# Typhoid fever in Bangkok

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Typhoid fever in Bangkok," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/typhoid-fever-in-bangkok/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The illness John Kiriakou calls the sickest he has ever been — typhoid fever caught in Bangkok in 2002, which he had assumed the inoculation would prevent, and which put him in hospital twice. The doctor's correction: the shot does not stop you catching typhoid, only makes it slightly less virulent when you do.*

- **Where:** Bangkok
- **When:** 2002
- **His assumption:** That the typhoid shots prevented typhoid
- **The doctor's correction:** They make the fever slightly less virulent, not preventable
- **Hospitalisations:** Twice

**Typhoid fever in Bangkok** is an episode [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) adds to a discussion of [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) inoculation practice, as the case that showed him what the injections did and did not buy.

## The diagnosis

Kiriakou introduces it as an addendum to the shots story and rates it against everything else. *"I caught typhoid fever in Bangkok in 2002. And it's the sickest I've ever been in my life."*[1]

His first reaction to the diagnosis was to reject it on the strength of his own paperwork: *"I said, 'But I said it can't be typhoid fever because I got the I got the shots. I got the typhoid shots.'"*[1]

## The correction

The doctor's answer is the part Kiriakou repeats. *"The typhoid shots don't prevent you from getting typhoid fever. The typhoid shots make the typhoid fever slightly less virulent when you catch it."*[2]

The severity even so was considerable. *"It was like the worst case of the flu I've ever had in my my I had to go to the hospital twice."*[2]

The episode sits directly against [the gamma globulin shot](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-gamma-globulin-shot), which Kiriakou describes as the routine that produced a lifetime of injections before overseas travel — and which, on this evidence, produced attenuation rather than immunity.

## See also

- [The gamma globulin shot](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-gamma-globulin-shot)
- [Kiriakou on travel](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-on-travel)
- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)

## Sources

1. Bad Bunny, Epstein Files, and more! (2026-02-11), at 08:48. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfFvuCYmaXs&t=528s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-11-deprogram-ted-rall-bad-bunny-epstein-files-and-more/
2. Bad Bunny, Epstein Files, and more! (2026-02-11), at 09:18. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfFvuCYmaXs&t=558s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-11-deprogram-ted-rall-bad-bunny-epstein-files-and-more/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/typhoid-fever-in-bangkok/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt