Brownstone Institute
The Latest “Bird Flu” Psyop
From Brownstone Institute
By
I am expert in influenza, and have consulted with the WHO over the past two decades on the topic of flu vaccines. This is one subject matter I am extremely knowledgeable about. This goes back to my medical school days, when I worked with Robert Lamb, one of the top influenza virus specialists in the world. It extended through much of my career, including my serving as Director of Clinical Influenza Vaccine Research for Solvay Biologicals, in which I oversaw over $200 million in federal (BARDA) alternative (cell-based) influenza vaccine research funding.
What is happening now with “Bird flu” is another psyops campaign being conducted by the administrative/deep state, apparently in partnership with Pharma, against the American people. They know and we know that the “vaccines” being produced will be somewhat ineffective, as all flu “vaccines” are. The government is chasing a rapidly evolving RNA virus with a syringe, just like they did with HIV and Covid-19.
Generally, the currently circulating avian influenza strain in the US does not include any cases of human-to-human transmission. And the current mortality, with over 60 cases identified, is 0%. NOT 50%.
All the while they are getting prepared to roll out masks, lockdowns, quarantines, etc.
All the while getting ready to roll out mRNA vaccines for poultry and livestock, as well as for all of us.
The more they test, the more “Bird flu” (H5N1) they will find. This “pandemic” is nothing more than an artifact of their newly developed protocols to test cattle, poultry, pets, people, and wildlife on a massive scale for avian influenza. In years past, this was not even considered. In the past, the USG did fund a massive testing and surveillance program called “Biowatch.” That program was a colossal failure and a massive waste of money. Billions of dollars.
Of course, these facilities producing the tests have been repurposed from the Covid-19 testing facilities.
Key questions include:
Will we all comply?
Will we be forced to comply?
Will President Trump go along with the PsyWar/psyops campaign again?
We will know soon enough.
As the United States is testing everyone who has even the mildest symptoms for the H5N1 (avian) influenza, guess what – they are finding it! This is what we call in the lab, a “sampling bias.”
Globally, from 1997 until the present, there have been 907 reported cases of H5N1. And in fact, this particular outbreak was not the worst – and it is the only one where a massive testing campaign has occurred. It appears that this is partly due to the new diagnostic capabilities developed and deployed during Covid-19. The more you test, the more you find. But is it clinically significant?

The Case Study of Tetanus: Supply Chain Issues.
The CDC recommends a booster for the tetanus vaccine every 10 years for adults.
However, research published almost a decade ago suggests that the protection from tetanus and diphtheria vaccination lasts at least 30 years after completing the standard childhood vaccination series.
“We have always been told to get a tetanus shot every 10 years, but actually, there is very little data to prove or disprove that timeline. When we looked at the levels of immunity among 546 adults, we realized that antibody titers against tetanus and diphtheria lasted much longer then previously believed.”
-Mark K. Slifka, Ph.D, study author
This research, published in a highly reputable journal, suggests that a revised vaccination schedule with boosters occurring at ages 30 and 60 would be sufficient. As this was published in early 2016, the US government, at the very least, could have commissioned easily designed prospective and retrospective studies to confirm these results. And those results would have been published by now, with the tetanus adult schedule revised to reflect what is now known about the durable immunity of tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. Reducing the boosters to just two shots would save the government vast sums of money.
Not only that, but both the tetanus and diphtheria vaccines carry risks for adults. It is estimated that 50%–85% of patients experience injection site pain or tenderness, 25%–30% experience edema and erythema. Higher preexisting anti-tetanus antibody levels are also associated with a higher reactogenicity rate and greater severity (reference).
Anaphylaxis after tetanus vaccination represents a rare but potentially serious adverse event, with an incidence of 1.6 cases per million doses. That means if 100 million adults receive the booster every ten years, 320 cases of anaphylaxis will be avoided over the 30-year period – from those two boosters being eliminated. Tetanus has always been a “rare” disease, spread through a skin wound contaminated by Clostridium tetani bacteria, commonly found in soil, dust, and manure. Before vaccines were available, there were about 500 cases a year, with most resulting in death. Concerns about vaccine-associated adverse events when immunizations were performed at short intervals led to a revision of the tetanus/diphtheria vaccination schedule in 1966 to once every 10 years for patients >6 years of age.
