The Virus Lie Is Bigger Than It Looks

It Tells Us That Our Bodies Are Stupid and Prone to Error--and So Are We

Apr 18, 2025

The existence or nonexistence of viruses may seem like a relatively small issue. It’s just one corner of one aspect of health care, which is only one of many areas of life that we participate in and are affected by. I hope by this point in reading this Substack, you will share or at least understand my point of view that far from being unimportant, the nonexistence of viruses is a pivotal issue in the entire field of health care, since the medical system is predicated on the germ theory—that tiny microbes cause disease and we require medical interventions to recover from illness and to remain healthy.

But that’s not all. As This Changes Everything, the title of my Substack, implies, the non-reality of viruses is also pivotal in our understanding of everything that is going on in the world. The fraud of the germ theory and viruses is a linchpin of a much bigger set of deceptions that have been perpetrated on us in every area of life—society, economics, politics, education, media, our relationship with the environment—even our own history and the history of the planet.

The virus belief tells us that we are powerless victims, walking around in a world full of potentially deadly microbes that can make us sick or even kill us. Because we believe in viruses, we believe our bodies are weak, often unable to defend themselves when attacked, prone to harming their own healthy tissue (“autoimmune” reactions) and creating many other diagnosable conditions such as building up cholesterol in coronary arteries and plaque in brain cells. We are told these conditions happen because the body inexplicably starts harming itself. We are supposed to believe that our bodies are frail, stupid, and unreliable.

Humans Are Incompetent

And it’s not only our bodies that are unreliable and prone to error. A larger deception, which I believe is held in place by our belief in viruses, tells us that we ourselves, as human beings, are inadequate, incompetent, and in need of the ones who are smarter to arrange things so we don’t get hurt or hurt others. Just as the virus narrative and germ theory have kept us from seeing how powerful our self-healing bodies really are, these lies have also kept us from seeing both our own true nature and the true nature of the problems in the world around us, and thus from seeing true solutions to these problems.

For me, fully grasping how we have been deceived about the causes and treatments of illness has opened a door through which other deceptions about the world we live in and our role in it become visible. These deceptions fall into three categories, which roughly correspond to the ways in which the medical system has taught us to see our bodies and ourselves.

Human nature is the reason for all the problems that exist in the world. Humans are essentially bad, sinful, violent, and prone to cruelty and greed. (The human body is unreliable, stupid, and prone to malfunction.)
Rights are granted by government, and can be taken away by government. Freedom is what those in control decide is good for us. (Humans can’t manage our bodies or our lives on our own; we need doctors and other experts to take care of us, give us vaccines to protect us, etc.)
Education, culture, media, and entertainment program us with a limited and distorted view of the world and ourselves. (Narratives and propaganda have kept people believing in viral illness, contagion, and the necessity for vaccines for 150 years.)

This article will address the first of these with support from the other two.

Human Nature Is Essentially Bad

All of the deceptions are built upon one: the inherent weakness and badness of human nature. We have been convinced that the negative situations that exist in the world—war, poverty, injustice, environmental destruction, and so many more—are due to the fact that human nature is deeply flawed, and the suffering, ugliness, and violence we see around us is our fault. We need to be controlled by the superior few who know best, or we will wreck this world. We’re very close to doing that right now! This narrative has been deeply accepted by many people, both in its delivery through religion, such as the inherent sinfulness of the human being, and in its pervasiveness as an explanation for all the problems and bad behavior that go on. These conditions are evidence of our depravity.

Sigmund Freud famously wrote in his book, Civilization and Its Discontents, that without the external controls of a civilized society, human beings would be viciously competing for food and sex, satisfying our instinctual desire to kill, and unable to behave decently or lovingly toward each other.[1] It is only through the restrictions imposed by society that the human’s instinctive aggression is reined in, he said in this book, which has been called one of the most influential in modern psychology.[2] This is what students of psychology learn about the people they will be counseling. It is a view of human nature that is deeply embedded in Western culture.

The ‘Fit’ and the ‘Unfit’

When Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859, setting forth the theory of evolution, its main tenet of “survival of the fittest” was immediately seized upon as an explanation for why a few people had massive wealth and the majority lived in poverty. The poor were simply “less fit;” the prosperous were by definition inherently superior human beings—obviously the “fittest”—and therefore should be in charge. This became a justification for the ideas of eugenics—breeding out inferiority in hopes of improving on the obviously faulty nature of the mass of humans.

These narratives of social Darwinism and the natural depravity of humans as articulated by Freud have been instructing us for well over a century that we regular humans need to be controlled so that we don’t create calamity. Eugenics and technocracy, both strong from the late 19^th century on, are aimed at correcting this problem.

