NOTE:
This was the best article I read in the past month. It started out as the worst -- extremely long, and almost impossible to finish. You can read the entire article at the link below. Good luck getting through it. I've provided key quotes in an attempt to create a much shorter article. But it's still much longer than most articles here. Read the highlighted in yellow paragraphs for an overview,
A lot of editing work, but I learned a lot about the human immune system. For a one sentence summary of the article: You can't stop influenza with a vaccine, and you can't stop COVID with a vaccine.
Ye Editor
Source:
https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/09/the-snake-oil-salesmen-and-covid-zero.html
... "One of the most common reasons given for mass COVID vaccinations is the idea that if we reach herd immunity through vaccination, we can starve the virus out of existence and get our lives back.
It's the COVID-Zero strategy ...
By now it is abundantly clear from the epidemiological data that the vaccinated are able to both catch and spread the disease.
Clearly vaccination isn't going to make this virus disappear.
... a tour through pre-COVID science demonstrates that, from day one, long before you and I had even heard of this virus,
it was 100% inevitable and 100% predictable that these vaccines would never be capable of eradicating this coronavirus
and would never lead to any kind of lasting herd immunity.
Even worse, lockdowns and mass vaccination have created a dangerous set of circumstances that interferes with our immune system's ability to protect us against other respiratory viruses.
They also risk driving the evolution of this virus towards mutations that are more dangerous to both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated alike.
Lockdowns, mass vaccinations, and mass booster shots were never capable of delivering on any of the promises that were made to the public.
... from day one, the promise of COVID-Zero can only ever have been a deliberately dishonest shell game designed to prey on a lack of public understanding of how our immune systems work
and on how most respiratory viruses differ from other viruses that we routinely vaccinate against.
We have been sold a fantasy designed to rope us into a pharmaceutical dependency as a deceitful trade-off for access to our lives.
The story tells itself by diving into the long-established science that every single virologist, immunologist, evolutionary biologist, vaccine developer, and public health official had access to long before COVID began.
... the one-two punch of lockdowns and the promise of vaccines as an exit strategy began as a cynical marketing ploy to coerce us into a never-ending regimen of annual booster shots
intentionally designed to replace the natural "antivirus security updates" against respiratory viruses that come from hugs and handshakes and from children laughing together at school.
... never-ending boosters were the initial motive for this global social-engineering shell game
― the subscription-based business model, adapted for the pharmaceutical industry.
... Eradication is hard and only appropriate for very specific families of viruses.
... most respiratory viruses
including SARS-CoV-2 (a.k.a. COVID)
come from animal reservoirs:
swine,
birds,
bats,
etc.
As long as there are bats in caves, birds in ponds, pigs in mud baths, and deer living in forests, respiratory viruses are only controllable through individual immunity,
but it is not possible to eradicate them.
There will always be a near-identical cousin brewing in the wings.
Even the current strain of COVID is already cheerfully jumping onwards across species boundaries.
According to both National Geographic and Nature magazine, 40% of wild deer tested positive for COVID antibodies in a study conducted in Michigan, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania.
It has also been documented in wild mink and has already made the species jump to other captive animals including dogs, cats, otters, leopards, tigers, and gorillas.
A lot of viruses ... happily adapt to new opportunities.
Specialists, like smallpox, eventually go extinct.
Generalists, like most respiratory viruses, never run out of hosts to keep the infection cycle going, forever.
As long as we share this planet with other animals, it is extremely deceitful to give anyone the impression that we can pursue any scorched earth policy that can put this genie back in the bottle.
With an outbreak on this global scale, it was clear that we were always going to have to live with this virus.
There are over 200 other endemic respiratory viruses that cause colds and flus, many of which circulate freely between humans and other animals.
Now there are 201.
They will be with us forever, whether we like it or not.
... COVID was quite contagious (its rapid spread showed that COVID was already well adapted to spreading easily among its new human hosts),
most people would have mild or no symptoms from COVID (making containment impossible),
and that it was spreading by aerosols produced by both symptomatic and pre-symptomatic people (making contact tracing a joke).