It has recently come to my attention that the traditional stand-alone tetanus vaccine (TT) that one used to receive as an adult has been discontinued due to WHO recommendations. Their reasoning being:
Use of TTCV combinations with diphtheria toxoid are strongly encouraged and single-antigen vaccines should be discontinued whenever feasible to help maintain both high diphtheria and high tetanus immunity throughout the life course.
The CDC blames the shuttering of the only plant producing TT for the current lack of a stand-alone TT vaccine.
Now, in order to get a booster tetanus shot, an adult must take the following.
- Td: Sanofi’s Tenivac protects against tetanus and diphtheria. Given to people 7 years and older as a booster every 10 years. *A version also includes pertussis (eg DPT), but due to the risk of encephalitis, it is not recommended as a booster.
Why is the DPT combination vaccine discouraged in adults due to encephalitis risk, but is it recommended for children? Another one of those inconvenient issues that plague the CDC-recommended childhood vaccine schedule.
While supplies of diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (Tdap) vaccines (Sanofi’s Adacel and GSK’s Boostrix) aren’t limited, they are more expensive, and a very small fraction of patients can develop encephalopathy (brain damage) from the pertussis component.
In the United States, diphtheria is virtually non-existent, with only 14 cases reported between 1996 and 2018. Of those cases reported, most were from international travelers or immigrants.
The market for a stand-alone TT vaccine vanished worldwide due to WHO recommendations to stop the sales of the TT vaccine. Which was due to the relatively few, economically stressed countries where diphtheria is still an issue. So, therefore, the only facility manufacturing the TT vaccine was shut down within the last year.
The blowback from the WHO recommendations is that now there is a shortage of tetanus and diphtheria (Td) vaccine in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.
This all comes down to poor planning. And illustrates why supply chain issues and infectious disease countermeasure stockpiles are essential considerations for governments.
The good news is that unless one is immunosuppressed, most of us have almost lifelong immunity against tetanus and diphtheria.
My recommendation is that unless one gets a very deep and dirty puncture wound and has not had a tetanus shot in over ten years or longer, avoid that booster.
Here is the ugly secret about influenza vaccines. They are given to protect one group of vulnerable people. Those who are immunosuppressed, and that cohort includes the very elderly.
If those influenza vaccine manufacturing plants only make enough vaccines for those susceptible to a severe case of the flu, there would not be enough of a market to sustain their production costs. Furthermore, if there were a pandemic of some sort of highly pathogenic influenza, there would not be sufficient capacity to make enough vaccines to meet demand.
Egg-based influenza vaccine production requires super “clean” eggs; about 100 million “clean” fertilized eggs are needed annually for vaccine production in the US alone. Candidate vaccine viruses are injected into the eggs. If the process is shuttered, the whole production comes to a screeching halt. Many vaccines can be stored for long periods. Even as long as a decade. This stockpiling system works well for DNA viruses with a low mutation rate. Stockpiling is rarely a solution for vaccines developed for RNA viruses that mutate rapidly.
Therefore, the influenza vaccine is pushed on the American people year after year. As a way to maintain “warm base manufacturing” and ensure sufficient market size to support industrial operations.
I have spoken on this subject at the WHO and US government agencies, as well as many, many conferences. Unfortunately, because the mRNA and RNA vaccine platforms require a lot of freezer space (commonly -20°C) to stockpile for even short periods, this limits the ability to stockpile. Furthermore, the frozen storage requirements are only for up to 6 months. That means stockpiling for more extended storage is not currently done, and it is back to square one on the supply chain issue.
