My name is Sam Vaknin, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited.

I mentioned yesterday the possible mutation in the virus, and that made many people very worried and very concerned, and they were not shy about communicating their concern, so I would like to tackle this a bit more in depth today.

As usual, we will open with a segment which is dedicated to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then we will proceed into the regular affair of this channel, which is narcissists, psychopaths and other lovely creatures.

So there are eight strains of the SARS-CoV-2. The SARS-CoV-2 is the COVID-19 virus that causes the pandemic. So there are eight strains already. Is it going to mutate? Is it going to kill all of us? I hope not. I still need viewers on my channel.

Additionally, it’s exceedingly unlikely. Let’s look at the HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. It’s a virus that causes AIDS. This virus has been around in Africa since 1931, and it has mutated only in 1971. So 40 years later, it took it 40 years to mutate.

It’s a little like the narcissist’s textile. Even so, the HIV virus infected 75 million people and killed a total of 32 million people without any mutation.

Like SARS-CoV-2, HIV is a zoonotic virus. Zoonosis is transmission from animals to humans.

So some of these viruses grow inside animals. They don’t affect the animals. The animals are only carriers, for example, bats with SARS-CoV. And these animals transmit the virus to humans with a minor mutation usually. Or these animals carry the viruses inside them as reservoirs.

At any rate, both HIV and SARS and SARS-CoV-2 and all these viruses are zoonotic. They reside in animals and pass on to humans. Such zoonotic viruses account for a shocking 60% of all human illnesses and 75% of all new emerging infections.

To study mutations in a field called genetic epidemiology, we sequence genomes. We study the genetic material of the virus and then we construct a phylogenetic tree.

SARS-CoV-2 is a very big virus, actually, one of the biggest we’ve ever come across. It’s an RNA virus. It’s like a small package which includes RNA material.

RNA is a type of genetic material which allows organisms to translate instructions into proteins.

So the virus is a small package, kind of envelope or membrane if you wish or whatever you want to call it, within which there are molecules of RNA.

So it’s an RNA virus. But it’s one of the biggest we’ve ever found. It has 30,000 nucleotides. It is twice as big as the flu agent.

But this virus mutates only twice a month. The flu, for example, mutates once or twice a week. So flu mutates four to six times more often than the SARS-CoV-2.

Flu circulates among pigs and birds. And these animals serve as in vivo laboratories from mutations. The flu virus goes into a pig, into a bird, mutates there and reinfects us the next season. And it’s totally new.

So we need a new vaccine. The SARS-CoV-2 mutates much more slowly.

But it has two secret weapons which the influenza viruses don’t have.

First of all, it has spikes. The SARS-CoV-2 is a member of the coronaviruses family. It’s a huge family with possibly a few hundred types of viruses. And they all have spikes like on a crown.

And that’s why they are called coronaviruses, crown viruses.

And so these spikes allow the SARS-CoV-2 to latch onto a protein called ACE2. It’s a protein receptor which can be found throughout the respiratory system.

In our mouth, in the windpipe, trachea, and the lungs, everywhere we have ACE protein receptors, both in the upper respiratory system andthe lower one. ACE2 proteins are much more common in the lungs than, for example, in the windpipe.

But this type of SARS, the SARS-CoV-2, has special kind of spikes. These spikes are able to attach to ACE proteins, even which are even found not in the lungs.

So it’s very persistent. It sort of adheres to tissue in the throat, in the windpipe, and won’t let go.

Another secret weapon this virus has is called furins. Furins are binding to SARS-CoV-2 proteins. They pierce. They’re like sharpened knives, and they pierce into the patient’s tissue.

Anthrax has the same wonderful feature. SARS-CoV-2, while it doesn’t mutate very often, has very worrying and dangerous features.

Ironically, vaccines and medicines exert selective pressure on viruses. They force the viruses to mutate in order to offer resistance.

Only the strongest viruses survive the onslaught of vaccines and medicines. But unfortunately, as I just said, they are the strongest.

Survival of the fetus virus. We have an example with bacteria. Antibiotic, antibiotic resistance has already rendered one-third of our antibiotics, our medicines, useless.

