Atticus Fox

I don’t think the 2020 pandemic was real. I think it was an invention of the Establishment.

I have touched on how the Establishment could have gone about such a thing before.

One of the reasons I don’t think Covid19 exists is that I am not convinced by what I have learnt about virology since 2020. Virology seems to be built on very weak foundations and circular reasoning. I will describe what I have learnt and you can judge for yourselves.

My position is that modern virology is built on the assumption that viruses exist, rather than directly proving their existence. It seems that many laboratory techniques – including cell culture, electron microscopy, PCR, immunological assays, and metagenomic sequencing – are interpreted within a framework that already presupposes the presence of viruses.

A red flag is to be observed in cell culture experiments, where the same observation of cytopathic effects (CPE) – cell die-off in virus cultures – has been observed in virus-free cultures. Thus, there is a growing school of thought – of which, I am a member – that such CPE might be the result of the laboratory procedures themselves – such as reducing nutrients and adding antibiotics – rather than from viruses.

Furthermore, many published studies fail to include appropriate negative control experiments to distinguish between these possibilities.
My understanding of these criticisms come from a number of critics of mainstream virology, such as Mike Yeadon, Jamie Andrews, Mark Bailey, and Christine Massey. These authors argue that:

• Electron microscope images leverage prior assumptions and interpretation rather than providing direct proof of viruses.

• PCR testing depends on reference genomes that were themselves derived from cell-culture experiments, making the process circular.

• Standard “virus isolation” protocols involve mixing patient samples with cultured cells and other substances rather than physically purifying viral particles.

• Freedom of Information requests have failed to uncover records demonstrating purified viruses according to a strict definition of isolation.

The original rules of virology were based on Koch’s Postulates, a set of principles devised by   Robert Koch, which required an infectious agent to be found, isolated, shown to cause disease, and found again.

Modern virology now refuses to abide by Koch’s Postulates because, they argue, viruses are too small and biologically different to satisfy the original postulates. Viruses are no longer required to be isolated as independent organisms.

Another red flag is that a virus has never been proven to cause disease in a healthy host.  Instead, because of the proposed nature of viruses, it was accepted that viral causation can only be inferred.

In the UK, The Common Cold Unit in Salisbury produced 40 years worth of data that failed to demonstrate natural human contagion. In the early 20th century extensive testing was performed on US army bases to study the transmission of Spanish Flu. Transmission of the most deadly transmitted virus in human history proved to be impossible under lab conditions.

https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/spread-of-spanish-flu-was-never-experimentally-confirmed-9f91b37c4dd8

Finally, it is clear that virological evidence is circular: laboratory tests detect viruses based on assumptions and reference materials that themselves depend on earlier cell-culture methods. All of the above means that there is very little evidence proving that viruses exist. I would say viruses have never been conclusively demonstrated according to the criteria they consider necessary.

Most virologists argue that no single technique is relied upon in virus isolation; rather, evidence from multiple independent methods – including virus purification, electron microscopy, genome sequencing, infectivity studies, serology, and epidemiology – provides mutually reinforcing evidence for the existence and role of viruses. However, all of these methods pre-suppose the existence of viruses. To my mind, virologists have lots of clues that viruses might exist but no evidence so, instead, the virologists’ argument is that all the little clues add up to the evidence. I’m not convinced. 

Let me take you through the process that virologists call ‘isolation’:

When virologists say they “isolate” a virus, they mean extracting the part of the sample that they think contains the virus and showing that it can replicate on its own in suitable cells and destroy those cells – create CPE – in the process. The process is methodical but conceptually straightforward. Here’s the typical workflow in plain language:

1. Collect a sample
Scientists start with material from an infected source, such as:
• Blood
• Nasal or throat swab
• Tissue sample
• Saliva or other bodily fluid
This sample contains many things: human cells, bacteria, debris, and possibly virus particles.
2. Remove larger contaminants
The sample is processed to get rid of larger material.
Common steps include:
• Filtering through very small filters (viruses are tiny, so they pass through while cells and bacteria are trapped).
• Centrifuging (spinning at high speed) so heavier debris settles out. Virologists agree how heavy viruses are so they only extract the material from the centrifuge that matches their pre-conceptions for viral mass.
After this step, the liquid should mainly contain very small particles, including any viruses. [AF: There’s an assumption here!]
3. Add the sample to living cells
Viruses cannot reproduce on their own – they must infect living cells. So researchers place the processed sample onto cultured cells in a laboratory dish. These might be:
• Monkey kidney cells
• Human lung cells
• Other cell lines that viruses commonly infect
The cells are kept alive in nutrient liquid inside incubators. The nutrient liquid is typically Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) which is a growth medium.

However, the protocols for Sars Cov2 isolation as stipulated by the European Center For Disease Control demonstrate that upon infection of the culture the nutrient medium to feed the Cell Line may be decreased from standard 10% Fetal Bovine Serum Growth medium to a starvation medium of 2%.

Virus replication is measured by observation of CPE. However, lowering the amounts of FBS – the growth medium – also causes CPE. So, they reduce the growth medium – the food – to ‘starvation’ levels and the cells die-off and virologists point and say “that is proof of a virus”.