The issue with freezer space and mRNA vaccines is one that most likely won’t be solved. This benefits the manufacturers of this vaccine technology – the US government has an endless need for new vaccines as the old ones expire.
My small hope is that the mRNA platform will be too costly to justify its continued use, as appeals concerning safety (or lack of) seem to fall on deaf FDA ears.
In the meantime, don’t believe the hype generated by ex-officials from the Biden and Trump administrations.

Both Dr. Lena Wen, CNN correspondent, and Dr. Redfield, ex-director of the CDC, have gone on to mainstream media shows and promoted the narrative that the case fatality rate for avian influenza is over 50 percent. This, frankly, is a lie that the WHO is promoting. Bird flu generally is not tested for when someone has flu symptoms. When an outbreak of avian flu occurs on a poultry farm, testing of farm workers who are seriously ill will commence. This has led to the generation of the 890 case reports since 2003. Of those seriously ill patients reported to the WHO, over 50 percent died.
This is not an actual case fatality rate of avian flu around the world. It is, again, a sampling error due to a tiny data set derived from those who are at greatest risk due to general health. And just like the WHO reported on an exaggerated case fatality rate for mPOX, which was also based on a sampling error, or for Covid-19, again a sampling error, it is now used to justify psychological bioterrorism on the world population. Please don’t fall for it.
El Gato Malo on X succinctly points out that Dr. Leana Wen and her public health ilk are advancing:
1. Do more of the same lousy testing used in Covid-19 to overstate a disease and cause panic.
2. Develop another non-sterilizing non-vaccine that does not work to be pushed on “the vulnerable.”
3. Doing it “right now” under EUA, so whoever makes these tests and jabs can cash in and be shielded from liability.
4. Claiming that proxies like “triggers antibody production” demonstrate clinical clinical efficacy.
It’s just one last smash-and-grab for cash before the Brandon (Biden) administration ends. Anyone who falls for this one will truly fall for anything.
Question: what are Leana’s conflicts of interest? Who is paying her or giving her grants?
For those that haven’t viewed Dr. Redfield speaking of the avian flu case fatality rate, have a watch below. It is genuinely shocking. This fear-mongering comes from an ex-director of the CDC. Shame on him.
Frankly, it reminds me of the 51 intelligence officials claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was fake.
One has to wonder what conflict of interest motivated him to say this on national TV?
Remember in the US, there have been 62 cases of avian influenza discovered, and all but one case were very mild.
This deep dive into the supply chain issues is meant to show that public health has put itself into a groupthink situation that it can’t escape.
Many solutions to this quandary do not involve an evermore expanding schedule of vaccinations, stockpiled for some future use. I have some general thoughts before I sign off.
- The use of early treatments via safe, proven drugs is a good solution.
- We now have many antibiotics to treat bacterial infections. Vaccines do not always need to be our first defense.
- Our medical system is very good at treating infectious diseases. The risks from such diseases are much less than it once was. People do not have to live in fear of infectious disease. I like to ask people, how many people do you know have died of flu? If you know of any (I don’t), how old were they?
- The need to scare people into more and more vaccines is a dangerous trend.
- And yes, the more vaccinations one receives, the more likely an adverse event.
- Vaccinating pregnant women and babies should always be a last resort.
- It is time for Congress to rethink the vaccine liability laws.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Brownstone Institute
Bizarre Decisions about Nicotine Pouches Lead to the Wrong Products on Shelves
From the Brownstone Institute
A walk through a dozen convenience stores in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, says a lot about how US nicotine policy actually works. Only about one in eight nicotine-pouch products for sale is legal. The rest are unauthorized—but they’re not all the same. Some are brightly branded, with uncertain ingredients, not approved by any Western regulator, and clearly aimed at impulse buyers. Others—like Sweden’s NOAT—are the opposite: muted, well-made, adult-oriented, and already approved for sale in Europe.