... Once a reasonably contagious respiratory virus begins circulating widely in a community, herd immunity can never be maintained for very long.
RNA respiratory viruses (such as influenza viruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), rhinoviruses, and coronaviruses) all mutate extremely fast compared to viruses like smallpox, measles, or polio.
... All viruses survive by creating copies of themselves.
And there are always a lot of "imperfect copies" — mutations — produced by the copying process itself.
Among RNA respiratory viruses these mutations stack up so quickly that there is rapid genetic drift, which continually produces new strains.
... Variants make it virtually impossible to build the impenetrable wall of long-lasting herd immunity required to starve these respiratory viruses out of existence.
That's one of several reasons why flu vaccines don't provide long-lasting immunity and have to be repeated annually
― our immune system constantly needs to be updated to keep pace with the inevitable evolution of countless unnamed "variants."
This never-ending conveyor belt of mutations means that everyone's immunity to COVID was always only going to be temporary
and only offer partial cross-reactive protection against future re-infections.
Thus, from day one, COVID vaccination was always doomed to the same fate as the flu vaccine
― a lifelong regimen of annual booster shots to try to keep pace with "variants"
for those unwilling to expose themselves to the risk of a natural infection.
And the hope that by the time the vaccines (and their booster shots) roll off the production line,
they won't already be out of date when confronted by the current generation of virus mutations.
... Coronaviruses, like other respiratory viruses, are therefore constantly producing a never-ending conveyor belt of "variants" that make long-lasting herd immunity impossible.
The alarm raised by our public health authorities about "variants" and the feigned compassion of pharmaceutical companies as they rush to develop fresh boosters capable of fighting variants is a charade ...
... for fast-mutating respiratory viruses, including coronaviruses, within a few months they are sufficiently different that your previously acquired immunity will only ever offer partial protection against your next exposure.
... The length of time it takes to manufacture and ship 8 billion doses (and then make vaccination appointments for 8 billion people) ensures that
by the time the last person gets their last dose, the never-ending conveyor belt of mutations will have already rendered the vaccine partially ineffective.
... The logistics of rolling out vaccines to 8 billion people meant that none of our vaccine makers or public health authorities ever could have genuinely believed that vaccines would create lasting herd immunity against COVID.
... It was 100% certain, from day one, that by the time the last dose is administered, the rapid evolution of the virus would ensure that it would already be time to start thinking about booster shots.
... Vaccines against respiratory viruses can never provide anything more than a temporary cross-reactive immunity "update"
― they are merely a synthetic replacement for your annual natural exposure to the smorgasbord of cold and flu viruses.
... The only question was always, how long between booster shots?
Weeks, months, years?
The current crop of COVID vaccines was never designed to provide sterilizing immunity - that's not how they work.
They are merely a tool designed to teach the immune system to attack the S-spike protein,
thereby priming the immune system to reduce the severity of infection in preparation for your inevitable future encounter with the real virus.
They were never capable of preventing infection, nor of preventing spread.
They were merely designed to reduce your chance of being hospitalized or dying if you are infected.
... Every first-year medical student knows that you cannot get herd immunity from a vaccine that does not stop infection.
... They were never capable of creating herd immunity.
They were designed to protect individuals against severe outcomes if they choose to take them - a tool to provide temporary focused protection for the vulnerable, just like the flu vaccine.
... Not only is the virus constantly mutating but immunity itself fades over time ...
This is true for both immunity acquired through natural infection and immunity acquired through vaccination.
... On average, the flu vaccine is only about 40% effective to begin with.
And it begins to fade almost immediately after vaccination.
By about 150 days (5 months), it reaches zero.
... vaccines will, at best, only last as long as immunity acquired through natural infection and will often fade much faster because the vaccine is often only able to trigger a partial immune response compared to the actual infection.
... in most cases, immunity acquired through vaccination will begin to fade much sooner than immunity acquired through a natural infection.
Every vaccine maker and public health official knows this despite bizarrely claiming that the COVID vaccines (based on re-creating the S-protein spike instead of using a whole virus) would somehow become the exception to the rule.
