Every so often there is a study that goes so viral that people start sending it to me and asking me if there’s anything to it. Sometimes I act and write about such studies; sometimes I do not. Sometimes I roll my eyes at the study and think it’s not worth bothering with, only to see how widely it is being disseminated to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about vaccines, cancer treatment, conventional medicine, and the like. When that happens, I generally break down and look at the study. So it has been this week with a study out of Sweden that is being spread far and wide that claims that spike protein gets into the nucleus and interferes with the repair of DNA damage (specifically double-stranded breaks in DNA) by blocking the action of BRCA1, a very important DNA damage repair protein, and 53BP1. For reference, BRCA1 mutations can predispose to a very high lifetime risk of certain cancers, in particular breast and ovarian cancer.
[Orac note: Sorry this is late. Somehow the scheduled posting feature of WordPress didn’t work, and I didn’t notice it until now.]
This is the study. And this is the way antivaxxers are spinning it:
One example of what I’m talking about is this video, which has been viewed 1.6 million times already in which Dr. Mikolaj Raszek wildly speculates that the results of the study urgently need to be confirmed and could demand the reconfiguration of vaccine design because of the risk of cancer from spike protein from vaccines:
Spoiler alert: Even if this study is correct (and its methodological shortcomings produce a great deal of doubt about that, as I’ll discuss), it’s just an in vitro study, and, more importantly, from a strictly biological and logical standpoint it doesn’t mean that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer through interference with DNA damage repair. Dr. Raszek describes this study as a “game changer.” Another spoiler alert: It’s not.
So what is the key “finding” of this study. I’ll cut to the chase (unusual for me) and list the abstract:
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS–CoV–2) has led to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID–19) pandemic, severely affecting public health and the global economy. Adaptive immunity plays a crucial role in fighting against SARS–CoV–2 infection and directly influences the clinical outcomes of patients. Clinical studies have indicated that patients with severe COVID–19 exhibit delayed and weak adaptive immune responses; however, the mechanism by which SARS–CoV–2 impedes adaptive immunity remains unclear. Here, by using an in vitro cell line, we report that the SARS–CoV–2 spike protein significantly inhibits DNA damage repair, which is required for effective V(D)J recombination in adaptive immunity. Mechanistically, we found that the spike protein localizes in the nucleus and inhibits DNA damage repair by impeding key DNA repair protein BRCA1 and 53BP1 recruitment to the damage site. Our findings reveal a potential molecular mechanism by which the spike protein might impede adaptive immunity and underscore the potential side effects of full-length spike-based vaccines.
First of all, note that this study really has nothing to do with vaccines, but the authors can’t help but throw in some verbiage that allowed antivaxxers to easily make it about vaccines. The scientists here are testing the hypothesis that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines that use full-length spike protein from SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Yet, they can’t help but speculate in the abstract that their work could “underscore the potential side effects of full-length spike-based vaccines.” Later, in the discussion, they write:
In contrast, our data provide valuable details on the involvement of spike protein subunits in DNA damage repair, indicating that full–length spike–based vaccines may inhibit the recombination of V(D)J in B cells, which is also consistent with a recent study that a full–length spike–based vaccine induced lower antibody titers compared to the RBD–based vaccine [28]. This suggests that the use of antigenic epitopes of the spike as a SARS–CoV–2 vaccine might be safer and more efficacious than the full–length spike. Taken together, we identified one of the potentially important mechanisms of SARS–CoV–2 suppression of the host adaptive immune machinery. Furthermore, our findings also imply a potential side effect of the full–length spike–based vaccine. This work will improve the understanding of COVID–19 pathogenesis and provide new strategies for designing more efficient and safer vaccines.
Interestingly, the reference cited doesn’t seem to show anything of the sort. In fact, it doesn’t even mention vaccines, much less receptor binding domain (RBD) COVID-19 vaccines or even the RBD itself. (RBD is just the part of the spike protein that binds ACE-receptor to enter the cell.) Rather, it is a paper about how SARS-CoV-2 mRNA can be found in exosomes, which might help spread the infection. I rather suspect that the authors meant to cite this paper (although I could be mistaken), which reviews data and marshals arguments to suggest that RBD-targeted vaccines are at least not inferior to the current vaccines that use the entire spike protein and very well might be superior. Either way, though, the paper under discussion doesn’t really support the idea that spike protein causes cancer.
Let me boil it down in a way that I’ve boiled it down to people who have written to me. Let’s, for the sake of argument, assume that this paper, even though it’s an in vitro paper using nothing but cell culture methods, is completely valid and the spike protein can enter the nucleus of cells, either from infection or from mRNA vaccination, and bind to important proteins involved in DNA damage repair, thus inhibiting their ability to fix DNA damage, which in the long run can lead to cancer. You know what produces a crapton of spike protein in the cells of many different organs throughout the body? You guessed it! SARS-CoV-2 infection!
Now compare that to vaccination, in which a small amount of mRNA is injected into skeletal muscle (usually the deltoid muscle), where it gets taken up by some muscle cells, there to make SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is then displayed on the cell surface and stimulates an immune response. (It is true that vaccine-spike protein does get into the blood—for instance, from the Moderna vaccine—but it’s at an incredibly low concentration, so much so that it took the development of special assays even to detect it, as I discussed a while back.) Basically, if there is a cancer risk or risk of other harm from mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, the very worst we could expect is that tumors might develop at the injection site. Of course, even that is very unlikely, again taking the findings of this study at face value, because muscle cells do not replicate and DNA damage repair mechanisms tend to impact cancer only in replicating cells. (Again, compare that to the crapton of spike protein that a SARS-CoV-2 infection produces in the cells of the lungs and other organs, which if you believe the conclusions of this study as spun by antivaxxers, would imply that it is COVID-19 survivors who need to worry about an increased risk of cancer, not those who are vaccinated.) To go beyond that requires postulating that the vaccine mRNA somehow gets into other cells (such as the various white blood cells that circulate in the area, fibroblast in the connective tissue of the muscle fibers, or into the cells of the vasculature in the area) and causes cancer would produce the same result: Local cancers.
Let’s look at it this way. The authors speculate:
Although it is debatable whether SARS–CoV–2 directly infects lymphocyte precursors [26,27], some reports have shown that infected cells secrete exosomes that can deliver SARS–CoV–2 RNA or protein to target cells [28,29].
Remember, the entire hypothesis behind the study is that the spike protein can interfere with DNA damage repair mechanisms in immune cells—a process known as V(D)J recombination—which are important in the the mechanisms of DNA recombination occurring in specific immune precursor cells that lead to the production of specific antibodies. It is this mechanism by which, the authors propose, SARS-CoV-2 might inhibit the immune response to its infection. Yet right here the authors admit that it’s not clear whether SARS-CoV-2 directly infects these cells and have to resort to a handwaving argument about how exosomes (small lipid particles) might carry SARS-CoV-2 mRNA, a process whose significance, even if it occurs, is not yet clear in terms of its ability to contribute to the progression of COVID-19 infection. I’ve also discussed exosomes before in the context of germ theory denial, in which certain deniers have claimed that SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t exist and what is being seen is actually exosomes.
You can stop reading right here if you want, as these are the main reasons why this study does not cast doubt on the safety of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines through the supposed ability of the spike protein to inhibit DNA damage repair. Or you can join me as I continue the discussion, specifically describing how the study itself has a number of problems that call into doubt whether its data support its conclusions. At best, this paper is difficult to interpret and not at all clear evidence for the conclusions that its authors make, which is probably why it was published in an MDPI journal, rather than a good virology or molecular biology journal, whose reviewers would certainly have demanded more controls and grilled the authors more about their methods. (MDPI journals tend to be bottom-feeding crappy journals, in my experience and estimation.)
Before I discuss some of the problems with this paper, I have to noe that I’m not an immunologist or an expert in DNA damage repair mechanisms. I am, however, a PhD molecular biologist in addition to being a surgeon, and I’m not alone in noticing the problems. So let’s look at what the authors did. In one experiment, they transfected (introduced plasmid DNA into the cells) HEK293T and HEK293 cells with DNA plasmids expressing the cDNAs encoding the spike protein, as well as a number of other SARS-CoV-2 proteins (NSP1, NSP9, NSP13, NSP14, NSP16, and nucleocapsid proteins), after which they did subcellular fractionation and found that the nuclear fraction was enriched for spike protein, but not just the spike protein. They found Nsp1, Nsp5, Nsp9, Nsp13, Nsp14, and Nsp16 proteins were localized in the nucleus too.
