Isn't the OAS thesis not that the individual is more/less susceptible but that the interaction of imperfect abs and virus leads to dominant escape variants which return to reinfect and impair/prevent "herd immunity"
That could be bad or good depending on whether viruses get worse or milder. Not been in narrative.
From this perspective the "higher AB counts " "similar to severe infection" indicate an AB /immune response that is ineffective - hence the high number allowing relatively longer infection transmission windows and higher mutation , etc etc. in the least conserved target
The antibodies do not become "imperfect" until the virus evolves around them. This vulnerability is built into the concept of using virus epitopes for recognition / firewall; so there's no need to biologically explain why viruses that don't possess other means of evading the immune system and achieving durable transmission (like chicken pox, measles) must evolve around this. They evolve around it because evolution demands they do. The bigger question is why has one particular virus not done so (polio).
Herd immunity is not a real concept in immunology. It was invented out of thin air by a CDC bureaucrat in 1967. In the decades afterward, all the childhood vaccines revealed themselves to be "leaky," and require sterner and sterner mandates and 100% compliance with boosters to prop up the fraud that they grant lasting immunity. Selling "herd immunity" to the world in 2020/1 was a huge fraud - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/die-herd - Selling "leaky vaccine disasters" like OAS to substack readers similarly ignores the history of childhood vaccines. They are leaky, but don't drive escape mutants. See again polio. So it's very much a clowns to the left, jokers to the right deal, no one's talking straight.
Spotted this as a question/answer in Rintrah's comments page yesterday:
'How about if you got vaccinated, and then get infected? Is the vaccine an obstacle to your immune response?
In that case you get to deal with original antigenic sin. Specifically it seems your body will struggle to develop an antibody response against the Nucleocapsid protein.'
There's been quite a lot about this inability of the vaccinated since the 'data' from a look at UK blood donors. Is there a struggle to deal with the nucleocapsid in the vaccinated and even if there is, how permanent and how important might it be do you think?
The Rintrah innate immunity post is good, though it goes out on quite a few limbs.
I offered my take on the N Protein controversy in last week's post - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/original-antigroundhogic-sin. I don't think there's any problem going on with N antibody for breakthrough infections that occur more than ~4 months after the second dose (infections before then are mostly asymptomatic or super-mild). Note that failure to generate N Protein antibody (at levels that meet the benchmarks mostly set back in 2020) wouldn't be OAS, since the N Protein is a different antigen than the one sensitized by the vaxx. B Cells enriched against spike would not react to N. If the antigens are not homologous then the theory of OAS doesn't actually explain what is going on and is thus not validated. To put it differently, OAS would not predict a problem with N-vaccinating the spike-vaccinated (vs whatever the antigenicity would be in the non-spike-vaxxed). Also note that the relevance of N protein antibodies (or even T Cell sensitization) to immune protection is unclear. N might just be superfluous. The immune system is very redundant, and also dials down all these elements anyway, essentially inviting continual encounter with the virus (even if suppressed by T Cells), as if to keep itself on its toes so to speak.
As far as I know the only reinfection study out so far is still Goldberg, et al., and it suggests a small diminishment in breakthrough+recovered performance vs the naive+recovered at 4-8 months - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/darmok-and-the-spike-protein-at-tanagra#footnote-8 - A small diminishment translates to "most of the breakthrough-infected are as well-protected as the "pureblood" infected." i.e., no immune sabotage of any form for most. Meanwhile there's a clear big improvement to immune response vs the vaxxed-only. Improvement is not "no improvement." And the study window would have predominately been measuring the performance of the EARLY-breakthrough infected, which are more asymptomatic or mild (again this is probably the conditions going on in the "recent reports" referenced in the UKHSA N Protein comment).
Thank you for assessing that study. I've had a lot of difficulties assessing all of this OAS information, but I always felt so much of this is being misattributed or incorrectly analyzed.
I have a friend who got her PhD in immunology and I asked her about OAS because I kept seeing it pop up. She laughed at it and essentially said that it's the "frat guy" in the immunology world, and apparently many graduate students try to bring it up in an attempt to lay some type of claim to aspects of the hypothesis.
I remember reading an abstract from one of the original OAS papers where they studies this in mice models. The researchers indicated that OAS is likely to be a heuristic approach, and I think we tend to miss that.
It's not that OAS is completely evil, but if OAS is to occur it's intent is for the body to elicit a prior immune response. If it's good enough to clear out the virus, then why waste all of this time and energy mounting a giant immune response to something you already had knowledge of before. It's strange because Dr. Malone made the same remark in his Joe Rogan interview: It's mounting an attack against the enemy you know.
I found it really strange how many people seemed to have clasped onto this concept, all the way down to the religious implications of the phrase. I also blame that UK dataset that began circulating. I actually wrote my posts on OAS because someone reached out to me commenting that they thought people were really not examining the data properly.
Hopefully the paranoia around OAS dies down. There's far more important things to consider aside from OAS that there are likely to be greater evidence to support.
Also, the irony is not lost on me that those who continue to evoke OAS are themselves trapped in their own OAS cycle. Not everything is OAS and it certainly should not be evoked every time someone mentions anything in regards to immunology.
Right - when I wrote my comment below about how OAS and ADE both imply that the injected are in a "trap" that their immune systems can't get out of, the overly on-the-nose allusion to the garden / fall certainly came to mind. Well, yes the Book of Genesis was prophetic when it came to the Scientific Revolution's impact on humanity... but it doesn't literally apply... to the immune system... Still, for the non-injected, it's very satisfying to imagine the injected in a permanently fallen state especially vis-a-vis the Scary Virus, as I mentioned below.
Lol at "frat guy." Like the brain, if not probably more-so than the brain, the essential character of the immune system is "plastic pattern recognition machine."
Feb 10, 2022·edited Feb 10, 2022Liked by Brian Mowrey
Personally, I wouldn't hope that my jabbed friends and family get stuck in such a perpetual Ouroboros state, but at the same time they seem so adamant in continuing such a cycle themselves, so who am I to constantly push back I suppose?
And from what I've heard the allusions stemmed from the original theorist's religious background. Can't remember if he was a member of the church or his dad was, but I feel like such semantic naming does more to enforce some religiosity around the idea more than it does to examine the concept with a skeptical eye.
Yeah I can't remember to what extent she meant with that, but she mentioned how so many of her fellow grad students apparently focused on that for their thesis. I think an analogy to the really loud, vocal college bro who really doesn't bring anything of substance to the party and just leaves all who come into contact with him stating "cool story, bro..." is probably what she meant, or at least that what I'd think.
Edit: OK for some reason I completely misunderstood your first comment! Yes the ideas of both ADE and OAS would suggest that these people would be in a constant tic-for-tac state where they would not be able to deviate lest they end up harming themselves. I haven't paid much attention to ADE but it's concerning that people are more concerned with the theory and not the actual evidence when evoking these... abbreviations?
I must confess that some of the points you made in this article baffled me on first read.
