Thread by @lisa_iannattone

So if “immunity debt” — the covert disinfo version where the crisis is entirely pinned on the real but minor contributing factor of “2-3 cohorts of kids all catching it for the first time in the same year” — were real, which age group should be struggling most with the flu?

Which (pediatric) age group should be the least affected based on the “not disinformation” version of “immunity debt” defined above?

Given that 10-16 year olds should all have either caught the flu already at least once and/or been vaccinated, none should be flu-naive, so according the immunity debt hypothesis favored by pundits and politicians this group should be largely unaffected.

So here it is guys, another dagger through the heart of the “immunity debt” disinfo op. This is the breakdown of cumulative influenza hospitalizations in Canada to date for this season. Notice something weird?

Other than the fact that these are only the numbers until Nov 26, 2022 and the number of hospitalizations is staggering, THIS is weird. This immediately stood out for me. More 10-16 year olds hospitalized than 6-23 month olds.

Hmmm maybe teenagers are more susceptible to severe influenza than I thought? So I clicked through all of the other seasons available, going back as far as 2014-2015 and this has never happened before. 10-16 years olds have never outpaced toddlers.

Cumulative influenza hospitalizations (all of Canada) — for the entire season — for 10-16 year olds:
2014-15 97
2015-16 117
2016-17 103
2017-18 182
2018-19 157
2019-20 nil
2020-21 nil
2021-22 56

2022-23 150 !! — so far! only up to Nov 26, 2022

canada.ca/en/public-heal…

In the same week (week 47) of the 2 worst seasons before this one cumulative flu hospitalizations for 10-16 year olds were at:
2017-18 — 9
2018-19 — 9
vs
2022-23 — 150

That number is 17x higher. A 1700% increase from the *bad* flu years.

Wait maybe it’s because the season started earlier this year?

This year’s season started week 43 while 2017-18 and 2018-19 both started week 45.
Let’s see:
2022-23 week 47 — 150
2017-18 week 49 — 13
2018-19 week 49 — 20

Do the math with me. That’s a **750% to 1150% increase**.

So what are the odds that no one in our pediatric hospitals or PH agencies noticed that there’s been a 750%-1150% increase in 10-16 years olds hospitalized for influenza? In our *bad* flu years there were 13-20 in the entire country, and now there are 150 and *no one* noticed? 🤨

I mean, the more I look at these numbers, the more the “immunity debt” (or “gap” or “cohort”) hypothesis looks like straight disinfo.

Let’s do the math. These are the increases by age group for the worst season (2018-19) vs 2022:

0-5 months: 20 — 57 = 2.85x
6-23 months: 62 — 112 = 1.8x
2-4: 65 — 203 = 3.1x
5-9: 61 — 185 = 3.0x
10-16: 20 — 150 = 7.5x

Why are 10-16 year olds doing the most “catching up”? 🤨

“Immunity gap effect” has the same issue with RSV. It’s the wrong cohort “paying the debt”. It should be 2020/21 babies doing the “catching up” but instead it’s babies not yet born (21/22) or even conceived (22/23) that bear the lion’s share of the excess hospitalizations.

I elaborate more on why “immunity debt” (the version that very serious people keep falsely claiming fits the data and is a legitimate explanation for the surge in severity we’re seeing — nope 👎🏻) doesn’t work for RSV in this thread.

https://twitter.com/lisa_iannattone/status/1597362889399992320

That really inconvenient data led to the invention of the super dangerous trash theory of pregnant women not catching enough pathogens — “generational immunity debt”. But the other problem with the RSV data is that the “immunity debt” was also being paid by adults over 45.

https://twitter.com/barclaybenedict/status/1597247125997309952

How many RSV naive 45+ year olds adults do you think there are? Or maybe the 20/21 babies were able to transfer their debt somehow? 🤔

Don’t worry your brains with the details though, because everyone just happily ignored that RSV data because it’s Denmark’s data which means it doesn’t count here and lots of very important people had very important galas to attend.

Now that we have our very own Canadian flu data showing that the pediatric age group seeing the biggest jump in severity is 10-16 year olds, do you think the very serious people spreading the “immunity debt / catch up effect” disinformation with impunity will finally find God?

I doubt it. A >1000% increase in flu admissions of pre-teens and teens doesn’t feel like something that would have gone unnoticed on the ground. And yet, I haven’t heard any of the ‘immunity debt’ proponents discuss this in the media. 🤔 Have you? Must have slipped their minds.

Sorry for the out-of-place graph, Twitter does that sometimes when I add on ALT text at the end when prompted. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The whole immunity debt circus 🎪 is a big campaign to distract everyone from the alternative (and looking more and more likely) explanation: immunity theft. A lot of experts risk falling from grace if the ‘mass infection with SARS2 harmed children’ hypothesis is taken seriously.

https://twitter.com/tryangregory/status/1599034118553018368

While I’m here, “immunity debt” doesn’t explain 15 dead kids from Strep A in the UK either.

fyi I focus on the “cohort effect” version of immunity debt in these 🧵s since that’s the version promoted by MDs and scientists that swear they know the other version “if you don’t constantly expose yourself to pathogens, your immune system gets weaker” is unscientific nonsense

Someone suggested that the flu data could just be random. Sure, it could. But there’s now several observations that don’t line up with the insistance that this is just a cohort of unexposed pandemic toddlers “catching up” ⤵️

-⬆️ RSV admissions in infants
-⬆️ RSV admissions in adults
-A worse 2022/23 season despite already having had a large rebound RSV epidemic in Denmark and Canada in 2021/22
-⬆️ influenza admissions in pre-teens and teens
-Surge in school aged children dying of invasive strep A

It’s not just influenza. Several data points don’t fit the double-triple cohort effect hypothesis.

And if you pay very close attention, you’ll notice that the Venn diagram of ‘experts’ digging in their heels on immunity debt and ‘experts’ that dug in their heels on “covid is primarily spread by droplets/ it’s not airborne/ you don’t need N95s” is almost a perfect circle. 🧐