Yet in the United States, NOAT has been told to stop selling. In September 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the company a warning letter for offering nicotine pouches without marketing authorization. That might make sense if the products were dangerous, but they appear to be among the safest on the market: mild flavors, low nicotine levels, and recyclable paper packaging. In Europe, regulators consider them acceptable. In America, they’re banned. The decision looks, at best, strange—and possibly arbitrary.
What the Market Shows
My October 2025 audit was straightforward. I visited twelve stores and recorded every distinct pouch product visible for sale at the counter. If the item matched one of the twenty ZYN products that the FDA authorized in January, it was counted as legal. Everything else was counted as illegal.
Two of the stores told me they had recently received FDA letters and had already removed most illegal stock. The other ten stores were still dominated by unauthorized products—more than 93 percent of what was on display. Across all twelve locations, about 12 percent of products were legal ZYN, and about 88 percent were not.
The illegal share wasn’t uniform. Many of the unauthorized products were clearly high-nicotine imports with flashy names like Loop, Velo, and Zimo. These products may be fine, but some are probably high in contaminants, and a few often with very high nicotine levels. Others were subdued, plainly meant for adult users. NOAT was a good example of that second group: simple packaging, oat-based filler, restrained flavoring, and branding that makes no effort to look “cool.” It’s the kind of product any regulator serious about harm reduction would welcome.
Enforcement Works
To the FDA’s credit, enforcement does make a difference. The two stores that received official letters quickly pulled their illegal stock. That mirrors the agency’s broader efforts this year: new import alerts to detain unauthorized tobacco products at the border (see also Import Alert 98-06), and hundreds of warning letters to retailers, importers, and distributors.
But effective enforcement can’t solve a supply problem. The list of legal nicotine-pouch products is still extremely short—only a narrow range of ZYN items. Adults who want more variety, or stores that want to meet that demand, inevitably turn to gray-market suppliers. The more limited the legal catalog, the more the illegal market thrives.
Why the NOAT Decision Appears Bizarre
The FDA’s own actions make the situation hard to explain. In January 2025, it authorized twenty ZYN products after finding that they contained far fewer harmful chemicals than cigarettes and could help adult smokers switch. That was progress. But nine months later, the FDA has approved nothing else—while sending a warning letter to NOAT, arguably the least youth-oriented pouch line in the world.
The outcome is bad for legal sellers and public health. ZYN is legal; a handful of clearly risky, high-nicotine imports continue to circulate; and a mild, adult-market brand that meets European safety and labeling rules is banned. Officially, NOAT’s problem is procedural—it lacks a marketing order. But in practical terms, the FDA is punishing the very design choices it claims to value: simplicity, low appeal to minors, and clean ingredients.
This approach also ignores the differences in actual risk. Studies consistently show that nicotine pouches have far fewer toxins than cigarettes and far less variability than many vapes. The biggest pouch concerns are uneven nicotine levels and occasional traces of tobacco-specific nitrosamines, depending on manufacturing quality. The serious contamination issues—heavy metals and inconsistent dosage—belong mostly to disposable vapes, particularly the flood of unregulated imports from China. Treating all “unauthorized” products as equally bad blurs those distinctions and undermines proportional enforcement.
A Better Balance: Enforce Upstream, Widen the Legal Path
My small Montgomery County survey suggests a simple formula for improvement.
First, keep enforcement targeted and focused on suppliers, not just clerks. Warning letters clearly change behavior at the store level, but the biggest impact will come from auditing distributors and importers, and stopping bad shipments before they reach retail shelves.
Second, make compliance easy. A single-page list of authorized nicotine-pouch products—currently the twenty approved ZYN items—should be posted in every store and attached to distributor invoices. Point-of-sale systems can block barcodes for anything not on the list, and retailers could affirm, once a year, that they stock only approved items.
Third, widen the legal lane. The FDA launched a pilot program in September 2025 to speed review of new pouch applications. That program should spell out exactly what evidence is needed—chemical data, toxicology, nicotine release rates, and behavioral studies—and make timely decisions. If products like NOAT meet those standards, they should be authorized quickly. Legal competition among adult-oriented brands will crowd out the sketchy imports far faster than enforcement alone.