I understand that you don't think that any good evidence for OAS has been mounted, and I get that our immune systems are far more more complex and adaptive than OAS theorists would have us believe.
However, I am having trouble integrating your analysis into the bigger picture.
I was wondering if you would be so kind as to answer some very basic questions.
On a personal level, who do you think, if anyone, would be well served by getting Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines?
If someone were to be forced to get one of the currently US approved vaccines for the first time, which one would you currently recommend?
Who do you think, if anyone, would be well served by getting Pfizer and Moderna mRNA boosters?
On a population level, what populations, if any, would you have recommended these mRNA vaccines to? Has the emergence Delta and then Omicron changed your analysis? If so, how?
What is your analysis of the trajectory of Marek's disease in chickens? How likely do you think mass vaccination with leaky vaccines during a pandemic could result in such a disaster among humans?
I realize that I may be asking you to bite off more than you would like to chew, but I truly value your perspective and would love any answers you could give me no matter how few or short.
I don't think anyone should receive the mRNA or vector vaccines. They are a novel biological intervention and should not be used in humans without years of study, if at all - I think there are ethical arguments against both platforms as well. Both remove the "the cells making virus protein self-destruct" rule and we don't know what the long term effects of that are (like cancer) and we haven't discussed the ethical meaning (our cells literally become factories for a commercially licensed product).
The danger of the virus was never universal or imminent enough to justify using these products without understanding the medical risks and ethical questions. This simply was not the Plague. Life with and without SARS-CoV-2 in the world is not on balance more or less risky for any given human, as demonstrated in https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3259 - so there was no reason for any individual to risk the vaccines. That's before we even factor in effective, but suppressed treatments. (So, no, Omicron hasn't altered the calculus either.)
That said, you can still acknowledge that there is evidence that these injections "work" against severe outcomes. What else is there to do? If the evidence is there, it's there.
If seatbelts gave you cancer, the argument against seatbelts wouldn't be that they don't work - just that having cancer is worse than the risk of a car accident in which a seat belt would prove protective. Most people will never be in an accident where the seatbelt actually makes a difference, and even if they do, it's only because they didn't get cancer and die first.
So I am not for trying to argue the case against the vaccines on the "They don't work" argument. I think it's unlikely to win. Not to say that it can't happen, but it's a weak attack.
In my view no one needs boosters. Again to the seatbelts, if you ARE wearing a cancer-causing seatbelt, well... you really don't need a racing helmet. In terms of the plausible biology that's really where the boosted are at, the likely returns get super-marginal. But as in the comments below, I have to acknowledge that the stats look better-than-marginal. This is probably a data artifact caused by the roll-out of boosters - i.e. classic healthy user bias.
How much of the supposed efficacy of these mRNA gene therapies against severe COVID-positive outcomes could be the result of in the clear demographical differences in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated population?
What percentage of "unvaccinated COVID-19 deaths" do you think fit the descriptions above? Poor medical care bordering on malpractice, iatrophobia, mental disorders, linguistic barriers, significant health co-factors, bad diagnoses, destructive medical interventions, etc.? My guess is that unvaccinated populations include the most indigent, linguistically challenged, deathbed ridden, and hospital and doctor fearing individuals in any society. So of course we would expect more deaths per 100,000 associated with COVID-19 in this population anytime COVID-19 is prevalent.
How much of the supposed efficacy of these mRNA gene therapies against severe COVID-positive outcomes could be the result of categorizing all of those "for who a vaccination cannot be found" (as California admits to doing)?
How much of the supposed efficacy of these mRNA gene therapies against severe COVID-positive outcomes could be the result of the data advantage that these vaccines are given by not counting anyone as "fully vaccinated" until 2 weeks after the second dose and counting anyone boosted less than than two weeks ago as unboosted? To me, this is the simplest explanation for the UK-HSA's much more strongly negative case efficacy for 2 dose than for 3 dose individuals.
Finally, how much of the supposed efficacy of these mRNA gene therapies against severe COVID-positive outcomes could be the result of placebo vs. nocebo effects on the individuals who test positive for COVID-19 as well as the relative consideration given to them by the healthcare professionals who treat them?
I am just asking for your basic ideas about these relative relevance or lack thereof of these potential issues. Thanks again.
RE the delay in category change, I don't think it matters much. ICNARC uses the delay. Here is the impact for May to December 2021: "Of 5955 paents classified as unvaccinated, 113 (1.9%) had received a first dose of vaccine within 14 days prior to the posive COVID-19 test." - p 44 of the January 28 report at https://www.icnarc.org/Our-Audit/Audits/Cmp/Reports
RE pregnant women, the trope that pregnant women are at increased risk from the virus is literally a lie. The data vs all women in age group doesn't support the claim, and that's despite the higher likelihood of "with not from." The pregnancy infection risk increase is just something MSM-narrative-aligned scientists say without evidence to keep their jobs. I'll be revisiting this topic if the V-Safe study ever finally publishes another update.
Right, along with acknowledging the evidence for severe efficacy, I acknowledge the possibility that it's all healthy user bias. Especially for 1) boosters vs 2nd-dosed (because there's no "my body is a temple" group left among the 2nd-dosed) 2) the UK in general (consistent reduction in all cause mortality in the 21 days after any dose in ONS / Scotland stats) 3) California (in which east LA and a lot of the desert functions as an open-air-nursing home for immigrants who aren't easily accessed by the health system). So in the latter case, you can't really argue that the doctors here are just imagining that all their "Covid patients" are unvaxxed https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-06/rural-california-the-unvaccinated-and-ill-overwhelm-hospital-staff It's the land of misfit elderly toys.
But elsewhere in the US, the elderly might be more likely to be injected even if they are unhealthy, because they are in indifferent facilities etc. Also I think this summer there were a lot of middle-aged deaths, labeled unvaccinated, primarily in the midwest and south it seems (based on national vs state trends in the all-cause stats), and I think these were driven by the negative healthcare treatment that you allude to, i.e. the NIH wait+ventilate protocol - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/invisible-apocalypse#footnote-anchor-12
But I was confident in severe efficacy back when the only data was from Israel. The population values for their per-100k denominators seemed reliable, because of the large orthodox population and lower uptake it doesn't seem like the unvaxxed were universally near-death like in the UK (though it might be the case for the non-boosted), and they were open about the fact that the vaccinated still dominate hospitalization in absolute counts. In the huge-scale trial of the Delta wave, the vaccines came out looking pretty good for severe efficacy. It's hard for me to throw that conclusion away just because the UK and US provide such unreliable confirmations.
(The shots still look good in the Israel data, but I'm also not sure if severe efficacy is meaningful or relevant in the Omicron era, all the stats might be showing now is "with not from" efficacy. It's possible that there's effectually no more severe illness to prevent.)
