Nice try at wishful thinking

Debunking the Covid Smart-Ass of the Week

Below, I’m responding to the comments of some guy (I’ll spare you his name) who used to be on my forum for a while. He had that annoying know-it-all vibe and eventually left after the group started calling him out for constantly derailing the real discussion. Since then, he’s been popping up elsewhere to spout nonsense and take shots at my predictions.
But no worries, I’m always open to questions and critical feedback — in fact, I welcome it. It’s just getting unpleasant when someone’s just trying to sneak in and stir up doubt and distrust from the inside. That’s not debate, that’s sabotage.
Still, I feel kind of obligated to respond to some of his shallow takes, because in times like these — when people are already confused and looking for clarity — this kind of simplistic garbage can actually do damage. And let’s be honest, that seems to be his goal.

So yeah, bear with me if some of my responses come off a little blunt. They’re still grounded in science — just with a bit of edge.

The guy: Why the “Hivicron tsunami” scenario is biologically off the table in 2025

Geert Vanden Bossche's "Hivicron" scenario — the emergence of a Highly Virulent Omicron variant causing mass immune breakdown and lethal reinfections — was a compelling hypothesis at the time. But in 2025, it's becoming increasingly clear that this specific prediction has missed its biological window.

Geert: I really hope this dilettante takes a minute to read my latest Substack[1] — just so he can see how close my predictions are getting. Some people slam the window shut without ever bothering to look outside. Why would they need a view when everything’s already “crystal clear” in their tiny little brain?

The guy:
Why?

1. Demographic reset is already underway.

The most primed, immunologically compromised individuals (often elderly or over-boosted) are statistically overrepresented in excess mortality data. At the same time, new births enter the population unprimed, gradually restoring immunological diversity and balance. This silent demographic turnover undermines the core conditions for a full-scale Hivicron-type catastrophe.

Geert: This makes zero sense. As long as we don’t have solid sterilizing herd immunity, highly infectious SC-2 variants will keep spreading. Because there’s more and more non-specific immune pressure on the humoral arm of the innate immune system  (like cytokines) — selection of immune escape variants is less stringent and increasingly directed at viral protein mutations that have the capacity to downregulate antiviral cytokine activity or production. That gives these variants an edge over others and slowly helps them take over. selection of immune escape variants is less selective and increasingly directed toward variants endowed with Hence, such (sub)variants slowly but surely acquire a competitive advantage among circulating variants. This evolution has several consequences:

-   When people get exposed to these variants that suppress the humoral innate response, even healthy unvaccinated folks with trained cell-mediated immunity struggle to fully control the virus. They regularly end up with mild upper respiratory symptoms — like coughing or hoarseness — but don’t really contribute to building herd immunity. It can even be worse for young kids, since they often get exposed at a time when their natural antibodies have dropped but their cell-mediated system isn’t well trained yet. So instead of helping restore ‘immunological diversity and balance’ in the population, they actually contribute to spreading the virus.

-   C-19 vaccinated people often deal with chronic infections — long Covid and all — which makes them a perfect breeding ground for a multitude of more dangerous variants. These new variants are namely selected to specifically subvert the humoral part of innate immunity. This further weakens their innate immune system after training of the cellular arm has already been sidelined due to earlier Ab-dependent enhancement of infection caused by Omicron and its descendants. Chronicity of infection combined with  poorly specific immune selection pressure causes newly emerging, highly infectious immune escape variants to spread like hell; that’s why we’re seeing such high viral loads in wastewater. This increase in viral infectious pressure is precisely what prevents many unvaccinated from rapidly eliminating the virus upon exposure (even despite their training of cell-based innate immunity and absence of diseases other than mild symptoms).

Sure, right now it’s mostly older or vulnerable people getting sick, but that won’t stay like that for long. That would be wishful thinking! The virus is shifting strategy — going after the first line of defense and targeting the humoral part of the innate immune system; that puts a lot more people at high risk — especially C-19 vaccinated folks who haven’t gotten seriously sick yet. The guy making these clueless comments clearly doesn’t get that the pandemic isn’t done evolving….unfortunately in a pretty disastrous direction!

The guy:

2. The population is too heterogeneous.

We now have a patchwork of immune profiles: some vaccinated multiple times, others infected naturally, many with no exposure in years. That diversity breaks the uniform immunological field required for a single variant to cause systemic failure.

Geert: Bullshit. The number of boosters doesn’t really matter anymore. What’s doing the ‘boosting’ now for all the C-19 vaccinees are the constant breakthrough infections from these abundantly circulating, highly infectious variants. These infections have basically shifted the whole clinical picture — from short, acute illness to long-term, chronic disease — across highly C-19  vaccinated populations. Hence, chronicity of disease and immune dysregulation resulting in immune-mediated diseases (including cancer) are becoming more widespread as part of a common disease pattern (not a patchwork of different profiles!) — what most people call long Covid. And just watch — in the coming weeks, we’ll see fewer cases of mild symptoms like hoarseness and more serious stuff kicking in among vaccinated individuals. Hospitalizations are already going up, and it’s not slowing down.
As matter of fact, it’s not the immunological status of the population but the viral landscape that has become incredibly diverse: the variants are all over the place8

The guy:

3. Highly virulent variants don’t spread well.

A virus that incapacitates or kills its host too quickly tends to burn out. Evolution favors transmissibility over lethality. Hivicron, by definition, would need both — an extremely rare balance that evolution rarely sustains in open populations.

