The Terrainers and the Virus believers are at each other’s throats often. I have seen some pretty insulting discussions between both groups on Substack.
The issue is one can’t openly look at Terrain Theory and dismiss it. If you’ve looked at it in any depth it can’t easily be refuted other than by saying ‘We KNOW viruses exist. Get real!’ Which isn’t an answer.
On the other hand Terrainers can’t easily refute a billion people’s direct experience of what seems to be transmission. We all have been in the situation where we seemingly ‘got’ something from someone who was ill after being in close proximity to him. We also have been around sick people a thousand times and didn’t get anything from them. Transmission is without a doubt a hit or miss phenomenon. The fact though it is sometimes a ‘hit’ means we can’t dismiss it outright.
I am loathe to deny people’s actual experiences.
There is an argument that doesn’t exclude either the lived experience of people and the nearly irrefutable points raised by Terrain.
I won’t go into each theory here, but I will provide a possible explanation as to how both can be correct.
Illnesses tend to be seasonal. Not always, but we do have ‘flu’ season etc. Suppose these aren’t illnesses. Suppose they are something else. Suppose it is our body doing two things, cleansing itself, and adjusting its functioning to account for weather changes.
The weather change occurs, the body must run cooler, or hotter. It automatically adjusts. While doing this it rids itself of accumulated junk. Mucous, for example, or various substances clogging up the body. This appears to be an illness. Our nose runs, we cough, we get a fever and sweat etc. We have been calling this a ‘virus’ when in fact it might simply be a twice yearly cleansing that takes place. This is an explanation for Terrain.
How do we reconcile the idea of transmission, which is our lived experience, if it is merely a body cleansing itself. Why would we all cleanse simultaneously? First, the body must cleanse as seasons change. We don’t require the same heat, the same fluid, etc during summer as winter. It isn’t unreasonable to think many people in one area would cleanse simultaneously. However, that doesn’t explain transmission. Which seems to occur.
How though does a body adjust? It does so naturally, but there still must be a chemical aspect to it. The body has trillions of compounds it creates. Up to ten trillion, they estimate. If it ‘naturally’ adjusts, and ‘naturally’ cleanses these two processes must have chemical components. It isn’t by will, nor by spirit, but by the body doing something to itself.
When the body flushes it spews out, sweats out, coughs out, vomits, etc. excess fluids, and also flushes out junk - undigested food, or poorly digested food. It flushes out bacteria it has picked up.
Here is the key. WHEN IT FLUSHES OUT IT POSSIBLY WOULD ALSO FLUSH OUT THE CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS IT MANUFACTURED THAT CAUSED THE FLUSHING. Those compounds would not then be needed. They too would be expelled. Those chemicals are TRIGGERING AGENTS that result in a body flushing out what isn’t needed.
These triggering agents aren’t viruses. They don’t replicate in a cell. Which is why no virus has ever been isolated. But, they do cause someone else breathing them in to perhaps be triggered into expunging junk from his or her body. Think of them as a class of near allergens.
To recap: The weather changes, a person needs to cleanse and adjust. The body does. To do so it creates from within itself a triggering agent, something that causes an expulsion of particles from itself - which is experienced as an illness, a virus. While doing this it also spews out the triggering agent. Who reacts to it? Those who have a similar need to expel waste or adjust to temperature.
This is not a virus, but it is transmitted. There is no virus that replicates. It is a chemical or chemicals created by the body through a natural process of the body. If you don’t need to cleanse, these triggering agents are easily ignored. They are part and parcel of the hundreds of millions of junk particles we breathe in every day. Like the vast majority of those, our body deals with them easily. If you do need to cleanse your body will react to them and begin its own cleansing process.
If this is true, and I don’t see a reason why it can’t be, then Terrain theory can be reconciled with apparent transmission. Despite transmission being almost unprovable in a lab.
Great post. I have also come to this same conclusion.
Other ideas I have 'on the shelf' (whether exogenous or endogenous I'm not sure)
1. I wonder if possible to induce colds/flu via chemicals/heavy metals (arsenic for example - exogenous)
2. There is also the radiological component to consider - both exo and endo (technology/weather and our own thoughts feelings)
3. Bile dumps from the liver excreting toxins (endogenous)
Very neat analysis, as in precise, systematic, marked by elegant simplicity....