In our day, several particular narratives of flawed human nature have been devised and promoted to convince us that we need to accept more social control and give up more of our freedom. These narratives have been carefully constructed and seeded throughout culture and society for at least 50 years. One of them, in my mind the one that underlies the rest of the narratives of deception, is presented as the main cause of many problems, such as food shortages, water shortages, wars, migration, pollution including “global warming,” and many more. That is the narrative that the earth is overpopulated. This notion has been finely crafted to induce feelings of guilt and even self-hatred so we will agree to extreme social controls for the sake of the planet, including population reduction.

The Overpopulation Narrative

In 1968, The Population Bomb predicted severe famines and massive death by the end of the 1970s due to a rapidly growing world population outstripping the supplies of food and natural resources. Paul Ehrlich’s overpopulation narrative and the scary language he used—“nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate,” for example—were a primary driving force behind population control efforts in many countries involving sterilization[3] and other severe measures such as coerced abortion[4] to slow population growth.

Ehrlich’s predictions were based on the 18^th-century writing of Thomas Malthus, whose model predicted imminent famine and starvation more than two centuries ago because population was growing faster than food production. His dire predictions, like those of Ehrlich, did not come true, not then and not since. Malthusian theory, which should be treated as a joke, is still often invoked in the discourse about overpopulation, but it has been debunked numerous times because it is simply wrong.[5]^,^[6] The models used by Ehrlich have also been repeatedly debunked.[7] Today, five decades on from Ehrlich’s vision of inevitable mass human die-off and 200 years after Malthus’s similar warnings, the world is producing at least 30 percent more food than needed to feed everyone.[8] The problem is, as it has always been in the modern era, one of distribution.

The more recent articulation of the overpopulation narrative that Ehrlich initiated was quickly taken up by an elite think tank, the Club of Rome, in its 1972 book The Limits to Growth. Their study, like The Population Bomb, was designed to instill in the minds of the public the notion that the world is overpopulated. These books define an interconnected set of problems: “accelerating industrialization, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of nonrenewable resources, and a deteriorating environment”[9] and suggest that population growth is the key to all of them.

This message has been reiterated countless times by officials of the United Nations and other public institutions, and underpins efforts towards “sustainability,” a concept which is the basis of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations’ Agenda 2030. In some countries, such as China, drastic limitations on family size have been imposed. In other places, such as America and Europe, some young people in each generation since the 1970s have decided not to have children because “there are already too many people in the world,” or “humans are causing too much destruction.” This view is very commonly heard today. Despite the incorrectness and utter failure of the population models used by Malthus and Ehrlich, the belief that the world is overpopulated has proved persistent and has reinforced the belief that human beings are inherently bad.

It may seem obvious that there are many people on the planet, maybe too many. But is it true, or do we see it that way because of the heavy propaganda since 1968? There is certainly a serious situation with pollution and degradation of the environment, toxic chemicals, microplastics, and heavy metals that are wreaking havoc on ecosystems and on humans. There is also a concern about the impact of careless and uninformed urban development on wildlife habitat as well as on water resources. But these problems are not directly related to population size. Is it possible that the population numbers are being deliberately exaggerated to instill fear and encourage attitudes such as those of the younger people who are deciding not to have children? Although the World Population Clock shows well over 8 billion people on the planet, and its digital ticker supposedly reflects the rising population taking into account births and deaths minute by minute,[10] some have pointed out that these figures are misleading.

Are There Really 8 Billion of Us?

One way that a curious person tested the figure of 8 billion was by using the UN’s own figures for the populations of the 300 largest cities in the world. This individual recorded the results in a short video on Rumble (https://rumble.com/v4fu9a0-overpopulation-hoax.html) [11]. The population information used was a couple of years old, so I decided to check out the claims made in the video by looking for the most recent population information I could find. Deriving figures from the World Population Review, I added up the numbers for the 300 most populated cities in the world. Starting with Tokyo, Japan, with 37 million residents, and descending to Montevideo, Uruguay, with 1.7 million, the figures for these 300 cities add up to just under 1.6 billion. I adjusted for the urban areas that are around some of these large cities, called urban agglomerations, for which I could get population information. That added about 163 million to the total. The populations of the next largest 200 cities, those with down to just over 1 million inhabitants, added 295.3 million to the total. This pushed the world total to just over 2 billion.

There are, of course, many cities smaller than 1 million in population, as well as towns, villages, and rural areas where people live. However, it doesn’t seem likely that these areas could contain 6 billion human beings—three times the number found in all of the largest 500 cities in the world. NCESC Geographic FAQ, using data from 2025, asserts that 55% of the world’s population lives in cities.[12] According to the German statistical site Destatis, that figure is 58%.[13] Let’s assume that all the cities and towns of under 1 million people contain a total of 1 billion. Added to the already calculated 2 billion for the 500 largest cities, this makes an estimated 3 billion for urban populations. (The 1 billion estimate for cities under 1 million is generous, since 200 cities between 1.7 and 1.1 billion added up to under 300 million. But we’ll be conservative and use that figure.)

