FOLLOW-UP: Alasdair Munro's "Immunity Debt" Fantasy is Back
The Unyielding Perserverance of the Unscientific Narcissist
One of the earliest inspirations for the Pandemic Accountability Index was the genesis and propagation of the term "Immunity Debt," and its vapid cheerleader Alasdair Munro, from the United Kingdom. We've profiled him extensively in 2022 and returned to his "Immunity Debt" fantasy in 2023 with "Foreclosing on Your Child's Immunity Debt." This is a completely fraudulent concept that can be easily debunked by opening any Immunology 101 textbook: your child's immune system is not simply a "muscle" that can be "trained" on pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2. The medical community has overwhelmingly rejected such nonsense.
Here is Immunology Professor Danny Altman, in an interview with journalist Martin W. Angler, quickly debunking this rather stubborn myth:
Yet, Munro persists. If he were to ever admit that he’s wrong, he might lose some Substack revenue, so this mythology must continue to be reinforced:
Tragically, as an unprofessional Substack crank, Alasdair Munro has a financial conflict of interest by repeatedly insisting that your child being constantly ill is in fact the fault of public health measures in 2020, and that a steady stream of illnesses is actually beneficial for their health. Munro is utterly unable to accept that he has gotten this crisis dead wrong, and the mountains of evidence of how COVID-19 has a negative impact on pediatric health and development continue to mount. A real man would admit fault and correct their perspective accordingly, yet just like many others we have covered (Stanford just hosted a conference full of them) on the Pandemic Accountability Index, their corruption and narcissism are too much to let go of.
On October 11th, 2024 Alasdair Munro proclaimed via Twitter:
"New article from me and [Thomas House] *fire emoji* [Just...why? -Ed.] On what immunity debt actually means, and why it alone is sufficient to explain disturbances in seasonal communicable disease dynamics post-pandemic."
Let’s dive into this refried gruel, as the contents within are quite pitiful.
I Got My Epidemiology Degree from Wikipedia
Alasdair Munro's new “paper” is emblematic of the dire state of academic science publishing in the social media age. It also mirrors a key dynamic of abusive interpersonal relationships: isolation. "Everyone but me is incompetent," is not a sound foundation for beginning to understand the highly technical moving parts surrounding infectious diseases, immunology, or many other complicated topics related to the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. However, it makes embracing repeated COVID-19 infections a lot easier, now that you can offload all of the thinking to some dishonest charlatan on social media, regardless of how actually competent they might be in the real world.
Munro's revival of the "immunity debt" concept in his latest pseudoscientific excrement is based upon the "S-I-R" mathematical model developed from 1916-1927. According to Stockton: "a population that is exposed to an infection can be divided into three categories - Susceptible (S), Infected (I), and Recovered (R), creating a SIR model." Yes, we are now justifying the concept of "Immunity Debt" based upon entry-level mathematical *models* from a century ago, in order to reject the growing mountain of medical research centered around SARS-CoV-2 from the past five years. This is the level of intellectual rigor that Alasdair Munro is charging the public top dollar on Substack for.
For an added chuckle, let's check Wikipedia:
"Compartmental models are a very general modelling technique...often applied to the mathematical modelling of infectious diseases...The SIR model is one of the simplest compartmental models..."
This is what Alasdair Munro is bragging about on Twitter with added *fire emojis* for added emphasis: “The simplest compartmental model.” The level of profound arrogance here is astounding. This is like watching a toddler bringing last night's turd to kindergarten show-and-tell and bragging about his incredible achievement getting it inside the toilet, with everyone else staring at him in disbelief that he hasn’t figured out how to flush yet.
Dishonest Ramblings of the Embarrassed
From there, this "study" rapidly devolves into yet another pitiful opinion editorial masquerading as a scientific publication, something that longtime readers of the Pandemic Accountability Index should be quite familiar with by now thanks to Munro's American colleagues Vinay Prasad of UCSF and his anti-vaxxer henchwoman, sports physician Tracy Beth Hoeg.
Let's review a few choice quotes from Munro's little screed:
"The concept of immunity debt is a phenomenon resulting from the suppression of endemic pathogens during the COVID-19 pandemic due to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs)."
Alasdair Munro fails to detail how this "phenomenon" was invented in 2021...by Alasdair Munro...and again, is immediately debunked by cracking open a basic Immunology 101 textbook. He expects his social media audience to be too incurious to bother to verify his bold claims: the gamble of every fake pandemic “expert.”
"This concept is demonstrated through post-pandemic resurgence of diseases such as RSV and Group A Streptococcus..."
This is a pretty cowardly lie of omission Munro is deploying here - as RSV and Step did not experience a resurgence "post-pandemic," but soon after repeatedly infecting unvaccinated children with SARS-CoV-2 in public schools became government policy. Cranks have been declaring the COVID-19 pandemic over as early as Summer 2020, erecting a fantasy of "normal" that turns a blind eye to the many harms that even "mild" COVID reinfections can cause.
