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Lyme Disease and Weaponized Ticks · Conspiracy! The Show

0:10
Speaker 1: Went sure insurance?
0:11
Speaker 2: Did I true? I'm a check.
0:14
Speaker 1: I'm both steed at your things?
0:16
Speaker 2: Wait thee Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy The Show. I'm
0:35
Speaker 2: Adam Todd Brown.
0:36
Speaker 1: Who are you? I'm physical Sani.
0:38
Speaker 2: We are your hosts. How are you doing?
0:41
Speaker 1: I'm doing good, you know, all things considered. I know
0:44
Speaker 1: people are pretty stressed out. I'm a little stir crazy,
0:46
Speaker 1: but I mean we're in sunny California. I have some
0:50
Speaker 1: space with technology. I don't have to be there. You
0:53
Speaker 1: don't have to be here. We're still doing it.
0:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, it's been a while since you've been on.
0:57
Speaker 2: We had to. That's been the hardest thing about this,
1:00
Speaker 2: figuring out how to get everyone into a spot where
1:03
Speaker 2: we can all record. Again. Have you been since I
1:07
Speaker 2: saw you last?
1:08
Speaker 1: Well? I always think about that coronavirus episode we recorded,
1:12
Speaker 1: and you know, I think it was so new that
1:14
Speaker 1: none of us really knew anything. So I just wonder
1:17
Speaker 1: if I was a little too cavalier during it, like
1:20
Speaker 1: we're gonna be all right and now, like you know,
1:22
Speaker 1: haven't left my apartment for like two months as that
1:27
Speaker 1: if it's lockdown with for two months, So I mean,
1:29
Speaker 1: I'm okay. You know, it's just a lot's changed.
1:32
Speaker 2: Yeah. We have a few episodes on the network where
1:36
Speaker 2: we talk about coronavirus and we're like, oh, come on,
1:40
Speaker 2: we're a rich nation, We'll be fine, and it's like, yeah,
1:43
Speaker 2: Trump's still our president though.
1:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, just these choices, these choices, these very questionable choices.
1:52
Speaker 2: We are faced with a lot of questionable choices these days,
1:55
Speaker 2: especially as it pertains to the presidency. But that is
2:00
Speaker 2: not what we're talking about today, No, it's not. We
2:04
Speaker 2: are talking about the theory that the United States government
2:07
Speaker 2: intentionally or otherwise spread lime disease in the United States
2:12
Speaker 2: during the Cold War by way of weaponized ticks. And
2:17
Speaker 2: this is the kind of thing people hear that and
2:19
Speaker 2: immediately want to kind of laugh it off because weaponized
2:24
Speaker 2: ticks sounds like such a crazy sci fi future kind
2:30
Speaker 2: of thing. But there's actually a lot of history behind
2:33
Speaker 2: us experimenting with stuff like this.
2:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think when you're thinking about bioweapons,
2:40
Speaker 1: it's not that crazy. It's not that crazy because ticks
2:43
Speaker 1: can infect people without them having to like breathe something,
2:47
Speaker 1: and it's like direct to the bloodstream. Ticks, mosquitoes, these
2:51
Speaker 1: bugs that can carry diseases and spread it amongst humans.
2:55
Speaker 1: So it's not too crazy, But like you know, it's
2:59
Speaker 1: people who aren't privy, I think to just sort of
3:02
Speaker 1: the insanity that are maybe insanity's not the right word,
3:07
Speaker 1: but the sort of the extreme types of testing our
3:10
Speaker 1: governments capable of are. I can see how they think
3:13
Speaker 1: this is crazy. I don't. I'm privy.
3:17
Speaker 2: And there are some parallels between this conspiracy theory and
3:23
Speaker 2: what's happening with coronavirus now, because there are there is
3:27
Speaker 2: a segment of society that thinks coronavirus came from a lab,
3:33
Speaker 2: And the argument really gets blurred when it comes to
3:38
Speaker 2: came from a lab versus created in a lab.
3:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because if it's found in nature, then it's
3:46
Speaker 1: already out there.
3:47
Speaker 2: Right, which people seem to take to mean as well,
3:52
Speaker 2: then if it's in nature, it can't have escaped from
3:56
Speaker 2: a lab. But yeah it can, because the lab in
3:59
Speaker 2: question in China is a lab where they work on
4:03
Speaker 2: a lot of different viruses and study them and research them,
4:07
Speaker 2: and fucking accidents happen. Like, it's not outside the realm
4:11
Speaker 2: of possibility that something could have escaped from there accidentally.
4:15
Speaker 2: And that's different from saying they created this and unleashed
4:20
Speaker 2: it on us.
4:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, because one's diabolical and the other is an accident.
4:24
Speaker 2: Right, And it's the same thing with this they you
4:28
Speaker 2: hear the same argument, which is that, well, lime disease
4:30
Speaker 2: has been around for thousands of years. Of course it
4:32
Speaker 2: didn't come from a government lab. But that's not really
4:36
Speaker 2: what people are saying. What people are saying is the
4:39
Speaker 2: government was testing this particular means of delivering diseases to
4:45
Speaker 2: a population at a lab in the same area where
4:48
Speaker 2: this outbreak happened. What if it escaped on accident? And
4:52
Speaker 2: it really isn't that crazy of a suggestion in either case, Yeah.
4:56
Speaker 1: Not at all. And then most of this research has
4:59
Speaker 1: come from Chris Newby. She wrote the book Bitten, And the.
5:03
Speaker 2: Thing about Chris Newby she's not a crazy person.
5:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really important, I think, you know, to note
5:09
Speaker 1: that she's not crazy. This is a reliable, rational resource.
5:15
Speaker 1: She's a science writer at Stanford University, and she produced
5:20
Speaker 1: that lime disease documentary Under Her Skin, which premiered at
5:23
Speaker 1: Tribeca and was an Oscar semifinalist. So yeah, not Alex Jones, which.
5:29
Speaker 2: Helps it definitely helps it lends some credibility to this
5:33
Speaker 2: when it's coming from a science writer and not a
5:36
Speaker 2: guy who's trending on Twitter right now because he wants
5:39
Speaker 2: to eat his neighbors. Did you see that video?
5:41
Speaker 1: I saw him trending, but I didn't see why. Now
5:44
Speaker 1: I know he wants to eat his neighbors.
5:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, the supply chain is breaking down pretty soon. He's
5:50
Speaker 2: going to have to eat his neighbors. How funny would
5:52
Speaker 2: it be if his neighbors saw that and defend that
5:55
Speaker 2: off they went and ate him right now?
5:59
Speaker 1: Why is he going to eat him? I need something
6:01
Speaker 1: to wipe my ass with. I'm gonna wipe my ass
6:03
Speaker 1: with my neighbors.
6:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can wipe your ass with all the free
6:07
Speaker 2: parking spots in La now, they're everywhere.
6:10
Speaker 1: Just do the thing that dogs do, just like rub
6:12
Speaker 1: my butt on the floor exactly.
6:15
Speaker 2: So another thing about Chris Nuby, she had lime disease.
6:19
Speaker 2: She and her husband both suffered from lime disease for
6:22
Speaker 2: five years. So she's got a dog in the fight. Yeah,
6:26
Speaker 2: so she's not on some crazy conspiracy theory quest. This
6:30
Speaker 2: is someone looking into a thing that happened to them personally.
6:34
Speaker 2: So what is lime disease. It is a bacterial disease
6:39
Speaker 2: transmitted by ticks, discovered by Willie Bergdorffer in the nineteen eighties.
6:45
Speaker 2: And I'm sorry, scientists should not get to be named Willie.
6:50
Speaker 1: It's just not a science name.
6:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, you either go will or William. You don't go Willie.
6:56
Speaker 1: What if it was like a maybe if he was
6:58
Speaker 1: referred to as William and in quotes Willy and like
7:02
Speaker 1: sort of the middle name Bergdorfer, that's worse it is worth,
7:05
Speaker 1: you know, it's maybe. I'm just gonna let the guy
7:09
Speaker 1: live or is he alive.