Using 55% as the percentage of the world’s population that is made up of urban dwellers, and 3 billion for their total numbers, the remaining 45% who don’t live in cities would be 1.83 billion. This would add up to a total of 5.5 billion for the world. It is hard to imagine that another 2.5 billion are unaccounted for. It looks unlikely that the total population could be anywhere near 8 billion, and is probably significantly less than 5.5 billion.

Access to the actual numbers of people in cities and towns is very hard to come by. Not only that, but it’s impossible to know the accuracy of population reporting for any number of reasons. Census numbers may not be accurate, and birth/death statistics also are good guesses, but not necessarily reflective of on-the-ground reality. Some of these numbers are based on reporting from official sources, which may exaggerate them in order to increase the amount of aid they receive. I think it is also reasonable to wonder whether the official sources that put out this information have an agenda to inflate the numbers as a way of reinforcing the idea that the world is overpopulated and making us feel both afraid and responsible for that.

Ergo, the Enemy Is Us

For all these reasons, the question I am raising about the actual number of people in the world is intended not as a presentation of facts, but rather as a thought-provoking exercise. If we have been lied to about the existence of viruses and their role in our health, perhaps we have also been lied to about overpopulation and its purported cause. Just as we are supposed to believe in our helplessness to manage our own health, resulting in our need for a medical system that treats our bodies like stupid, incompetent, and even dangerous machines, we are supposed to believe that humans are predisposed to behave in ways that are harmful to each other and the planet. Thus we need outside control by those who are smarter, such as the people who write the books, to prevent us from causing disaster.

The Pogo cartoon strip in 1971, where Pogo looks sadly at an image of environmental pollution and says, “We have met the enemy and he is us,” has become an iconic image. This expresses exactly what the Club of Rome and its ilk have been working to instill in the psyche of humanity. In its 1991 book, The First Global Revolution, this group of self-styled elite thinkers revealed how and why they constructed the idea of humans as our own worst enemy:

In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. In their totality and in their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which demands the solidarity of all peoples. But in designating them as the enemy, we fall into the trap about which we have already warned, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.[14]

Similarly, during the plandemic, we who rejected the virus narrative and refused the injection were labeled as the cause of death and destruction for others—we were (and still are) the enemy. The lie of viruses and the lie of human depravity are cut from the same tissue of lies.

And, if you have any doubt that the narrative of human beings as the cause of all the world’s problems is a story made up by those who fancy themselves superior to ordinary people—the fittest, far above the rest of us—note the tone of this paragraph. “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages…” They, these elite think-tankers, decided in their augustness that they needed to instruct us on how we are the problem. They never clearly include themselves in the class of those responsible for the problems, other than implicitly, in that they are (probably) part of “humanity itself.”

They have met the enemy, and the enemy is us (not them).

Thanks as always for reading. Please feel free to pass this article on to others, and become a subscriber if you find value in it.

[1] Freud, S. (1930, 1989). Civilization and Its Discontents. WW Norton.

[2] Wikipedia. (2025, January 20). Civilization and Its Discontents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Discontents

[3] Mann, C. C. (2018). The Book That Incited a Worldwide Fear of Overpopulation. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-worldwide-fear-overpopulation-180967499/

[4] Personal communication, SeungGyeong Ji, dissertation studying population control measure in South Korea, October 28, 2020.

[5] Sconfienza, U. M. (2020). Limits. Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care by Giorgos Kallis. [Book review]. Environmental Politics, 29(2), 360–361. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2020.1718875

[6] Zubrin, R. (2022, September 8). Malthusian theory has always been false. Quillette. https://quillette.com/2022/09/08/in-defence-of-progress/

[7] What Would You Say. (2020, July 29). Should We Panic about Overpopulation? [Video presentation]. YouTube.

[8] Thin. (2022, October 9). “We produce enough food to feed 1.5 (times) the global population.” Thin Ink. https://news.thin-ink.net/p/we-produce-enough-food-to-feed-15

[9] Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens III, W. W. (1972). The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. Potomac Associates, p. 21.

[10] United States Census Bureau. (n.d.). US and world population clock. https://www.census.gov/popclock/

[11] Real Truth Real News. (2024). The Overpopulation Hoax – the Earth Is Not Overpopulated and There’s More Than Enough Room for Everyone! [Video Presentation]. Rumble. https://rumble.com/v4fu9a0-overpopulation-hoax.html

[12] Strickland, K. (2025, February 14). What percentage of the 7 billion people on earth live in cities? NCESC Geographic FAQ. https://www.ncesc.com/geographic-faq/what-percentage-of-the-7-billion-people-on-earth-live-in-cities/

[13] Destatis. (2025). The largest cities worldwide in 2025. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Countries-Regions/International-Statistics/Data-Topic/Population-Labour-Social-Issues/DemographyMigration/UrbanPopulation.html

[14] King, A., & Schneider, B. (1991). The First Global Revolution: a Report by the Council of the Club of Rome. Pantheon Books, p. 115.

This Changes Everything