This result brings up another issue. This study is not the first study to look at the subcellular localization of SARS-CoV-2 proteins. (Indeed, figuring out where in the cell these proteins go would be one of the obvious early experiments to do, and, of course, it was done.) Normally, when you get a result like this, you’re supposed to compare your results to past results. If your results agree with past results, great! If they don’t, you really do need to explain why you think you got different results and possibly even do experiments to figure out why there was a discrepancy.
So here’s the older study, which found:
As can be seen in the Supplementary Fig. S2, the viral proteins are either cytoplasmic (NSP2, NSP3C, NSP4, NSP8, Spike, M, N, ORF3a, ORF3b, ORF6, ORF7a, ORF7b, ORF8, ORF9b and ORF10) or both nuclear and cytoplasmic (NSP1, NSP3N, NSP5, NSP6, NSP7, NSP9, NSP10, NSP12, NSP13, NSP14, NSP15, NSP16, E and ORF9a).
There’s a hell of a disagreement there. The previous study found that spike protein was not nuclear and was only cytoplasmic, but the current study found spike in the nucleus. If I were a reviewer, I would have insisted on an explanation or at least that the authors acknowledge the difference between their results and previously reported results and at least speculate as to why they found something different. Seriously, one has to wonder about their the methodology used.
The authors also used specific assays to test DNA damage repair in response to radiation and other DNA damaging agents. This is important, because what gets lost in the antivax ranting about this study is that the authors found that several SARS-CoV-2 proteins inhibited DNA damage repair. For instance, in addition to spike protein, Nsp1, Nsp5, Nsp13, and NSP14 inhibited a type of DNA repair measured by non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). (You don’t need to know the details for purposes of this discussion.) Similarly, Nsp1, Nsp13, and Nsp14 inhibited a process known as homologous recombination (HR), which is important in DNA damage repair. True, in the authors’ assays, spike protein was the most potent inhibitor of these processes, but several other SARS-CoV-2 proteins that supposedly locate in the nucleus inhibited them too. Indeed, Nsp1 inhibited NHEJ almost as potently as the spike protein. One notes that none of these proteins are targets of COVID-19 vaccines and could only theoretically cause problems during COVID-19 infection. In fairness, the authors note that these proteins also inhibit cell replication and that their apparent effect on DNA damage repair as shown in the assays could be secondary to that, but you know what? They should have done further experiments to see if that was indeed the case!
Did I mention again that this is just a single in vitro study done in only two related cell lines whose relevance to the in vivo situation is not shown? Also, no experiments here show that spike actually interacts with the DNA damage repair proteins postulated, just that the levels of various DNA damage repair proteins remained unchanged by cranking up the expression of spike protein.
Other problems that I’ve seen pointed out include a distinct lack of proper controls, as noted by an actual expert, who noted that the assay lacked positive and negative controls:
Given the lack of followup on the results for the other SARS-CoV-2 proteins supposedly interfering with the VHEJ and HR assays to clarify the mechanism, plus the questions raised about the relative lack of proper controls, I, too find this paper more or less uninterpretable.
I could go on, but it’s unnecessary for the reasons I listed above. Even if this paper is 100% accurate about the effects of spike proteins on DNA damage repair, even if spike does get into the nucleus and interfere with the DNA damage repair proteins and pathways implicated, it does not demonstrate that the spike protein made by COVID-19 mRNA vaccines gets into the nucleus and interferes with DNA damage repair mechanisms, and even if vaccine-produced spike protein did that the very worst thing that could result might be tumors at the injection site. Think of it this way. If the results of this paper actually did translate to humans, it would be a very strong argument not against vaccination for COVID-19 but for being vaccinated. That’s because, if these results were to hold true in experimental animals and then humans, they would imply that the massive amounts of spike protein made by SARS-CoV-2 infection in cells in organs all over the body, particularly the lungs, would lead to a hugely increased risk in future years of potentially deadly cancers in a number of organs, rather than a very small potential risk of a tumor at the vaccine injection site, something incredibly unlikely to be life-threatening. And that’s leaving aside the methodological weaknesses of the paper that call into question its results, plus the fact that it’s just an in vitro study with one cell line.
Finally, it’s been observed that before the pandemic and social media’s ability to amplify and misuse science like this, a paper like this would likely have been published and read by few people, influencing no one but a subset of scientists interested in the questions raised. A few with a special interest in DNA damage repair might have used it as a starting point to carry the research forward with other experiments, but only a few, and the authors’ wild and unfounded speculation about how their results suggest that current COVID-19 vaccines might be unsafe and need their design rethought correctly ignored as unjustified extrapolation from results that are at best preliminary and at worst just plain wrong.
That was then. This is now
In the age of the pandemic, this study has been accessed over 350,000 times, and the video to which I linked above has been accessed over a million times. Another video discussing the study and making many of the same mistakes has been accessed nearly a million times. Meanwhile on Twitter, the Tweets above from researcher Jeremy Stark are the only Tweets I could find pointing out the flaws in the study, in contrast to the hundreds of Tweets touting this study as “evidence” that COVID-19 vaccines are going to cause cancer because the spike protein gets into the nucleus and interferes with DNA damage repair. (I included six such Tweets just to make that point, but there are more than I have time to read, and the number has been climbing ever since this study went viral a few days ago.) Scientists need to be a lot more careful about their speculations in their papers, and reviewers need to call them out on it when they do engage in speculation that doesn’t flow from the results of a study. Whereas before studies like this would have languished in justified obscurity, now they provide grist for the antivaccine movement to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about vaccines. It’s even worse than that, though. These days crappy preprint studies that haven’t even passed peer review can be weaponized. We need to do better.
295 replies on “Does spike protein from COVID-19 vaccines interfere with DNA damage repair?”
A question which seems relevant given the authors of this controversial study propose that vaccines using less than a full-length version of spike protein might be safer/more efficaceous:
Do the existing mRNA Covid vaccines all make use of nucleotide sequences encoding full-length spike proteins?
According to the CDC:
“COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are given in the upper arm muscle. The mRNA will enter the muscle cells and instruct the cells’ machinery to produce a harmless piece of what is called the spike protein. The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19. After the protein piece is made, our cells break down the mRNA and remove it.
Next, our cells display the spike protein piece on their surface. Our immune system recognizes that the protein doesn’t belong there. This triggers our immune system to produce antibodies and activate other immune cells to fight off what it thinks is an infection.”
Note the reference to a “piece of…the spike protein”.
The Mayo Clinic refers to vaccines producing a “version” of the spike protein. Another site describes vaccination as resulting in the synthesis of “fake” copies of the spike protein.
These sources suggest or explicitly state that cells are (temporarily) churning out something less than the full native spike protein in order to induce an immune response. Other sites simply refer to production of “spike proteins”.
So which is it – a part or full mini-spike-a-thon?
And would other coronaviruses producing such ailments as the common cold (or human viruses in general) have similar DNA repair effects in vitro?
Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use the full-length spike protein, slightly modified so that its subunits stay together. There has been talk of using just the receptor binding domain, and maybe that will be a component of future vaccines, but right now the full length spike protein is used.
It all just makes me think that if there is a The Deep State, it is all this misinformation and divisive rhetoric that is “the plan”. Can’t unite to throw down corrupt sub-governments and elites if we’re all divided over basic medicine. Also, it draws people who do trust medical science to be more likely to just go with the flow of what the official narrative is. By painting the conspiracy theorists as dissenting nutters there’s more compliance with the general population, and things that may have been questioned before are more likely to slip through now, because to question them now puts one in with the “nutters”. Which also may cause people who might be on the fence, but would still follow the main narrative, to jump over the other side of the fence.
It makes me so sad, that here was a potential for humanity to come together, to have a common “enemy”, the virus, and to overcome it together. But instead, we have this.
@jjaeg03 Can you simply tell where Orac was wrong, withouyt conspricay theories
jjawg03: “Which also may cause people who might be on the fence, but would still follow the main narrative, to jump over the other side of the fence.”
bUt BoTh SiDeS!!!!1!1!!
Or, if you prefer: “Oh look now see what you’ve made me do”—the plangent cry of the gaslighting abuser.
“But instead, we have this.”
What do you expect? Someone always gets rich from a fire sale.
I don’t understand the resistance to making safer vaccines. So what if the virus is allegedly worse than the vaccine ( a cop out argument). How safe should vaccines be? Just a little safer? Or a lot safer? If this study is correct and replicable in the real world (in vivo) isn’t it a good thing to find a way to make the current set of vaccines better so there are less reactions? Why are we so combative with any suggestion that these vaccines may not be as safe as the could be. Should they be as safe as possible?