That was a lie, and they knew it from day one.
... the coronaviruses involved in colds (there were four human coronaviruses before SARS, MERS, and COVID) all trigger such a weak immune response that they do not lead to any long-lasting immunity whatsoever.
... to pretend that there was any chance that herd immunity to COVID would be anything but short-lived was dishonest at best.
For most people, immunity was always going to fade quickly.
Just like what happens after most other respiratory virus infections.
,,, The only rational reason why the WHO and public health officials would withhold all that contextual information from the public as they rolled out lockdowns and held forth vaccines as an exit strategy
was to whip the public into irrational fear in order to be able to make a dishonest case for mass vaccination when they should have,
at most, been focused on providing focused vaccination of the most vulnerable only.
That deception was the Trojan Horse to introduce endless mass booster shots as immunity inevitably fades and as new variants replace old ones.
... the inevitable limitations and problems
with these vaccines become apparent
(i.e. fading of vaccine-induced immunity,
vaccines proving to only be partially effective,
the rise of new variants, and
the vaccinated population demonstrably
catching and spreading the virus
― a.k.a. the leaky vaccine phenomenon),
... all this was 100% to be expected.
... Do we need a lifetime regimen of booster shots to keep us safe from a beast to which we cannot develop durable long-term immunity?
The short answer is no.
Contrary to what you might think, the rapid evolution of RNA respiratory viruses actually has several important benefits
... evolutionary pressures ... normally drive viruses towards becoming less dangerous over time.
... for viruses with fast genetic drift, like respiratory viruses, even a few months can make a dramatic difference.
Rapid genetic drift is one of the reasons why the Spanish Flu stopped being a monster disease, but polio and measles haven't.
And anyone with training in virology or immunology understands this!
... a simple organism like a virus is utterly blind to its environment — all it does is blindly produce genetic copies of itself. "
Evolutionary pressure" is actually just a fancy way of saying that environmental conditions will determine which of those millions of copies survives long enough to produce even more copies of itself.
... A virus "adapts" over time because some genetic copies with one set of mutations survive and spread faster than other copies with a different set of mutations.
... fear mongering about the Delta variant being even more contagious leaves out the fact that this is exactly what you would expect as a respiratory virus adapts to its new host species.
We would expect new variants to be more contagious but less deadly as the virus fades to become just like the other 200+ respiratory viruses that cause common colds and flu.
... A vaccine that provides sterilizing immunity prevents the vaccinated from being able to catch or transmit the virus.
They become a dead end for the virus.
However, as I've already mentioned, the current crop of COVID vaccines, which are meant to train the immune system to recognize the S-spike proteins, were not designed to create sterilizing immunity.
By their design, they merely help reduce the risk of severe outcomes by priming the immune system.
The vaccinated can still catch and spread the virus ― the definition of a leaky vaccine ― and epidemiological data makes it very clear that this is now happening all around the world.
Thus, both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated are equally capable of producing new variants.
The idea that the unvaccinated are producing variants while the vaccinated are not is a boldfaced lie.
... since COVID vaccination only offers temporary short-term protection, as soon as immunity fades, the vaccinated themselves are also equally at risk of more severe outcomes.
... the end result would be that we all become permanently dependent on boosters every 6 months, forever.
... (an) example (well known to public health officials and vaccine developers) from the poultry farming industry where a universal leaky vaccine pushed a virus to evolve to become extremely deadly to unvaccinated chickens.
It is called the Marek Effect.
It began with a leaky vaccine that was rolled out to fight a herpes virus in industrialized high-density chicken barns.
Vaccinated chickens were protected from severe outcomes but nevertheless continued to catch and spread the virus, so evolutionary pressure led to the emergence of a dual-track variant that become the dominant strain of this herpes virus.
It continues to spread among the vaccinated chickens without killing them but kills up to 80% or more of unvaccinated birds if they get infected.
Thus, a never-ending stream of vaccinations is now required just to maintain the status quo.
I bet the pharmaceutical industry is smiling at all those drug-dependent chickens though — talk about having a captive audience!