Antibiotics – typically Penicillin and Streptomycin – will also be added at this stage. It is added to the culture medium to help prevent bacterial contamination. However, antibiotics also cause CPE.

4. Watch for signs of infection
If a virus is present and able to infect those cells, it will start multiplying.
Scientists look for cytopathic effects, meaning visible damage to the cells, such as:
Cells rounding up
Cells detaching from the dish
Cells dying in clusters
These changes ‘suggest’ a virus is replicating, according to virologists.

5. Purify the virus
Once infection is confirmed, the virus-containing fluid is collected.
Further purification can include:
Repeated cell infection cycles (to amplify the virus)
Ultracentrifugation to concentrate virus particles
Density gradients that separate particles by weight. [AF: Again, assumptions about the weight of a virus come into play here].
At this stage, the ‘virus’ population becomes much cleaner.

‘I found that purification and identification elements of this technique relied on prior selection, and agreement with genomic and immunological models – meaning the images only make sense once those assumptions are already in place.’ – Jamie Andrews

6. Confirm the virus identity
Scientists then confirm what virus they have ‘found’ using several tools:
• Electron microscopy to see virus particles.
• PCR or sequencing to read viral genetic material.
• Antibody tests to see if known antibodies bind to it.
This verifies to virologists that the isolated agent is a specific virus.

‘I learned that the images we see in textbooks are cleaned up high contrast images, and what microscopists actually have to work with is a soup of variegated cell material. Areas of interest can be magnified to find particles that correspond to the size and shape of known viruses, and then this data is triangulated using other (model based) identification techniques.’ – Jamie Andrews

So, the tests suggest that a virus has been found. At this point, good lab practise would set up a control test: would the same steps NOT lead to CPE if started with a cell culture that was guaranteed to be virus free? If CPE is observed in the ‘virus’ sample but not in the ‘non-virus’ sample, then, clearly, something in the virus sample is causing CPE. Such a control experiment is standard when trying to prove cause and effect. I’ll quote Dr Mike Yeadon here as his incredulity comes across very well:

‘…the principal way of demonstrating the pathological properties of viruses rests entirely on a single technique. That is, addition of suspect samples to cells in culture, whereupon the cells begin to die, the so-called “cytopathic effect” or CPE. Cell die-off is presented as evidence of a virus in the culture. This next part is so unbelievable that I rejected it for over two years after I was told about it. CPE occurs not because a clinical sample, thought to contain a virus was added, but because the researchers, following a 70 year old recipe, radically reduce the growth factors necessary to keep the cells alive and add high concentrations of antibiotics (ostensibly to retain bacterial sterility). Antibiotics are known to cause cell die-off. You may be thinking “This cannot be right because, if it was, the control leg of such a study would report CPE even with no putative pathogen”. Here’s the shock. None of the papers reporting, for example, “The isolation of SARS-CoV-2” EVER include these controls. What this means is that, uniquely in “virology”, the scientific editors & peer reviewers have become accustomed to NOT expecting to see control legs and results. Obviously this is fraud. But, does it matter?’

‘Over the last couple of years, Jamie Andrews has gone back to the root of this central method in virology and, using Contract Research Organizations, performed the control studies above. In every case, when he looked at the cells after growth factor dilution and addition of antibiotics, he sees the cells begin to die off, that is, CPE occurs. He’s repeatedly confirmed that it’s the protocol  and not the purported “virus” which causes cells to die. What this shows is that the most important technique for “confirming the cytotoxic effect of viruses” is deliberate fraud and has been since the first time it was reported on in the 1950s. On that occasion a Nobel Prize was awarded for this sloppy science.’

This piece from Jamie Andrews describe the control experiments he has run (warning: it’s quite technical) :

https://open.substack.com/pub/controlstudies/p/cell-culture-isolation-control-experiment?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1csxsa

Extract from Conclusion from above link:

‘The unanimous results in the breakdown of the Cell Line in the test cultures occurred at the same speed, to the same severity and included all of the distinguishing morphological features of CPE observed in the cross referenced papers. According to The American Society of Microbiology any CPE observed in <5days of incubation is indicative of viral presence and replication.’

Another article describing the work commissioned by Jamie Andrews to conduct, document and image a true Negative Control of the Cell Culture Isolation Protocol, this time for Sars Cov 2 virus:

https://open.substack.com/pub/controlstudies/p/controls2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1csxsa

Article contains this:

‘Cell Culture Isolation Protocol  is the Gold Standard procedure for isolating viruses’. The protocols for Sars Cov 2 Isolation as stipulated by the European Centre for Disease Control: Standard laboratory protocols for Sars Cov 2 characterization demonstrate that on Infection of the culture the nutrient medium to feed the Cell Line may be decreased from standard 10% Fetal Bovine Serum Growth medium to a starvation medium of 2%. As underlined in the method above, color me shocked they followed the protocol of the WHO certified manual the CLSI M4A1 and starved the cells in 2% FBS and lied and called it “Maintenance Medium”. For new readers to the project I will point out this is the exact mechanism that we demonstrated unanimously in our control experiments which cause the Cytopathic Effect observed in a cell line which Virologists fraudulently claim is evidence of the presence of a pathogen.’

