Will our next pandemic be a Tamiflu pandemic? Tamiflu's adverse events mimic bird flu

Caryn Lipson

May 14, 2024

Will Tamiflu be the new Remdesivir?

Failed drug repurposed as Covid-19 therapy

Readers might remember that the FDA gave remdesivir emergency use authorization as a therapy for COVID-19. It was prioritized as the remedy of choice, even though the NIH acknowledged liver and renal (kidney) failure as adverse events and the NIH failed to determine its benefit for Ebola patients during trials since it killed more patients than Ebola.

Despite the drug increasing the the risk of death by 3% and the chance of renal (kidney) failure by 20%, Dr. Paul Marik testified before Senator Ron Johnson’s panel that hospitals were incentivized to prescribe it giving “a 20% bonus on the entire hospital bill for Medicare patients who were prescribed remdesivir.”

Adverse events mistaken as disease symptoms

Worse yet is that adverse events associated with remdesivir had been mistaken for features of COIVID-19, as Dr. Bryan Ardis told Attorney Reiner Fuellmich, who had been investigating human rights violations related to the Covid-19 pandemic:

"Gilead’s “cohort study” conducted for “compassionate use” on patients with COVID-19 was only 28 days long. It reported that of 61 patients treated with the drug, eight were excluded for missing information, 32 (60%) of 53 remaining patients reported adverse events including increased liver enzymes, diarrhea, rash, and kidney function impairment. Twelve patients (23%) had “serious” adverse events including multiple-organ-dysfunction syndrome, septic shock, acute kidney injury, and hypotension (low blood pressure).

…

Each of these symptoms – multi-organ failure, septic shock, acute kidney injury and hypotension – are described in medical literature as features of COVID-19 itself. (Emphasis added.)

Next pandemic in the works

The FDA has started warning about a potential bird flu pandemic, despite listing it as a low probability, as Frontline News has reported:

FDA is sounding an alarm about the potential for such a pandemic, for which it is “drawing up plans to roll out tests, antiviral drugs and vaccines in the event the [bird flu] virus jumps to humans,” as reported by The Gateway Pundit. Even though FDA head Robert Califf says that the probability of this happening is low, they are taking these measures with the rationale that it's best to be prepared for a scenario where the virus jumps to humans.

Dr. Peter McCullough, on the Chief Medical Board of The Wellness Company, said the board voted to add Tamiflu to its “Contagion Kit” in the event that bird flu pandemic materializes, as WLT Report reported:

“Out of an abundance of caution, we are adding Tamiflu to the Contagion Kit. Tamiflu is a safe medication approved treat Influenza type A, viruses like avian flu. We will continue to closely monitor this situation and make further recommendations as warranted.”

The Wellness Company also sells Dr. Zelenko's Z-Stack, which Dr. Zelenko recommended for multiple viruses and will help inhibit bird flu.

Dr. Jane Ruby criticized Dr. McCullough for recommending Tamiflu, a pharmaceutical drug with a black box warning for neuropsychiatric side effects, for a non-existent disease.

Is Tamiflu a good choice?

The government generally stockpiles Tamiflu for release in the event of a flu epidemic as it did in 2022. Many people may also try to get as much of it as they can get their hands on, in anticipation of the currently improbable event. Yet, Tamiflu does not have such a good track record.

No real benefits, serious rates of adverse events

According to an April 2014 article about Tamiflu, published by The Guardian, the drug’s manufacturer, Roche, had withheld critical trial information. The independent Cochrane Collaboration's initial positive reports on the drug were, therefore, found to be based on incomplete data. After the mistake was recognized in 2008, it took Dr. Thomas Jefferson, the lead reviewer, six years to get the full information and perform a new review with complete data.

