Re: The claim viruses aren’t real or contagious

… I respectfully beg to differ.

Of the 4 members of the Rice family, three of us got sick with the same symptoms at the same time in January 2020. Does this mean we were infected by a contagious virus, perhaps “early Covid? I say, perhaps. We all had “something” that made us feel rotten and we all tested negative for the flu.

Readers are probably familiar with the theory or assertion that Covid was not caused by a “virus” or that viruses either don’t exist or aren’t contagious (meaning they don’t cause other people to become “sick.”)

Citizens who think this are often among the most adamant or militant posters on the web and are definitely not shy about sharing their opinion or attacking those who disagree with their view. 

Note: Personally, I’m “pro-free-speech” and believe anyone should be able to post their thoughts whether I agree with them or not. I’d be a hypocrite if I sought to silence people who hold counter views … as just about every one of my articles develops a premise that challenges conventional wisdom (aka the “authorized” narrative).

This caveat offered, I do think viruses exist and I do think they can be contagious and cause many people to get sick at roughly the same time.

The Bill Rice, Jr./Troy, Alabama case study …

To support this belief, I can cite personal observations from January 2020 when I became sick with “flu symptoms,” symptoms that also largely mirror the signature “Covid symptoms.” 

What follows is a timeline and summary of many people in my close network of contacts who also got sick at roughly the same time.

On or around January 20, 2020, I checked my second grade daughter, Maggie, out of school after the school nurse called and said she was sick. Maggie was indeed sick, with a fever, sore throat, fatigue, body aches, etc.

That night, I left Maggie at home with her mother and my son Jack and I attended a Troy University basketball game.

By the second half of the basketball game, I felt the “flu” or a “bug” rapidly coming on, which prompted me to leave the game early. I could tell a nasty sore throat was in my future and, walking back to the car, I was already experiencing chills.

By 3 a.m. I was very sick, with high fever, chills, strange dreams, body aches and was beginning to have unusually violent coughing fits. For the next week, I rarely got out of bed.

On about Day 4 of my illness, I sucked it up and took the trash from the kitchen to the outdoor canister - a walk of about 10 yards. This exertion left me so winded I had to sit down on the front steps to catch my breath.

If my memory or timeline is accurate, the day before I checked Maggie out of school, I attended a special event at the local high school. A senior student, who sufferers from severe Tourettes, was signing a golf scholarship. Since I was writing a feature story on this student, I attended the college scholarship signing ceremony. (The story was later published by Golf magazine).

At the event, I spent a great deal of time talking to Griff, the fantastic golfer, as well as his father and a mutual friend. I later learned all three people got sick shortly after, which makes me think I might have infected these friends.

I also later learned that many students in Maggie’s class - maybe 8 of 24 students - became sick at roughly the same time. Also, Maggie’s teacher became very sick and was out of school for a week and, as I learned, all four of this teacher’s children became sick at the same time.

When I was bedridden for a week, my wife - then an English teacher at Charles Henderson High School - came home from school one day and told me that “half” the students of one of her four classes were out sick. Since my wife had about 30 students in a class, this would be 15 of 30 students.

Carrie also told me the school “seemed like a ghost town” and the principal couldn’t recruit enough substitutes to cover for the teachers who had called in sick.

I don’t know how many CHHS students and teachers missed school due to illness during this time span, but my guess is that this figure is probably at least 125 people in a high school with approximately 600 students.

My son also became sick a week or so after I was sick (the symptoms of Jack and Maggie were not nearly as severe as mine).

From this micro example, I’m confident that hundreds of students and teachers in two local schools were sick at the same time I was and at least two adult friends who attended the golf scholarship event.

The birth of a contrarian hypothesis …

By April 2020, I’d formulated my hypothesis that maybe Covid was spreading earlier than we’d been told by the experts. Since I was a freelance journalist, I decided to research this hypothesis and started doing some research and interviews.

At the time, I wasn’t banned from Facebook, which - sans censorship - can actually be a wonderful research tool. I made a Facebook post asking my followers to contact me if they or a family member think they might have had “early Covid.” (I received a list of more than 60 names of people who did think this was possible).

I also learned at least five school systems in Alabama had shut down because of illness. One of these school systems was Opp City Schools, which is about 50 miles south of Troy.

It turns out superintendents make these announcements on Facebook, which generates many comments of other people talking about this circulating “virus” or “flu bug.”

I ended up reading several Facebook threads and found many posts from parents in surrounding towns who confirmed the same “bug” was rampant in their towns and their children’s schools as well. 

More than one parent posted they wished their superintendent had also shut down their children’s schools. For example, Brittany Adams wrote:

“(I) really wish Florala Elementary would close as well; my son got it … in turn has got my whole house sick.” (emphasis added).

I also learned from our region’s largest newspaper, The Dothan Eagle, that the “flu” was at perhaps record levels in Southeast Alabama, with 12.6 percent of hospital or doctors’ visits in late January/early February 2020 attributed to ILI (Influenza Like Illness.)

That is, what I observed in Troy was happening throughout the Southeast corner of Alabama.

These data points, news stories and Facebook comments made me think a “virus” had indeed been “spreading.”

More confirmation from my doctor and a healthcare administrator …

I rarely go to the doctor, but when I was sick with this “bug” in late January 2020, I felt so terrible I did go to Southeast Alabama Rural Health Associates (SARHA), a medical clinic based in Troy that serves 12 counties in our part of the state.

