Snakes On a Gain...of Function?
Sorry...this new "covid is snake venom" theory doesn't hold water.
I’m open to conspiracy theories…but they need to make some damn sense!!
Oh, sure, I’ll entertain a conspiracy theory briefly just to see if there’s any merit to it…but among the intriguing and quirky possibilities - Was the moon landing faked? Is Paul McCartney really a “Faul” McCartney? Did the CERN supercollider cause the Mandela Effect? - are theories that defy logic and reason, such as the recent flat earth movement.
Those of us who are skeptical of the mainstream COVID-19 narrative need to be very careful that we don’t fall for flat earth theories that end up making us look, well, silly.
Unfortunately, some well-meaning people right now are pushing a really crazy theory about COVID-19 and snakes.
The Covid Snake Theory is mixed with some truths and flat-out misunderstandings that might sound good to people who love their Doom Porn stir-fried, hot, and sizzling.
But this is a massive misfire.
The short version of the Covid Snake Theory:
COVID-19 is not a virus. It’s snake venom, purposefully being put into our water to poison us.
Remdesivir is not a drug, but powdered snake venom.
Want proof? Well, we don’t have any actual lab analysis of remdesivir or municipal water supplies worldwide. However, “corona” means crown, which can remind you of the word “king,” and the word “virus” initially meant “venom,” and scientists have been studying 19 enzymes or proteins in snake venom, which means COVID-19 actually stands for “King Cobra venom.”
Oh, and a lot of the symptoms of severe covid are similar to snake venom poisoning.
That’s it, for the most part.
I don’t mean to sound overly sarcastic here. This is but a brief example of the convoluted breadcrumbs used to piece together this theory.
I take no great pleasure in trying to explain why this snake theory is snake oil.
But the story is spreading like wildfire, and it needs to get nipped in the bud before we all look like fools.
So how did this theory get started?
The Covid Snake Theory has been put forward by a retired chiropractor named Dr. Bryan Ardis, D.C. and hyped up by a “world premiere” called “Watch the Water” on April 11 on the Stew Peters show, available on Rumble.
Mike Adams of Natural News also interviewed Dr. Bryan Ardis. Part 1 of 3 was uploaded yesterday, which you can watch here on Brighteon.
Dr. Ardis seems like a nice guy - but you should also listen to what he says with a grain of salt, since he’s actively marketing an “Anti-V” collection of supplements at the URL www.ardisanecdote.com - which is a perhaps purposeful (I hope) misspelling of the word “antidote.”
(An antidote is a cure, an anecdote is a story.)
I was organizing earlier today and listened to both the Stew Peters Watch the Water “documentary” and the Mike Adams interview.
Mike Adams did a slightly better job, but I was super disappointed in him for not pointing out the obvious holes in the theory.
(FYI, I contributed a few articles to Natural News over 10 years ago, when the site was not political and before Mike Adams started on InfoWars. Adams has gotten a bit hyperbolic since then, but overall, I still think he offers some value if you can get past the doom and political incorrectness.)
I am frankly surprised. I thought Mike Adams was a lot smarter than this. I don’t know what the hell he was thinking…acting so incredulous over some of the more dubious claims by Dr. Ardis.
As for Stew Peters…I have no idea who he was before the covid pandemic. He popped up in the past year as a prominent conservative voice criticizing covid vaccines and lockdowns. He’s not someone I’ve followed that closely, as I have found him to err on the side of hysteria.
I have nothing against him personally, but Peters tends to hype a lot of inflammatory covid vaccine stories that aren’t ultimately helpful in fighting mandates.
He often has on guests that like to predict massive, impending doom such as: Everyone who gets the “clot shot” will die within 6 months. Well, they didn’t. Then we were told that some of the vials were just saline. Or they are designed to kill people slowly over years. The timeframe of death keeps getting pushed back.
I will be one of the first people to tell you that these mRNA shots have a higher adverse reaction rate, and they may have long-term consequences we aren’t aware of yet. But we just don’t know for sure, and when you run around screaming “everyone is gonna die!” you end up looking foolish when people do not.
So I expect Stew Peters to be interviewing folks on the less credible side of the vaccine critical spectrum…but I did not expect this.
The Watch the Water documentary was a production. It was laden with sappy music, dramatic pauses, and carefully curated clips from TV shows.
In one of the most concerning leaps of logic, Dr. Ardis reveals that he determined snake venom was being put into water supplies after seeing an episode of the Blacklist where James Spader’s character was poisoned by cobra venom put into his water.
Whaatttt??
OK, I know about “predictive programming”1 but it’s never that literal (if it’s even a real thing).
So explain then why our neighbors got covid when the entire neighborhood is on well water?