Well, still denying that these vaccines are indeed unsafe, after so many hundreds of young athletes collapsed after vaccination due to heart inflammation or heart attack, is really like still denying that the coronavirus exists at all.
Citation(s) required, preferably from the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
Heck, even newspaper reports.
If and when you get citations, I suspect they will be very specific. For example, one commenter on Twitter shared (unconvincing, since pretty small scale) data about FIFA supposed to show this – not explaining why all the other sports don’t show anything like this.
“after so many hundreds of young athletes collapsed after vaccination due to heart inflammation or heart attack”
When? Where? An assertion like that requires you provide evidence — you haven’t yet.
The citation will be Natural News.
Someone has scoured the world news for reports of sports people, sports coaches, trainers, etc. (mostly soccer) who have had heart attacks, or collapsed on or off the field and concluded they had all been vaccinated and their symptoms were the result of vaccination. Natural News has picked it up and amplified it and it is now doing the rounds of the conspiracy minded, so here we are.
I don’t think that anyone is disputing that some people have had severe side effects to the vaccines – but tales of the coming vaccine-Apocalypse seems to be build on weak (uncited) data at best, and wishful thinking at worst. It may be hard for you to grasp 2 things at the same time – but something can be both safe but not 100% safe. Real life is messy like that sometimes.
Whereas, the ignoring the health costs of the pandemic right before our eyes is a new kind of self-serving denial that keeps costing lives.
Don’t worry mate. When you take your 8th booster shot and drop dead; climate change will be the cause. Kind regards, Mark
“You know what produces a crapton of spike protein in the cells of many different organs throughout the body? You guessed it! SARS-CoV-2 infection!”
In “nature”, the spikes are attached to the whole virus. Do they often get plinked off as the virus floats around?
“don’t worry, it’ll probably be just arm cancer” still sounds pretty scary!
You might want to learn how viruses reproduce…
I know greatly how viruses reproduce. Just, not so much in the human organism.
In particular, how coronaviruses get the spike protein in that process.
In case you missed the relevant portion of Orac’s article:
“…the very worst we could expect is that tumors might develop at the injection site. Of course, even that is very unlikely, again taking the findings of this study at face value, because muscle cells do not replicate and DNA damage repair mechanisms tend to impact cancer only in replicating cells.”
Again, this presupposes that the paper’s findings are 100% accurate and reproducible, and that what happens in these cell lines reflects what actually occurs in human beings. Is there potentially an assay that could measure DNA repair activity in lung tissue from people suffering from Covid-19 pneumonia?
I’m still waiting for evidence that carcinogenesis is a potential consequence only of infection with SARS-CoV-2, and what effects on DNA repair mechanisms might result from infection with other coronaviruses (like ones causing the common cold) and non-coronaviruses.
Anything new and unnatural should be suspect. The spikes are exposed on the outside of the cell that generated them — well won’t the immune system find it confusing that cells considered “self” have created foreign proteins? It doesn’t happen that way in nature as far as I know. And yes, nature went through billions of years of trial and error.
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blockquote> won’t the immune system find it confusing that cells considered “self” have created foreign proteins? It doesn’t happen that way in nature as far as I know.
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blockquote>
This statement does not feel right. There is some guy on here bitching about killer T-baddies all over the place.
I thought they had one job that was to walk around and kill any cells that was waving the “I’m fucked” flag. Bit, then again, I’m not on the jury.
“won’t the immune system find it confusing that cells considered “self” have created foreign proteins?”
Excellent question! (Seriously, good question.)
And the answer is no, the immune system won’t be confused by this, because this is what happens during an infection as well, and it is exactly what the immune system has evolved to deal with. When cells start expressing non-self antigen that’s a sign to the immune system to kill that cell right quick, before whatever is causing that non-self antigen (virus or intracellular bacteria) gets out.
There are also special immune cells called “antigen presenting cells” who’s job is to just kind of wander through the body nibbling on stuff and presenting it on their cell surface to see if there’s a T-cell that has a receptor for that antigen (an antigen is just a protein or peptide or even a sugar that the immune system responds to).
So, nope, it’s not a problem, it’s how the immune system normally works.
Every cell that is infected by a virus will have proteins or peptides from those proteins put up on the cell surface. That is a key part of the mechanism of identification and destruction of infected cells. That’s what cytotoxic T-cells, aka killer T-cells, aka cytotoxic T lymphocytes, aka CD8+ T-cells do for their living.
Sorry, Justa Tech, I didn’t mean to rehash your post. It wasn’t showing in my antique browser when I wrote my reply.
What does “unnatural” mean, other than “icky”? You realize that we’re communicating on the Internet, not sitting around a fire talking to each other? Transistors don’t grow on trees: even glass is artificial. I’m sitting in a building with central heating, wearing clothes that include plastic and artificial dyes.
Our lives are full of artificial things, the product of tens of thousands of years of human ingenuity. That’s not just eyeglasses and the Internet and bicycles. Consider the produce department: broccoli is a highly modified mustard plant. Cucumbers have had the bitterness bred out of them. Corn looks very little like the ancestral teosinte.
Even sitting around a fire is unnatural. The only animals which do that rather than run a mile are humans and any dogs that have grown up with them.
@ JustaTech:
That’s an excellent reply.
It seems that people who are fear mongering about the grave dangers of the spike proteins do not know a great deal about how the immune system works.
During an infection with Covid, not only are myriad spikes involved, they are not lone actors milling about but are part of the whole virus which can do….. bad things.
The spikes are the ‘implements’ that the virus uses to access cells.
Please comment more here.
I’m not sure how this is supposed to work. The fragments of spike protein attach to or somehow break bits of DNA, thus causing genetic damage and upping your chance of cancers ? I didn’t read the paper, because I’m lazy, but if I understand Orac’s explanation of it, the paper is saying that the bits of spike protein damage the genetic repair system, causing genetic damage to go unfixed and so causing more cancers ? Having difficulty visualizing that.
I cannot follow most of this, so suffice it to say that I am grateful to be alerted to this latest bit of rubbish–not that I ever recieve any of it. But some loon will come along and refer to it eventually. I will refer this loon to this post and the loon will come back with something like, “everyone there is elitist and mean so I will not bother”. As if I haven’t severed enough friendships over general woo, now I have to screen for vaccination status!
You can’t follow it, so you mindless accept the opinions of someone who inevitably sides with the drug industry in any controversy?
You clearly haven’t read any of the posts where Orac lambasts the pharmaceutical industry. Hint: they’re not difficult to find.
Interesting that in order to study the vaccine and its side effects, you would at least want to have access to the original study material including test results etc. which is about 329,000 pages.
Well the FDA is now fighting a FOIA lawsuit and only wants to release 500 pages per month.
“FDA proposes to process and produce the non-exempt portions of responsive records at a rate of 500 pages per month.”
A quick calculation shows the it would take the FDA 658 MONTHS to release the whole report (and supporting documents) (about 54 years).
If there is an urgency in mandating the vaccines and the need to get a 3rd or 4th shot, why the delay the release of information that will support what the FDA is advocating. And since Pfizer is not liable for civil suit, under the emergency powers act, why not release the documents.
sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/020-Second-Joint-Status-Report-8989f1fed17e2d919391d8df1978006e.pdf
This is irrelevant to the topic of this post.
Well I guess the spike protein and the effects on the human body and DNA and the testing process using those items, might be useful in the topic, to determine the safety and efficacy of the vaccine would certainly be relevant in the discussion.
But then 95% of the posters here won’t be alive to know the answer to those questions.
The FDA has all the 329,000 pages now, why not release all of them and resolve all this discussion? Do you believe the people that approved the vaccines really read all 329,000 pages?
This goes to your normal practice of barfing up hairballs of conspiracy theories irrelevant to the topic of the post.
It may not have crossed your mind that the FDA have better things to do than spend all their time reviewing 329,000 pages of documents and reacting the parts it is not permitted to release, just so a bunch of conspiracy theorists can entertain themselves.
If there was something wrong with the Pfizer vaccine or it did not work, that would be obvious by now after getting close to a billion doses have been delivered. Data mining the approval process for an apparent gotcha moment does not change the real world efficacy of the vaccine.
It’s so safe and effective that we need to drag our feet in releasing the information that shows the same…
Actually,publishing lots of papers is lots of work. FDA could use its time better
Well, this is embarrassing.