You're doing a great job with this. This is what my intuition was telling me. The immune system of a Wuhan-spike vaccinated person will respond, initially with the antibodies that it already knows how to make - the wuhan-spike antibodies, but all the while the process of learning how to make antibodies to the new spike protein is initiated. If the wuhan spike antibodies, along with innate immunity, quickly clear the infection, the immune system will not have that much exposure to the new spike and so won't learn to make antibodies to it to a great extent. The more the infection with the new spike progresses, the more exposure to it the immune system will have and the more it will learn to make antibodies specific to the new spike. So, it's not as if your immune system is unable to learn to make any new antibodies just because it already knows how to make some similar antibodies. Remember, the first time you're exposed it takes 8 days for you to really have any significant antibodies. So, it's not like you ever really have an immediate robust antibody response to a new antigen. You can only have an immediate, robust antibody response to a pathogen with the same antigen as one you've previously been infected with. To show that OAS is a real problem, they'd have to show that these same people got reinfected with Omicron, yet again, and still did not make any omicron specific antibodies. Even then it would only be a problem if said infections were more than just mild. If they were mild, it may just mean that the immune system never learned to make antibodies that are specific to the new antigen because it didn't need to because the innate arm and old antibodies fought it off so quickly that the immune system didn't really have enough exposure to learn to make the new antibodies well. But 'so what?' in that case. It just means that the tools the immune system already has have this pathogen well under control.
Exactly, it all reduces to "So What" in real world application, especially for immune performance after "natural boosting" / breakthrough infection.
Just remember that OAS has the bailey of "well you still can't elicit antibodies to homologous variant epitopes with injections." Influenza being the textbook case, though I'm not even sure how well this problem has been reproduced in contemporary studies not involving older adults. So yeah, custom "Omicron boosters" can't make as many Omicron antibodies as a "1st dose Omicron vaccine" in animal models - but the boosted animals still do fine in infection challenge with Omicron, so...
Great post as always! Out of curiosity (I don't actually care about credentials - arguments should be judged based on their content alone), are you a biologist or doctor by trade? How'd you develop your framework for understanding human immunology?
Thank you. I took AP Bio 20 years ago, like Sirotkin lol. In 2011 I did enough research on the genetic side of viruses (for a fiction project) to already know CRISPR was coming and the limits of viruses as super-weapons as implied by the arsenal of immune evasion traits in everyday chickenpox etc., and did a lot of thinking about that afterward. But I had NO idea how many vaccines Americans had started giving their kids after the 80s, nor the ongoing global polio eradication blunder. I would have started this project way earlier.
Feb 8, 2022·edited Feb 8, 2022Liked by Brian Mowrey
I was under the (apparently erroneous) impression that OAS meant when a new variant (V.2) stopped by, you generated antibodies for a previous variant (V.1) exclusively, none of which bound to V.2 epitopes, rendering you completely vulnerable to the new variant (V.2).
This to me would be the ONLY reason it would be an issue.
If, instead, you generate antibodies (quickly, because you are already primed / learned with V.1) for V.1 (V.1 = V.2 epitope subset A) and more slowly / less of them as first exposure, but still reliably to V.2 (V.2 =/= V.1 epitope subset B) - this is what I would expect, given genetic drift means some epitopes will remain the same (V.1 epitope subset A = V.2 epitope subset A), and some will change (V.1 epitope subset B =/= V.2 epitope subset B).
It seems impossible to me that the "wrong" antibodies can be generated for a given epitope (what I thought OAS proponents were claiming). That's just not how the process works, which is why OAS has always seemed ridiculous to me, and why I looked for but never found the mechanism described that meant an epitope E.76 being presented to B cells with appropriate co-stimulation resulted in anything but E.76 B cell antibody factory being created.
OAS fans were, I thought, claiming presenting an E.76 epitope to an unrelated / ineffective E.12 B cell resulted in that B cell proliferating and spamming out useless antibodies to E.12. Still seems nonsensical.
"This to me would be the ONLY reason it would be an issue." Well, you certainly won't make it far in immunology with THAT attitude!
It's obviously plausible that the medium-affinity binding from (high) residual / ramped-up vaccine antibodies, because they suppress viral replication, also would result in less antigenic stimulation. But that's like saying "immunity doesn't work because it works." The burden is on OAS to answer the question "why is diminished epitope updating bad in the overall context of memory immunity, which extends beyond antibodies."
And in my intuition and in the real-world evidence, only high residual antibodies seem to have a suppressive effect - as in breakthrough infections very soon after 2nd dose (as with Alpha in Fig 5). Ramped-up antibodies seem to offer the best of both worlds - because the virus was "let into the gate," you get an updated memory immune response with a new lineage of enriched B Cells, but also avoid severe outcomes thanks to stimulated B Cells for the old model pumping out IgG (as with Delta in Fig 5).
This really goes back to the completely fictitious belief (?) that immunity = antibodies.
It boggles the mind.
But then having read even more of my immunology books now, makes sense, given that's pretty much all the focus has been on: how to generate anitbodies to do stuff that we can charge $$ for... Monoclonal antibodies in particular are big business...
My understanding for the reason Omicron is so devastating in terms of infectivity is it was not a genetic drift so much as a genetic leapfrog shift via a jump gate into something wayyy different epitopically.
And my hunch is that it's the altered tissue tropism for the upper respiratory tract, so that it evades the resident T Cells that would be localized in the lower respiratory tract post-Wuhan-strain infection, as I mentioned in https://unglossed.substack.com/p/rashocron
Feb 9, 2022·edited Feb 9, 2022Liked by Brian Mowrey
Yes definitely.
I have not seen that discussed much anywhere either: vaccine-activated T cells more than likely return to the site of injection ffs, waiting in case there's another attack there. The mechanisms that allow this blew my mind when reading about it. Locale specific immune response made much sense, but then how the circulating / maturing immune response does a lap or two of the body then returns to the site of immune response genesis was WOW.
It's difficult to not read about the way these things (immune cells) act (despite the reality of chemotactics etc) and not perceive them as living things. It's so damn cool. The leap from there to us as sentient beings seems like a thin veil.
I also find it fascinating from a psychological perspective how in/outgroup dynamics (~ self vs non-self) occur at the lowest functional level in just about every single living thing on the planet. It's been captivating reading and pattern matching to other domains.
Right, especially Antigen Presenting Cells evince discernment and consciousness in how they process DAMP/PAMP in order to mediate T Cell and B Cell response all the way down to class switching, and how they pick out the residues from the entire viral code to present.
T Cells similarly show discernment in all sorts of ways - and of course have to prove their ability to not enrich for self-proteins in order to survive the gauntlet of the thymus! It's a very This is Sparta lifestyle.
Arguably the APC and T Cells don't really see bacteria and viruses as "not-self," even "self" cells are a sort of foreign species that requires a particular balance between stimulation and tolerance.
And B Cells... well... they... well, God Bless 'em.
None of Pfizer / Moderna formulations is stated to have an adjuvant. The 5-11 Pfizer reformulated the stabilizer / buffer but 12+ versions manufactured after November 2021 would also have the new mix - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/in-orphania#footnote-1.
The designs of both mRNA injections essentially follow an immune-evasion platform. But the spike itself is obviously immonogenic.
