The Highwire with Del Bigtree - A VARIANT ATTACKING THE BOOSTED?

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Investigative Journalist with a popular Substack, Igor Chudov, explains his recent discoveries comparing the dramatic difference in Covid-19 death rates in both Portugal and South Africa, and what could be the causeBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

One of the things that we're tracking, I told you we should keep our eye on monkeypox and how they're talking about it. Remember, they script these things. We've showed you how the news scripts these things out, how they all start changing, you know, their language together. But one of the things that we have to keep our eye on is, you know, Amercron or is just the SARS-CoV-2 virus, right? All of these variants. And we have talked to multiple scientists, including here at Band & Bosch, talking about the pressure we're putting on. this virus with this massive vaccination program that has never taken place in the history of the world. We've never vaccinated this people for one disease all at one time.

And so last week I reported that Memorial Day weekend, they reported that we had, I think, six times the amount of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the U.S. Then we did the previous Memorial weekend. Luckily, Omicron is mild, but we are all watching to see, does it remain mild? as it continues to, you know, mutate. And so some of the headlines in America are alarming. There appears to be some new variants on the way. This is what it says, Battle of Omicron, this is deadline.

Battle of Omicron being won by new BA4 and BA5 variants as overlapping COVID waves hit the U.S. He goes on to say estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today indicate that the share of cases tied to Omicron variants, and BA5 increased 79% in just the past week. Now, I don't think we have to be super alarmed at the moment because this BA4 and BA5, we looked at the CDC website, appears to be making up right around 13% of the total amount of SARS-CoV2 cases in the U.S.

But as they're saying, it's growing 79% per week. But this is a headline that grabbed my attention on substap. BA5 is a variant for boosted people. South Africa versus Portugal, same variant opposite outcomes. Now, one of the things about this, this is an independent journalist named Igor Chudoff, but he's being shared on Twitter and different social media platforms, and he has been on many articles.

So when I dove in this article, I said, wow, this guy is really laying out facts and graphs in a way so compelling. I decided, you know what, I got to meet this guy. I want to see, you know, first of all, about this article, but how he's gotten into this material and what got him in the middle of this. So it's my honor and pleasure right now to be joined by Igor Chudoff. Igor, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for inviting me, Del.

All right. So this article, I found very interesting, but I want you to take us through it. You know, you're looking at these new variants, B4, but especially five. Why are you comparing Portugal and South Africa? What made you decide to do that? These are two major countries where there's two variants. They're called sister variants because they're so similar. They predominated and specifically BA5 in Portugal as well as South Africa.

However, the outcomes were so different that it seemed worth writing about. So here we have some slides. Now you're saying that Portugal and South Africa, the main variant right now is this BA5, right? What is the difference? What are you seeing this different? And what is your conclusion on that? I was struck by how different is the amount of deaths and cases in both of these countries, especially compared to their own history in January when everybody had Omicron.

And somehow for South Africa, this latest so-called wave of BA4 or 5, which I will just refer to as BA5, is a very minor wave. It's really a blip on the radar, barely noticeable, both in cases as well as deaths. In Portugal, however, it's a huge wave of. of illness followed a couple of weeks later by a large wave of deaths, similar to what they experienced in January. This is daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million. You can see Portugal's starting to rise up, you know, moving towards some of the highest that they've seen in a long time. You look back those blue lines, it goes way back. South Africa is the opposite. They've already come out of their high death rates and they're dropping down and not being affected right now at all by this new variant.

And so both of these having very different outcomes from this variant. What then, so what did you find separates them? Why are they different? These countries aren't exactly identical, but they're similar in many ways. Portugal has better medical care, a little older population. South Africa has HIV. But these are the two countries we can compare because they both have this BA5 wave. And Portugal has six times more deaths.

Why? what's so wrong in Portugal, what didn't go right? And the only answer is their vaccination rate, which Portugal was described as a country where there is nobody left to vaccine. Wow. Unfortunately, it doesn't help them. Right, so they're fully vaccinated.

They've got vaccinated. They're much higher than we reported just last week on our show. I think South Africa is somewhere in the 30. I think they're under 40% of them are vaccinated. Portugal, as we saw that headline, Nobody left to vaccinate. That's how vaccinated they are. And now they're having a rise in deaths.

And so that is quite alarming. So those are the trends that you're looking at. Yes, that's correct. The deaths in fact keep rising so far. So we won't know how far it will go from now. And I wish it doesn't. But it looks very alarming. And the difference between the rate of deaths

between these two countries is very tough. telling. That suggests that the reason why BA5 is so much worse in Portugal is that it mostly infects and reinfects the vaccinate. Most Portuguese people like just about everywhere else already had COVID. Well, it's another major wave and it's a reinfection driven. And BA5 is especially good at reinfecting the vaccinated and the booster. Wow, look at this. We have this headline out of Medrex IV. SARS-CoV-2-Amacron, BA212, BA4, and BA5, Subverins evolved to extend antibody evasion. Very alarming when we start seeing, you know, in many ways, this is a form of something that we've been talking about on this show, you know, immune enhancement or disease

enhancement, where the vaccine, are you saying that you believe the vaccine is helping this virus be more deadly if it's inside of you versus in Africa where we're seeing that people aren't vaccinated, they're not having that sort of disease enhancement being caused by the vaccination. Is that essentially what you think you're seeing here? Yes, Dahl, there is a little bit of good and bad news here. And the bad news is that the virus has evolved to take advantage of this non-neutralizing antibodies. And that's why the Portugal has so many deaths and cases right now. However, the unvaccinated South Africa isn't getting reinfected in a major way.