Simon Thornley and a co-author have agreed to retract a recently published paper that claimed an extremely high rate of miscarriage in pregnant women who received a Covid-19 vaccination. Criticism quickly followed.
“Professor Scragg wrote that the paper was published in a “low ranking non-indexed journal called Science, Public health Policy and the Law”.*
“Professor Scragg said Thornley and Brock made a major error and used an “incorrect denominator” which led to the major miscalculation, after they claimed that “80-90 per cent of pregnant women will miscarry if they have the Covid-19 vaccination”.
“Thornley declined to apologise but admitted the claim was totally false and said he and Brock “never intended to frighten pregnant people”.”
http://1news.co.nz/2021/11/17/simon-thornley-retracts-bogus-vaccination-miscarriage-claim/
Thornley, who antivaxers have glommed onto as an expert witness, has claimed that SARS-CoV-2 is merely the equivalent of a nasty flu, and that most of the well over 3 million deaths attributed to it were actually due to lockdowns and medical interventions.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/126906088/covid19-a-paper-on-vaccination-in-pregnancy-coauthored-by-simon-thornley-has-been-panned-by-experts-around-the-world
*That “low-ranking” publication is a house journal of James Lyons-Weiler’s IPAK, and he is its editor. L-W trumpeted the article’s findings in a press release.
“trumpeted the article’s findings”
That’s where the problem lies: they’re using the wrong musical instrument. All these problems could have been averted had they, correctly, chosen a chorus of kazoos.
Once the kazoos fall silent, cue the violins.
I’ve certainly heard that 89% figure tossed about at the woo-fraught sites I follow but I would bet you good money that I’ll never hear about the retraction and the incorrect denominator from them.
It is a sad day when a non-journal has to withdraw one of its paper-shaped objects from view.
I also note that Lyons-Weiler has republished Walach’s paper that was tossed from the MDPI journal Vaccines for being a load of old junk.
Science, Public Health Policy and the Law is truly a place where junk science goes to die.
Hi Dangerous Bacon. Found out part of the origin story for Thornley’s embarrassing mistake.
Dr. Jens Foell @fMRI_guy, Nov 18
Good lord, this story
A paper claims that COVID vax almost always leads to miscarriage — because the clowns who wrote it misinterpreted the part of a data set that only included pregnancies that ended prematurely. Paper has now been retracted, damage is already done.
Viki Male @VikiLovesFACS, Nov 18
As a scientist, what should infuriate me about this study is how badly done it was. As a person, what troubles me most is how many people will make bad decisions based on it.
But it turns out I’m actually an academic because the thing that really left me shaking my head was that they basically just copied and pasted their analysis off a screenshot of a letter that was circulating on social media.
Their stupid wrong analysis wasn’t even original.
Dr Siouxsie Wiles @SiouxsieW Nov 18
Hi Viki, Do you have a link to that screenshot or a copy of it?
Viki Male @VikiLovesFACS Replying to @SiouxsieW
There were variants on it – it mutated somewhat as it went along, but they all made the same denominator error. But I think this is the original…..
https://www.skirsch.com/covid/NEJM_LTE.pdf
[LTE, signed by]:
Deanna, McLeod, HBSc, Principal at Kaleidoscope Strategic Inc, Toronto, ON [emails redacted]
Ira Bernstein, MD, CCFP, FCFP, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON,
Sanja Jovanovic, MD, MSc, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC,
The thing is, it’s hosted on Steve Kirsch’s personal webpage.
In case you have not yet stumbled across Mr. Kirsch, this is a good summary, although it leaves out Kirsch’s claim that he understands VAERS better than anyone.
This tech millionaire went from covid trial funder to misinformation superspreader
After boosting unproven covid drugs and campaigning against vaccines, Steve Kirsch was abandoned by his team of scientific advisers—and left out of a job.
By Cat Ferguson
October 5, 2021
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/10/05/1036408/silicon-valley-millionaire-steve-kirsch-covid-vaccine-misinformation/
What do you mean “It’s not evidence that Covid vaccines are unsafe” & why is “what antivaxers say” the focus of this post?
The vaccines use the full length spike protein.
The spike protein hijacks the DNA damage repair mechanism.
The DNA damage repair mechanism is what mitigates deleterious mutations.
Deleterious mutations cause tumors.
The vaccines don’t elicit antibodies to the entire virus, may blunt CD4 T cell response & efficacy wanes to less than 40% within months.
Many people have now prompted these spike proteins to develop on their cells, interfering with their DNA damage repair mechanism; three times in the last 11 months.
Shouldn’t the most pressing issue be to stop the children’s immunization campaign immediately?
You have the platform to do this, Orac.
How are you going to stop the children catching Covid, Christine? Since the study was looking at Sars-Cov-2 damaging DNA repair mechanisms then, assuming the study is applicable to humans, Covid and vaccination could have the same result.
You may then say “children are less affected by covid (generally)” but then shouldn’t they be less affected by the vaccine too in that case?
@ NumberWang,
Re: “How are you going to stop the children catching Covid, Christine?”
Maybe we shouldn’t be stopping children from catching Covid.
Re: “Covid and vaccination could have the same result.”
“Could” have but probably not. Vaccination bypasses the benefit of IgA antibodies from the mucosal immune system & IgG antibodies from the tonsils.
I wonder if people who have had their tonsils removed are suffering more severe covid than those who have not. Tonsillectomy is no longer a “routine” surgical procedure. But is was, when the 50+ crowd were children … but anyway …
Re: “You may then say “children are less affected by covid (generally)” but then shouldn’t they be less affected by the vaccine too in that case?”
Its not “generally”; it’s “overwhelmingly”. And no. I hope so but I doubt it.
@Christine Kincaid
You write and exp[ressf very well. I like the cut of your gib, launguag wise. Why is your intent always so {null strinfg} retarded?
Christine, stop for a moment and think. The study looked at the effect of SARS-Cov-2. Not vaccination. SARS-Cov-2. The actual virus. The one you are infected with when you get Covid. Are you so fixated that you’ve already spun this in your mind, so that the results don’t apply to children?
You have no proof for any of your claims.
Did you read what Orac wrote ? Authors used plasmid (piece of DNA) containing the spike protein. Vaccines do not use plasmid, but mRNA. Plasmids are stable, mRNA is not. Plasmids produce lots of protein, and are used in bioengineerig beacuse of this.
It has been known for quite a while that the vaccines can enter the blood, and can get past the blood-brain barrier. It might depend on exactly how the shot is given. I am very skeptical of Orac’s certainty that only tiny amounts enter the blood. We have no reason to be sure of that.
And this study really just reminds us of how little is understood about this virus, the vaccines, and cellular biology in general. That is why it was reckless to force these experimental vaccines on the trusting public. The vaccine makers went ahead without knowing much about the spike protein that they decided to use as the antigen. But it was a big emergency, big rush, so recklessness was considered acceptable.
I am very glad studies like this go viral, and at least remind people that the experts don’t all agree with each other, and not everything is known or understood. Orac ALWAYS takes the side of the drug companies in any controversy. His opinions should be considered, but we should be skeptical as with any other extremely biased source of information.
“We have no reason to be sure of that.”
Yes you do. They measured it.
A few observations…
–Orac takes the side of the data and has been known to criticise pharmaceutical companies.
— if spike proteins are so incredibly dangerous, wouldn’t we want to inhibit their activity such as when they occur naturally in extremely high numbers DURING AN INFECTION WITH COVID? Which vaccines do with much lower and controlled numbers?
— in related batshit news: RFKjr’s book, The Many Crimes of Anthony Fauci ** is highly ranked on Amazon. 5 stars, many reviews.
** not the real title
RFK Jr.’s book still ranks behind The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. and The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck, which is how I feel about RFK Jr.’s outpourings in general.
By the way, children definitely are affected by corvids, as anyone who’s seen “The Birds” would realize.
RFK’ Jr’s book also has blurbs from Natural News and a professor who denies that HIV exists.
I prefer Larry Kramer of ACT UP, who went from being an intense critic of Dr. Fauci to being a close friend.
RFK Jr is an embarrassment to his dad and uncle’s legacy, including President Kennedy’s efforts to implement polio vaccination.
Is that not a fair point? Yes, I have to concede that it is. (Damn, how it grieves me having to concede to Orac!) Yes, I believe knocking out the toll-like receptors is a far more concerning finding of how mRNA vaccination can cause cancer, but I will still also have to agree with Christine and Indie that exercising the precautionary principle is best.