... A leaky vaccine used sparingly to protect small pockets of vulnerable individuals is very different than a leaky vaccine applied to everyone.
... antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) ... happens when a poorly designed vaccine trains antibodies to recognize a virus as an intruder without being strong enough to kill/neutralize them.
Instead of the virus being neutralized inside the antibody when the antibody attacks and "swallows" it ... the virus takes over the antibody cell that attacked it and uses it as a host to start making copies of itself.
Thus, the attacking antibody opens the door to the inside of the cell and becomes the virus' unwitting host, thereby accelerating rather than stopping the infection.
Antibody-dependent enhancement is a well-documented phenomenon in attempts to develop vaccines against the RSV virus, dengue fever, and other coronaviruses.
This is one of the reasons why previous attempts to develop a human coronavirus vaccine against the SARS-1 virus failed.
It kept happening in animal trials.
And many doctors warned from day one that it would happen with these vaccines as well as new variants gradually emerge that are sufficiently different from the original variant upon which the vaccine is based.
ADE doesn't show up on the day after vaccination.
It emerges gradually as new variants spread that are different from previous variants.
... your previous vaccination protects you only until new variants arise,
then the training that your previous vaccination gave your immune system becomes a liability
as your immune system switches from protecting you to increasing your risk from the disease.
Your only way to protect yourself is to dutifully get your next "updated" booster shot to protect you for next few short months.
You become a permanent drug dependent vaccine customer.
And you better hope next year's formulation doesn't get it wrong.
(this) puts a whole new spin on "trust the scientists."
Your life will literally be at their mercy.
I bet the pharmaceutical industry will be smiling at all those drug-dependent ... loyal customers though — talk about having a captive audience!
And what a sweet deal - vaccine makers have been granted an exemption from liability and, if it goes wrong, they are the go-to guy to solve it... with more boosters.
And with every booster, you'll get to play Russian Roulette all over again with side effects: death, autoimmune diseases, reactivation of dormant viruses, neurological damage, blood clotting, and more.
... All vaccine makers and public health authorities were aware of the potential for ADE with the development of a coronavirus vaccine.
Yet they pushed for mass vaccination, from day one, without completing the long-term trials that are meant to rule out this kind of risk.
They knowingly gambled with your future in their eagerness to get you onto your regimen of never-ending boosters and vaccine passports.
Why not, if more boosters are the solution if something going wrong.
They can always blame it on the "variants".
The media won't challenge them - not with billions of vaccine advertising dollars floating around.
... The once deadly 1918 Spanish Flu is still with us today; now it is part of the smorgasbord of viruses that cause colds and flus every winter precisely because subsequent variants evolved to be less deadly.
As unpleasant as flu season is, for most of us it is not lethal unless we have weak or compromised immune systems.
But each subsequent exposure teaches our immune system how to keep up with its gradual evolution over time.
... each year's fresh exposure to the latest strain of cold or flu virus functions as a sort of antivirus security update to partially prepare you for the next one.
Fading immunity and changing mutations means you'll never be 100% immune to the next one, but as long as updates are frequent enough, you'll also never have 0% immunity.
There will always be enough carry-over to protect you from the most serious outcomes unless you are unfortunate enough to have a weak immune system.
That is why it is called cross-reactive immunity.
... As long as we are re-exposed frequently, before immunity fades to zero, cross-reactive immunity is the only realistic evolutionary strategy that humans have to protect us from the next viral variant or viral cousin of these fast-mutating respiratory viruses.
With sufficient leftover cross-reactive immunity from your last exposure, exposure to the latest variant of a virus may simply result in your immune system getting updated without you even noticing a single thing.
That's what it means to get an "asymptomatic" infection.
Before we started tormenting the healthy with never-ending PCR tests to make us aware of all these "asymptomatic infections",
we were constantly getting lots of these "antivirus security updates"
each time we encountered one of the more than 200 respiratory viruses circulating among us,
often without even noticing the "infection".
Many of these encounters are asymptomatic because our immune systems are able to neutralize them without even ruffling enough layers of our defenses to trigger any symptoms.