So the good news here is for those of us who weren't vaccinated or boosted, those people can expect a better outcome. Are you aware of Gert van der Vosz, the Belgian scientist, that has been reporting that he believes the vaccination is going to pressure this virus, to mutate into a space where it becomes more deadly and infectious for the vaccinated? Are you aware of his work? Yes, and in fact, my latest article talks about his predictions specifically. It's not the one we're discussing.

However, I believe him to be correct. And also, I have my own thoughts on what constitutes the more deadly variant. And it may not be what people expect. They think that something super deadly would look like the point. you know, a terrible illness that kills people in a day or five days or a week. Instead, I think the deadly variant is the waves of COVID that come and go and keep reinfecting people and keep taking them down. And that's why we're seeing the incredible amount of deadly flu in Australia.

You know, people are having flu reportedly that doesn't clear for 10 days. And that suggests that they have immune problems. They can't clear a regular flu virus that they've had for years and now suddenly instead of couple of days, their flu takes 10 days. Their COVID-reinfections come one after another, and COVID is immune suppression. So that's a deadly recession of troubles that I am afraid might end not so well for the people at that. Yeah. You know, it's just the reason I brought you on is you don't have a medical background, correct? You're just an independent journalist. No, no, I don't. All right. I'm a journalist. I'm a researcher. I am a business owner, but it's something that I deeply care about,

because of some of my loved ones were unfortunately affected by vaccination. And I found this topic to be very interesting. And this was why I'm coming. And, you know, it seems clear to me because you provide what I liked about your article. You provided your evidence. You showed us the studies where they're coming from, where these graphs are coming from. You're not making them yourself. Are you surprised?

Because I know I'm surprised. When I watch mainstream media, I even watch doctors like Sanjay Gupta on CNN. And I never see a graph. I never see any, you know, data being produced by, you know, anyone. I mean, it's just like they tell us things that don't seem to make a lot of sense. Do you feel like we should be seeing more evidence of the things that are being stayed by mainstream media? One of my major disappointments with what I see in COVID response is the so-called health experts. You know, these are the people I used to think actually know something.

And regrettably, I see unfounded opinions. I see recommendations that disagree with the most obvious evidence that they could see by walking on a nearby train station. And sadly enough, there is no logical basis for a lot of things that the health experts are discussing. And there is a lot of topics that they don't seem to be one to touch. For example, reinfections of vaccinated. Right. Well, I'm glad you're doing it. I'm really glad you wrote this article and it brought our attention to it. So, I mean, if at the very least I want you to know, and I think you are a representation to so many people out there that come up and say, you know, what am I supposed to do? I feel like this thing is so much bigger than me. There's so many lies. How can I refute what the news is doing? Yet I feel like you've proved that. You're an independent journalist. You've picked up, you know, you've got a great substact that everybody should check out. And there's a lot of scientists and doctors actually. sharing Igor's work because as I pointed out he's showing his data he's showing

where it's coming from but you know I just want to point out I think this may is this maybe your first news interview on the topics that you're covering yes though it is and I'm very excited and nervous about thank you bringing you well I want to thank you for taking the time because what I want to show is by doing the work you've done teams like mine that have international scientists and by the way it was someone over in England that pointed out your substack to us. It actually makes a difference. And now millions of people are going to be look at this comparison.

And we will continue to track Portugal compared to South Africa. I want to thank you for doing that work and showing your work and your data so that we can trust what we were talking about. And I'm glad that we have, you know, as I say, prepared you for television because I think there's more of it in your future. So well done. And great article. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you, Dahl. It was a pleasure and done that. Okay. Take care. Well, I mean, just to sort of sum that all up, why does this all mean? We are worried about this, right? We're worried about variants that, you know, use the vaccine to infect more, to re-infect and to ultimately lead to more deaths and hospitalizations.

Well, when we think about the United States of America, I want to point out what we said in the beginning. It appears right now that this BA4 and 5, very similar. Right now they're making up about 13% of the total cases in the U.S. So it's not a big deal for us right now. But it does appear. There's many articles saying it is far more infectious than any other Amacron variant so far. So it's continuing to grow in its infectiousness. If what we're seeing in Portugal is true, it does appear that it is now getting around.

many of the issues that were protecting people, it could be making them, you know, more hospitalizations and leading to more deaths. Maybe it's exactly what Igor said. Maybe it's just simply the constant being sick because your immune system has been beat up by the vaccine, that it'll kill some people and others, but over time we will see this rise in deaths, or maybe it'll be something dramatic against what he said, where it's just a very bad variant. But just we decided to sort of track where would it be in America. We now know that, that's right about 13% when we started looking at the data last week. Was it about 7%?

It's growing about 79% per week. And so we crush that data together. And if it continues to grow at 79% per week, then right around June 24th, here's what we sort of charted out for you. As we try to watch what this does in America, somewhere around June 24th would be where this ends up dominating, being the dominant strain. We will watch this. Are we going to see a rise in hospitalizations, a rise in deaths?

Obviously, I pray that that's not the case. I pray that the human body, whether it's vaccinated or not, is capable of, you know, blocking this or keeping from getting too sick. But this is what we're tracking here at the high wire. I know you're not seeing it on CNN. I know you're not seeing it on MSNBC or Fox or anywhere else. Nobody else is really, truly looking at the data and the science that could potentially affect our lives.

And yes, I have doctors reaching out to me from all around the country and even here in Texas. They're telling me we are seeing some sort of rise in hospitalizations right now, though they're not sure what it is. So everybody, I'm just saying, you know, we've got to stay healthy. We've got to stay on top of things. And we cannot let ourselves go back into lockdowns and all this insanity that will happen. If this ends up being a deadly virus for the vaccinated, what does that mean for the unvaccinated? Do I have to be locked down? If I'm like I would be in South Africa

where it doesn't affect me at all, how are we going to move through this in the future? It's a serious question.