To say we will do whatever because natural infection might be worse is not a very good excuse. Too much of a mad scientist feel to it!
Let me present you with a hypothetical…..
A new disease emerges which kills 50% of all infected.
However, survivors become immortal.
A vaccine is available.
Do you advocate for it?
Immortality is no good without eternal youth. Just ask Tithonus.
I remember reading Gullivers travels, where he lands somewhere, were there are some people who are immortel and they are not envied, because al the disadventages of aging, still we be expressed and at some point they forget everything they did, or read a short time befite.
So being immoral, without eternal youth, no thanks.
Hmmm. If it was immortal in the ‘indestructible’ sense…..
On the other hand, immorality plus eternal youth would be kind of fun.
Knocking out Toll like receptos ? Your favorite paper said that one is upregulated, two are downregulated. There are 13 TLRs.,.
Paper is question used DNA (plasmid) not RNA, Do you spor the difference ?
I’m probably being very stupid , but wouldn’t a cell producing spike protein be destroyed by the immune system ? So it would not have the opportunity to become malignant ?
Is there any certainty about whether those cells will always be destroyed?
“wouldn’t a cell producing spike protein be destroyed by the immune system?”
Only cells that express spike protein on their surfaces are destroyed by the immune system. They are talking about spike protein inside the nucleus of cells. Of course the other question is: how likely is it that cells with spike protein inside their nucleus will also have spike protein on their surfaces. If the answer is “almost always” then you have a point.
(Of course, it has not been proven that spike protein can get into the nucleus. And, as Orac pointed out, there is a prior study that suggests this is not the case).
So, no one knows. Big experiment.
“Big mistake, Indie!”
Nurhachi’s ashes would probably fetch a tidy sum. They could be mixed with tiger balm to cure cancer.
“So, no one knows. Big experiment.”
I definitely did not say that.
If the vaccine causes cancer, then the infection is even more likely to do so, and by many orders of magnitude.
Therefore get the vaccine, not the infection 😉
Indie Rebel:
“So, no one knows. Big experiment”
I definitely did not say that.
If the vaccine causes cancer, then the infection would be far more likely to cause cancer. And by several orders of magnitude.
So…get the vaccine rather than the infection would be my advice.
MDPI is on a roll, now publishing Canadian antivaxxers on “Maternal COVID-19 Vaccination and Its Potential Impact on Fetal and Neonatal Development”: https://mdpi-res.com/d_attachment/vaccines/vaccines-09-01351/article_deploy/vaccines-09-01351.pdf
The Hill, new
Fauci overwhelmed by calls after journal published mistake over beagle experiment
3600 calls in 36 hours.
They claimed NIAID funded Tunisian study on sandflies with beagles, PLOS Neglected Tropical Disease Journal, which later corrected it.
The good people at This Week in Virology discussed the paper at some length.
TWiV explains that a recent report suggesting that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein inhibits V(D)J recombination in vitro would not impact immunity after infection or vaccination,
https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-830/
I just finished listening to that one. I am really not a microbiologist and they consulted Brianne Barker before recording the episode. She said that V(D)J recombination occurs in T and B cells but not ‘regular’ human cells which further undercuts the relevance of this in vitro study.
And some reviewer should have cautioned them about speculating on relevance to vaccines which weren’t part of their study.
An even bigger issue is that V(D)J recombination only occur pre-B cells and thymocytes (T cell precursors), which largely occur only in childhood when the B and T cell repertoires are generated. Once B and T cells are mature, then there is no further V(D)J recombination. The authors of this paper lack an understanding of adaptive immunity, in which somatic hypermutation during an infection leads to affinity maturation of antibody genes in mature B cells (no such thing occurs in mature T cells). Somatic hypermutation is a result of a different enzymatic pathway (AID et al.) that has nothing to do with the DNA repair enzymes (plus RAG1/2) used during V(D)J recombination. This process not only leads to high affinity antibodies (i.e., “high titer”) but it also leads to class switching from IgM to IgG and IgA.
In other words, this paper has virtually no impact on how SARS2 spike might negatively impact adaptive immune response.
The antivaxxers where not concerned about the effect on the immune system. They glommed onto the possibility that the spike protein, as a result of its effect on the lymphocytes as described in the paper, could also increase the risk of cancer. The paper itself did not even mention cancer.
Lawrence says:
November 18, 2021 at 6:56 pm
“Let me present you with a hypothetical…..
A new disease emerges which kills 50% of all infected.
However, survivors become immortal.
A vaccine is available.
Do you advocate for it?”
And yet you said about my post on the release of information from the FDA.
“This is irrelevant to the topic of this post.”
when I questioned the FDA foot dragging on the release of PUBLIC information relevant to the damage done to human test subjects and possibly their DNA.
There is a paper about this, not very good one, subject of this post. There is lots of follow up studies. No need to haraass FDA.
This may have been posted but I haven’t seen it….
Natural News claims that only PUREBLOODS will survive the oncoming Holocaust due to spike proteins and radiation. Only they will be able to reproduce.
I don’t know but isn’t that rather interesting language? Who is he trying to entice?
Other woo-based outlets I survey also sound alarming.
@ Montague,
Re:”You write and exp[ressf very well. I like the cut of your gib, launguag wise. ”
Thank you.
Re: “Why is your intent always so {null strinfg} retarded?”
Well, I certainly don’t think my intent is retarded. Can you clarify what you think my intent is?
Invoking inhibited DNA damage repair for a 7 year old child, is more foreboding than for a 70 year old adult; because it shifts the risk:benefit ratio quite a bit. A possible increased risk of cancer is not the only concern. DNA damage repair is also an important factor in adaptive immunity & mitigation of autoimmune disorders.
You’ve made a convincing case for vaccinating children against Covid-19. Why subject them to what would be a massively higher dose of spike proteins through active infection and illness?
Of course, the study findings have yet to be confirmed by other researchers and more importantly, shown to translate to actual human beings, not just cells in a flask.
@ Dangerous Bacon,
Re: “You’ve made a convincing case for vaccinating children against Covid-19”
No, I have not, because:
Re: “Why subject them to what would be a massively higher dose of spike proteins through active infection and illness?”
They aren’t subjected to a massively higher dose of spike proteins when actively infected. They are subjected to a dose of the entire virus, not just a spike. And the immune response is different for a whole virus, than it is for just a spike.
Are we going to give kids three doses within a year too? Three doses of something that inhibits DNA repair?
I’m sure you don’t know. I’m sure not many would care to speculate on that, at this point in time. But … would you be okay with that if we did? Knowing that the spike protein causes DNA damage; would you be okay with giving kids 3 vaccinations in one year?
Christine: “(Children) aren’t subjected to a massively higher dose of spike proteins when actively infected.”
This shouldn’t have to be explained to you, but every virion involved in active infection carries spike proteins. Massive viral replication in a sick person releases vast numbers of spike protein-bearing virions traveling to multiple sites in the body for up to weeks at a time, contrasted with production of much smaller amounts of spike protein via RNA in vaccines that is quickly degraded.
The fact that the entire virus is produced in infection doesn’t mitigate the effects of spike proteins – it magnifies the pathogenic effect, which includes MIS-C in children.
“…severe multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) (is) associated with COVID-19 in children. Major symptoms include: multiple organ failure, hyper-ferritinemia, and cardiogenic or vasoplegic shock. Furthermore, abnormal blood coagulation parameters due to irregularities of blood flow, vascular injury and abnormalities within the circulating blood leading to systemic coagulopathy in COVID-19 patients.”
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13337-021-00687-2
You must despise children, to wish such suffering and death on them.
@ DB:
No matter how well you say something or how many times you say it, even if others reinforce what you say some people will not or can not learn if it contradicts their idee fixe..
and that’s exactly what we have here.
“Invoking inhibited DNA damage repair for a 7 year old child, is more foreboding than for a 70 year old adult; because it shifts the risk:benefit ratio quite a bit.”
Agreed. CT scans, splashing around in old surplus transformer fluid, the frequent nitro-breaths to blow forth a fire on spots previously used for burning Romex and Lanolium.
The unknown sins of thirty years ago may be catching up with me, I’ve thought pretty much every day since. But these shots don’t seem to be that.
I’ll be all like let’s meet up and “talk” if it comes to mandating something like gene splicing that > than half the people end up with Brundle-Fly finger nails and teeth but without the ability to stick to walls and melt people’s faces. I’ll bring the “cheese dip” and the auto-optics.
“Can you clarify what you think my intent is?”
