If viruses don’t exist, then how can we see them?

Guest Post by Steve Kirsch

People who claim “viruses do not exist” will have a tough time explaining these two papers. And a third paper shows all of Koch’s postulates for SARS-CoV-2 published in a top medical journal. Whoops!

Executive summary

This will be my last post on the topic of whether the virus exists.

The answer is yes.

People who think there are no viruses or that SARS-CoV-2 isn’t a virus are badly misinformed.

I’ve offered to bet $1M to anyone who thinks otherwise, but sadly there were no takers.

Why did I spend so much time on this?

A large number of people have been successfully duped into believing viruses and virology are scams.

But this can easily be disproved by science. VERY easily. The virology explanation fits the facts. Their “viruses don’t exist” hypothesis leaves everything unexplained. It couldn’t be simpler.

Yet the virus deniers cannot be moved off “the virus has to be isolated based on a layman’s definition of “isolate” or it doesn’t exist.” This is stupid. That’s not how science works.

Yet, when presented with the facts, people reject them and stick with their beliefs.

The vaccines are a much more complex issue because the data is more complicated.

If we can figure out how to red-pill the people who are bought into the “there is no virus” story, then we may have a technique to red-pill people who think the vaccines are safe.

The problem I have with the vaccine crowd is that they refuse even to engage in dialog. The virus deniers are happy to engage in dialog, but just as dogmatic in their beliefs. So the virus debate allowed me to engage in changing people’s beliefs on a small scale. It was pretty eye opening as I expected this to be much easier than it appeared.

Do I have any doubts I got it wrong? Nope.

The fact that nobody will take my money suggests that they have no conviction in their beliefs. Yet, even without that conviction, it appears that nothing will change their minds. That was counter-intuitive to me.

If you were a virus denier and you have now changed your mind, please indicate that in the comments. I bet the number changed is near zero which suggests to me that logical arguments and data are not persuasive.

It reinforces the old Mark Twain quote:

It’s Easier To Fool People Than To Convince Them That They’ve Been Fooled.

And yes, you were fooled by that because Mark Twain never said that. Think I’m kidding? Here’s the reference.

What did I learn

1. No amount of evidence and explanation will make a difference to people dug in their beliefs, even if the arguments are simple and clear. The evidence for viruses is overwhelming: it fits all the observed data, bacteriophages have been isolated, there is a peer reviewed paper published in Nature proving Koch’s postulates, larger viruses can be observed under an optical microscope, there is no alternate hypothesis that fits the observations. None of that makes a difference to people bought into that narrative.
2. People who promote false views invariably shy away from debates. Some people are brave enough to engage, but when the going gets tough, they disengage. We saw this with Patrick Gunnels where as soon as I pointed out bacteriophages are viruses he told me never to contact him again.
3. People who promote false views will never risk any money in a challenge that is adjudicated.
4. The method used to mislead people is simple: Establish credibility in some area where you are actually telling the truth. Then you get a loyal following. Then you spin a false story that SOUNDS plausible but where people have limited expertise. So you “teach” people that if the virus hasn’t be isolated, it doesn’t exist. Or that you can get any genetic sequence you want because tiny pieces of RNA can be assembled into anything. Or that Sanger sequencing is unreliable. So you are perceived as an “educator” by leveraging the credibility you previously achieved. Once people are locked in to the narrative, it’s hard to pull them out.
5. It’s even more effective if you produce an entertaining video about it such as this Sam Bailey video on virology where she positions herself as the expert in the field and she’s telling you what is REALLY going on. It promotes her book. By mixing in snippets of the truth (like that the PCR test being inaccurate but without telling you the whole story), she has just enough seemingly credible content that she position herself as the expert who is going to enlighten you with the magician’s secrets! Pay no attention what virologists tell you! They are misleading you! This method works remarkably well. Even though she’s misleading everyone, she gets comments like this one (with 186 likes): “Outstanding. You might be the most dangerous person to the orthodox medical establishment in existence. Bravo. I have such a deep respect for what you are doing.” Wow. I didn’t read all the comments, but they appeared all to be glowing! At this point, her followers are so loyal that she could debate us, lose badly on every single point, and her followers will believe she won the debate. I’m totally serious about that.
6. The previous steps work remarkably well due to the Dunning-Kruger effect. The people who you educated now are “experts” and look down on people who are the real experts in the field. Masks are a good example where wearing people are absolutely convinced that they are the “smart” ones in the crowd even though they’ve never read any of the clinical trial data.

So although I couldn’t shift anyone’s thinking as per 1, at least I verified that 2 – 3 hold as a way to assess truth and that 4 is true for any deception.

Bottom line: It’s Easier To Fool People Than To Convince Them That They’ve Been Fooled.

Two papers show viruses that are large enough to be seen with an optical microscope

If viruses don’t exist, how can we see them?

These two papers show recently discovered viruses that are big enough to see and which have distinct shapes that can be easily observed:

1. Thirty-thousand-year-old distant relative of giant icosahedral DNA viruses with a pandoravirus morphology
2. The rapidly expanding universe of giant viruses: Mimivirus, Pandoravirus, Pithovirus and Mollivirus. The image above shows light microscope and electron microscope images of the same virus.

If you think these papers are fake, the burden of proof is on you to show evidence of fakery. Generally, fakery doesn’t last too long in top journals, e.g., the faked HCQ paper in the Lancet. Baseless accusations won’t cut it with my readers. If you have proof either of these papers were faked, let’s see the proof.

Koch’s postulates have been satisfied for SARS-CoV-2

Not only can you see viruses, but Koch’s postulates have been satisfied for the SARS-CoV-2 virus in this paper and the results were published in Nature:

Our results demonstrate the pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 in mice, which—together with previous clinical studies1—completely satisfies Koch’s postulates7 and confirms that SARS-CoV-2 is the pathogen responsible for COVID-19.