After “ceaseless questions from Cochrane and the British Medical Journal, after half a decade, Roche finally gave Cochrane the information it needed,” which author Dr. Ben Goldacre summed up in his article. The Cochrane report showed that not only was there little, if any, benefit from Tamiflu, but the “mild” adverse effects are actually quite significant, all of which he detailed:

It does not reduce the number of hospitalizations
There isn’t enough data to know if it reduces death
It reduces self-reported undiagnosed pneumonia, but there is no significant benefit according to detailed diagnostic forms for pneumonia.
It might help prevent flu symptoms, but not asymptomatic spread
It may take a few hours off the duration of flu symptoms

Dr. Goldacre put numbers to the adverse events percentages demonstrating what would happen if a million people took Tamiflu in a pandemic:

45,000 will experience vomiting,
31,000 will experience headache and
11,000 will have psychiatric side-effects.

These numbers, he warns, are only for 1 million people.

Remember, though, that those figures all assume we are only giving Tamiflu to a million people: if things kick off, we have stockpiled enough for 80% of the population. That's quite a lot of vomit.

Tamiflu saga reverberations

Pandemic fear and scientific misconduct

In 2015, the Indian Journal of Pharmacology reviewed the Tamiflu saga to learn how to avoid a similar situation in the future. Problems they found included pandemic panic, propaganda, and scientific misconduct.

A cocktail of pandemic panic, publicity propaganda, and scientific misconduct turned a new medicine with only modest efficacy into a blockbuster. It appears that the multiple regulatory checks and balances gave way as science lost its primacy and pharmaceutical enterprise lost no time in making the most of it. This reminds one of Prof R. P. Feynman's statements after Challenger space shuttle disaster. (Emphasis added.)

“Reality must take precedence over public relations as nature can’t be fooled”

Tamiflu saga should have prevented remdesivir catastrophe

BMJ published an editorial, in 2022, criticizing the use of remdesivir and lamenting “the lost lessons of Tamiflu.” Editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee pointed out that Tamiflu's and Remdesivir's stories share many common features, including both having failed in previous settings and being hyped on poor research:

. . . How one such treatment reached its costly prominence, despite the already available evidence of its inadequacies, stands as a cautionary tale. It also shows how little or how slowly we learn. The remdesivir story shares many common features with the saga of Tamiflu (oseltamivir), the drug that cost the world billions of dollars during the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Both drugs had failed in earlier settings. At the start of the pandemics both were hyped on limited, poor quality research, mainly funded by drug companies. Both were bought in large amounts by governments without data to back up their purchase. Both have harms that have been inadequately researched and reported. (Emphasis added.)

Problems with remdesivir were also covered in The ‘very, very bad look' of remdesivir, the first FDA-approved COVID-19 drug: The Food and Drug Administration held no advisory meeting on antiviral, and the European Union signed contract without knowing of failed trial.

It may seem incredible, yet despite the Tamiflu saga and remdesivir catastrophe, Tamiflu is still being considered a safe and effective antiviral to combat the bird flu, not just by Dr McCullough, but by the FDA as well, as Frontline News reported.

Can it happen again?

Tamiflu pandemic? Tamiflu adverse effects mimic bird flu symptoms

Is it possible to create a bird flu pandemic by mistaking Tamiflu adverse events for bird flu, as occurred when Remdesivir adverse effects were written up as features of COVID-19? Like Tamiflu's adverse events, bird flu symptoms include nausea and vomiting.[fn]Symptoms of bird flu per the Cleveland Clinic - fever, fatigue, cough, muscle aches. sore throat. nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stuffy or runny nose. shortness of breath (dyspnea), and pink eye (conjunctivitis).[/fn]

The US population today is 341,586,555. During the COVID-19 “pandemic” 80% of the population got at least one mRNA shot. 80% of the population today is 273,269,244. While many more people might question a new bird flu vaccine, Tamiflu is a drug most people have heard of and still believe to be safe — like Dr. McCullough, apparently.

Bye-bye freedom

Tamiflu isn't as dangerous as Remdesivir, which is perhaps why even normally cautious physicians are willing to promote it, “to be on the safe side.” However, the real danger lies not in the mass administration of Tamiflu, but in the potential consequences. In the event of hundreds of thousands of people being stricken with debilitating, if non-life-threatening, adverse events that are mistaken for bird flu, mass hysteria could erupt, providing certain vested interests with the perfect opportunity to rush through emergency use authorization for an all-new, untested “wonder drug” to cure "bird flu," not to mention lockdown restrictions so restrictive we may long for the COVID era.

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