No one seems to really know if the in vivo antigenic process is mRNA into APC > GC MHC II spike presentation, or spike expressed in other cells > MHC I presentation or spike affixing to membrane? > Natural killer cell apoptosis or T Cells or? > APCs >, or exosomes > APCs > as speculated in the Bansal et al. exosomes paper.
Correct - "IgG from Alpha or Delta variant-infected patients with no history of COVID-19 vaccination or prior SARS-CoV-2 infection preferentially bound Alpha and Delta variant RBDs," - I'll add a clarification to my annotations on Figure 5 (if I can find any room).
This is such a beautiful, thorough and phenomenally impressive analysis of OAS...and...I'm a complete layman (well, I know a little). Please don't be angry if I ask this, but is there a layman's version of what this says? I feel it's important to share w/my friends and family who are still racing to get boosters, but they will not understand it, and I am unable to summarize it :(. (I realize I am probably not your target audience...but I found you recently and understood (mostly :) ) those articles.) In any case, THANK YOU for sharing your work!!!
Thank you!! That's reassuring to read. I am inundated w/info and have three jobs. I'm usually pretty quick (haha if I say so myself 🙈 ...two magna cum laude degrees from an Ivy League university plus a doctorate), so if I don't understand something after really concentrating on it, it's because there's enough parlance that's germane to the subject that I just don't know, AND I know I would get there if I had time to research it in-depth. If I had more time...and if people weren't getting jabbed daily, I would. Again, I realize I may not be the right audience for Brian's posts (in tech, we call it product-market fit :)), but I understood a few of the others, and this one "feels" particularly important. If he can provide a summary (even 2-3 sentences), then cherries on top of the ice cream! If not, totally cool also!
I will meditate on your request tonight - but as I myself failed at dissuading a January boosting incident in real life, "summarizing" the case has eluded me as well. Are these friends and family in fact influenced by the OAS trope? I know I have seen plenty of comments in substack "OAS smoking gun" posts where readers attest directly that the misreported "evidence" for OAS has convinced them that their already-Covid-vaccinated family members are better off with the booster. Sad.
Making matters worse, the official figures on boosters are unfortunately favorable everywhere, but especially in the UK where the stats suddenly look bad for 2-dosed. This is likely an artifact of healthy user bias, in which the booster rollout makes the 2-dosed-only look worse, when before the boosters they were doing fine. I may try addressing this issue in a future post.
First, thank you for considering my request! Second, my pleasure, and my words are well-deserved. Third, my friends don't get into the science at all, frankly. They follow mainstream media. One (my bff from college) works at one of the big banks, where it's mandated to work in the office and her role may require her to be there in person. They're brainwashed by MSM (I'm in the US, so they watch CNN, MSNBC blah blah blah....almost every channel here is captured as is NYT, etc. (I know you know this.)) SO, if I have enough facts/evidence that I can share with them at a basic level, they WILL listen to me. Some of them just got Covid (2 jabs), and I haven't (0 jabs.) If I could say something like, "With each jab, you are actually, over time, lowering your immune system... it's called [Antibody Dependent Enhancement][Original Antigenic Sin (I actually don't know the diff between these two, and THAT I can research on my own and will)] and what happens is that the spike proteins degrade yada yada...." I am not saying this example is medically correct 😂....it's just a hypothetical of how I explain things to them. I'm tenacious, and I wear them down and start to scare them 😂., and they do listen to me. If I could save even 1 or 5 lives, I will feel like I'm doing my bit in humanity. Blessings to you, Brian!! xoxo
Right - but OAS and ADE both imply that the already-vaccinated are in some trap that their immune system can't get out of. Hence my crusade to show that there is no evidence for OAS in any real life context and to try to be even-handed discussing the evidence for ADE in the context of the Covid-vaccines.
And even the "Innate immune suppression" meme leads to the same conclusion. If the Covid-vaccinated have destroyed their innate immune system, then the only solution is more injections forever. So once again I try to be very cautious with the evidence here.
All of the negative efficacy memes are very popular in substack because they make the non-injected feel like they made the right decision vis-a-vis the Scary Virus. But they feed right into the argument in favor of boosters.
The argument against boosters is the opposite of OAS - that the immune system is "naturally boosted" once it encounters the virus in real life. We know this takes place for other vaccines, so there is no reason to rule it out for these shots without evidence.
On the other hand, like I said, the stats for the double-dosed all look "bad" compared to the boosted right now, so the argument is actually harder now than it was several months ago.
Oh. I see. Do we have enough evidence yet, though, that each additional booster, while it may strengthen their immunity in the near time (i.e., therefore supporting the case for boosting, as you suggest) actually increasingly decreases their immune system over time? Like 1 step forward, 3 steps back with each additional booster? Thanks, Brian!!
Not yet - but Jacquelyn Sauriol's comment articulates what would be the most likely way that boosting sabotages immunity even if the first 2 shots didn't. Over-priming the immune system. The result would be eventual switch to down-regulation / tolerance, so the immune system stops suppressing the virus.
There's a lot of good, "mainstream-friendly" discussion of this potential, the other unknowns of the boosting schedule, and the reasons natural infection is likely to boost mucosal immunity in John Campbell's interview of Robert Clancy, but it's rather meandering and I can't find the part where boosters are mentioned, I might review it in a later post https://youtu.be/FPPnyzvO7J4
Balancing writing prose with clarity, is a tricky art. I sometimes get annoyed when I read endless arguments not knowing 'where the writer is going with it' but other times I am grateful for waiting because the argument appears like a garden of flowers after walking long corridors.
Sorry for being late to catch the email alert for this one. Yes, I would mainly say the issue is repeating / compounding of unknown long term harms. And I would argue that the pro column of increased protection vs 2nd-dose is an illusion, but that is not based on the evidence (since the evidence supports the illusion). Infection efficacy will drop again, so the infection is not "prevented," just shifted back in time a few months - exactly the same as the effect from the first rounds. But this is not a winning argument. When "thinking" about risk, people don't listen to the logic that says "doing this won't change the risk." So they're really hostage to advertising in the end.
My layperson analogy is holding somewhat true still; we are priming and priming the engine and now it wont even start. Just a big cloud of black smoke through the tailpipe and a ruined engine for life. That is some real bad gas too, like sugar in the gas tank.
Perhaps. But even though I mine the controversies of OAS and negative efficacy for half my posts, I remain a bit unconvinced by the evidence for either - and far more pessimistic about the likely universal direct harms of mRNA transfection with spike...!
Isn't the OAS thesis not that the individual is more/less susceptible but that the interaction of imperfect abs and virus leads to dominant escape variants which return to reinfect and impair/prevent "herd immunity"
That could be bad or good depending on whether viruses get worse or milder. Not been in narrative.