Like my two children, I was given a flu test, which came back “negative.”

I later interviewed two friends who work for SARHA, a senior administrator and the clinic’s director of medicine (my personal doctor).

The administrator confirmed that SARHA was inundated with patients in December 2019 and late January/early February 2020. She also shared with me that surprisingly few patients were testing positive for flu.

“We thought something must be wrong with the flu tests,” she told me.

My doctor told me his “gut instinct” was that Covid was spreading weeks or months earlier than the nation was told by the CDC and the public health experts.

The same thing was happening throughout the South …

In my “early spread” research, one revelation that’s striking to me and has received virtually no media attention is that ILI percentages were above the expected “baseline” beginning in November 2019. Indeed, ILI was categorized by the CDC as  “widespread” and “severe” across five Deep South states (from Texas to Georgia).

As I pointed out in later articles, ILI in the state of Georgia was 12.2 percent in late December 2019. (This is a huge percentage, approximately five times greater than the “baseline” percentage).

Five of these states are not like the others. Was this the first wave of early Covid?

Skip forward 11 weeks and 44 states had ILI activity at the “Highest” level. I’m a contrarian, but I maintain this could be a picture of “virus spread” - before “official Covid” arrived in America in March.

The CDC headquarters was Ground Zero of Early Covid …

It belatedly occurred to me that the CDC is located in Atlanta, Georgia, which means many CDC employees must have been “out sick” - with Covid symptoms - even before the “Wuhan outbreak.”

I later emailed a member of the CDC media affairs team and asked him if he remembers a large number of his co-workers who were out sick in November, December or January. (This person did not respond to my query, which I consider a “tell.”)

I was probably the only journalist in America who posed this question, which I did to highlight the fact that someone at the CDC should have seriously considered the possibility this virus was “spreading” in America even before the world had heard of a novel corona virus.

After all, the CDC compiles the “flu test” data and weekly ILI national surveillance reports. For me at least, it’s impossible to believe nobody at this agency considered the possibility Covid might have already spread across the country - especially in these Southern states.

Only one antibody test of archived blood …

In fact, the easiest scientific test the CDC could have performed to gauge “early prevalence” would have been administering Covid antibody tests in March or April 2020 to its own employees.

As I’ve written ad nauseam, the CDC did commission ONE antibody study of “archived blood” (from blood donors who donated specimens to the Red Cross in December 2019 and January 2020). However, these specimens came from nine states - but no states where ILI was “severe” and “widespread” as early as November 2019 - namely the Deep South states, including Alabama and Georgia.

Also, the CDC didn’t publish these results until November 30, 2020 - almost a year after the blood had been collected. This prompts the question: How long does it take to test 7,000 units of blood for antibodies?

As I’ve also written 100 times, my theory is that public health officials simply do not investigate anything they do not want to “confirm.”

A quick summary …

I know large numbers of people in my hometown - and surrounding towns - were definitely sick with “something” in the fall and winter of 2019-2020 before Covid was supposed to even be in America.

I also know large swaths of people got sick at the same time, which leads me to conclude that some virus (Covid or otherwise) was indeed “contagious.”

To try to quantify this assertion:

- 75 percent of the people in my household got sick at the same time.

- 50 percent of students in one of my wife’s English classes got sick at the same time.

- At least 33 percent of students in Maggie’s 2nd grade class (plus her teacher) got sick at the same time.

Furthermore, whatever made us sick wasn’t “isolated” to Troy as throngs of people were getting sick throughout SE Alabama and all the Deep South states in the same three to four-month time frame.

(*** If you share an article, it spreads - perhaps like a virus ***)

If viruses don’t exist, what causes so many people to get sick at the same time?

Regarding those who vehemently assert that viruses don’t exist or cause sicknesses, my first question is: “Okay, what is causing these people to get sick?”

I must say I’ve never got an answer I find convincing or persuasive.

Most people don’t answer this question, but some say it might be 5-G radiation or toxins in the air or fungi or bacteria.

My next question is why does 5-G radiation or environmental toxins suddenly sweep through a given household, school or business all at the same time?

Outbreaks of flu didn’t begin in the 20th Century …

I also think I’m correct in observing that people were getting sick in the cold-and-flu months even before we had a CDC, cell phone towers or smoke stacks.

For example, I bet there were a couple of times that members of the Ingalls’ family on “Little House on the Prairie” all got sick at the same time, probably at the same time as many of their neighbors in Walnut Grove.

We know these sicknesses couldn’t have been caused by 5-G radiation or the seeding of clouds or from toxins on food Mrs. Ingalls bought at the local grocery store chain.

That is, I allow it’s possible the “virus” theory has been wrong all along (which, after all, wouldn’t be the first accepted medical theory that was later debunked). 

However, I haven’t seen this group put forth a convincing theory on what was/is causing these periodic and recurring outbreaks of “flu-like” illnesses - for thousands of years.

Until I hear a more convincing theory, I’m going to stick to my guns and continue to think that viruses do exist; they often are “contagious” and they do make clusters of people “sick.”

I’m not 100-percent sure the “virus” I had in January 2020 was Covid, but (IMO) whatever it was that made me sick was definitely spreading to other people (e.g. it was “contagious”) … and I didn’t imagine it.

(I doubt this story will add subscribers from the “no-virus” community, but I’ve been meaning to address this subject - which I don’t think should be this volatile - for a while now.)

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