The Bottom Line
Enforcement matters, and the data show it works—where it happens. But the legal market is too narrow to protect consumers or encourage innovation. The current regime leaves a few ZYN products as lonely legal islands in a sea of gray-market pouches that range from sensible to reckless.
The FDA’s treatment of NOAT stands out as a case study in inconsistency: a quiet, adult-focused brand approved in Europe yet effectively banned in the US, while flashier and riskier options continue to slip through. That’s not a public-health victory; it’s a missed opportunity.
If the goal is to help adult smokers move to lower-risk products while keeping youth use low, the path forward is clear: enforce smartly, make compliance easy, and give good products a fair shot. Right now, we’re doing the first part well—but failing at the second and third. It’s time to fix that.
Addictions
The War on Commonsense Nicotine Regulation
From the Brownstone Institute
Cigarettes kill nearly half a million Americans each year. Everyone knows it, including the Food and Drug Administration. Yet while the most lethal nicotine product remains on sale in every gas station, the FDA continues to block or delay far safer alternatives.
Nicotine pouches—small, smokeless packets tucked under the lip—deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. They eliminate the tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens that make cigarettes so deadly. The logic of harm reduction couldn’t be clearer: if smokers can get nicotine without smoke, millions of lives could be saved.
Sweden has already proven the point. Through widespread use of snus and nicotine pouches, the country has cut daily smoking to about 5 percent, the lowest rate in Europe. Lung-cancer deaths are less than half the continental average. This “Swedish Experience” shows that when adults are given safer options, they switch voluntarily—no prohibition required.
In the United States, however, the FDA’s tobacco division has turned this logic on its head. Since Congress gave it sweeping authority in 2009, the agency has demanded that every new product undergo a Premarket Tobacco Product Application, or PMTA, proving it is “appropriate for the protection of public health.” That sounds reasonable until you see how the process works.
Manufacturers must spend millions on speculative modeling about how their products might affect every segment of society—smokers, nonsmokers, youth, and future generations—before they can even reach the market. Unsurprisingly, almost all PMTAs have been denied or shelved. Reduced-risk products sit in limbo while Marlboros and Newports remain untouched.
Only this January did the agency relent slightly, authorizing 20 ZYN nicotine-pouch products made by Swedish Match, now owned by Philip Morris. The FDA admitted the obvious: “The data show that these specific products are appropriate for the protection of public health.” The toxic-chemical levels were far lower than in cigarettes, and adult smokers were more likely to switch than teens were to start.
The decision should have been a turning point. Instead, it exposed the double standard. Other pouch makers—especially smaller firms from Sweden and the US, such as NOAT—remain locked out of the legal market even when their products meet the same technical standards.
The FDA’s inaction has created a black market dominated by unregulated imports, many from China. According to my own research, roughly 85 percent of pouches now sold in convenience stores are technically illegal.
The agency claims that this heavy-handed approach protects kids. But youth pouch use in the US remains very low—about 1.5 percent of high-school students according to the latest National Youth Tobacco Survey—while nearly 30 million American adults still smoke. Denying safer products to millions of addicted adults because a tiny fraction of teens might experiment is the opposite of public-health logic.
There’s a better path. The FDA should base its decisions on science, not fear. If a product dramatically reduces exposure to harmful chemicals, meets strict packaging and marketing standards, and enforces Tobacco 21 age verification, it should be allowed on the market. Population-level effects can be monitored afterward through real-world data on switching and youth use. That’s how drug and vaccine regulation already works.
Sweden’s evidence shows the results of a pragmatic approach: a near-smoke-free society achieved through consumer choice, not coercion. The FDA’s own approval of ZYN proves that such products can meet its legal standard for protecting public health. The next step is consistency—apply the same rules to everyone.
Combustion, not nicotine, is the killer. Until the FDA acts on that simple truth, it will keep protecting the cigarette industry it was supposed to regulate.
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