There’s the whole families of bacteria nowadays which do not respond to antibiotics. They don’t respond to antibiotics because they have mutated. They have changed. They have developed resistance.

The theory is that SARS-CoV-2 will undergo an antigenic shift. Antigenic shift is when one virus combines with another virus, another virus which is far more virulent, far more transmissible.

By combining with another virus, the SARS-CoV-2 can become far more dangerous, far more easily contagious, and even may develop special capacities, for example, the ability to cloak itself, to render itself invisible to the immunological system.

Antigenic drift, which is what’s happening to every virus in its life cycle, including this virus, antigenic drift is actually likely to reduce the effectiveness of the virus.

SARS, the original, in 2002-2003 vanished because antigenic drift caused mutations which rendered it incapable of infecting humans.

Same happened to MERS, Middle Eastern variety.

But big viruses, unfortunately, are less likely to undergo drift and more likely to recombine with other pathogens.

Still, the good news is this, immunity acquired by an individual, by exposure to the virus, is likely to last for years, not like the flu.

When you get immune, when you’re exposed to the flu, when you have flu, and you become immune, it’s good for one season, if you’re lucky.

Sometimes within the season, there’s a new strain, you get the flu again.

Not so, probably, with SARS-CoV-2, immunity there would last a minimum one year, probably two or three.

The virus changes only minimally, so your immune system will recognize these slight variations.

And this is precisely why universal quarantine and social distancing are enormous mistakes, because they prevent the emergence of herd immunity.

They don’t allow us, they don’t allow our immunological systems the best defenses to work against the virus.

What we should have done, we should have adopted measures, obviously, but these measures should have been targeted only at vulnerable populations.

The old, the immunocompromised, pregnant women, people with underlying pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease, or blood pressure, these should have been isolated and strictly guaranteed by law. All the others should have been let loose, so that they can acquire immunity.

Had we done this, we would have forestalled much of the tragedy now unfolding.

And this is not my only criticism of the medical profession. If anyone is to blame for the mass panic that swept across the globe, it is the medical profession.

It failed us beyond words in providing a measured, reasoned, proportional and analytical response to this health crisis.

Yesterday, for example, the White House’s coordinator, Dr. Brick, suggested in a public statement, in a public statement, mind you, that 200,000 people might die in the United States, based on what? The flimsiest of evidence, undisclosed mathematical models not available for peer review and scrutiny, and hubris, vanity, grandiosity.

Doctors hate to admit that they don’t know what they are talking about. Dr. Fauci, of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, is not far behind in his coast-to-coast alarmism. The world-renowned epidemiologist, Leipzig, published an academic paper with others of equal stature, suggesting, with a straight face, that social distancing was a successful measure in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919.

Just to remind you, 100 million people died on that unhappy occasion. Isn’t such a slaughter more indicative of the dismal failure and dangerous nature of guarantees and universal isolation? Isn’t it more indicative of failure than success?

It seems that guarantees and universal isolation didn’t quite work at that time. Their efficacy is only alleged and untrying.

Are the leading luminaries, or rather self-aggrandizing panic merchants, like Osterholm, the self-imputed virus doctor, are making the talk-show rounds strutting their stuff and getting to become mini-celebrities?

These are the some of the very same people who erred egregiously by predicting 1.4 million dead in both the SARS and the Ebola pandemics. The numbers were nowhere near. They were the ones who touted the need for 500 million vaccines immediately or else.

What am I trying to say? These people have been consistent in only one thing, in being wrong.

So what is going on?

There’s a fear of failure and it’s attendant humiliation.

Not on my watch. I’m perfect.

There is an attitude of better safe than sorry. There is the intoxicating novel experience of the limelight and mini-celebrity. And there is a terror of the devastating consequences of litigation run amok.

In short, there’s a lot of narcissism going on. We have come full round. The chickens have come home to roost.

Our growing narcissism in the public arena, as well as in the private arena, has ruined the planet, created overpopulation, and generated public officials both in politics and in the medical profession, whose vanity, stature, and standing are more important to them than the truth in calming the public and instituting measures which are the right thing to do.