Of course, Massey et al. have a different interpretation of Koch’s postulates that is difficult, time consuming and expensive to meet, so they would claim that it doesn’t meet THEIR interpretation of Koch’s postulates.

They flatly refuse to debate any of us on this issue, bet or no bet. They can’t argue it’s a waste of their time because we’ll pay them $1M if they are right. That’s an opportunity. Why pass on it? Answer: because they know they would lose.

P.S. I’d ask Tom Cowan, Christine Massey, Mark Bailey, etc. about this but none of them want to talk to me.

The virus has been sequenced

There are thousands of COVID variants.

I used the S gene codons from this Wuhan variant.

Here’s the BLAST search result:

They will tell you gene sequencing is random and you can get anything you want, but clearly some sequences were identical, others had slight mutations in the S gene. But it only matched SARS-CoV-2.

How do we know that viruses exist? 100 years worth of experiments, that’s how!

These articles show how you can use “science” to prove that viruses exist.

How? Simple. The data observed over the past 100 years is a perfect fit to the “viruses exists” hypothesis than the null hypothesis. It’s no more complicated than that.

However, the above is difficult for people to understand that science works just like a courtroom in weighing evidence against a “he did it” vs. “he didn’t do it” hypothesis. In a court room, the jury would never say, “In order to prove he did it, you’d have to isolate the murder weapon” or “you’d have to see a video of him committing the crime.”

Reader comment

From Don Newmeyer:

For a cell biologist like myself, this is an especially tedious and almost pointless debate. People have been studying these viruses for decades, and the scientific community would certainly have raised doubts if there had been any. We argue about everything that’s not firmly nailed down. (The only exception is the politics-driven monomania of late.) I wonder if the virus deniers are actually so numerous, or just a vocal minority.

Answer: Just a vocal minority who don’t even have the courage to even bet $100 that they are right. They have a total lack of conviction in their beliefs. They won’t show up for any debate and use ad hominem attacks as their excuse for avoiding defending their position.

Read my articles for more info

Here are some of the articles I’ve written (and one by Jeff Green):

1. The very disingenuous “Settling the virus debate” challenge
2. Settling the virus debate
3. Is there a virus? (Patrick Gunnels admits bacteriophages have been isolated. whoops!)
4. Has the virus been isolated? Yes, but not to “their” specs explaining how Koch’s postulates are obsolete.
5. I bet $1M a virus exists. Why aren’t they accepting my bet? No takers!
6. Does anyone want to debate

Articles written by others

1. Challenge to Christine Massey (by Jeff Green). It’s pretty astounding. I’ll leave it at that. Jeff couldn’t make any headway either. Nobody can. You are arguing science with people who believe in religion.
2. Thoughts on the existence of viruses and the follow-up article

The “Settling the Virus Debate” challenge

We accepted their “challenge” and offered to do the work they specified. They refused and went into ad hominem attacks. After all, that is how science works.

They have $500K. They could EASILY fund their challenge and do it themselves. Why don’t they? We don’t know that because they won’t answer that question.

If the virus did exist, you’d think that at least one person would be accepting my $1M bet on the matter. You only need $200K to accept, a sum that Christine Massey says they have. There are currently no takers to my bet. Why wouldn’t Christine Massey and her friends accept? Because they know they will lose.

The mastermind behind the challenge is Tom Cowan. He’s not a scientist. He told people that 5G causes COVID. I don’t understand how anyone can take him seriously. Tom, so why was there no COVID in South Korea (which was the first country to massively roll out 5G) until just recently? He refuses to answer that simple question. That’s why he doesn’t want to talk to me; it would look bad if his followers saw how ridiculous his claims are. No legitimate scientist would ever make such an unfounded claim.

See The very disingenuous “Settling the virus debate” challenge for more information.

They have no alternate hypothesis to explain the data that is on the table

Generally, when you challenge an established hypothesis, you do that by presenting an alternative hypothesis that is a better fit to explain all the data (in this case, gathered over the past 100 years). They cannot even explain simple things like how my wife got COVID and then I got it 5 days later. Both of us have been virus free for the entire pandemic. So what caused the COVID antigen tests to go positive? Their alternative hypothesis is “well, we don’t know. It could have been 5G or maybe too much junk food.”

If they don’t accept my bet, this will be my last post on this topic

I have more important things to do with my time than waste more time on this.

I’ve already written 6 articles on the topic. I’ve beat the horse to death.

If you don’t get it, I’m sorry.

If you think I’m dense for not believing Sam Bailey, you are entitled to your opinion. You aren’t going to change my mind at this point. I’ve given them hours and they have no alternate hypothesis that is anywhere even close to credible. And you don’t really believe what Sam Bailey says or you’d accept one of my bets or offer one of your own as described in the term sheet.

Tom Cowan is the “mastermind” behind the challenge and Cowan isn’t a scientist. Their challenge is ridiculous. We have 100 years of data. We don’t need more data and especially data that are specified by a team led by a doctor who has had his medical license revoked and cannot answer a simple question about his 5G hypothesis. Is that the best they could find to lead such an important effort?

At this point, this is beating a dead horse.

I’ve written 6 Substacks on this (see above), and none of these people will debate me, even after extreme monetary incentives to do so.

At this point, if any of them think I’m wrong and are serious about settling the issue, they should accept one of my bets to prove that they are serious and I’ll be happy to engage and we can have a meaningful discussion.

They have more than enough money to do that (they have $500K and my bet minimum is $200K). Who wouldn’t want to double their money in 6 hours?