7:12
Speaker 2: Too late for that?
7:13
Speaker 1: Let him rest in peace?
7:15
Speaker 2: That works. Here's here's how much of a willy Willy
7:19
Speaker 2: Bergdorfer is. I think I accidentally took this out of
7:23
Speaker 2: the notes, but I'm not sure if this is how
7:25
Speaker 2: he discovered lime disease or if this just happened while
7:29
Speaker 2: he was researching it. But at one point while in
7:32
Speaker 2: the lab, he splashed his eyes with lime disease, infected
7:38
Speaker 2: rabbit urine, and gave himself lime disease. That's such a
7:43
Speaker 2: fucking willy move.
7:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's he willied. He willied, He willied this shit
7:48
Speaker 1: out of that. So he actually isn't lime disease like
7:52
Speaker 1: a lifelong ailment.
7:54
Speaker 2: That's one of the debates about it is there are
7:58
Speaker 2: a lot of people who want it class as a
8:01
Speaker 2: chronic illness. And what ends up happening is people who
8:05
Speaker 2: suffer from lime disease will go to the doctor and
8:08
Speaker 2: be told that what they're suffering from is in their head. Yeah,
8:13
Speaker 2: which happens with a lot of chronic conditions. Fibromyalgia too,
8:16
Speaker 2: is one. I knew a girl with fibromyalgia and that
8:20
Speaker 2: happened to her all the time. She would like she
8:22
Speaker 2: was in France at one point and went to a
8:24
Speaker 2: doctor and the doctor straight up said, fibromyalgia is fake
8:29
Speaker 2: and what's happening to you is in your head. And
8:31
Speaker 2: that happens with lime disease too.
8:33
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of neurological issues that happen
8:36
Speaker 1: with lime disease.
8:38
Speaker 2: Right, there's neurological symptoms. One of the problems with it
8:42
Speaker 2: is it's really hard to detect. The most common tests
8:46
Speaker 2: they use for lime disease fails to catch lime disease
8:50
Speaker 2: like half the time. Wow, in early cases and.
8:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think Newbie and her husband they were misdiagnosed
8:58
Speaker 1: initially right, or actually they suffered from lime disease for
9:01
Speaker 1: a year before being diagnosed.
9:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of the big issues with how it
9:06
Speaker 2: spreads is by the time people finally take a test
9:10
Speaker 2: that comes out positive, they've had it for like a
9:13
Speaker 2: month or six weeks. And it's a disease like most
9:17
Speaker 2: diseases that if you don't treat it, it gets progressively worse.
9:22
Speaker 2: So at first you just have a rash and maybe headache,
9:26
Speaker 2: flu like symptoms, so you might just think you have
9:28
Speaker 2: a flu. So you go to the doctor and get tested,
9:31
Speaker 2: and because the test for lime disease is so shitty,
9:34
Speaker 2: it doesn't pick up anything, so the doctor's lanea, you
9:36
Speaker 2: got the flu. And then if it stays untreated for
9:40
Speaker 2: a few months, it can cause face paralyzation, joint pain, headaches,
9:44
Speaker 2: and heart palpitations. If left untreated for six months, sixty
9:47
Speaker 2: percent of sufferers develop lime arthritis. If left untreated for
9:51
Speaker 2: six months, five percent of untreated lime sufferers develop chronic
9:55
Speaker 2: neurological symptoms, which include memory loss, insomnia, and a general
10:00
Speaker 2: of feeling unwell and changes in personality.
10:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in super bad cases, lime can cause chronic
10:07
Speaker 1: incephalo my myelitis, which resembles multiple sclerosis. And yes, I
10:14
Speaker 1: did say and cephalo myelitis.
10:17
Speaker 2: You nailed it. I was waiting for it, prepping for
10:21
Speaker 2: that all morning.
10:24
Speaker 1: It resembles MS, which is pretty horrible. Cognitive impairmid brain fog, migraines,
10:30
Speaker 1: balance issues, weakness in the legs, et.
10:33
Speaker 2: Cetera, awkward gait, awkward gait. Yeah, So if you've noticed
10:38
Speaker 2: your friend has developed an awkward gait, get them to
10:41
Speaker 2: a hospital and have them tested for lime disease.
10:43
Speaker 1: There's a fifty percent chance that it'll be accurate, exactly. Yeah.
10:50
Speaker 1: And then there's neurological symptoms as well.
10:52
Speaker 2: Panic attacks, psychosis, delusions, and depersonalization.
10:56
Speaker 1: And then you were I think you mentioned blood testings
10:59
Speaker 1: often negative in the early stages. So yeah, with that
11:02
Speaker 1: you don't get treated, then it just gets worse.
11:05
Speaker 2: And currently the only treatment is antibiotics. There is no vaccine.
11:11
Speaker 2: One was available between nineteen ninety eight and two thousand
11:14
Speaker 2: and two, but it was withdrawn from the market due
11:17
Speaker 2: to poor sales, and that part will be important later.
11:22
Speaker 2: As far as the history of lime disease, it was
11:24
Speaker 2: diagnosed as a condition in nineteen seventy five, in Old Lime, Connecticut.
11:29
Speaker 2: Do you think they have like a lime disease festival
11:31
Speaker 2: every year? Like the place where the mothman destroyed that bridge?
11:36
Speaker 2: They have a mothman celebration every year?
11:38
Speaker 1: Did they have a mothman celebration?
11:40
Speaker 2: There are mothman statues, And it's like the legend is
11:43
Speaker 2: that he killed like forty people in town.
11:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, like kids, right.
11:48
Speaker 2: Kids, parents? He destroyed a bridge, like a rush hour bridge.
11:53
Speaker 1: Isn't it funny how history just sort of changes.
11:56
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there'll be a nine to eleven festival in
11:58
Speaker 2: New York someday.
12:01
Speaker 1: So the Lime Festival, which we cannot confirm.
12:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, hopefully we can get booked on it at some
12:07
Speaker 2: point though, I.
12:08
Speaker 1: Know when we have shows again, exactly, so Old Lime Connecticut.
12:15
Speaker 2: Old Lime, Connecticut. Prior to the nineteenth century, lime disease
12:18
Speaker 2: was present for thousands of years in America and had
12:21
Speaker 2: spread along with its tick hosts, from the Northeast to
12:25
Speaker 2: the Midwest. So that's again that argument that people use
12:29
Speaker 2: when it comes to this theory is no, it wasn't
12:31
Speaker 2: created by the government. It was around for a thousand years.
12:34
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, two different things though.
12:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can still you can still unleash something that's
12:39
Speaker 1: been around in an area and cause a lot of damage.
12:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if you have a whole collection of ticks
12:46
Speaker 2: that have it and they somehow get out. I hope
12:50
Speaker 2: it wasn't like some boring Oh a guy was carrying
12:53
Speaker 2: a case of them and dropped him. I hope those
12:55
Speaker 2: ticks escaped. I hope there was a plot. I want
12:58
Speaker 2: to see the animated movie.
13:01
Speaker 1: What would the animated booby be named?
13:04
Speaker 2: Ticks World Tour?
13:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just you know, they're very ambitious.
13:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, a bunch of spunky personalities in the group and
13:14
Speaker 2: rock tick.
13:16
Speaker 1: So I assume the lime disease doesn't mess with these ticks.
13:20
Speaker 1: They're just carriers.
13:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, they they just carry it and people hate them
13:25
Speaker 2: for it, which it's not their fault. Won't be so
13:28
Speaker 2: hard on ticks. So yeah, we know lime disease has
13:31
Speaker 2: been around for a long time. And another thing that
13:34
Speaker 2: we know was around at least for a little while
13:37
Speaker 2: was the US Biological Weapons Program. This was a program
13:42
Speaker 2: started in nineteen forty three under the Roosevelt administration after
13:46
Speaker 2: World War Two, ran for twenty seven years until nineteen
13:51
Speaker 2: seventy and it was managed by the US Army Chemical
13:55
Speaker 2: Corps out of Camp Dietrich later Fort Dietrick in Maryland,
13:59
Speaker 2: so same general area of the country.
14:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean over that twenty seven year history,
14:07
Speaker 1: the following bioagents were weaponized and stockpiled. I think that's
14:13
Speaker 1: important when it comes to sort of like this accidental
14:17
Speaker 1: or intentional release is just there's a lot, a lot
14:20
Speaker 1: of these tiny little things. But the following were the
14:22
Speaker 1: bioagents that they stockpiled. Anthrax is the most recognizable one,
14:28
Speaker 1: but some of the other ones are tularimia, Brucellos's Q fever, vee, botulism,
14:35
Speaker 1: and there's looks like some sort of like staff infection, staphlococcal,
14:39
Speaker 1: introtoxin B.
14:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they kept big stockpiles of this stuff there.
14:45
Speaker 2: So again, when like you said, when you're talking about
14:49
Speaker 2: something escaping from a lab, it's not going to escape
14:52
Speaker 2: in the amount that it's just naturally found in nature.
14:55
Speaker 2: There's going to be a lot of it in a
14:57
Speaker 2: concentrated area.
14:59
Speaker 1: Yeah.
14:59
Speaker 2: But in nineteen sixty nine, President Nixon ended all offensive
15:04
Speaker 2: aspects of the bioweapons program, which fucking surey did.
15:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a term, right, We're always we're just
15:15
Speaker 1: defending ourselves.
15:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like when mk ultra ended. It's like, okay,
15:20
Speaker 2: that means you just sent up a bunch of compounds
15:23
Speaker 2: in Latin America. In nineteen seventy five, the US ratified
15:28
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventy two Biological Weapons Convention and the nineteen
15:33
Speaker 2: twenty five Geneva Convention. No rush outlawing biological warfare.
15:39
Speaker 1: Uh huh, and again sure it did.
15:43
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the gas we dropped on the Branch Davidians was
15:47
Speaker 2: banned by the Geneva Convention before we dropped it on them.
15:51
Speaker 2: We still use that gas on protesters today, most recently
15:54
Speaker 2: in Ferguson. It's called CS teargas, banned by the Geneva Convention.
16:00
Speaker 2: Used by police all over the fucking country.
16:03
Speaker 1: It's not a secret.
16:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, So please tell me more about how we don't
16:07
Speaker 2: engage in biological weapons research anymore.
16:11
Speaker 1: Something needs to be updated someone's bio or internet description.
16:16
Speaker 2: We do still have a biological defense program.
16:19
Speaker 1: Again, not offense. We're not being offensive. We are just
16:24
Speaker 1: defending ourselves against against what what are we what are
16:28
Speaker 1: we fighting against?
16:30
Speaker 2: Hmmm, good question. And the thing about this bioweapons program,
16:36
Speaker 2: it's a lot like mk ultra it happened around the
16:39
Speaker 2: same time as MK Ultra, And whereas that was us
16:43
Speaker 2: doing psychological experiments on our own population without their knowledge,
16:48
Speaker 2: with a bioweapons program, we were conducting fucking chemical weapons
16:52
Speaker 2: experiments on the public without.
16:55
Speaker 1: Their knowledge a lot of the time. Yeah, that's pretty
16:59
Speaker 1: outrage you know, like it's just people get paid to
17:03
Speaker 1: be part of experiments.
17:05
Speaker 2: You should get paid to be part of an experiment, and.
17:07
Speaker 1: You should probably know about it as well, right.
17:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if it's one that involves the government dropping
17:13
Speaker 2: chemicals on you from planes overhead. And that's exactly what
17:17
Speaker 2: we did with this program. In nineteen forty nine, the
17:20
Speaker 2: first test happened. It was called a vulnerability field test,
17:24
Speaker 2: and in that test, we just sprayed harmless bacteria into
17:27
Speaker 2: the air conditioning system to see how far it would spread.
17:31
Speaker 1: So they just chose they did it to themselves and
17:35
Speaker 1: everyone in their own building. I mean, I'd be pissed
17:38
Speaker 1: off if I worked at the Pentagon and had nothing
17:40
Speaker 1: to do with this, Like if I was someone's fucking secretary.
17:45
Speaker 1: The fuck.
17:46
Speaker 2: They did another test in San Francisco using bacteria similar
17:52
Speaker 2: to anthrax, but harmless. Don't worry, we hope in nineteen
17:56
Speaker 2: fifty six, the New York City subway was contaminated with
17:59
Speaker 2: the bacteria in an attempt to simulate the spreading of
18:03
Speaker 2: anthrax in a large urban population.
18:06
Speaker 1: I mean, you know how we were talking about how
18:08
Speaker 1: anthrax can or think these things can occur naturally in nature.
18:14
Speaker 1: I Like, when I think of the New York subway system,
18:17
Speaker 1: I just think anthrax could be in there already.
18:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like we put it down there once. How do
18:23
Speaker 2: we know the shit we put down there hasn't evolved
18:26
Speaker 2: since then?
18:27
Speaker 1: It has its conscious sentient.
18:30
Speaker 2: Top and turn stiles. What this is one of the
18:35
Speaker 2: big problems with programs like this. White people tend to
18:38
Speaker 2: get treated one way, which is We're just gonna spray
18:42
Speaker 2: some harmless shit around and see what happens. Meanwhile, in
18:45
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty one, the program infected a large group of
18:48
Speaker 2: African Americans with a fungus to see if they were
18:52
Speaker 2: more susceptible to infection.
18:54
Speaker 1: Oh wow, a fungus.
18:56
Speaker 2: And yeah that wasn't notice the words harmless aren't in there. No,
19:01
Speaker 2: it was just you think black people get infected easier,
19:04
Speaker 2: let's check. But it was nineteen fifty one who was
19:09
Speaker 2: going to complain black people obviously, but it was going
19:13
Speaker 2: to lose about it.
19:13
Speaker 1: If you don't know what's happening, then yeah, what of
19:17
Speaker 1: course the action can you take?
19:18
Speaker 2: And this carries on throughout the fifties, and this is
19:22
Speaker 2: another important detail. In the nineteen sixties, the aim became
19:26
Speaker 2: to develop weapons that would incapacitate rather than kill.
19:31
Speaker 1: Like lime disease.
19:33
Speaker 2: Like lime disease. And one of when people debunk this theory,
19:37
Speaker 2: one of the things they say is, well, it's not lethal,
19:40
Speaker 2: so it wouldn't even make sense as a biological weapon.
19:43
Speaker 2: And it's like, unless you're trying to develop a non
19:46
Speaker 2: lethal biological weapon, then it makes perfect sense.
19:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's other ways to ruin people's lives besides killing them.
19:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, case in point the Vietnam War, when the US
19:58
Speaker 2: just dropped this herbicide called Agent Orange, like we were
20:03
Speaker 2: trying to clear out trees so we could see Charlie
20:06
Speaker 2: and the government eventually admitted that, Okay, yeah, we gave
20:10
Speaker 2: everyone cancer. Sorry about that. Sorry, So, yeah, this is
20:13
Speaker 2: a thing we did on our own people in the
20:16
Speaker 2: United States. We also there have been allegations of US
20:20
Speaker 2: doing this in other countries. In nineteen sixty two, CIA
20:24
Speaker 2: operatives contaminated a shipment of sugar while it was in
20:28
Speaker 2: storage in Cuba. A Canadian agricultural technician claimed that he
20:33
Speaker 2: was paid five thousand dollars to infect Cuban turkeys with
20:36
Speaker 2: Newcastle disease. Five thousand. That's it.
20:40
Speaker 1: I know what year was this, Yeah.
