterium tuberculosis: intraspecific M. bovi pncA sequence polymorphism – PubMed (nih.gov)
[22] Wuhan market was epicentre of pandemic’s start, studies suggest (nature.com)
[23] Advice on the use of masks in the community, during home care and in healthcare settings in the context of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak (who.int)
About The Author
