Dissolving Illusions: After 60 years of working on flu vaccines, they are unable to develop vaccines that reduce mortality rates

In the book ‘Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History’, authors Dr. Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk, provide a meticulously researched and footnoted account, challenging the prevailing narrative that vaccines single-handedly prevented masses of deaths. Their work is an eye-opening exploration of the forgotten history of infectious diseases, vaccination and public health policies.

The book was published in 2013. Ten years later, after more experience and research, the authors released a ‘10th Anniversary Edition’ to which the authors added more than 200 pages, more than 350 references and more charts to challenge traditional medical dogma.  

Dissolving Illusions details facts and figures from long-overlooked medical journals, books, newspapers, and other sources. Using myth-shattering graphs, this book shows that vaccines, antibiotics, and other medical interventions are not responsible for the increase in lifespan and the decline in mortality from infectious diseases. If the medical profession could systematically misinterpret and ignore key historical information, the question must be asked, “What else is ignored and misinterpreted today?” the authors ask.

The book has an accompanying website, ‘Dissolving Illusions’, which provides charts, resources, free chapters and the following overview:

It wasn’t long ago when infections plagued the Western world. Smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, typhoid, diphtheria, whooping cough, and other diseases were once considered a tragic part of life. Starting in the mid-1800s, there was a steady drop in the deaths from all these infectious diseases, decreasing by the mid-1900s to very low levels. The elimination of these diseases is one of the most amazing, yet unsung, public health revolutions in history. That journey from disease cesspool to our modern world is a tale of plagues and famine, crushing poverty and filth, lost cures, individual freedoms versus state might, protests and arrests, and much more.

Dissolving Illusions paints a historic portrait with quotes from the pages of long-overlooked medical journals, books, newspapers, and other sources to reveal a startling history that has been disregarded. With this historic information and originally researched data in the form of myth-shattering graphs, Dissolving Illusions shines new light onto issues that are assumed to be clear-cut and settled long ago.

On Tuesday, Roman Bystrianyk joined PANDA, formerly Pandemics Data & Analytics, to highlight and discuss some of the information in Dissolving Illusions.   

Bystrianyk has been researching the history of diseases and vaccines since 1998. He has an extensive background in health and nutrition as well as a BSc in engineering and an MSc in computer science.

Dissolving Illusions wasn’t just a solo effort, Bystrianyk said.  “There’s a lot of people … a lot of people did a lot of gathering of data, there’s a lot of people that supported me and there’s all these brilliant doctors that have been lost to history that wrote a lot of stuff that was really important,” he said.

Bystrianyk briefly discussed the US data on measles.  The collection of data on measles began in 1900.  By the time a vaccine was rolled out for measles in 1963, the measles mortality rate had already decreased by 98.6%. “The vaccine came in way after the mortality rate had already dropped,” he said.

England began gathering data on measles in 1838. The mortality rate decreases gradually from an initial high and then significantly drops from the 1920s.  From the mid-1900s the measles mortality rate in England is virtually zero.  “They started vaccinating in 1968 in England and by that point, they had almost a 100% [99.8%] decline in mortality rate from measles,” Bystrianyk said. “So, basically, the problem was solved by the time they started vaccinating.”

Displaying graphs of the data for whooping cough, Bystrianyk demonstrated that it was the same – the mortality rate was already very low before the vaccination campaigns. Whooping cough is also known as pertussis or the 100-day cough.

In the US a vaccine for whooping cough was introduced in the late 1940s.  “By that point [there] was already a 92% decrease in mortality,” he said.  “In England, they began vaccinating in 1957 when they already had an almost 100% [99.7%] decline in mortality rate.”

Not only did the vaccines not contribute to reduced mortality but data from Sweden conclusively shows that the whooping cough vaccines were ineffective.  In 1978, examinations showed that 84% of children who were verified to have the pertussis bacteria had previously received three doses of vaccine. 

“[Sweden] deemed the DTP [diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis] vaccine ineffective and they were concerned about its safety so they discontinued vaccination in 1979,” Bystrianyk said.  In the following 17 years, there was no increase in the whooping cough mortality rate.  “So, despite having no vaccination programme, there was no problem in Sweden.”  From 1981 to 1993, 8 children were recorded as dying from pertussis, 0.6 children per year.  The odds of children dying from whooping cough in Sweden when there was no national vaccination programme were 1 in 13 million.

Bystrianyk also demonstrated that scarlet fever, typhoid, and tuberculosis (“TB”) show the same pattern of mortality decline before a vaccine is introduced. “The [vaccines] came in well after the majority of the problem has been solved,” he said. 

Influenza (“flu”) shows a similar pattern.  The US began vaccinating for flu in the late 1970s.  By this time, there had already been a 90% decrease in the flu mortality rate.  Showing a graph representing flu data in the US since national vaccination programmes began Bystrianyk said, “There’s no real decrease in death rate [from the flu] after 40 years of vaccination.”

A 2023 paper published in Cell Host & Microbe, for which Anthony Fauci was a co-author, stated:

As of 2022, after more than 60 years of experience with influenza vaccines, very little improvement in vaccine prevention of infection has been noted. As pointed out decades ago, and still true today, the rates of effectiveness of our best approved influenza vaccines would be inadequate for licensure for most other vaccine-preventable diseases. Even decades-long efforts to develop better, so-called “universal” influenza vaccines – vaccines that would create more broadly protective immunity, preferably lasting over longer time periods – have not yet resulted in next-generation, broadly protective vaccines, although a large number of experimental vaccines are in preclinical or early clinical development.

Rethinking next-generation vaccines for coronaviruses, influenzaviruses, and other respiratory viruses, Cell Host & Microbe, 11 January 2023

“These vaccines don’t work in reducing mortality rates.  They’re still working on it after 60 years,” Bystrianyk said.

Sources mentioned in the video above: