WHAT DOES THE WORD "VIRUS" MEAN?

Why Mees Baaijen's claims about virology are meaningless.

Dear Nevermorons

Well, folks, looks like I was wrong again!

I thought that the amazing book Can You Catch a Cold?, written by Daniel Roytas, had essentially ended the debate about whether or not viruses exist.

Turns out that I spoke too soon!

Over the past three months, Mees Baaijen has unleashed a deluge of posts in which he attempts to convince his readers that people who deny the existence of viruses are a bunch of credulous dupes who have fallen for a psy op meant to divide the Truth Movement.

Since March, he has published no less than seven articles in which he beats his dead pet horse like it owes him money.

I compiled a list of these posts, because I want to encourage people to check out the comment sections on them. No matter how many smart people make thoughtful comments encouraging him to rethink his stance, he insists on sticking to his guns. If you want to want to get an idea of where the virus debate is at these days, it’s worth spending some time in the comments on these articles.

Virus or no-virus? Germs or Terrain? (March 7th)

Dr Tom Cowan’s critique on my no-virus article (March 13)

A 128-year-old lesson in virology (April 17)

Pierre Kory: The War on Ivermectin - and “no-virus” implications (March 24)

No-virus: finally, the final piece (March 29)

The proof for NO No-Virus (May 17th)

WHO IS MEES BAAIJEN?

Mees Baaijen is the author of a book called The Predators Versus The People, which purports to prove that a single Global Mafia has been running the whole wide world for the past 500 years.

One crime syndicate controls the entire world

I haven’t personally read very much of his work, but some other members of the Nevermore team are definitely fans, and I’m definitely not accusing Baaijen of intentionally misleading people or anything like that.

I think that he is quite convinced of his own Belief System (BS for short), and that he thinks that he thinks that he is doing the world a service by berating us dupes for our gullibility.

Clearly we’ve all been brainwashed by the beguiling Baileys!

WHAT ARGUMENTS IS HE MAKING?

Apparently, Mees has a background as a veterinarian, and is convinced that viruses are real because he has personally observed outbreaks of Foot and Mouth Disease when working with livestock.

Based on his lived experience of witnessing “uniformized” and “synchronized” outbreaks of disease, he then concludes that viruses must exist.

He apparently regards this as a silver bullet argument.

“But wait a second,” you may be asking. “Why does he assume that mass outbreaks of illness must be caused by a virus? Does he think that all pathogens are viruses?”

Good question. Part of the weakness of Baaijen’s argument is that he doesn’t specify what definition of virus he is using.

Personally, I am very solidly on the No Virus side of this debate, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that there’s no such thing as a pathogen.

Unless the term “virus” is well-defined, the debate about the existence of viruses is absolutely meaningless. We might as well be debating whether or not “thingamabobs” and “whatchamacallits” exist.

WHAT DOES THE WORD “VIRUS” MEAN?

The term “virus” comes from a Latin root meaning “poison”. No one is arguing that poisons don’t exist, or that poisons can’t make you sick.

If the word “virus” meant nothing other than "invisible and unidentified disease-causing agent", I would not deny the existence of viruses.

But that is not what the word virus means within the context of virology. Chat GPT defines a virus as:

a non-living infectious agent made of genetic material (DNA or RNA) encased in a protein shell, sometimes with a lipid envelope, which can only replicate inside host cells.

This mostly agrees with the definition that my computer’s dictionary uses.

In order for this debate to be meaningful, we must be able to agree what we’re talking about. So my question for Mr. Baaijen is this: is this the meaning of the word “virus” that you are referring to when you use that word?

If that is not the definition you are using, could you please specify which definition you are using?

In his most recent post, Baaijen explains why he believes that the existence of viruses has been a proven scientific fact since 1897.

According to him:

In 1897, Friedrich Loeffler proved that foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) was caused by an invisible germ, yet replicating in the host. During outbreaks, Loeffler sampled the liquid from tongue blisters. After transmission to cattle (by injection or natural methods), the typical FMD symptoms appeared within days: first fever and tongue and mouth lesions, and foot lesions 1-2 days later. The provoked disease, just as the natural one, spread easily to other cattle in the stable, and even escaped to neighboring herds.

Note that Baaijen seems to treat “invisible germ” as a synonym for “virus”. He goes on:

Passing the blister liquid through filters that blocked bacteria did not affect its infectiousness. Filtration tests showed that the agent consisted of particles between 20 to100 nanometer (nm) in size – 10 to 50 times smaller than bacteria, and 1000x smaller than a human cell. Such particles cannot be seen with optical microscopes, as their maximum resolution is 200 nm.

He then concludes that the causal agent was thus not an “inanimate toxin” and must have been replicated in the host. Ergo, virology is true.

Yeah, I know. His reasoning doesn’t make sense to me, either.

Now, I have plenty of questions about this experiment. Were all the animals consuming the same food? Were they drinking from the same water supply? Is it possible that something could have gotten through the filters that were used? Most importantly, was there a control group?

But following any of these lines of inquiry would be a distraction from the important point here, which is that Baaijen does not properly define the term “virus”. If he is unwilling to do that, then there is no point in debating whether viruses exist or not.

It is perplexing that Baaijen thought that this was a silver bullet argument. How could an experiment conducted in 1897 prove the existence of viruses when the modern idea of viruses didn’t surface until decades later?

According to Chat GPT:

The idea of viruses as nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) surrounded by a protein coat, and behaving like genetic parasites, goes back to the first half of the 20th century, but it only became widely accepted and clearly defined between the 1930s and 1950s.

I am fully aware that some people who take the No Virus position also deny that contagion occurs. I do not take this position, personally.

Perhaps Baaijen will think that I’m being slippery, but there is no one unified No Virus party line. Speaking for myself, I believe that there are organisms that can make people sick.

Case in point: beaver feaver. Canoeists know that drinking dirty lake water will give you diarrhea. The medical explanation for this is that beaver faeces contains a protozoan parasite called Giardia lamblia. I see no reason to doubt this theory.

As for contagion, I think the jury’s out on that one, too. Technically, even hardcore terrain therapy purists believe in some kinds of contagion. For example know that mental illness can spread through social contagion (depression, anorexia, gender dysphoria). I think contagion will remain an open question for years to come, but clearly viral contagion is an absurd proposition in the absence of proof for the existence of viruses.

Or at least this seems obvious to me.

THE “NO VIRUS” POSITION CLARIFIED

To me, the “No Virus” position is that there is zero legitimate evidence for viruses as defined by the pseudo-science of virology.

That is not the same as saying that there is no such thing as pathogens or poisons. It does not mean that germs can’t cause illness. It does not mean that infectious disease does not exist. It does not mean that there’s no such thing as contagion.

The central claim that defines the No Virus position is that virology is an entirely fraudulent pseudo-science.

We know that it is impossible to prove that viruses don’t exist, because it is impossible to prove a negative. The burden of proof lies with those who are asserting that viruses DO exist, and they have failed to provide that proof.

Other than that, the main thing we assert is that the entire field of virology is predicated on assumptions which are demonstrably false.

And we cannot have a meaningful debate about virology unless we can agree on a definition for the word “virus”.

I rest my case.

for the wild,

Crow Qu’appelle