20:42
Speaker 2: I mean it was probably the sixties or seventies, but still.
20:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean in the sixties or seventies, five
20:49
Speaker 1: thousand is like is it? You get a lot further
20:52
Speaker 1: with five thousand.
20:53
Speaker 2: Back then, in seventy seven, the Cuban government blamed the
20:56
Speaker 2: US for a serious outbreak of African swine fever, claiming
21:00
Speaker 2: the US was trying to destabilize the government, and the
21:03
Speaker 2: Cuban government blamed the US for an outbreak of Dengey fever,
21:06
Speaker 2: another vector born disease like lime disease, which is carried
21:10
Speaker 2: in mosquitoes.
21:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, so for biological weapons, we got tics, We've got mosquitoes,
21:16
Speaker 1: vector born diseases. And then there's the Korean War. Yeah.
21:20
Speaker 2: The Korean War is really interesting because there's a rumor
21:26
Speaker 2: or conspiracy theory that we used biological weapons during the
21:31
Speaker 2: Korean War, and one of the most famous aspects of
21:35
Speaker 2: that war was a bunch of American POWs were taken
21:38
Speaker 2: into custody by North Korea and on video they were like, yep,
21:42
Speaker 2: we dropped biological weapons on the Koreans and we are sorry.
21:46
Speaker 2: And when those soldiers came home, they were like, there
21:49
Speaker 2: was mind control happening. They like brainwashed us into saying that.
21:53
Speaker 1: So the confessions were under duress, supposedly.
21:57
Speaker 2: Right, and that prompted us one to start mk ultra,
22:02
Speaker 2: Like that's where mk Ultra's started.
22:04
Speaker 1: Well that's what we get from this, you know.
22:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was literally what we got from it was
22:09
Speaker 2: oh shit, we can do that. That wait, how did
22:13
Speaker 2: they do that? And so we spend the next thirty
22:16
Speaker 2: years trying to replicate that.
22:18
Speaker 1: That's add Yeah, so you just started a whole program.
22:24
Speaker 1: You're like, you kind of keep up with the Joneses
22:26
Speaker 1: in North Korea.
22:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the thing about those confessions happening under duress,
22:32
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean they weren't true. It just means we
22:36
Speaker 2: wanted to know how North Korea got them to say it,
22:40
Speaker 2: because normally you're not gonna get like that's if you're
22:44
Speaker 2: going to war expecting to fucking blab all the secrets.
22:47
Speaker 2: If the enemy catches you. Fuck you don't go to war.
22:50
Speaker 2: That's not that's not what you're supposed to do. And like,
22:53
Speaker 2: I feel like, especially then, most US troops probably wouldn't
22:56
Speaker 2: have said anything about it. They would have lied about
22:59
Speaker 2: drop been chemical weapons. Yeah, so the fact that those
23:04
Speaker 2: confessions might have been coerced means nothing to me.
23:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could be you know, it could be true.
23:09
Speaker 1: It could be coerced. It could be coerced and it's
23:11
Speaker 1: still true.
23:12
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't think we've ever done an episode just
23:15
Speaker 2: about chemical weapons in Korea, but we should. It's there's
23:18
Speaker 2: a lot of interesting evidence. I guess you could call
23:23
Speaker 2: it out there, but because the government has never officially
23:26
Speaker 2: recognized it as real, then it's not official evidence. But
23:31
Speaker 2: if we did that, it would explain a whole lot
23:34
Speaker 2: about how we treat North Korea.
23:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because we do not.
23:38
Speaker 2: Want that country's history getting out onto the world stage.
23:42
Speaker 1: Holy shit, Oh my god.
23:45
Speaker 2: So let's talk about Willy Bergdorfer.
23:47
Speaker 1: Willy.
23:49
Speaker 2: He is a Swiss tick scientist, and by that I
23:51
Speaker 2: mean he's a tick who's good at science, big fucking
23:55
Speaker 2: man sized tick.
23:58
Speaker 1: Would I'd love to see a picture of Willy.
24:00
Speaker 2: Oh, I had one at one point. Yeah, I think
24:04
Speaker 2: I was just googling around, but he looks like a
24:06
Speaker 2: Willie Bergdorfer.
24:07
Speaker 1: Okay, I was thinking he might actually look like a
24:09
Speaker 1: tick who's good at science, like a nerdy tick.
24:13
Speaker 2: That would be the coolest.
24:15
Speaker 1: I mean, this guy's you know, he's He attended a
24:18
Speaker 1: doctoral program in parasitology, also studied worms and tropical bacterial
24:25
Speaker 1: bacterial He helped me out there bacterial ceriology.
24:31
Speaker 2: I think we got it.
24:33
Speaker 1: I spent all my time trying to pronounce that one
24:35
Speaker 1: word at the top, which I don't even remember anymore.
24:37
Speaker 2: That I don't even have enphalitis or something milo and
24:43
Speaker 2: cephalite I don't even remember.
24:45
Speaker 1: But this was in Switzerland, at the University of Basil,
24:50
Speaker 1: Basil Basl, I think. And then he developed his love affair,
24:55
Speaker 1: which is in the words of Chris Nuby, Yeah, his
24:59
Speaker 1: love affair with ticks sounds like a memoir. His love
25:02
Speaker 1: affair with ticks began in nineteen forty eight, when he
25:05
Speaker 1: was twenty three and studying at that university.
25:08
Speaker 2: What people leave out of his story is that those
25:10
Speaker 2: ticks were only fourteen at the time. Guy's a huge creep.
25:14
Speaker 1: Oh creeper Willie explains the name a little more. Yeah,
25:19
Speaker 1: a grown ass man named Willie and his young ass ticks.
25:23
Speaker 1: But he really did have this love like it was
25:25
Speaker 1: a long love affair. He spent thirty years studying ticks
25:30
Speaker 1: and tickborn diseases.
25:31
Speaker 2: And he is credited with discovering the bacteria that causes
25:35
Speaker 2: lime disease in nineteen eighty one, after a breakout in
25:39
Speaker 2: the northeastern United States in the seventies.
25:42
Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's been around for a long time, thousands
25:45
Speaker 1: of years, but it is interesting that there would be
25:47
Speaker 1: a sudden and acute outbreak and a very sort of
25:51
Speaker 1: concentrated area.
25:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, and another thing when people debunk this theory, one
25:58
Speaker 2: of the things they bring up as well, there were
26:00
Speaker 2: cases of lime disease outside of that area too, And
26:05
Speaker 2: again that's that's because it is naturally occurring out in
26:09
Speaker 2: the world, But there could have also been a huge
26:12
Speaker 2: influx of it in one particular part of the country,
26:15
Speaker 2: So there would be cases all over the place if
26:18
Speaker 2: it's naturally occurring.
26:20
Speaker 1: I mean, I was just gonna say, most of the
26:21
Speaker 1: people I know with lime disease trace it back to Connecticut, really,
26:26
Speaker 1: I think, so, I think they've all been sort of
26:28
Speaker 1: in like the Northeast.
26:30
Speaker 2: The only person I know with lime disease is Daryl
26:34
Speaker 2: Hall of Hall and Oates, and I don't know him personally.
26:37
Speaker 2: I just know I was trying to see Hall and
26:39
Speaker 2: Oates in concert in the early two thousands and it
26:41
Speaker 2: got canceled because he had lime disease.
26:44
Speaker 1: Well, at least the doctors didn't tell him it was
26:46
Speaker 1: all in his head.
26:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course not. It's a rich white dude, get
26:51
Speaker 2: any medical treatment. He once.
26:53
Speaker 1: Oh to be rich and white.
26:55
Speaker 2: Oh it must be nice. Someday I'll get the halfway there.
27:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I am just striking out.