"This underscores the need for comprehensive public health strategies that consider long-term outcomes of widespread NPI usage and ways to mitigate them."
Of course, Munro fails to disclose which specific NPIs cause his beloved "immunity debt" phenomenon - overplaying his hand that any form of preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections is in fact harmful to public health - a completely absurd fantasy that makes a mockery of the countless millions of dead & disabled worldwide as a result of the COVID-19 infections that were supposed to “train” their immune system.
"It was hypothesized early in the pandemic that the suppression of transmission of these 'off-target' pathogens might alter their epidemiological patterns due to a reduction in pathogen-specific population immunity, a phenomenon often termed as 'immunity debt' or 'immunity gap."
“Immunity Debt” was creative fiction hypothesized by…you guessed it: Alasdair Munro starting in 2021 and propagated throughout 2022 as countless children were repeatedly infected with COVID-19, a brand-new disease, and began to suffer a wide range of negative effects as a consequence. "Immunity debt" was propagated in 2022 to explain away the result of pro-infection public health mismanagement throughout the Western media. It didn't matter if this hypothesis failed under basic scrutiny, it was a seductive fantasy that easily explained away constant pediatric illness as beneficial to their health and development.
"This concept should not be conflated with an overall decrease in immune system competence, which some commentators have inaccurately suggested."
Munro correctly identifies his fantasy as little more than a fictional "concept" which isn't rooted in serious medical science. Alasdair has repeatedly insisted that COVID-19 does not negatively impact the immune system, and has repeatedly championed constant pediatric illness, regardless of the cause, as beneficial to their health and development to his captive, paying audience on Substack, covered in cute cartoons of benevolent viruses and sick children.
Since 2021, medical researchers with real-world responsibility to the truth have uncovered a growing mountain of evidence that debunks Alasdair Munro's claims of "immunity debt." This is why Munro tweeted out that "immunity debt...alone is sufficient," as Alasdair is too cowardly to admit that his pro-infection opinion has been soundly debunked. Instead, Munro is now insisting that everyone else is dead wrong and are merely "commentators" who "inaccurately suggested" repeated COVID-19 infections have negative effects on the immune system. The absolute arrogance of this prick is astounding.
Here is just some of the latest medical scientific research on the topic:
European Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: "COVID-19 causes long-term reduction of innate and adaptive immune cells which is associated with a Th2 serum cytokine profile."
Biochimie: "Cancer-related effects of SARS-CoV-2 may take several years to manifest themselves."
Nature Microbiology: "Evolution of enhanced innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 Omicron subvariants"
Nature Immunology: "Long COVID manifests with T cell dysregulation, inflammation and an uncoordinated adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2"
Signal Transduction & Targeted Therapy: "ACE2-independent infection of T lymphocytes by SARS-CoV-2"
eLife: "SARS-CoV-2 uses CD4 to infect T helper lymphocytes"
Nature Scientific Reports: "Reduced numbers of T cells and B cells correlates with persistent SARS-CoV-2 presence in non-severe COVID-19 patients"
You do not need an eight-year medical degree and six figures of student loan debt to reasonably deduce that the interactions between COVID-19 and your immune system are a complicated, highly technical matter with a lot of moving parts. To be so arrogant to simply throw all of this quality research away and write it off as worthless in comparison to a basic mathematical model from Wikipedia, that originates from a century before SARS-CoV-2 infected a single person, is utterly absurd.
Alasdair Munro (@apsmunro) and his social media laptop class academic friends imply children are suffering from an “Immunity Debt,” and by any basic cowboy logic, a debt must be paid. Munro believes that his “Immune Debt” must be paid by children nakedly embracing the SARS-CoV-2 virus, so just what might that entail? Let’s dump the Wikipedia rags and ask the real experts for once:
“Blood Vessel Damage in All Children with SARS-CoV-2 Regardless of Disease Severity” (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia)
Oops, Alasdair Munro. You could have simply been quiet and faded away, forgotten as yet another useless chronically incorrect fraud. Instead, you chose to make yourself the “Main Character” of SARS-CoV-2 sycophants, destroying your professional reputation and credibility, all in exchange for precisely… nothing.
“You don’t become a public health ‘expert’ by going to med school or treating COVID-19 patients. You do it on the social media feeds. You do it with your fingers on a laptop. The rest is bullshit, and you know it” -Immunity Debt Collector Munro.
Alasdair Munro has zero ability, nor plans, to treat the children disabled by the virus he has championed across social media for multiple years now. Thus, he has accumulated a rather impressive deficit of Credibility Debt, and his scientifically illiterate opinions about SARS-CoV-2 can be instantly discarded.
Anyone still trying to sell you “Immunity Debt” in 2024 is a narcissistic fraud.