“Intent” here is like “meaning”. The meaning of the words you string together very good, but, IMHO, quite insufferably wrong as a whole half the time.
There is now a post about this paper on the In The Pipeline blog that people might find interesting.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/coronavirus-vaccines-and-cancer
A good discussion.
I’d have thought the fact that it’s published in MDPI would be grounds alone to toss it out the room. Perhaps Scopie’s Law could use an addendum?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDPI#Inclusion_in_Beall's_list
(Attacking one’s critics by abusing their employer? Yup.)
That folks like Orac and Derek are nevertheless willing to give it the time of day demonstrates a level of respect; something I observe that is never reciprocated by the antivaxxers. Perhaps they should read their Bibles instead? Matthew 7:16 nailed the whole lousy lot.
I didn’t find anything about this on my regular news sources**
it seems that the Proud Boys served as security for an anti-vax rally ( freedomnews, joemygod, democraticunderground,hillreporter, yahoo video)
from the images it looked like a few dozen or less PBs and (not) “thousands” of protestors and NO images of Central Park- which was named- but a Trump building and a street, probably midtown, only close up images .
I only transmit the news because Orac repeatedly warns that there is a link between anti-vax and the extreme right.
Remember this is NYC! The day before there was a rally condemning the Rittenhouse verdict- that made the news.
** I suppose because we elites control all the real news..
Alright, the freedomnews.tv DOES show a large group marching in the street and pasting anti-vax stickers on light poles.
@Denice: Apologies, I might have read that as “sticking anti-vaxxers on light poles.”
(No, I’m not a nice person. But it was good enough for Il Duce, and there’s not much between them, so f’em all.)
Perhaps not a “link” but absolutely a team-up, which speaks volumes about their common cause. And, no, after all the language and behavior I have observed of movement antivaxxers over the years, I am not surprised to see it one bit. It was all very much calculated to get them from There to Here. And I know just enough history to see what that’s to enable next.
See Also.
(I have a close family member who has just got out of a decades-long DV relationship. We are still learning the full horrors of that, and theirs wasn’t even the worst when compared to many others. So when I say NO quarter for abusers, I do not say it as a joke.)
The link is that Orac doesn’t like anti-vaxxers and he doesn’t like what he considers the “extreme right.” And I guess he thinks he’s an “elite.”
And by the way, identifying yourself as an “elite” GUARANTEES that you will be HATED by the majority of Americans. Not that you care.
Trump is a son of a centimillonaire, certainly part of elite. Yet some people like him.
An elite group? Like the “Pureblood” antivaxers? So you think they’ll be “HATED by the majority of Americans”?
Depends what you mean by ‘elite’ Indie. For instance, I bet you don’t object to elite fighting forces, elite fire fighters, elite troubleshooters, elite investigators and elite race car drivers.
But apparently it’s offensive to your average American to infer that they aren’t as good at science as elite scientists?
There’s a difference between assuming that you are part of the ‘elite’ in a social sense and part of the elite in a particular field. A scientist isn’t a better person than a non-scientist but they damn well are better at science.
You might claim that this is arrogant, but it’s nothing compared to assuming that Barry the chartered accountant can prove an expert in immunology wrong, after a bit of personal ‘research’ on the internet.
@NumberWang: “Depends what you mean by ‘elite’ Indie. For instance, I bet you don’t object to elite fighting forces, elite fire fighters, elite troubleshooters, elite investigators and elite race car drivers.”
Anything that pricks (instead of feeds) their narcissistic bubble is an immediate threat to be stomped on and crushed.
Mao’s Cultural Revolution was a textbook example of this mindset put to productive work. And highly effective it was too… until it wasn’t.
In the end even Mao realized that he’d blown his own foot off and had to mobilize the real military to clean up his mess; by which time all of China was in tatters, wrecked by ersatz civil war. The only remarkable bit is how rapidly they managed to tidy up afterwards and pretend it had never happened at all. Final death toll: anywhere between 0.5 and 2 million (that lack of surety also speaks volumes). And now China is an enormously powerful capitalist police state, and a very stable one too.
And you try and tell these nouveaux Red Guards of today that… they won’t believe you.
@ Dangerous Bacon,
Re: “Massive viral replication in a sick person releases vast numbers of spike protein-bearing virions traveling to multiple sites in the body for up to weeks at a time, contrasted with production of much smaller amounts of spike protein via RNA in vaccines that is quickly degraded.”
But spike proteins administered IV cross the BBB in amounts 10X higher than intra-nasally administered spike proteins. IM administration would be lower than IV but still higher than inhalation or mucous membrane exposure.
And spike proteins from infection are not coated with a lipid nanoparticle, further ensuring transportation across the BBB.
Vaccinations using the full length spike protein will ensure that the DNA damage repair inhibition is directly delivered into the brain, which could potentially result in brain cancer.
Re: “The fact that the entire virus is produced in infection doesn’t mitigate the effects of spike proteins – it magnifies the pathogenic effect, which includes MIS-C in children.”
Magnifies it from what? As of November 1, only 48 children have died from MIS-C.
Re: “You must despise children, to wish such suffering and death on them.”
Because hundreds of thousands of children potentially suffering brain cancer, is somehow preferable to 48 children dying in almost 2 years from mis-c?
Citations needed for everything in your comment.
@ autismjungle,
Re: “Citations needed for everything in your comment.”
No, they are not needed for “everything”.
Regarding spike proteins found in 10X the amount in the brain if administered IV vs nasal:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33328624/
I’m not citing the fact that the vaccines use lipid nanoparticles, that 48 children have died from mis-c as of November 1st, or that inhibited DNA damage repair can result in tumors. That’s silly. Should be common knowledge. Especially on a post literally talking about the DNA damage repair.
@Christine M Kincaid Vaccines are not administrared IV, repeat this hundred times.
You link was about S1 protein, which is a part of spike protein. SARS CoV 2 does have spike protein, so it should cross BBB, too.
Hundred dead children is a real thing, even if you do not care about them. Effect to DNA damage correction is highly speculative,
Do you not know that vaccines are not adminisrated IV ? It is intramuscular you know. Amount of spike protein in blood is known. There is an immune response against it,and it would been soon cleared
Even if spike protein (a *protein) would cross BBB barrier, how it would go inside the cell ? Spike protein in vaccines just docks on the receptor.
Spike protein in the virus would certainly go into cells, and the virus infects other parts of body than the nose.o
“Even if spike protein (a *protein) would cross BBB barrier, how it would go inside the cell ?”
The protected mRNA goes inside cells, and the cells generate the spikes.
Aarno Syvanen:
First of all, you do a really spectacular job explaining material related to the questions being considered by Orac which greatly benefits the regulars and new readers.
As I said to DB above: some people will not or cannot learn if the material runs counter to their deeply ingrained beliefs which did not develop based on reason or by accumulating facts. There’s a reason they call it an idee fixe– because it doesn’t change no matter what. It is essentially an article of faith with them. Could you “teach” a Christian that Jesus is NOT lord or “instruct” a Hindu that Shiva is only a character in a story someone created millennia ago? You can’t.
When we discuss vaccines or immunology, SBM doubters find fertile grounds for confabulation because very few people know much about these questions and there are many small details, some of which are still being debated in expert circles. In another area, we do know much about how, why and when autism develops in the brain that basically obliterates the vaccine-cause-autism belief. But still anti-vaxxers persist and assiduously avoid the research which shows reality. G-d knows, I’ve listed enough about this research and these scientists.
I sometimes ask scoffers if they could tell me if their ideas are taught anywhere at a university? They can’t.
But anyway, you provide great comments and references.
@Aarno,
Re: “Do you not know that vaccines are not adminisrated IV ?”
As someone who has administered thousands of vaccines? Yes.
Which is why my second sentence in the second paragraph is:
“IM administration would be lower than IV but still higher than inhalation or mucous membrane exposure.”
@Indie Rebel. MRNA vaccine do indeed go into cells, but Christine M Kincaid speaks about spike proteins crossing BBB.
@Denice: IANAD, but I think “idee fixe” goes beyond “devoutly-held article of faith” into Paranoid Personality Disorder and psychotic delusion. As in, there are real physiological malfunctions that cause it, not just this powerful need to believe.
(I have witnessed an acute case of psychotic delusion. It took a locked ward and months of medication to bring them back down, and was horrifying for everyone, including the sufferer, to experience and incredibly damaging to relationships and psyches.)
I have no doubt there are antivaxxers who meet a PPD/psychosis diagnosis; and thus are unable to help themselves. But for many it is the founding commitment for their absolutist fundamentalist faith; and that, if anything, makes them the more dangerous.