Almost everyone gets a few immune system updates to the viruses that cause common colds, every single year, yet only a small percentage will ever get very sick.
The rest may barely get a runny nose, or no symptoms at all.
Mass PCR testing during COVID created a massive freak-out over every single asymptomatic COVID update
when we should have only been focused on those people who come down with severe symptomatic disease.
There was never any justifiable reason to roll out PCR tests to asymptomatic citizens other than to heighten fear in the population in order to make them receptive to mass vaccination.
So, in a sense, those 201 respiratory viruses that cause our colds and flus ... are dangerous to those with weak immune systems,
(but) for the rest of us our immune systems depend on them to give us partial protection against new strains that emerge through mutation or when new strains jump across species boundaries.
Getting rid of those (viruses) already circulating in society would make us more vulnerable to new variants that emerge.
Adding another 200 will make us even safer once we get our first contact behind us.
Eradicating a relatively benign respiratory virus is therefore not a desirable goal.
... Focused protection for the vulnerable, not lockdowns, was always the only realistic public health response to this respiratory virus,
unless someone wanted to seize the opportunity as a way to rope the public into (repeated) mass vaccinations.
... Our immune system ... must be continually stress-tested with mild challenges to these fast-mutating viruses in order to develop the robust arsenal of defenses to keep us safe.
It is a concept called anti-fragility, which was described in detail by Nassim Taleb in his ground-breaking book, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.
Once you understand this concept, your fear of "variants" will rapidly dissolve.
The eradication of these fast-mutating respiratory viruses is therefore not just unachievable,
it would actually be dangerous if we succeeded because it would eliminate the security updates that we need to protect us against new variants that crawl out of bat caves or jump species boundaries.
This year's runny nose is your protection against COVID-23.
Your cross-reactive immunity to last years annoying flu might just save your life if something truly dangerous arrives, as long as it is at least somewhat related to what your immune system has seen before.
COVID could easily have turned out to be as dangerous to us as the Spanish Flu if it hadn't been for the saving grace of cross-reactive immunity.
... up to 90-99% of us already had some level of protection to COVID thanks to partial cross-reactive immunity gained from exposure to other coronaviruses.
... Respiratory viruses are a completely different beast than smallpox, polio, or measles; and pretending otherwise is not just silly, it's criminal because anyone with a background in immunology knows better.
But it's a fantastic and very profitably way to scare a wide-eyed population into accepting never-ending booster shots as a replacement for the natural antivirus updates that we normally get from hugs and handshakes.
Protect the vulnerable.
Stop preying on the rest of us.
(governments and media) sparked a wave of fear that is so strong that not only is everyone desperate for a leaky jab to lead them to safety,
they are so scared that they won't rest until all their friends, neighbors, and family members get one too, even if it requires extreme levels of coercion to get the job done.
... the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship served as an inadvertent petri-dish to study the COVID virus.
... the virus circulated freely onboard the ship, yet age corrected lethality remained between 0.025% and 0.625%
(that's on the order of a bad flu season and nothing at all like the fatality rate of the 1918 Spanish Flu,
which was between 2% and 10%).
Only 26% of the passengers tested positive for the virus and of those that tested positive 48% remained completely symptom free despite the advanced age of most of these passengers!
... Like most cold and flu viruses, only those with weak immune systems were in danger while everyone else got off with little or no symptoms.
...Research subsequently confirmed what the Diamond Princess outbreak revealed.
Cross-reactive immunity.
... because of cross-reactive immunity
... COVID was never a mortal threat to most of us.
... The Diamond Princess example provided the unequivocal proof that the only people who might benefit from a vaccine,
even if it worked as advertised,
were the small number of extremely vulnerable members of society with weak immune systems.
Likewise, lockdowns should have been recommended only for nursing home residents (on a strictly voluntary basis to protect their human rights) while the pandemic surged through the rest of us.
Just like during other cold and flu seasons, the vulnerable to COVID are overwhelmingly those with compromised immune systems:
those whose immune systems are shutting down as they approach death from old age
and those whose immune systems are compromised due to severe pre-existing conditions that reduce immune function.