So here’s my summary of the half-truths and misunderstandings expressed in the Watch the Water documentary:
1] Monoclonal Antibodies Aren’t Just Used for Snake Bites
We’re told monoclonal antibodies are primarily used as snake antivenin. Not true (emphasis mine):
Monoclonal antibodies have broad clinical and experimental medical uses. Many of the initial monoclonal antibodies used in clinical medicine were immunomodulatory agents with activity against specific immune cells, such as CD4 or CD3 lymphocytes, which are important in the pathogenesis of rejection after solid organ transplantation. Subsequently, monoclonal antibodies were prepared against specific cytokines (anti-cytokines), which were believed to play a role in cell and tissue damage in immunologically mediated diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, alkylosing spondylitis, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis and psoriasis, among others. In addition, therapeutic monoclonal antibodies were developed, aimed at blocking or inhibiting the activity of specific enzymes, cell surface transporters or signaling molecules and have been used in cancer chemotherapy and to treat severe viral infections. Use of monoclonal antibodies is currently broadening to therapy of other severe, nonmalignant conditions including asthma, atopic dermatitis, migraine headaches, hypercholesterolemia, osteoporosis and viral or bacterial infections. Thus, the therapeutic monoclonal antibodies do not fall into a single class and have broad therapeutic uses. As of 2018, more than 60 therapeutic monoclonal antibodies are approved and in use in the United States.
2] Remdesivir Is Snake Venom Because It’s a Powder, Really?
We’re also told by Dr. Ardis, without any chemical analysis, that remdesivir is actually snake venom, because snake venom is also available in a powdered form that you mix with liquid when ready to use. Umm…you mean similar to the powder that is used in antibiotic suspensions, such as the very well-known amoxicillin (penicillin) that you’d get as a kid? (Back in the day the liquid was actually pink.)
I’ve also taken the antibiotic cefdinir as an oral suspension, which was stored as a white powder (technically, “creme”)…should I also be concerned that the cefdinir I took was actually dried snake venom? Please!
You can’t just say a medicine is literally snake venom because it looks similar and has some bad side effects!
This is what really shocked me about Mike Adams. The man claims he has a lab that he can use for all kinds of testing. Did he not ask for some sort of sample to check out before nodding his head to this naivete?
I also want to know why remdesivir was being tested on Ebola if it is actually snake venom…is that because Ebola is also snake venom? Really?
3] If a Ton of Snake Venom Was Really Being Put Into the Water Supply, a Lot More People Would Be Dead
Dr. Ardis seems to think that because the CDC was testing water waste for signs of coronavirus, they were actually putting covid into the water. (I think. This part seemed a little confusing, but I also admit I had the video on 1.50x to get through it quickly.)
How would all the earth’s governments coordinate putting snake venom into water supplies, but at the right dosage and timing so that only a small percentage of people would get really sick and die?
Why do we have families where the husband died of covid but the wife just got sniffles?
This makes no sense on its face.
If, at best, a small amount of snake venom was put into water, it’d likely work in the same way allergy shots do…meaning, it might teach people’s immune systems to fight snake bites. It might be homeopathic in that sense and not that toxic at all.
4] If the Origin of COVID-19 Was Snakes, That Doesn’t Make It Snake Venom
One of the few potentially compelling things Dr. Ardis discussed was the possibility that COVID-19 actually originated in snakes, not bats. Yes, it’s true, snakes were seen as a potential breeding ground for the original covid virus.
However, if the virus originated in snakes, it means the snakes would have been infected with covid. That is not the same thing as the virus literally being snake venom. Snake venom is very different from a virus that infects snakes.
C’mon, Mike Adams…surely you understand this! I can blame Stew Peters for missing this but you?
This entire side trip about the potential snake origins of covid sidesteps the bigger issue of gain-of-function research, which is the far more important story we should be focused on here.
5] mRNA is Not the Same Thing as Snake Venom
OK, so we’ve now been told that remdesivir is not a drug, but snake venom. We’re told that COVID-19 is not a virus, but snake venom. Guess what else Dr. Ardis thinks is snake venom? You got it, mRNA vaccines!
You can find some interesting things about mRNA and snakes if you do a search, but none of it suggests that mRNA vaccines are actually snake venom. Or the vaccine venom somehow puts snake DNA into your body so you won’t be fully human. (I admit, I’m not entirely clear on what he’s actually saying here.)
First, I can point you to a study that mRNA in snake venom has been found to be unusually stable. But folks…bits of genetic code are not the same thing as the “thing” they are part of. Your mRNA in your blood is not your blood. In the same way, mRNA inside snake venom is not the same thing as snake venom itself.
Oh, look, here’s another smoking gun (not):
Moderna co-founder using mRNA technology to treat venomous snakebites
“….I thought vaccines will be useless for snakebite, because snakebite is an acute problem, it can kill a person within minutes to hours,” said Vaiyapuri, who has also worked alongside Lewin since 2014.
“In those cases vaccines can’t make an impact quickly.”
.…
However, he said research shows that mRNA vaccines can produce antibodies in as little as three hours, which gives him hope that targeted vaccine campaigns in rural villages could one day save countless lives.