27:09
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the Willie bergdor For theory. In
27:13
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, Chris Nuby saw an interview with Willie where
27:17
Speaker 2: he hinted that our current lime disease outbreak could be
27:20
Speaker 2: a bioweapons experiment gone awry. Shortly before his death, he
27:25
Speaker 2: was interviewed by a lime disease documentarian slash bioweapons researcher
27:30
Speaker 2: named Tim Gray, and in the interview, Bergdorffer apparently said
27:34
Speaker 2: that he believed the outbreak of tichborne diseases that started
27:37
Speaker 2: around Lime, Connecticut had been caused by a bioweapons release.
27:42
Speaker 2: And the problem with all of these interviews is that
27:46
Speaker 2: Willie bergdorf For suffered from Parkinson's disease near the end
27:50
Speaker 2: of his life. He died in twenty fourteen, So his
27:53
Speaker 2: answers are sometimes as mysterious as the shit we're talking about.
27:58
Speaker 2: Like at one point he answer there's a question from
28:00
Speaker 2: Chris Newby literally by saying question mark.
28:06
Speaker 1: He said the words question mark.
28:09
Speaker 2: He said the words question mark as an answer to
28:12
Speaker 2: a question. So the interviews with him are a little weird. Yeah,
28:19
Speaker 2: this is the exchange that caught Chris Newby's attention. The
28:23
Speaker 2: interviewer asked, if there's an emergence of a brand new
28:25
Speaker 2: epidemic that has the tenets of all those things that
28:28
Speaker 2: you put together, do you feel responsible for that? And
28:31
Speaker 2: Willy said, yeah, it sounds like throughout the thirty eight years,
28:35
Speaker 2: I may have the lab director telephoned me. This is
28:39
Speaker 2: director so and so. I got somebody here from the FBI.
28:42
Speaker 2: Will you come down and we will ask a few
28:44
Speaker 2: questions exactly the same thing. I recall all these discussions,
28:48
Speaker 2: and that is the quote that people sees on as
28:52
Speaker 2: Willie Bergdorfer's admission to being involved in releasing this from
28:57
Speaker 2: a lab. But it's not it's not really. I mean
29:01
Speaker 2: it is, but it's pretty vague.
29:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't talk about anything like an intentional release.
29:08
Speaker 1: It does sound like the FBI utilized him.
29:12
Speaker 2: That's the thing. I can't tell if he's implying that
29:14
Speaker 2: the FBI wanted to work with him or if they
29:16
Speaker 2: were investigating him for having released this.
29:19
Speaker 1: I get the impression that they were working with him.
29:23
Speaker 1: He has some value the organization itself. You know, they're
29:26
Speaker 1: not comprised of scientists. They're not making these weapons, they're
29:31
Speaker 1: not doing this research, so they need people to do that.
29:34
Speaker 2: They're probably trying to see if we could spy on
29:36
Speaker 2: the black panthers with ticks. Can we just drop ticks
29:40
Speaker 2: in Oakland and put fucking cameras in them?
29:43
Speaker 1: Put cameras in the ticks?
29:45
Speaker 2: Oh man, so baby cameras.
29:48
Speaker 1: Too bad? We lost Willie. Now, our cameras are so small.
29:52
Speaker 2: What if they just made ticks that were strong enough
29:54
Speaker 2: to carry regular cameras.
29:57
Speaker 1: This wouldn't be subtle. I mean, but you know what,
30:00
Speaker 1: some of these cameras are really small. So maybe if
30:03
Speaker 1: you just hung a teeny little camera on its.
30:07
Speaker 2: Abdomen, a little lanyard around the tick's neck. Police body cam.
30:14
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I'm not going to sit here
30:17
Speaker 1: and assume that Willy was trying to harm people, But
30:21
Speaker 1: it does sound like, you know, the FBI or a
30:24
Speaker 1: lot of the government organizations which are capable of experimenting
30:28
Speaker 1: on people without their knowledge. At the very least, you
30:30
Speaker 1: know he was working. Maybe he was working for a
30:33
Speaker 1: shitty boss.
30:34
Speaker 2: He did, at the very least admit that at various
30:37
Speaker 2: points when he was working in different government labs, one
30:41
Speaker 2: of the things he was working on was injecting tics
30:45
Speaker 2: with diseases and seeing if it was a way that
30:48
Speaker 2: you could spread disease. Yeah, even if Willy didn't do
30:54
Speaker 2: it and they're just chasing the wrong lead here, I
30:58
Speaker 2: still feel like there's something to the theory that this
31:01
Speaker 2: came from a lab accidentally or on purpose, because we
31:06
Speaker 2: were doing a lot of research in this field, and
31:10
Speaker 2: one of the labs where we were doing it is
31:13
Speaker 2: very close to where this outbreak happened. So it's really
31:16
Speaker 2: not that crazy.
31:17
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think people hear the word conspiracy
31:20
Speaker 1: and it sets up a red flag. But we can't
31:23
Speaker 1: just trust every all the information that's just fed to
31:26
Speaker 1: SMA to think a little critically.
31:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the stuff about him spending years injecting tics
31:34
Speaker 2: with lime disease, that comes from his own scientific journals.
31:38
Speaker 2: That's not conjecture. It's from his documents from his time
31:42
Speaker 2: working there.
31:43
Speaker 1: Yeah.
31:43
Speaker 2: And this is a quote from the book Bitten. He
31:47
Speaker 2: was growing microbes inside ticks, having the ticks feed on animals,
31:51
Speaker 2: and then harvesting the microbes from the animals that exhibited
31:54
Speaker 2: the level of illness that the military had requested.
31:58
Speaker 1: Mmm, okay, well there's a military request. What does that imply?
32:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one hundred percent implies that they were trying
32:06
Speaker 2: to use this for something. And when he discovered lime disease,
32:10
Speaker 2: he was studying deer ticks from Long Island to uncover
32:14
Speaker 2: what was triggering spotted fever cases and Long Island Old Lime, Connecticut,
32:20
Speaker 2: that is the area where this outbreak happened in the seventies.
32:25
Speaker 2: So there's a bunch of science stuff in the notes
32:28
Speaker 2: that we can probably skip people. I mean, if you're
32:32
Speaker 2: interested in more on this topic, read the book Bitten.
32:35
Speaker 2: There's an audiobook version that's like five hours long. The
32:38
Speaker 2: thing that comes up the most is this thing called
32:41
Speaker 2: the Swiss agent, and apparently around the time Bergdorfer had
32:46
Speaker 2: discovered the line bacterium, he had also found another microbe
32:50
Speaker 2: that he called the Swiss agent. And when Chris Nuby
32:54
Speaker 2: read through his personal papers, she learned that he initially
32:57
Speaker 2: thought the Swiss agent could have been the culprit of lime,
33:00
Speaker 2: and that it was found in blood samples of people
33:02
Speaker 2: diagnosed with the illness. Eventually, though, the Swiss agent was
33:06
Speaker 2: missing from scientific journals and all but forgotten, and Chris
33:13
Speaker 2: Nuby and Tim Gray visited the National Archives to search
33:16
Speaker 2: through Willie's papers to try and verify this admission that he,
33:21
Speaker 2: you know, was testing this strain of lime dise He's
33:24
Speaker 2: in a lab and they didn't find anything, but they
33:27
Speaker 2: did find a folder labeled the Swiss agent, and that
33:31
Speaker 2: folder was empty. So the thinking is the Swiss agent
33:36
Speaker 2: could be a bioweapon or something that at some point
33:40
Speaker 2: in the research they decided to go in another direction
33:43
Speaker 2: and make it a bioweapon, which if we've stopped making
33:48
Speaker 2: bioweapons in nineteen sixty nine, of course, once you go
33:51
Speaker 2: down that path, it's going to have to be a
33:53
Speaker 2: secret thing. It's not going to be you're not just
33:54
Speaker 2: going to put it in the fucking government records.
33:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, anything that's a little sketchy.