From this perspective the "higher AB counts " "similar to severe infection" indicate an AB /immune response that is ineffective - hence the high number allowing relatively longer infection transmission windows and higher mutation , etc etc. in the least conserved target
The antibodies do not become "imperfect" until the virus evolves around them. This vulnerability is built into the concept of using virus epitopes for recognition / firewall; so there's no need to biologically explain why viruses that don't possess other means of evading the immune system and achieving durable transmission (like chicken pox, measles) must evolve around this. They evolve around it because evolution demands they do. The bigger question is why has one particular virus not done so (polio).
Herd immunity is not a real concept in immunology. It was invented out of thin air by a CDC bureaucrat in 1967. In the decades afterward, all the childhood vaccines revealed themselves to be "leaky," and require sterner and sterner mandates and 100% compliance with boosters to prop up the fraud that they grant lasting immunity. Selling "herd immunity" to the world in 2020/1 was a huge fraud - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/die-herd - Selling "leaky vaccine disasters" like OAS to substack readers similarly ignores the history of childhood vaccines. They are leaky, but don't drive escape mutants. See again polio. So it's very much a clowns to the left, jokers to the right deal, no one's talking straight.
Hi Brian,
Spotted this as a question/answer in Rintrah's comments page yesterday:
'How about if you got vaccinated, and then get infected? Is the vaccine an obstacle to your immune response?
In that case you get to deal with original antigenic sin. Specifically it seems your body will struggle to develop an antibody response against the Nucleocapsid protein.'
There's been quite a lot about this inability of the vaccinated since the 'data' from a look at UK blood donors. Is there a struggle to deal with the nucleocapsid in the vaccinated and even if there is, how permanent and how important might it be do you think?
The Rintrah innate immunity post is good, though it goes out on quite a few limbs.
I offered my take on the N Protein controversy in last week's post - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/original-antigroundhogic-sin. I don't think there's any problem going on with N antibody for breakthrough infections that occur more than ~4 months after the second dose (infections before then are mostly asymptomatic or super-mild). Note that failure to generate N Protein antibody (at levels that meet the benchmarks mostly set back in 2020) wouldn't be OAS, since the N Protein is a different antigen than the one sensitized by the vaxx. B Cells enriched against spike would not react to N. If the antigens are not homologous then the theory of OAS doesn't actually explain what is going on and is thus not validated. To put it differently, OAS would not predict a problem with N-vaccinating the spike-vaccinated (vs whatever the antigenicity would be in the non-spike-vaxxed). Also note that the relevance of N protein antibodies (or even T Cell sensitization) to immune protection is unclear. N might just be superfluous. The immune system is very redundant, and also dials down all these elements anyway, essentially inviting continual encounter with the virus (even if suppressed by T Cells), as if to keep itself on its toes so to speak.
As far as I know the only reinfection study out so far is still Goldberg, et al., and it suggests a small diminishment in breakthrough+recovered performance vs the naive+recovered at 4-8 months - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/darmok-and-the-spike-protein-at-tanagra#footnote-8 - A small diminishment translates to "most of the breakthrough-infected are as well-protected as the "pureblood" infected." i.e., no immune sabotage of any form for most. Meanwhile there's a clear big improvement to immune response vs the vaxxed-only. Improvement is not "no improvement." And the study window would have predominately been measuring the performance of the EARLY-breakthrough infected, which are more asymptomatic or mild (again this is probably the conditions going on in the "recent reports" referenced in the UKHSA N Protein comment).
Just saw this a couple of days ago:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35139340/
Thank you for assessing that study. I've had a lot of difficulties assessing all of this OAS information, but I always felt so much of this is being misattributed or incorrectly analyzed.
I have a friend who got her PhD in immunology and I asked her about OAS because I kept seeing it pop up. She laughed at it and essentially said that it's the "frat guy" in the immunology world, and apparently many graduate students try to bring it up in an attempt to lay some type of claim to aspects of the hypothesis.
I remember reading an abstract from one of the original OAS papers where they studies this in mice models. The researchers indicated that OAS is likely to be a heuristic approach, and I think we tend to miss that.
It's not that OAS is completely evil, but if OAS is to occur it's intent is for the body to elicit a prior immune response. If it's good enough to clear out the virus, then why waste all of this time and energy mounting a giant immune response to something you already had knowledge of before. It's strange because Dr. Malone made the same remark in his Joe Rogan interview: It's mounting an attack against the enemy you know.
I found it really strange how many people seemed to have clasped onto this concept, all the way down to the religious implications of the phrase. I also blame that UK dataset that began circulating. I actually wrote my posts on OAS because someone reached out to me commenting that they thought people were really not examining the data properly.
Hopefully the paranoia around OAS dies down. There's far more important things to consider aside from OAS that there are likely to be greater evidence to support.
Also, the irony is not lost on me that those who continue to evoke OAS are themselves trapped in their own OAS cycle. Not everything is OAS and it certainly should not be evoked every time someone mentions anything in regards to immunology.
Right - when I wrote my comment below about how OAS and ADE both imply that the injected are in a "trap" that their immune systems can't get out of, the overly on-the-nose allusion to the garden / fall certainly came to mind. Well, yes the Book of Genesis was prophetic when it came to the Scientific Revolution's impact on humanity... but it doesn't literally apply... to the immune system... Still, for the non-injected, it's very satisfying to imagine the injected in a permanently fallen state especially vis-a-vis the Scary Virus, as I mentioned below.
Lol at "frat guy." Like the brain, if not probably more-so than the brain, the essential character of the immune system is "plastic pattern recognition machine."
Personally, I wouldn't hope that my jabbed friends and family get stuck in such a perpetual Ouroboros state, but at the same time they seem so adamant in continuing such a cycle themselves, so who am I to constantly push back I suppose?
And from what I've heard the allusions stemmed from the original theorist's religious background. Can't remember if he was a member of the church or his dad was, but I feel like such semantic naming does more to enforce some religiosity around the idea more than it does to examine the concept with a skeptical eye.
Yeah I can't remember to what extent she meant with that, but she mentioned how so many of her fellow grad students apparently focused on that for their thesis. I think an analogy to the really loud, vocal college bro who really doesn't bring anything of substance to the party and just leaves all who come into contact with him stating "cool story, bro..." is probably what she meant, or at least that what I'd think.
Edit: OK for some reason I completely misunderstood your first comment! Yes the ideas of both ADE and OAS would suggest that these people would be in a constant tic-for-tac state where they would not be able to deviate lest they end up harming themselves. I haven't paid much attention to ADE but it's concerning that people are more concerned with the theory and not the actual evidence when evoking these... abbreviations?
Hi, Brian!
I must confess that some of the points you made in this article baffled me on first read.
I understand that you don't think that any good evidence for OAS has been mounted, and I get that our immune systems are far more more complex and adaptive than OAS theorists would have us believe.
However, I am having trouble integrating your analysis into the bigger picture.
I was wondering if you would be so kind as to answer some very basic questions.
On a personal level, who do you think, if anyone, would be well served by getting Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines?
If someone were to be forced to get one of the currently US approved vaccines for the first time, which one would you currently recommend?
Who do you think, if anyone, would be well served by getting Pfizer and Moderna mRNA boosters?