Crazy people must also battle their own illnesses in order to fight effectively; and since they do not (and, by definition, cannot) understand the enemy within, they enter the field already badly hobbled. Whereas True Believers are free to invest every fibre of their being on waging their Holy Jihad, entirely unimpeded by either disability or remorse.
“only 48 children have died of MIS-C”
Classic antivaxer callousness. Meantime, the overall pediatric Covid-19 casualty list has gotten longer in recent days.
“Child deaths from a preventable illness like Covid-19, no matter how few, are motivation for authorizing a vaccine in children, the US Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official said…”
“In this latest wave of Covid-19, particularly down south, there have been thousands of children hospitalized. And, frankly, it’s an embarrassment in a developed country to have even 100 children, like we’ve had, die of infectious disease that’s preventable,” Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Dr. Peter Marks said in a town hall hosted by the Covid-19 Vaccine Education and Equity Project.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 645 children have died from Covid-19 in the US.”
http://cnn.com/2021/10/05/health/us-coronavirus-tuesday/index.html
But in Christine’s view, that’s “only” 645 children. It’s like when anti-MMR types scoff about “only” 500 or so deaths from measles annually in the years leading up to the introduction of measles vaccination (after which deaths rapidly declined), so they can feel good about promoting spurious vaccine-disease links.
Yes, good points, scary facts. The mRNA is coated and prevented from breaking down quickly. I think the mRNA is also constructed to make it last longer.
And we don’t know how long the spike-generating cells are allowed to survive. Can we assume the immune system destroys them within a certain amount of time? No, and how many spikes will be generated is not known. So we have vaccines with variable and unknown dosages.
Too many unknowns. I don’t know why genetic vaccine advocates pretend so much certainty.
I’m guessing that what a ‘genetic vaccine’ is, is one of the unknowns?
IR: Hi there, more facts!
mRNA is inherently unstable. So it breaks down in a relatively short amount of time (hours to days, I don’t have the number off the top of my head). That’s regardless of whether it is the body’s own mRNA or an mRNA vaccine. So the cells that got the mRNA from the vaccine stop making the spikes pretty quickly because the instructions (mRNA) degrades.
The cells that take up the mRNA from the vaccine don’t make spikes forever. Just for a little while and then they stop. Just like they would with any other mRNA in the body. So there is no reason for the immune system to kill those cells.
All of this has been studied (I just don’t have the studies on hand right now). So this is not something to worry about.
Here’s a helpful background article, although it’s a bit vague on specifics.
https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/where-mrna-vaccines-and-spike-proteins-go
I think the default half-life of the mRNA for the vaccines was about 10-12 hours but it was tweaked to last about 12-14 hours.
@Indie Rebel All this is actually known. There are papers about them, MRNA vaccine half life is 24 h (any measurable amount) and spike protein lasts two weeks (ditto). T cells clear almost all infected cells, otherwise infection would continue.
@JustaTech: “mRNA is inherently unstable.”
But-but-but, Indie Rebel said</em it has been especially reinforced! Perhaps, much like Irn Bru, it is made from GIRDERS? ’Cos we all know cytoplasm can’t melt steel beams!!!!1!1!!
Honestly, the level of paranoid spew is just getting silly now. It’s one thing to know nothing about how things work (I’m certainly ignorant AF); quite another to fill all the gaps with flaming fabulist claptrap in desperate attempt to feel in control and important.
And I guarantee you: not one of these dimwits will ever ask:
“Might there be something I’ve missed?”
It is a question their egos cannot tolerate. An allergy, perhaps.
So what is the ultimate dose on average? Is there a citation for that? Seems pretty important.
[…] study. I won’t explain why details here, but if you really want to know the gory details, you can read this deconstruction. (Since then, I’ve also realized that the authors of this study have no clue about how the immune […]
When certain comments are blocked, is it because they express valid concerns about these vaccines?
By that logic, a bunch of your previous comments on vaccines weren’t blocked because they were invalid.
Think about it.
@Indie Rebel: Some comments automatically land in the moderation queue, depending on rude language, number of URLs, and whatever else the software filters are trained to flag as “needs some human eyeballs”.
And since our gracious host does in fact have a day job, need for sleep (allegedly†), Very Important Puppers to play with, and so on, it is perhaps unfortunate but inevitable that he isn’t parked at his keyboard 60/24/7/365 instantly approving your vacant wibble.
e.g. My own exquisite commentary often lands in that queue (unsurprisingly, as I suffer both potty mouth and linkarrhea). And yet, you won’t see me throwing a flaming narc shitfit simply ’cos the whole world won’t lookatme lookatme LOOKATME every seven seconds. Because I have patience, which in fact is not the sick people on a COVID ward.
So sorry to puncture your puffed up messianic persecution complex there, sparky, as I done let all your hot air out now. But not everything is all about you.
…
@Dangerous Bacon: Rimshot.
—
† Although what a box of blinkenlights needs to sleep for I dunno. Running software updates, perhaps?
Are we really to believe this? As if ‘Management’ doesn’t have deep enough pockets to hire an assistant for Orac to manage this blog. Please! Like Indie, I also have to suspect that ‘Management’ is deliberately trying to censor us antivaxxers.
PS: ‘Management’ — ahhemmn, Orac! — I am also waiting for you to post my comments on the other thread.
My comments never have bad language or urls or anything like that. It’s probably just poorly written software.
@Indie Rebel: “It’s probably just poorly written software.”
Page footer: “Powered by WordPress”
Case rested.
Polly, your recipe for success is probably to continue buying phoenix baubles and hope that those and CK can power a trip to the Pleiades.
Dr. Susan Oliver from UNSW did a discussion on the spike paper on YouTube. She linked to two similar investigations that were not referenced in this paper/
https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/msb.202110396
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-020-00372-8
She said that these studies did not show spike protein in the nucleus. Also they had more and better controls.
The second reference notes:
Thanks, squirrelelite, for the mention of Dr Susan Oliver..
I chased down her video and it is just about the most comprehensive and clearly articulated debunking of that paper that I have seen anywhere. The TWiW video is a close second and covers the same issues but it is a bit confusing in part and overlong at 40 minutes compared with Dr Susan Oliver’s 10 minute complete demolition job.
Here is the link for anyone who wants to know how bad that study really is:
Note: she is a rather odd/quirky character – nothing wrong with that! – but if that worries you just concentrate on the content. It really is excellent.
Some commentators here have claimed that COID-19 was engineered in a lab. Here’s a story that throws that into doubt.
First Known Covid Case Was Vendor at Wuhan Market, Scientist Says
And, Julian, here is a piece that makes it even stronger!
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2021/11/23/the_covid_lab_leak_theory_just_got_even_stronger_557283.html
Here were the skeptics back in September trumpeting the discovery of the Lao bats as proof against the lab leak theory. How quiet they are now.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/bats-in-laos-caves-harbor-closest-relatives-to-covid-19-virus-1.1653943
If we back up for a second, it’s not a serious contention that a lab leak was impossible here, no matter how well SBM does the razzle dazzle (Chicago reference). Indeed the lab leak is the more probable scenario. People from the lab got sick even. (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/u-s-intel-report-identified-3-wuhan-lab-researchers-who-n1268327) But these folks at this blog are part of a group think that supports Fauci and all things CDC. Their confirmation bias and whole identity alignment would be called into question. They can’t be open to such a possibility. It could still have come from a bat, or whatever other animal Jon Stewart mentioned in in his common sensical rant on the subject. But if I were betting on it, I’d bet on the lab leak.
What is the problem with wet market theory ? Why it is so bad ? Lots of customers of wet market got sick, too.
“Some commentators here have claimed that COID-19 was engineered in a lab. Here’s a story that throws that into doubt.
First Known Covid Case Was Vendor at Wuhan Market, Scientist Says”
From a Wall St. Journal article on the report in Science:
“The reconstruction suggests that early transmission of the virus was tied to the (live animal) market, Dr. Worobey said. Most who were at the market and got ill visited a section where live raccoon dogs, which carry coronaviruses, were sold, which “provides strong evidence of a live-animal market origin of the pandemic,” he wrote.
“You can no longer just dismiss the Huanan market link,” Dr. Worobey said.