34:00
Speaker 2: And all through the nineteen fifties, this was what Willie
34:03
Speaker 2: Bergdorffer was doing. They were studying ticks and what kind
34:08
Speaker 2: of diseases they spread.
34:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he had an extensive collection of tick colonies.
34:13
Speaker 1: He was the go to person for special tick requests
34:16
Speaker 1: for bioweapons. So you know, his work was a part
34:21
Speaker 1: of this larger bioweapons operation that you know, I'm not
34:25
Speaker 1: going to say he's responsible for all of that, but
34:27
Speaker 1: there was some contribution.
34:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had knowledge of this program. And in nineteen
34:33
Speaker 2: fifty three, the Biological Warfare Laboratories at Fort Dietrich established
34:38
Speaker 2: a program to study the use of arthropods for spreading
34:41
Speaker 2: anti personnel biological warfare agents. And like you mentioned at
34:47
Speaker 2: the beginning of the show, this is a quote the
34:50
Speaker 2: advantage of vector borne diseases as biological weapons. Arthropods inject
34:54
Speaker 2: the agents directly into the body, so a mask offers
34:57
Speaker 2: no protection. They remain alive for some time, keeping the
35:01
Speaker 2: area consistently dangerous. So it's not just that spreading disease
35:06
Speaker 2: by way of ticks or mosquitos isn't crazy. It's actually
35:10
Speaker 2: kind of a good idea.
35:12
Speaker 1: It's effective.
35:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great way to spread something in an
35:15
Speaker 2: area where you don't want people to know you were
35:18
Speaker 2: the one who spread it. It's smart. It's what I
35:20
Speaker 2: would do. You know what, I'm buying some texts after
35:22
Speaker 2: we're done with this.
35:23
Speaker 1: You got some ticks with some people's name on it. Yeah,
35:27
Speaker 1: you're gonna send some ticks to.
35:28
Speaker 2: Some mailing out ticks to people you had it coming.
35:33
Speaker 1: I know, tis like ticks are the new anthrax and
35:35
Speaker 1: the mail you know how like it like fancy wedding.
35:38
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'll open a box and like butterflies and shit
35:40
Speaker 1: will come out. It'd be like sort of like that,
35:43
Speaker 1: except it's just like surprise, I'm going to hurt you.
35:48
Speaker 2: Bill Gates once was giving a talk about malaria yea
35:52
Speaker 2: to a group of fellow rich people, and in the
35:56
Speaker 2: middle of that talk, he opened a jar of mosquito
36:00
Speaker 2: and just let it out into the room, and he
36:02
Speaker 2: they were like harmless mosquitos. But when he did it,
36:05
Speaker 2: he said, if poor people have to worry about this,
36:08
Speaker 2: you should too.
36:09
Speaker 1: Wow, that's theatrical.
36:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably the only interesting thing. Bill Gates has
36:13
Speaker 2: ever done, I mean, except invent personal computers. Obviously it
36:17
Speaker 2: was pretty cool too.
36:18
Speaker 1: I guess, like, you know, if oatmeal we were a person,
36:22
Speaker 1: the Bill Gates story, like really healthy oatmeal.
36:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, the steel cut kind that takes like ten minutes
36:30
Speaker 2: to cook.
36:30
Speaker 1: And tastes awful, but it's really good for.
36:32
Speaker 2: You, great for you. So not only were we working
36:36
Speaker 2: on stuff like this, we actually ran a couple of tests.
36:40
Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty four, the Army tested prototypes for the
36:43
Speaker 2: deployment of uninfected fleas in what it code named Operation
36:48
Speaker 2: Big Itch, and in nineteen fifty five they ran a
36:51
Speaker 2: similar test with mosquitos called Operation Big Buzz.
36:55
Speaker 1: Not too subtle.
36:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the kind of shit we were getting
36:58
Speaker 2: up to in the fifty and sixties as a government.
37:02
Speaker 2: We were throwing everything at the wall to see what worked.
37:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, can you just imagine someone intentionally infecting
37:10
Speaker 1: you with fleas? Like who cares if they're uninfected, Like
37:13
Speaker 1: they're fleas.
37:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, and how do you do it? You just got
37:17
Speaker 2: a pocket full of fleas and toss them at somebody.
37:21
Speaker 1: You got a pocket full of fleas and.
37:23
Speaker 2: I'm ready, We'll cell a Phane packet, like it's glitter
37:28
Speaker 2: flea bomb. I'm gonna flea bomb someone in the mail.
37:31
Speaker 1: You have a bunch of you have a balloon and
37:33
Speaker 1: a bunch of fleas, and you just pop.
37:34
Speaker 2: It, pop it, pop it and run.
37:38
Speaker 1: Jesus. So something happened in seventy five in Long Island,
37:44
Speaker 1: in Cape Cod there was an outbreak.
37:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the outbreak that people kind of point to
37:50
Speaker 2: as the starting point for the lime disease epidemic in
37:54
Speaker 2: this country. Like three hundred thousand people get lime disease
37:56
Speaker 2: every year in this country. That's a whole fucking line.
37:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in seventy five in this region, Long Island,
38:03
Speaker 1: Cape Cod, it was a highly unusual event with large
38:06
Speaker 1: numbers of casualties, higher morbidity than expected. It was an
38:12
Speaker 1: uncommon disease. Was this the initial outbreak of f lime?
38:17
Speaker 2: This was the one that led to lime disease being
38:20
Speaker 2: called lime disease? Ye, Like we knew the bacteria we
38:23
Speaker 2: later found out had been around for thousands of years,
38:26
Speaker 2: but this is when we officially it was called juvenile
38:29
Speaker 2: arthritis before that, even though I think the adults could
38:32
Speaker 2: get it also.
38:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean one of those symptoms of lime can
38:36
Speaker 1: be arthritis.
38:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was misdiagnosed as juvenile arthritis. And that
38:42
Speaker 2: point source outbreak part is important. What that means is
38:46
Speaker 2: a big cluster of the disease all in one spot.
38:50
Speaker 2: And people point to the fact that while there were
38:52
Speaker 2: people in the Midwest who had it, why.
38:54
Speaker 1: Would it randomly spike in seventy five.
38:56
Speaker 2: Those ticks were angry.
38:59
Speaker 1: These weapons ticks. They're trying to escape because they just
39:02
Speaker 1: want to they just want to express themselves on a
39:04
Speaker 1: world tour.
39:05
Speaker 2: The Ticks World Tour. Let's write that movie.
39:08
Speaker 1: You Got the bad boy Tick Got the slutty Tick.
39:11
Speaker 2: When this outbreak happened, they reached out to old Willy
39:14
Speaker 2: berg Dorffer and they had reported all of these outbreaks
39:18
Speaker 2: of lyme disease. And this is when Willy comes upon
39:23
Speaker 2: the Swiss agent and at one point in his lab
39:27
Speaker 2: notes referred to the Swiss agent as Swiss Agent USA.
39:32
Speaker 2: And his thinking was that this Swiss agent is what
39:36
Speaker 2: caused the outbreak in Connecticut and Long Island. And remember
39:41
Speaker 2: that's the same folder that was empty when they went
39:44
Speaker 2: to go look at his records in April. In his notes,
39:49
Speaker 2: he just stops referring to the Swiss agent USA all together.
39:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, never mentions it again.
39:55
Speaker 2: Never mentions it again. The book sort of ends that way.
39:59
Speaker 2: They weren't able to definitively prove that Willie Bergdorffer was
40:04
Speaker 2: part of spreading this from a lab, either intentionally or otherwise.
40:09
Speaker 2: It just kind of seems like he was. And I
40:12
Speaker 2: mean that's kind of a frustrating detail of this conspiracy,
40:15
Speaker 2: is it. It seems like it's so close to being
40:19
Speaker 2: a thing that could be solved, but just not there yet.
40:23
Speaker 2: But I personally am not opposed to the idea that
40:26
Speaker 2: this escaped from a lab in some capacity, be it
40:30
Speaker 2: intentionally or otherwise.