On a population level, what populations, if any, would you have recommended these mRNA vaccines to? Has the emergence Delta and then Omicron changed your analysis? If so, how?
What is your analysis of the trajectory of Marek's disease in chickens? How likely do you think mass vaccination with leaky vaccines during a pandemic could result in such a disaster among humans?
I realize that I may be asking you to bite off more than you would like to chew, but I truly value your perspective and would love any answers you could give me no matter how few or short.
I don't think anyone should receive the mRNA or vector vaccines. They are a novel biological intervention and should not be used in humans without years of study, if at all - I think there are ethical arguments against both platforms as well. Both remove the "the cells making virus protein self-destruct" rule and we don't know what the long term effects of that are (like cancer) and we haven't discussed the ethical meaning (our cells literally become factories for a commercially licensed product).
The danger of the virus was never universal or imminent enough to justify using these products without understanding the medical risks and ethical questions. This simply was not the Plague. Life with and without SARS-CoV-2 in the world is not on balance more or less risky for any given human, as demonstrated in https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3259 - so there was no reason for any individual to risk the vaccines. That's before we even factor in effective, but suppressed treatments. (So, no, Omicron hasn't altered the calculus either.)
That said, you can still acknowledge that there is evidence that these injections "work" against severe outcomes. What else is there to do? If the evidence is there, it's there.
If seatbelts gave you cancer, the argument against seatbelts wouldn't be that they don't work - just that having cancer is worse than the risk of a car accident in which a seat belt would prove protective. Most people will never be in an accident where the seatbelt actually makes a difference, and even if they do, it's only because they didn't get cancer and die first.
So I am not for trying to argue the case against the vaccines on the "They don't work" argument. I think it's unlikely to win. Not to say that it can't happen, but it's a weak attack.
In my view no one needs boosters. Again to the seatbelts, if you ARE wearing a cancer-causing seatbelt, well... you really don't need a racing helmet. In terms of the plausible biology that's really where the boosted are at, the likely returns get super-marginal. But as in the comments below, I have to acknowledge that the stats look better-than-marginal. This is probably a data artifact caused by the roll-out of boosters - i.e. classic healthy user bias.
I've addressed Marek's, I don't think it applies to a coronavirus, again in terms of the plausible biology https://unglossed.substack.com/p/crackpot-corner-marekspocalypse-edition
Thanks for the kind reply.
Just a couple of more points.
This a table from official California data: https://i.imgur.com/VyTp3qd.jpg
How much of the supposed efficacy of these mRNA gene therapies against severe COVID-positive outcomes could be the result of in the clear demographical differences in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated population?
I found this article eye-opening: https://dailysceptic.org/2022/02/03/how-many-pregnant-women-have-actually-died-of-covid-19/
What percentage of "unvaccinated COVID-19 deaths" do you think fit the descriptions above? Poor medical care bordering on malpractice, iatrophobia, mental disorders, linguistic barriers, significant health co-factors, bad diagnoses, destructive medical interventions, etc.? My guess is that unvaccinated populations include the most indigent, linguistically challenged, deathbed ridden, and hospital and doctor fearing individuals in any society. So of course we would expect more deaths per 100,000 associated with COVID-19 in this population anytime COVID-19 is prevalent.
How much of the supposed efficacy of these mRNA gene therapies against severe COVID-positive outcomes could be the result of categorizing all of those "for who a vaccination cannot be found" (as California admits to doing)?
How much of the supposed efficacy of these mRNA gene therapies against severe COVID-positive outcomes could be the result of the data advantage that these vaccines are given by not counting anyone as "fully vaccinated" until 2 weeks after the second dose and counting anyone boosted less than than two weeks ago as unboosted? To me, this is the simplest explanation for the UK-HSA's much more strongly negative case efficacy for 2 dose than for 3 dose individuals.
Finally, how much of the supposed efficacy of these mRNA gene therapies against severe COVID-positive outcomes could be the result of placebo vs. nocebo effects on the individuals who test positive for COVID-19 as well as the relative consideration given to them by the healthcare professionals who treat them?
I am just asking for your basic ideas about these relative relevance or lack thereof of these potential issues. Thanks again.
RE the delay in category change, I don't think it matters much. ICNARC uses the delay. Here is the impact for May to December 2021: "Of 5955 paents classified as unvaccinated, 113 (1.9%) had received a first dose of vaccine within 14 days prior to the posive COVID-19 test." - p 44 of the January 28 report at https://www.icnarc.org/Our-Audit/Audits/Cmp/Reports
RE pregnant women, the trope that pregnant women are at increased risk from the virus is literally a lie. The data vs all women in age group doesn't support the claim, and that's despite the higher likelihood of "with not from." The pregnancy infection risk increase is just something MSM-narrative-aligned scientists say without evidence to keep their jobs. I'll be revisiting this topic if the V-Safe study ever finally publishes another update.
Right, along with acknowledging the evidence for severe efficacy, I acknowledge the possibility that it's all healthy user bias. Especially for 1) boosters vs 2nd-dosed (because there's no "my body is a temple" group left among the 2nd-dosed) 2) the UK in general (consistent reduction in all cause mortality in the 21 days after any dose in ONS / Scotland stats) 3) California (in which east LA and a lot of the desert functions as an open-air-nursing home for immigrants who aren't easily accessed by the health system). So in the latter case, you can't really argue that the doctors here are just imagining that all their "Covid patients" are unvaxxed https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-06/rural-california-the-unvaccinated-and-ill-overwhelm-hospital-staff It's the land of misfit elderly toys.
But elsewhere in the US, the elderly might be more likely to be injected even if they are unhealthy, because they are in indifferent facilities etc. Also I think this summer there were a lot of middle-aged deaths, labeled unvaccinated, primarily in the midwest and south it seems (based on national vs state trends in the all-cause stats), and I think these were driven by the negative healthcare treatment that you allude to, i.e. the NIH wait+ventilate protocol - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/invisible-apocalypse#footnote-anchor-12
But I was confident in severe efficacy back when the only data was from Israel. The population values for their per-100k denominators seemed reliable, because of the large orthodox population and lower uptake it doesn't seem like the unvaxxed were universally near-death like in the UK (though it might be the case for the non-boosted), and they were open about the fact that the vaccinated still dominate hospitalization in absolute counts. In the huge-scale trial of the Delta wave, the vaccines came out looking pretty good for severe efficacy. It's hard for me to throw that conclusion away just because the UK and US provide such unreliable confirmations.
(The shots still look good in the Israel data, but I'm also not sure if severe efficacy is meaningful or relevant in the Omicron era, all the stats might be showing now is "with not from" efficacy. It's possible that there's effectually no more severe illness to prevent.)
Thanks again.