Geert: Yet another load of crap! Viruses don’t make plans — they don’t have brains. And no, evolution isn’t some master planner either! The idea that viruses ‘prefer’ to be more transmissible than virulent is just a myth. For the record, both transmissibility and virulence mostly depend on how the host immune system reacts — not on some imaginary virus logic! Nature however, evolved in a way that’s more concerned with protecting humanity than helping viruses. If it wants to avoid burning out humanity, it’s going to have to let the virus weed out the people who can’t contribute to real herd immunity. Sadly, that includes a big chunk of the C-19 vaccinated. Their dysfunctional adaptive immune response to SC-2 is now pretty much exhausted and, on top of that, many never got a chance to properly train their cell-mediated innate immunity — because they were fully vaccinated too early. Meanwhile, the circulating variants are now specifically targeting their innate humoral immunity.
That’s a whole different story from what’s currently happening in the unvaccinated. When they can’t clear the virus, it’s usually because of individual health issues compromising their innate immune sterilizing capacity  — like chronic illness, poor lifestyle, or weak baseline immunity, or because of poor innate immune training (e.g., young children) — not because the virus has evolved to outsmart them (check out my Substack for more on that: https://voiceforscienceandsolidarity.substack.com/p/highly-covid-19-vaccinated-populations?r=y46t6). Once the C-19 vaccinated stop pumping out immune escape variants like a factory line, the viral load in the population will drop. And when that happens, even unvaccinated people with weaker immune systems will be able to handle it.

So please, stop spreading this dumb narrative about the virus or evolution “choosing” anything. That kind of stuff belongs in fairy tales, not science.

The guy:

4. The expected “tsunami” never came.

If Hivicron were viable, it would have shown its teeth during 2022–2023, when priming levels were high and escape pressure was intense. Instead, we saw waves of mild Omicron subvariants, with high case counts but decreasing IFRs.

Geert: OMG!!! The guy clearly missed all of my deep dives into the pandemic dynamics and how the virus has been evolving right alongside changes in the host’s adaptive immune system. The massive selective immune pressure from highly C-19 vaccinated populations on the spike protein is exactly what pushed SC-2 to suddenly adopt spectacular changes in that very protein, resulting in the emergence of a brand-new SC-2 variant: Omicron. Since then, the adaptive immune system has more or less adjusted to Omicron and its offspring — but guess what? It still can’t stop transmission. Now the pressure is slowly shifting to the last remaining functional arm of the innate immune system in highly C-19 vaccinated populations (i.e., the humoral arm). And once that’s burns out on a population scale — which might happen quickly, since the innate system isn’t exactly flexible and can only shuffle cytokine patterns around — we’re probably looking at a whole new viral jump, resulting in the emergence of what I expect to be an entirely new Coronavirus, which I’ve been calling ‘HIVICRON’..

I’ve always said the real tsunami would hit after the silence. And that so-called silence — the whole “Covid is over!” delusion — is only just starting to fade. People are finally waking up to the fact that this thing is far from done. But here comes Mr. Smartass, already rushing to make his so-called final judgment on my work — while completely missing the bigger picture.

The guy:

5. The slow collapse is more plausible.

Instead of a single explosive event, we’re witnessing a slow erosion of public health: increases in chronic illness, autoimmune disorders, strange multisystem symptoms. A creeping degradation — not a tidal wave.

Geert: Here we go again — this guy completely ignores how the virus is evolving and actually seems to believe that nature is just gonna settle for a slow, steady breakdown of public health. He clearly didn’t bother to pay attention to any of my immunological explanations about why the pandemic had to go through this metastable phase before the before the shit hits the fan.
History’s about to prove him very wrong. Hopefully he lives through it — at least long enough to reflect on how clueless and premature it was to jump to conclusions without the slightest grasp of the science!

The guy:

In short:

The immunological trap Bossche warned of may still be real.

But the catastrophic outcome he predicted — a Hivicron tsunami — has likely been defused by the very biological complexity he underestimated.

We won't die all at once. We'll recover unevenly. Or degrade unevenly.

But either way — Hivicron missed its chance.

Geert: I didn’t underestimate the biological complexity — I underestimated how incredibly adaptable and versatile the host immune system can be. Pandemics hit entire populations, sometimes globally, so they don’t follow some kind of personalized, case-by-case approach. That would go totally against their nature as population-level phenomena. It’s exactly this large-scale effect that unfortunately costs lives to protect the population as a whole — but it’s also what drives herd immunity and eventual recovery. The only thing uneven in all of this is the ridiculous garbage that guy is spewing compared to what I actually know about the subject.

‍

[1] https://voiceforscienceandsolidarity.substack.com/p/highly-covid-19-vaccinated-populations?r=y46t6

‍