40:32
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, the spike is evidence of that.
40:36
Speaker 1: I mean, if this has been around for thousands of
40:38
Speaker 1: years and then suddenly a lot of people in one
40:41
Speaker 1: specific region are getting it, and there's a lab nearby,
40:45
Speaker 1: so it was not far carry those pockets full of ticks.
40:49
Speaker 2: And yeah, they could get it bomb tick balloon. So
40:54
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier that there at one point was a
40:58
Speaker 2: vaccine for line disease. Yeah, and I feel like this
41:02
Speaker 2: is a whole other conspiracy theory unto itself or a conspiracy.
41:08
Speaker 2: The first and only licensed vaccine was developed by Smith
41:11
Speaker 2: Klein Beecham and licensed in nineteen ninety eight. And what
41:15
Speaker 2: it did is it stimulated antibodies that attacked the lime
41:19
Speaker 2: bacteria in the tick's gut as it fed on the
41:22
Speaker 2: human host, before the bacteria was able to enter the body.
41:26
Speaker 2: So this would be a thing. If you lived in
41:28
Speaker 2: an area with a high incidence of lime disease, you
41:31
Speaker 2: would get this and if a tick started feeding on you, you'd
41:35
Speaker 2: be fine. In most cases.
41:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's seventy eight percent effective and protecting against lime infection.
41:41
Speaker 2: So that's better than no vaccine.
41:43
Speaker 1: Obviously, it's pretty effective.
41:45
Speaker 2: And it was one hundred percent effective at preventing asymptomatic cases.
41:50
Speaker 2: One point five million doses were administered, at which point
41:53
Speaker 2: the vaccine entered something called post licensure monitoring, and that's
41:58
Speaker 2: exactly what it sounds like. It's a proved but we're
42:01
Speaker 2: still watching it to make sure it's permanently approved. And
42:05
Speaker 2: part of that monitoring includes something called the Vaccine Adverse
42:09
Speaker 2: Events Reporting System or VAYERS. And the problem with VERS
42:13
Speaker 2: is that it accepts reports of adverse reactions from anyone,
42:17
Speaker 2: be it healthcare workers, vaccine recipients, relatives of vaccine recipients,
42:23
Speaker 2: and so that kind of information only helps if an
42:26
Speaker 2: expert analyzes it further. And what happened is between December
42:31
Speaker 2: ninety eight and July two thousand, nine hundred and five
42:34
Speaker 2: reports were made to vayers about adverse events after the
42:38
Speaker 2: administration of Lime disease, and sixty six were classified as serious.
42:43
Speaker 2: But after examining the reports, they didn't find anything unexpected
42:48
Speaker 2: or any unusual patterns of reported adverse effects, so it
42:53
Speaker 2: was in line with what everyone expected. But one of
42:56
Speaker 2: the things that was looked into during this was this
42:59
Speaker 2: idea that the vaccine actually caused arthritis, which huge problem
43:04
Speaker 2: for a vaccine that's supposed to prevent a disease that
43:06
Speaker 2: causes arthritis. Yeah, and before they could actually research that,
43:13
Speaker 2: somehow the media jumped on this story and started pumping
43:18
Speaker 2: out headlines like lime vaccine may cause problems and Lime
43:23
Speaker 2: disease vaccine safety is questioned. After that, all these fucking
43:27
Speaker 2: anti lime disease vaccine groups started popping up trying to
43:32
Speaker 2: get the vaccine ended. A class action lawsuit was filed,
43:36
Speaker 2: and in response to all of this, Smith Klein Beacham
43:40
Speaker 2: just withdrew the vaccine. They were like, fuck it, this
43:42
Speaker 2: is too much trouble. And the problem is, after all
43:46
Speaker 2: that research was done, the post licensure data showed no
43:49
Speaker 2: difference in the incidents of chronic arthritis between those who
43:54
Speaker 2: received the vaccine and those who didn't. So the vaccine works.
43:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's too bad. So it was canceled before the
44:01
Speaker 1: analysis was completed, right, Oh that's yeah, that sucks. I mean,
44:05
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand new cases a year and they just
44:08
Speaker 1: took the vaccine off the market even though it's been
44:11
Speaker 1: proven not to cause arthritis. The initial reason why it was.
44:15
Speaker 2: Pulled, right, And I didn't have time to look into
44:19
Speaker 2: all of the groups that were behind those efforts to
44:22
Speaker 2: get this vaccine pulled. But I know this is a
44:25
Speaker 2: weird comparison, but it reminds me a lot of what
44:28
Speaker 2: happened with vaping last year.
44:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it was a big fear campaign.
44:33
Speaker 2: It was a huge fear campaign that was directed at
44:35
Speaker 2: the wrong thing. There were all these stories about lung
44:38
Speaker 2: disease that people were getting from vaping, and every article
44:42
Speaker 2: in the main image, it was always jewel pods that
44:46
Speaker 2: they were showing in those articles. In the text of
44:49
Speaker 2: the article would be about how teens are using jewel
44:53
Speaker 2: pods at an alarming rate, and because of that kind
44:56
Speaker 2: of hysteria, we conflated this lung disease with jewel pods.
45:01
Speaker 2: When it turned out, and even if you read the
45:02
Speaker 2: initial articles, it was tainted THHC cartridges.
45:07
Speaker 1: And there's no THHC in jewel pods.
45:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't jewel pods that were causing it at all.
45:13
Speaker 2: But there was still this nationwide effort to restrict the
45:17
Speaker 2: sale of jewel pods and it worked. And one of
45:20
Speaker 2: the things that people based their argument against jewel pods
45:25
Speaker 2: on was this study that was done at one point
45:27
Speaker 2: that claimed jewel pods and cigarettes have the same chemicals. Yeah,
45:32
Speaker 2: which would be alarming because the thing we know about
45:34
Speaker 2: cigarettes is they got like strict nine in them and
45:37
Speaker 2: fucking formaldehyde and all this crazy shit.
45:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, but if you.
45:41
Speaker 2: Read the actual study, what they were saying is cigarettes
45:46
Speaker 2: and jewel pods both containing the same chemicals that for example,
45:52
Speaker 2: when you walk into an apartment building in California, there's
45:55
Speaker 2: a sign that says, hey, there might be something here
45:57
Speaker 2: that could give you cancer.
45:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've had that a couple buildings, yeah, that
46:02
Speaker 1: I've lived in.
46:03
Speaker 2: That's what they meant, which is which is what you want.
46:05
Speaker 1: To see every time you know, you go home, is
46:08
Speaker 1: that you might get cancer from the building you live in.
46:11
Speaker 2: It's very comforting.
46:12
Speaker 1: Yeah.
46:13
Speaker 2: And the thing is, those chemicals they're referring to are
46:16
Speaker 2: in everything. Even if you don't smoke and don't use
46:20
Speaker 2: a jewel, you're going to be exposed to those chemicals. Yeah.
46:23
Speaker 2: So of course they're in cigarettes and jewel pods like
46:26
Speaker 2: that stands to reason. But the way they presented it
46:30
Speaker 2: was jewel pods and cigarettes are the same thing, and
46:33
Speaker 2: they very much are not.
46:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.
46:35
Speaker 2: And as it turned out, that study was done by
46:39
Speaker 2: three doctors who all had a financial stake in the
46:43
Speaker 2: tobacco cessation industry motive. Yeah, which nothing is better for
46:48
Speaker 2: quitting cigarettes than vaping, Like it works better than anything else. Yeah,
46:53
Speaker 2: So they have a vested interest in jewel failing and
46:57
Speaker 2: being restricted.
46:58
Speaker 1: And also the smoking industry is tied to the smoking industry, right,
47:04
Speaker 1: don't they just sort of work hand in hand, So
47:06
Speaker 1: the jewel pods would pull away from that cycle of
47:08
Speaker 1: smoking and then trying to quit, then maybe falling into
47:11
Speaker 1: smoking again.
47:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, the tobacco industry has no interest in an actual
47:16
Speaker 2: smoking cessation product that works. Yeah, like they want the
47:20
Speaker 2: one that's going to keep you coming back to cigarettes.
47:22
Speaker 2: So that massive campaign, like basically crippled jewel. They still exist,
47:27
Speaker 2: but shit's hard to find and it's getting harder.
47:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, so capitalism.
47:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just curious how much of that behind the
47:36
Speaker 2: scenes shit went into this vaccine getting withdrawn and to
47:40
Speaker 2: what end? Because it is kind of a boon to
47:43
Speaker 2: the fucking healthcare industry if you have this chronic illness
47:47
Speaker 2: that hundreds of thousands of people get every year and
47:51
Speaker 2: they just have to keep coming back to the doctor
47:53
Speaker 2: time and time again. Meanwhile, insurance companies get to go, well,
47:57
Speaker 2: this isn't a chronic illness. You shouldn't even be at
47:59
Speaker 2: the doctor, so we don't have to for it. It's
48:00
Speaker 2: one of those diseases that I could see a pharmaceutical
48:04
Speaker 2: company or an insurance company being like, that's probably for
48:08
Speaker 2: the best that's out there. That'll help us make money.
48:10
Speaker 1: It's profitable, keeps them coming to the doctor. I mean,
48:14
Speaker 1: we all know that our healthcare system is more focused
48:18
Speaker 1: on treating the symptoms than the underlying issue.
48:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, it always has been, we.
48:23
Speaker 1: Want to lose your customers.
48:24
Speaker 2: And I feel like, to bring it back to coronavirus.
48:27
Speaker 2: I feel like we're going to see this same kind
48:29
Speaker 2: of debate whenever a coronavirus vaccine comes around, because there's
48:34
Speaker 2: a lot of companies fighting to be the one to
48:37
Speaker 2: deliver that and the company that got approved or is
48:41
Speaker 2: most vociferously approved by the US government is this company
48:45
Speaker 2: called Maderna that has never successfully tested a drug and
48:51
Speaker 2: had it approved, but they claim they can have a
48:54
Speaker 2: vaccine ready by like January. So Trump was like, that
48:57
Speaker 2: sounds better than two years from now. Quote that was
49:00
Speaker 2: his actual words.
49:01
Speaker 1: Like a simple little sales pitch.
49:03
Speaker 2: That is the perfect way to describe it. It looked
49:06
Speaker 2: like an episode of Shark Tank. He had all of
49:08
Speaker 2: these company CEOs sitting across from him at a table
49:12
Speaker 2: and had each one of them pitch their idea, and
49:14
Speaker 2: the one he went with was this moderna company. And
49:17
Speaker 2: as that vaccine goes along more and more, I guarantee
49:21
Speaker 2: we're going to see a lot of articles questioning the
49:23
Speaker 2: safety of it. And I'm telling you, now, look into
49:27
Speaker 2: the sources of those articles. It could just be another
49:30
Speaker 2: vaccine company that wants to be first, and those motherfuckers
49:34
Speaker 2: are playing with your lives if they're doing that kind
49:36
Speaker 2: of shit.
49:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so crazy that so much as at stake
49:39
Speaker 1: and it's an afterthought, not even.
49:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, and especially with lime disease, I can just picture
49:45
Speaker 2: people being like, well, it doesn't kill you, so who cares.
49:48
Speaker 1: But everyone I've known who's had lime disease, it is incapacitating,
49:53
Speaker 1: it is debilitating, and it's maddening to feel so sick
49:58
Speaker 1: and then be told it is in your head.
49:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know anyone with lyme disease, but I
50:02
Speaker 2: know someone with is it hashimotos is another autoimmune disorder,
50:07
Speaker 2: and she's just in pain all the fucking time, like constantly,
50:12
Speaker 2: And it's the same thing. You go to the doctor
50:14
Speaker 2: and they're like, h I don't know, what can we do?
50:16
Speaker 2: Been around any ticks lately? So yeah, to I guess
50:22
Speaker 2: to summarize, I believe this. I believe that this escaped
50:26
Speaker 2: from some sort of government lab. I don't know if
50:29
Speaker 2: it happened intentionally, but I can definitely see it having
50:32
Speaker 2: happened in some way.
50:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't think it's far fetched at all, you know,
50:37
Speaker 1: And even if it's not, you know, we can't sit
50:40
Speaker 1: here and say the motive was to maybe infect our
50:43
Speaker 1: own people, although although our government has been known to
50:47
Speaker 1: test on our own people, so maybe it was. But
50:50
Speaker 1: it just it it makes sense to me. Yeah, it
50:53
Speaker 1: makes sense, and I think I'm gonna I'm gonna check
50:57
Speaker 1: that book out.
50:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just I like this exation for it better
51:01
Speaker 2: than what a fucking mass tick rebellion in the Northeast
51:05
Speaker 2: United States.
51:06
Speaker 1: They organized, right, they organized. They're like, we're gonna fuck
51:09
Speaker 1: the Northeast up. And that's that.
51:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, after they planned their escape, as featured in Ticks
51:16
Speaker 2: World Tour Part one, then they get out. Ticks World
51:19
Speaker 2: Tour Part two is them exacting their revenge for having
51:22
Speaker 2: been locked up in that facility.
51:23
Speaker 1: And I highly recommend seeing the first one. It's not
51:25
Speaker 1: one of those those anthologies where you could just skip
51:30
Speaker 1: the first and watch the second. Don't.
51:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's like the Hunger Games. You gotta be
51:33
Speaker 2: all in.
51:35
Speaker 1: As you won't know.
51:37
Speaker 2: So that's our episode. This is a really good episode.
51:40
Speaker 2: Thank you for doing it. I appreciate it.
51:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, I learned a lot, you know, I just this
51:43
Speaker 1: wasn't really on my radar until you you know, I
51:46
Speaker 1: knew about lyme disease, knew it was horrible, but you
51:49
Speaker 1: know the source, the origin of like how it popped
51:54
Speaker 1: up so like so many cases in one area that
51:58
Speaker 1: just it's it's.
52:00
Speaker 2: It is very striking. Yeah, I'm glad I looked into
52:04
Speaker 2: this just because I had heard this conspiracy and it
52:06
Speaker 2: always sounded kind of crazy to me too, especially the
52:10
Speaker 2: part where yeah, it's been around forever, so how did
52:12
Speaker 2: it come from a lab? But now I get how
52:14
Speaker 2: it fucking came from a lab?
52:15
Speaker 1: Yeah. We I mean, if you're if we're stockpiling.
52:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, germs because we had it in a lab. Very easy. Uh,
52:24
Speaker 2: do you have anything to plug before we get out
52:26
Speaker 2: of here? Yeah? You're doing any zoom shows?
52:29
Speaker 1: Well, I have a weekly podcast, Facial Recognition Comedy Podcast,
52:33
Speaker 1: new episode every Tuesday. I'm one of the hosts. And
52:38
Speaker 1: also just check me out on on YouTube and Instagram.
52:42
Speaker 1: I put my own stand up and a lot of
52:44
Speaker 1: content up as well. So uh fizzas at Fizzas, Uh.
52:51
Speaker 2: I am at Adam Todd Brown on Instagram and Twitter,
52:56
Speaker 2: don't fucking add me on Facebook and don't use face
53:00
Speaker 2: Book anymore and also Patreon dot com, slash on pops.
53:05
Speaker 2: You can subscribe to the entire network or conspiracy, dot Supercast,
53:10
Speaker 2: dot tech. You can subscribe to just this podcast for
53:13
Speaker 2: three dollars a month. That's a new thing, so go
53:15
Speaker 2: out and do that. And that's it. Is a say goodbye, goodbye,
53:20
Speaker 2: goodbye everybody. We love you,