You're doing a great job with this. This is what my intuition was telling me. The immune system of a Wuhan-spike vaccinated person will respond, initially with the antibodies that it already knows how to make - the wuhan-spike antibodies, but all the while the process of learning how to make antibodies to the new spike protein is initiated. If the wuhan spike antibodies, along with innate immunity, quickly clear the infection, the immune system will not have that much exposure to the new spike and so won't learn to make antibodies to it to a great extent. The more the infection with the new spike progresses, the more exposure to it the immune system will have and the more it will learn to make antibodies specific to the new spike. So, it's not as if your immune system is unable to learn to make any new antibodies just because it already knows how to make some similar antibodies. Remember, the first time you're exposed it takes 8 days for you to really have any significant antibodies. So, it's not like you ever really have an immediate robust antibody response to a new antigen. You can only have an immediate, robust antibody response to a pathogen with the same antigen as one you've previously been infected with. To show that OAS is a real problem, they'd have to show that these same people got reinfected with Omicron, yet again, and still did not make any omicron specific antibodies. Even then it would only be a problem if said infections were more than just mild. If they were mild, it may just mean that the immune system never learned to make antibodies that are specific to the new antigen because it didn't need to because the innate arm and old antibodies fought it off so quickly that the immune system didn't really have enough exposure to learn to make the new antibodies well. But 'so what?' in that case. It just means that the tools the immune system already has have this pathogen well under control.
Exactly, it all reduces to "So What" in real world application, especially for immune performance after "natural boosting" / breakthrough infection.
Just remember that OAS has the bailey of "well you still can't elicit antibodies to homologous variant epitopes with injections." Influenza being the textbook case, though I'm not even sure how well this problem has been reproduced in contemporary studies not involving older adults. So yeah, custom "Omicron boosters" can't make as many Omicron antibodies as a "1st dose Omicron vaccine" in animal models - but the boosted animals still do fine in infection challenge with Omicron, so...
Great post as always! Out of curiosity (I don't actually care about credentials - arguments should be judged based on their content alone), are you a biologist or doctor by trade? How'd you develop your framework for understanding human immunology?
Thank you. I took AP Bio 20 years ago, like Sirotkin lol. In 2011 I did enough research on the genetic side of viruses (for a fiction project) to already know CRISPR was coming and the limits of viruses as super-weapons as implied by the arsenal of immune evasion traits in everyday chickenpox etc., and did a lot of thinking about that afterward. But I had NO idea how many vaccines Americans had started giving their kids after the 80s, nor the ongoing global polio eradication blunder. I would have started this project way earlier.
I was under the (apparently erroneous) impression that OAS meant when a new variant (V.2) stopped by, you generated antibodies for a previous variant (V.1) exclusively, none of which bound to V.2 epitopes, rendering you completely vulnerable to the new variant (V.2).
This to me would be the ONLY reason it would be an issue.
If, instead, you generate antibodies (quickly, because you are already primed / learned with V.1) for V.1 (V.1 = V.2 epitope subset A) and more slowly / less of them as first exposure, but still reliably to V.2 (V.2 =/= V.1 epitope subset B) - this is what I would expect, given genetic drift means some epitopes will remain the same (V.1 epitope subset A = V.2 epitope subset A), and some will change (V.1 epitope subset B =/= V.2 epitope subset B).
It seems impossible to me that the "wrong" antibodies can be generated for a given epitope (what I thought OAS proponents were claiming). That's just not how the process works, which is why OAS has always seemed ridiculous to me, and why I looked for but never found the mechanism described that meant an epitope E.76 being presented to B cells with appropriate co-stimulation resulted in anything but E.76 B cell antibody factory being created.
OAS fans were, I thought, claiming presenting an E.76 epitope to an unrelated / ineffective E.12 B cell resulted in that B cell proliferating and spamming out useless antibodies to E.12. Still seems nonsensical.
"This to me would be the ONLY reason it would be an issue." Well, you certainly won't make it far in immunology with THAT attitude!
It's obviously plausible that the medium-affinity binding from (high) residual / ramped-up vaccine antibodies, because they suppress viral replication, also would result in less antigenic stimulation. But that's like saying "immunity doesn't work because it works." The burden is on OAS to answer the question "why is diminished epitope updating bad in the overall context of memory immunity, which extends beyond antibodies."
And in my intuition and in the real-world evidence, only high residual antibodies seem to have a suppressive effect - as in breakthrough infections very soon after 2nd dose (as with Alpha in Fig 5). Ramped-up antibodies seem to offer the best of both worlds - because the virus was "let into the gate," you get an updated memory immune response with a new lineage of enriched B Cells, but also avoid severe outcomes thanks to stimulated B Cells for the old model pumping out IgG (as with Delta in Fig 5).
This really goes back to the completely fictitious belief (?) that immunity = antibodies.
It boggles the mind.
But then having read even more of my immunology books now, makes sense, given that's pretty much all the focus has been on: how to generate anitbodies to do stuff that we can charge $$ for... Monoclonal antibodies in particular are big business...
The editing function is a blessing and a curse haha. edited 12 times in the past 20 minutes...
My understanding for the reason Omicron is so devastating in terms of infectivity is it was not a genetic drift so much as a genetic leapfrog shift via a jump gate into something wayyy different epitopically.
And my hunch is that it's the altered tissue tropism for the upper respiratory tract, so that it evades the resident T Cells that would be localized in the lower respiratory tract post-Wuhan-strain infection, as I mentioned in https://unglossed.substack.com/p/rashocron
Yes definitely.
I have not seen that discussed much anywhere either: vaccine-activated T cells more than likely return to the site of injection ffs, waiting in case there's another attack there. The mechanisms that allow this blew my mind when reading about it. Locale specific immune response made much sense, but then how the circulating / maturing immune response does a lap or two of the body then returns to the site of immune response genesis was WOW.
It's difficult to not read about the way these things (immune cells) act (despite the reality of chemotactics etc) and not perceive them as living things. It's so damn cool. The leap from there to us as sentient beings seems like a thin veil.
I also find it fascinating from a psychological perspective how in/outgroup dynamics (~ self vs non-self) occur at the lowest functional level in just about every single living thing on the planet. It's been captivating reading and pattern matching to other domains.
Right, especially Antigen Presenting Cells evince discernment and consciousness in how they process DAMP/PAMP in order to mediate T Cell and B Cell response all the way down to class switching, and how they pick out the residues from the entire viral code to present.
T Cells similarly show discernment in all sorts of ways - and of course have to prove their ability to not enrich for self-proteins in order to survive the gauntlet of the thymus! It's a very This is Sparta lifestyle.
Arguably the APC and T Cells don't really see bacteria and viruses as "not-self," even "self" cells are a sort of foreign species that requires a particular balance between stimulation and tolerance.
And B Cells... well... they... well, God Bless 'em.
I need to find the image again but (I think, from memory) Pfizer's kid vaccine has no adjuvant. :-/
None of Pfizer / Moderna formulations is stated to have an adjuvant. The 5-11 Pfizer reformulated the stabilizer / buffer but 12+ versions manufactured after November 2021 would also have the new mix - https://unglossed.substack.com/p/in-orphania#footnote-1.
The designs of both mRNA injections essentially follow an immune-evasion platform. But the spike itself is obviously immonogenic.
