Dr. Philp McMillan, John McMillan
History has a cruel way of repeating itself, especially when we fail to appreciate its lessons. COVID-19 is now a global presence, and its emergence has chilling parallels with the deadliest pandemic in recorded human history — one that killed more people than World War I and reshaped our understanding of medicine forever.
Imagine being a European doctor immediately after the Great War, witnessing young, healthy soldiers who had survived the carnage of battle, collapse and die from what appears to be influenza at rates that defy everything known about the disease. The old and frail, who typically succumb to flu, survive. It’s mostly people in the prime of life who are dying in droves. Something is terribly wrong.
The Spanish flu of 1918 offers historical context for our current crisis. Disturbing similarities appear when we examine the Spanish flu and COVID-19 through the lens of immune system science. It seems that in both cases, well-intentioned medical interventions, based on incomplete scientific understanding, primed immune systems for disaster.
When Science Gets It Wrong
In 1918, the medical establishment faced a crisis with incomplete knowledge. Viruses hadn’t been discovered yet. When doctors found a bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae in the lungs of flu victims, they reached what seemed like a logical conclusion: this bacterium must be causing the pandemic.
Armed with this “knowledge,” they launched a massive public health campaign. Bacterial vaccines were developed and administered to hundreds of thousands of people, particularly those in the military. These vaccines contained bacterial products designed to prime the immune system against what doctors believed was the real threat.
Unfortunately, the story takes a dark turn. These bacteria contain substances called lipopolysaccharides**—**powerful inflammatory compounds that trigger intense immune responses. When your body encounters these substances during serious bacterial infections, your immune system treats them like dangerous toxins. In fact, the immune response is so intense that your body deliberately “forgets” these compounds afterward, recognizing that remembering them could lead to catastrophic overreactions in the future.
The 1918 flu was indeed caused by a virus, just as we understand today. But viral infections often lead to secondary bacterial infections in the lungs. So when vaccinated individuals contracted the flu virus and developed these predictable bacterial complications, their primed immune systems launched devastating attacks on their own lung tissue. The very intervention meant to protect them may have significantly contributed to their deaths.
Fast Forward to 2020
Now consider our approach to COVID-19. We developed vaccines targeting the virus’s spike protein — the crown-like projections that give coronavirus its name. The logic seemed sound: teach the immune system to recognize this distinctive feature, and it will stop the virus in its tracks.
But recent research reveals something unusual about how our immune systems handle viral spike protein. Studies tracking immune memory show that our bodies treat spike protein differently than other viral components. Unlike our robust, long-lasting immunity to viruses like influenza or vaccines like tetanus, spike protein immunity fades remarkably quickly.
Researchers examining immune cells in bone marrow — where long-term immune memory lives — found virtually no spike-specific memory cells even months after vaccination or infection. This pattern mirrors exactly how the immune system responds to bacterial toxins: clear the threat, then deliberately forget it to avoid future overreactions.
The Uncomfortable Question
This brings us to a disturbing possibility. “Houston, we have a problem,” warns Dr. Philip McMillan, a clinician and researcher studying this phenomenon. “Because if this extrapolation is correct, if the immune system has been primed to overreact on further exposure to spike protein, what happens down the line?”
If the 1918 pattern holds true, we may have inadvertently primed millions of immune systems to overreact when they encounter the spike protein again, whether through new infections or repeated exposures. The virus continues circulating and evolving. Each encounter could potentially trigger the kind of immune storm that devastated lungs in 1918.
Why haven’t we seen this yet? Two factors may be masking the problem: First, repeated mRNA vaccinations appear to shift antibody responses toward a “tolerant” type called IgG4, which dampens inflammatory reactions. Second, recent virus variants have been milder than the Delta strain that caused severe disease in 2021. But these protective factors may not last forever.
The Larger Lesson
The real warning here extends beyond any specific medical intervention. Both 1918 and 2020 demonstrate what happens when we act decisively based on incomplete understanding. In 1918, doctors didn’t know viruses existed. In 2020, we may not have fully grasped the spike protein’s complex effects on immune function.
“That to me is an error that must be acknowledged, even though it’s inconvenient,” notes Dr. McMillan. This isn’t about condemning vaccination broadly; it’s about recognizing that medical interventions require careful, individualized assessment rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.
The immune system is remarkably sophisticated, evolved over millions of years to distinguish threats from non-threats. When it decides that a toxin should be forgotten while a pathogen should be remembered, we ought to pause and ask why.
The echo of 1918 reminds us that the greatest medical disasters often evolve not from malicious intent, but from the toxic combination of incomplete knowledge and absolute certainty. The virus causing COVID-19 shows no signs of disappearing. Whether our immune preparations prove protective or problematic may depend on lessons we’re still learning – lessons that a century-old pandemic should have taught us long ago.
Citations:
0 Comments