For everyone else with a strong immune system and cross-reactive immunity, we have little to fear from the virus and its never-ending stream of mutations
unless our immune systems are temporarily suppressed through illness, environmental conditions, or nutritional deficiencies.
... topping up on vitamin C and D,
eating properly,
getting enough rest,
getting hugs from loved ones,
adopting a positive attitude in life,
and smiling when you see a rainbow
are all strategies that help
keep your immune system strong.
They don't prevent infection,
but they might reduce your risk
of a bad outcome.
... Our public health authorities also all know this.
... You cannot control other people forever to avoid getting exposed to a respiratory virus.
COVID Zero is an authoritarian fantasy.
But you can control your food, your sleep, and your attitude so that your immune system can mount the strongest attack it can muster.
The odds are that you already have all the cross-reactive immunity you need to survive this virus without a hitch.
... Take good care of yourself.
Go play in the sun with your friends.
... As is so often the case when politicians try to run our lives for us, the government response to COVID is not just wrong, it is actually making us more vulnerable, both to COVID and to other respiratory viruses.
Depriving nursing home patients of their loved ones, locking them in isolation, locking people in their homes, shutting down gyms, driving us into depression, and paralysing us with fear and uncertainty ensures that our immune systems will be working at suboptimal levels.
Broken marriages, children deprived of social contacts, insomnia, the remarkable surge in obesity that occurred during COVID, and so many other consequences of these ill begotten strategies all have a toll on our ability to mount a strong immune response when we are inevitably exposed to any respiratory viruses.
Equally devastating is that, by disrupting our normal social contacts, we have reduced how much training our immune system is getting through repeated exposure to other respiratory viruses.
A computer that stops getting security updates becomes increasingly vulnerable to future versions of viruses.
The same goes for our immune system. COVID is not the only risk.
Remember, there are more than 200 other respiratory viruses that are also circulating.
They may not be getting much attention and may be temporarily starved for hosts while we are cooped up at home, but they haven't gone away.
... New Zealand's myopic focus on COVID as the one and only risk is coming home to roost.
Its hospitals are overflowing with children.
But they're not being hospitalized by COVID.
They are falling ill with RSV virus because of the "immunity debt" that built up from not being continually exposed to all the respiratory viruses that make up normal life.
These children are, quite literally, the next wave of victims of COVID-Zero.
Being cut off from normal life has left them fragile.
Instead of praise, it now is becoming apparent that New Zealand's authoritarian strong woman, Jacinda Ardern, and her public health advisors ought to be standing trial
for gross negligence for ignoring the long-established research about how our immune systems depend on continual exposure to respiratory viruses in order to stay healthy.
As long as our social contacts are restricted, we are all becoming increasing vulnerable to all these other respiratory viruses because of the "immunity debt" that has built up during lockdowns and social distancing rules.
... COVID-Zero in all its variations was a fantasy.
... What I have laid out in this essay is pretty basic virology and immunology knowledge.
... Why is there such a blind obsession with getting us all to take a vaccine that most people do not need and that can never provide long-lasting herd immunity?
... politicians are shameless opportunists,
so it is not surprising that they are now exploiting the situation to increase their powers
and to harness this emerging command-and-control economy in pursuit of their own ideological goals — redistribution, carbon net zero, social credit score systems, you name it.
"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
— Rahm Emanuel
"I really believe COVID has created a window of political opportunity..."
— Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada
But our public health officials and international health organizations are trained to know better.
Yet they nevertheless set this nightmare in motion in violation of all their own long-established pandemic planning guidelines.
They know eradication is impossible.
They know most of us already have cross-reactive immunity.
They know most of us are healthy enough so that our immune systems will protect us against severe outcomes from this virus.
They know about the negative consequences imposed on our immune systems when we are prevented from living normal lives.
They know they are increasing our risk to other viruses by preventing us from socializing.
It's their job to know.
And, as I have demonstrated, they have known since day one.
"It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
― Voltaire