No one seems to really know if the in vivo antigenic process is mRNA into APC > GC MHC II spike presentation, or spike expressed in other cells > MHC I presentation or spike affixing to membrane? > Natural killer cell apoptosis or T Cells or? > APCs >, or exosomes > APCs > as speculated in the Bansal et al. exosomes paper.
"The non-Covid-vaccinated have no previously circulating B Cells for the Wuhan spike."
Assuming they were not infected with the original Wuhan strain yes?
Correct - "IgG from Alpha or Delta variant-infected patients with no history of COVID-19 vaccination or prior SARS-CoV-2 infection preferentially bound Alpha and Delta variant RBDs," - I'll add a clarification to my annotations on Figure 5 (if I can find any room).
I saw an enhanced description later, "naive" - and nearly deleted my comment.
This is such a beautiful, thorough and phenomenally impressive analysis of OAS...and...I'm a complete layman (well, I know a little). Please don't be angry if I ask this, but is there a layman's version of what this says? I feel it's important to share w/my friends and family who are still racing to get boosters, but they will not understand it, and I am unable to summarize it :(. (I realize I am probably not your target audience...but I found you recently and understood (mostly :) ) those articles.) In any case, THANK YOU for sharing your work!!!
You have to read the posts several times to have a hope of understanding them. Well, at least I do.
Thank you!! That's reassuring to read. I am inundated w/info and have three jobs. I'm usually pretty quick (haha if I say so myself 🙈 ...two magna cum laude degrees from an Ivy League university plus a doctorate), so if I don't understand something after really concentrating on it, it's because there's enough parlance that's germane to the subject that I just don't know, AND I know I would get there if I had time to research it in-depth. If I had more time...and if people weren't getting jabbed daily, I would. Again, I realize I may not be the right audience for Brian's posts (in tech, we call it product-market fit :)), but I understood a few of the others, and this one "feels" particularly important. If he can provide a summary (even 2-3 sentences), then cherries on top of the ice cream! If not, totally cool also!
I will meditate on your request tonight - but as I myself failed at dissuading a January boosting incident in real life, "summarizing" the case has eluded me as well. Are these friends and family in fact influenced by the OAS trope? I know I have seen plenty of comments in substack "OAS smoking gun" posts where readers attest directly that the misreported "evidence" for OAS has convinced them that their already-Covid-vaccinated family members are better off with the booster. Sad.
Making matters worse, the official figures on boosters are unfortunately favorable everywhere, but especially in the UK where the stats suddenly look bad for 2-dosed. This is likely an artifact of healthy user bias, in which the booster rollout makes the 2-dosed-only look worse, when before the boosters they were doing fine. I may try addressing this issue in a future post.
Thank you for the kind remarks.
First, thank you for considering my request! Second, my pleasure, and my words are well-deserved. Third, my friends don't get into the science at all, frankly. They follow mainstream media. One (my bff from college) works at one of the big banks, where it's mandated to work in the office and her role may require her to be there in person. They're brainwashed by MSM (I'm in the US, so they watch CNN, MSNBC blah blah blah....almost every channel here is captured as is NYT, etc. (I know you know this.)) SO, if I have enough facts/evidence that I can share with them at a basic level, they WILL listen to me. Some of them just got Covid (2 jabs), and I haven't (0 jabs.) If I could say something like, "With each jab, you are actually, over time, lowering your immune system... it's called [Antibody Dependent Enhancement][Original Antigenic Sin (I actually don't know the diff between these two, and THAT I can research on my own and will)] and what happens is that the spike proteins degrade yada yada...." I am not saying this example is medically correct 😂....it's just a hypothetical of how I explain things to them. I'm tenacious, and I wear them down and start to scare them 😂., and they do listen to me. If I could save even 1 or 5 lives, I will feel like I'm doing my bit in humanity. Blessings to you, Brian!! xoxo
Right - but OAS and ADE both imply that the already-vaccinated are in some trap that their immune system can't get out of. Hence my crusade to show that there is no evidence for OAS in any real life context and to try to be even-handed discussing the evidence for ADE in the context of the Covid-vaccines.
And even the "Innate immune suppression" meme leads to the same conclusion. If the Covid-vaccinated have destroyed their innate immune system, then the only solution is more injections forever. So once again I try to be very cautious with the evidence here.
All of the negative efficacy memes are very popular in substack because they make the non-injected feel like they made the right decision vis-a-vis the Scary Virus. But they feed right into the argument in favor of boosters.
The argument against boosters is the opposite of OAS - that the immune system is "naturally boosted" once it encounters the virus in real life. We know this takes place for other vaccines, so there is no reason to rule it out for these shots without evidence.
On the other hand, like I said, the stats for the double-dosed all look "bad" compared to the boosted right now, so the argument is actually harder now than it was several months ago.
Oh. I see. Do we have enough evidence yet, though, that each additional booster, while it may strengthen their immunity in the near time (i.e., therefore supporting the case for boosting, as you suggest) actually increasingly decreases their immune system over time? Like 1 step forward, 3 steps back with each additional booster? Thanks, Brian!!
Not yet - but Jacquelyn Sauriol's comment articulates what would be the most likely way that boosting sabotages immunity even if the first 2 shots didn't. Over-priming the immune system. The result would be eventual switch to down-regulation / tolerance, so the immune system stops suppressing the virus.
There's a lot of good, "mainstream-friendly" discussion of this potential, the other unknowns of the boosting schedule, and the reasons natural infection is likely to boost mucosal immunity in John Campbell's interview of Robert Clancy, but it's rather meandering and I can't find the part where boosters are mentioned, I might review it in a later post https://youtu.be/FPPnyzvO7J4
Balancing writing prose with clarity, is a tricky art. I sometimes get annoyed when I read endless arguments not knowing 'where the writer is going with it' but other times I am grateful for waiting because the argument appears like a garden of flowers after walking long corridors.
Therein lies the art.
I will watch it. I have seen some of his videos before. Thank you, thank you for this wealth of info and being so kindly responsive!
Sorry for being late to catch the email alert for this one. Yes, I would mainly say the issue is repeating / compounding of unknown long term harms. And I would argue that the pro column of increased protection vs 2nd-dose is an illusion, but that is not based on the evidence (since the evidence supports the illusion). Infection efficacy will drop again, so the infection is not "prevented," just shifted back in time a few months - exactly the same as the effect from the first rounds. But this is not a winning argument. When "thinking" about risk, people don't listen to the logic that says "doing this won't change the risk." So they're really hostage to advertising in the end.
My layperson analogy is holding somewhat true still; we are priming and priming the engine and now it wont even start. Just a big cloud of black smoke through the tailpipe and a ruined engine for life. That is some real bad gas too, like sugar in the gas tank.
Perhaps. But even though I mine the controversies of OAS and negative efficacy for half my posts, I remain a bit unconvinced by the evidence for either - and far more pessimistic about the likely universal direct harms of mRNA transfection with spike...!
Transfection...new one for me, thanks BW