There’s nothing sinister going on here, at least on the surface. They are talking about using mRNA to create a fast-acting vaccine that could save people from snake venom, not kill them with snake venom.
There’s no technology right now, even with mRNA, to produce snake venom inside a human being.
Can someone explain to me how mRNA is going to force a human body to produce snake venom? We don’t have the anatomy for it:
Snake venom is made by organs that evolved from salivary glands. Ordinary saliva contains enzymes to help digest food as you chew it and natural selection has favoured snakes that include ever more toxic enzymes in their saliva.
Scientists at Bangor University recently sequenced the genome of the king cobra and found that the toxins in its venom are slight variations of ordinary proteins. As prey gradually evolved immunity, so snakes have responded with a complex mix of 50-100 different proteins to alter blood pressure, prevent blood clotting and paralyse nerves.
So what you are saying is that scientists can create an mRNA shot that will tell a human body without specialized venom glands to produce snake venom toxins made up of 50-100 different proteins? This is highly unlikely.
One or two proteins maybe…which is what these mRNA shots do, tell your body to produce a single protein.
But that singular protein is not the same thing as full-blown snake venom, even if it had bits of it that shared some qualities with a snake venom protein.
Now…could these proteins be in a virus? I don’t know. Read on.
The Potentially Small Kernel of Truth in the Snake (Oil) Story
The problem with all this rampant speculation is that it gets us off track from the real origins of COVID-19.
Here’s what’s possibly the real item of interest…Dr. Ardis mentioned the following issue with COVID-19, which I verified in this headline:
COVID-19 kills patients using an enzyme similar to neurotoxins in rattlesnake venom
TUCSON, Ariz. — COVID-19 appears to kill patients in the same way a rattlesnake does — triggering a protein related to neurotoxins found in the reptile’s venom, a new study reveals. Scientists at the University of Arizona believe the mechanism may hold the key to predicting patients most likely to die from the virus.
This trigger fuels the severity of the virus by causing severe inflammation. A patient’s immune system goes into overdrive, leading to organ failure.
“Many patients who died from COVID-19 had some of the highest levels of this enzyme that have ever been reported,” says study senior author Dr. Floyd Chilton in a university release.
The COVID enzyme shares the same genetic ancestry as the key active chemical in snake venom.
This is definitely of interest, but it is not some “smoking gun” that COVID-19 is actual snake venom.2
Someone with a better understanding of genetics could perhaps answer this question, however:
Is it possible that in gain-of-function research, scientists might have used some genetic material from snakes (and/or proteins found in their venom) to craft the COVID-19 virus?
THIS may possibly be the real story…even though it is still far-fetched.
Unfortunately, because Dr. Ardis mixes in this very interesting tidbit with a whole bunch of baseless speculation about everything being snake venom - and the venom being in the water supply to boot! - fact checkers are going to be all over his ass for making up such a whopper of a conspiracy theory.
And this is a shame. Dr. Ardis seems well-intentioned - but neither Stew Peters or Mike Adams have helped this situation by being so incredulous at Dr. Ardis’s wild theories.
We want a free press, and that means people on “our” side also have to be skeptical and willing to ask the tough questions.
I really hope these three (Ardis, Peters, and Adams) can back off a bit and get a bit more clear-headed on what the actual issues are here. They are hurting more than they are helping right now otherwise.
We can’t just make wild claims based on dubious connections and synchronicities. It’s easy to read things into synchronicities. Trust me, I used to do this all the time when I was younger. A cloud in the sky shaped a certain way “meant” I was supposed to be with a guy I liked. No, it did not.
You can tell yourself that a red balloon is a sign, and you’ll soon be seeing red balloons everywhere. Now that I’ve mentioned 11:11 you can also expect to see that on your clock and elsewhere. It’s not that I got your brain to look for it…it’s an angel getting your attention. See how easy that is?
Synchronicities can be fun and interesting, but must be taken with a grain of salt and not given as absolute proof…especially when we are dealing with critical scientific issues.
I myself had a synchronicity while watching the Watch the Water documentary. I was going through old papers while watching. At the end, when Dr. Ardis was talking about his fortune cookie, a small slip of paper dropped into my hand from a pile of papers.
It was a fortune cookie slip I had saved from years ago. It read:
A smile is a curve that can get a lot of things straight.
Follow me on GETTR @stephaniebrail.
Predictive programming is a conspiracy concept that the “Illuminati” needs to telegraph what they do in advance as a spiritual component of their Satanic worship, so they will spell out their plans in TV shows and movies.
In my follow-up post and video, I looked into this enzyme issue more. It turns out the enzyme in question naturally occurs in the human body. It is *not* a snake enzyme, but it is similar to a snake enzyme. I explain how it works here:
I recorded a video responding to some of the questions/challenges below. It's here - https://wholistic.substack.com/p/snakes-poisoning-the-well
Brian Mowrey is far more lenient and generous with his analysis but ultimately, it's the same critique - one enzyme does not a snake venom make - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/jumping-the-snake