Also, this extract from the Conclusion:

‘It is clear from these comprehensive studies that the Gold Standard in viral Isolation is not a valid method and renders the downstream BioChemical assays used to indicate Viral presence as invalid given that no Purified or Isolated distinct Biological particle has been produced to benchmark against as a Gold Standard.’

More evidence disproving viruses from Jamie Andrews:

https://open.substack.com/pub/controlstudies/p/we-have-proved-viruses-dont-exist?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1csxsa

Some more information from virus-sceptics I have unearthed during my research that you might want to pursue:

Jamie Andrews on the renal toxins added to kidney cells: ‘They took what they believed to be “Isolated” virus : A completely unregulated concoction knowingly containing Monkey Kidney cells and Numerous Antibiotics such as Amphoterecin and Gentomicin (Known renal toxins). It could however have anything else in it as Trial “medicine” is given exemption for regulation.’ (My emphasis).

From p8 of ‘A Farewell to Virology’ by Dr Mark Bailey: ‘when virologists want to isolate a virus from a sample they’ll take the sample or some part of it and add it to some cells – usually ones that are relatively easy to grow in the lab – and then look to see if the cells die and/or if there are any virus particles released into the liquid nutrient bath the cells are growing in.
It is unclear if Wiles is implying that the “virus isolate” is established by: (a) the taking of the sample, (b) seeing some cells die in vitro, (c) the release of claimed “virus particles” in the tissue culture, or (d) all or some combination of these elements. However, nothing she
described requires the existence of viruses — it is a game of deception, whether realised or not. It simply involves the assertion that a virus was in the sample, blaming the breakdown of experimentally stressed cells in the test tube on the imagined virus, and then declaring that some of the vesicles (whose biological composition and function were not established) were the viruses.’

From Unbekoming: ‘The CDC names three methods by which Ebola is “isolated.” Method one: a crude human sample is mixed with monkey kidney cells (typically Vero cells, derived from African green monkey kidney) to see if the cells react. Method two: the sample is injected into the brains and abdomens of baby mice to see if it kills them. Method three: the sample is injected into the abdomens of young guinea pigs to see if it kills them. Each procedure adds material rather than separating it. The patient sample is combined with monkey kidney cells, broad-spectrum antibiotics (used to prevent bacterial contamination, often nephrotoxic to the very kidney cells being used), antifungals (often also kidney-toxic), fetal bovine serum, and trypsin. The mixture is then observed for what virologists call cytopathic effects — the breakdown of the cells — and the breakdown is attributed to a virus. The control experiment that would distinguish the supposed virus from the toxic effects of the procedure itself — performing the same steps with no patient sample, to see whether the cells break down anyway — is not standardly performed. When John Enders and Thomas Peebles performed an analogous control experiment in 1954 during their measles work, the control cells broke down indistinguishably from the inoculated cells. They admitted in their own paper that they could not distinguish the supposed virus from whatever cytopathic agent was already present in the culture. It has only been supplemented by PCR, a tool that detects short genetic sequences and is matched against a reference genome that was itself assembled from cell-culture material of the kind just described. The circle closes on itself. The virus is what the test detects. The test detects what the virus is said to contain. The actual particle, purified directly from a sick person’s bodily fluid and shown to cause disease in a healthy host through controlled experiment, has never been demonstrated.‘ (My emphasis).

(Enders, J., and Peebles, T., “Propagation in tissue cultures of cytopathogenic agents from patients with measles,” Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, 1954; see also Daniel Roytas, Can You Catch a Cold? and Tom Cowan, The Contagion Myth.)

The Canadian researcher Christine Massey has submitted Freedom of Information requests to government agencies around the world seeking records of the isolation and purification of various alleged viruses, with isolation defined as physical separation of the particle from other material sufficient to characterise it and demonstrate it causes disease.

In response to her March 2021 request, the CDC informed her that a search of its records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to her request regarding Ebola virus.¹ Seven other FOI requests to various national agencies have returned the same answer. No records exist. The Public Health Agency of Canada acknowledged in its response that the isolation of a virus cannot be completed without the use of another medium — that is, the agency cannot produce evidence of isolation in the conventional scientific sense because what virology calls isolation does not involve separating the virus from anything.²

The diagnostic methodology — Vero monkey kidney cell culture, antibody tests of admitted doubtful specificity, PCR matched to never-isolated reference material — is circular by the regulatory agencies’ own descriptions.

1. CDC FOIA response to Christine Massey, March 2021; archived at fluoridefreepeel.ca.

2. Public Health Agency of Canada FOIA response to Christine Massey, December 2021.

All of the above is why I am a ‘virus sceptic’.

Plus, think of how useful viruses are to the Establishment. C19 virus allowed them to lock us all down for 2 years.

Bird flu has enabled them to license all domestic and farm birds and performed controlled genocides from time to time.

Bovine TB has allowed further culls of animals.

Viruses have allowed for a massively increasing schedule of vaccinations in children.

They threaten us with other viruses on a regular basis – hantavirus; HPV; Ebola; Meningitis etc etc.