Dr. Worobey’s work adds to mounting evidence of a natural, or so-called zoonotic, origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. While many virologists and others who study epidemics say a laboratory accident in Wuhan can’t be ruled out, they believe it’s far more likely that the new virus’s origin occurred in nature…
“My feeling has always been that the virus emerging from an animal source was more likely and my confidence in that is growing” due to Dr. Worobey’s article and other recent research, said Stephen Goldstein, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Utah…
Researchers at the Pasteur Institute, a French nonprofit, reported in September that they had found three coronaviruses in bats in caves in northern Laos, close to the Chinese border, that very closely resemble SARS-CoV-2 and can infect human cells. The portion of the bat viruses that attach to cells, called the receptor binding domain, differs from that portion of SARS-CoV-2 by only one or two amino acids, the researchers said. Their findings were reported on a preprint server, and are being reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.
One of the viruses, collected in 2020 and dubbed in their study “Banal-52,” is so close that it is “essentially the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2,” Dr. Garry said during a webinar this week hosted by the Global Virus Network, a coalition of virologists.
The discovery of these viruses undermines the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 was created or adapted in a laboratory, he said. The differences between these viruses and SARS-CoV-2 show that the latter circulated in another animal after bats, adapting other properties such as a furin cleavage site that made it more transmissible among humans, he said.”
My turn to quote, Dangerous One…
“The differences between these viruses and SARS-CoV-2 show that the latter circulated in another animal after bats”
My turn. My turn.
Ooh ooh, let me have a turn again! This is so much fun.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan/
@Greg Actually both theories have same complexity. White coat, or raccoon was the link. Besides of that, raccon where intentionally varried to the wet market,
@DB: It’s probably safe to say SARS-CoV-2 has a natural origin for the same reason it’s pretty safe to say that of any other new disease: because most new diseases do.
In similar vein, we can observe that the foamy paranoiacs squeaking about CCP and Wuhan labs are unchanged from the foamy paranoiacs squeaking about CIA and “laboratory AIDS” a few decades back. They have a need to assign blame, to identify a clear enemy and hate on them. They are black-and-white thinkers: doubt, uncertainty, and error bars are intolerable, if not inconceivable, to them. This racist eugenicist anti-vax cult we’re hearing from right now is a very old character under that veneer; one that has existed as part of humanity for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and at least as long as Blood Libel.
By the way, there is an extra twisted advantage to their altered reality: look at all the real, proven shit that the CIA, CCP, etc get up to, and how quiet this lot suddenly are. Indeed, it would not surprise that a major secondary motive for creating these convenient boogeymen is that it saves them having to acknowledge or call out all of those real threats; for if they did that then the cowardice of their subsequent inaction would be revealed to all.
Thus, these boogeymen are created not to be vanquished but to stand forever looming as the ever-present imminent threat: a vehicle for triggering and justifying every panicked populist “reaction” the leadership wishes to exact on its many real-world enemies; from writing off its banking debts by burning all the Jews (a fine European tradition), to fixing its PR problems by rounding up every critic and their families in vast Stalinist progroms never to be heard from again.
…
Hitler and Mao did not win by swaying the majority to their side—they won convincing that majority to turn a complacent convenient blind eye while their zealous minority did all the killing work.
If anti-vaxxers wish to author blame-ready narratives of Good People vs The Wicked, then two can play at that game. And in contrast to their Mary-Sue fables, our stories have a great deal of recorded sordid human history to back them right up. It won’t stop them, of course, but it will reveal them further for what they really are.
Setting aside the rest of Has’ pscho-babble about ‘antivaxxers’ shortcomings, and, in which he is actually do a remarkable job at channeling Denice, I can’t help but reflect on this. ..
So, believing in the lab leak theory is racist? How is it more racist than believing in the natural origin one? Seriously, drug dealers, hear me out.
Is it more racist to believe that intelligent, well-credentialed Chinese scientists brought a virus from nature into the lab, and, using cutting-edge science, they cunningly engineered it to be one of the most infectious agent known to humanity? Or, is it more racist to believe that peasant, Chinese vendors sold wild animals at a filthy wet-market, and, through the nastiest hygienic practices, they unleashed the virus on the public?
Seriously, if I were Chinese, out of pride, I would be secretly hoping the lab leak theory is true!
Cleanup needed in the Inbred Pigfucker aisle.
@Greg, it’s an interesting philosophical question you have raised:
What’s worst: Screwing up ‘on purpose’ or by accident?
I guess it could be framed as: Incompetence vs. Stupidity
“Or, is it more racist to believe that peasant, Chinese vendors sold wild animals at a filthy wet-market, and, through the nastiest hygienic practices, they unleashed the virus on the public?”
I think that many Chinese people will be quite familiar with the structure and practices of a wet market and totally unashamed about it. Any open air live animal market is going to be a challenging environment for cleanliness. I’m sure certain people would object if they insisted on dipping the animals in bleach for a few minutes before bringing them out.
Anyway, where did this intelligent and well credentialed scientist get the virus from? We already know that there was an intermediate animal between bats and humans.
@Narad: Poor pig!
I think it is interesting that genuine concerns and discussion/debate is met so often with antivaxxer smears. If people have genuine queries then they should be addressed and not dismissed out of hand. There is a growing level of condescension within the scientific community that serves no one. There is simply no long term study results for these mRNA vaccines. How the spike protein behaves in theory and in a lab setting is not evidence that it is will behave as planned once inside a body. The virus itself enters the body through the respiratory system. And so the bodies natural defense is triggered in a different way to that of an inter muscular injection. This has been shown to be the case in past attempts at vaccination for corona viruses in animal testing. The fact that this spike protein is being triggered using an mRNA vaccine further complicates this matter. The immune system, as I am sure everyone here will agree is extremely complex and not entirely understood. It is not unreasonable to have concerns and to want to tread with caution. The above Orac post confirms it to be arguable and not yet entirely resolved. I for one will study these conflicting results with great interest. But it is not enough proof for me that this confers conclusively that those who suggest caution and raise these issues were and are wrong to do so. It is the lack of such categorical evidence that concerns me most. Vilifying genuine concerns does not lead to safe and well founded science. It does quite the opposite. Arrogance can never serve science. Arrogance leads to ignorance. Only humility and genuine scientific exploration with the mantra to do no harm can further our understanding. To prove safety and efficacy takes time and should never be rushed no matter how tempting and how much pressure there may be to do so.
Yawn. Do you want some alfredo sauce with that copy pasta?
If you can convince yourself that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan lab (or better yet, was deliberately released as a sinister mass depopulation plan), then it makes perfect sense to oppose any and all effective means of mitigating the pandemic.
It’s flawless logic, if you’re an utter loon.
@ has ( re an earlier comment)
I definitely agree that diagnosable conditions can be part of the problem: in fact, Brian Deer once got into trouble for suggesting that the anti-vax mothers who harassed him had issues of their own since their kids had ASDs and ASDs have a genetic factor.
Personality disorders may be common: reading anti-vaxxers’ writings ( RI, twitter, blogs) over the years has led me to suspect those often. Very often.
We know that people with ASDs have differences in their PFC as well as in other areas: some of their family members who are NOT diagnosed can have lesser cognitive issues just as some family members of people with SMI like schizophrenia may have lesser cognitive problems w/o schizophrenia. People with problems in their right hemisphere often have trouble making global evaluations and stick instead to more isolated details. OBVIOUSLY, more serious conditions like dementia and psychosis can include anosognosia, the inability to understand that there is any problem- this is the extreme of course.
As kids develop they learn how to self-evaluate their own abilities as well as those of others ( metacognition, person perception, social cognition) and how to self-programme ( executive fxing). By adolescence, many of these skills approach those of adults BUT not all people develop them well and these skills are not entirely in synch with either intelligence or general cognitive level ( although some require abstraction) yielding many diverse types. Perhaps anti-vaxxers who think themselves equal to experts reflect this problem.
Recent research has shown a tendency of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy believers to have traits that are predictive ( including paranoid ideation, narcissism, believe in being special/ not common, persecution etc). So I have no problem accepting that true believers may have emotional and/ or cognitive issues. I indeed wonder if people without any issues can easily fall into CT or anti-vax beliefs. Can it all be education? Or only about beliefs? There’s a question for people seeking dissertation topics.
@Denice: “I indeed wonder if people without any issues can easily fall into CT or anti-vax beliefs.”
I’m sure anyone can. However, after many years of observation, trying to form a better theory of mind with which to understand other people and their behaviors† (in addition to myself), I feel fairly confident in saying that whoever calculated that Type 2 Cluster B personality disorders constitute 1–3% of the population lost a zero somewhere.
Also, reading Not Always Right and r/JustNoMIL is very bad for my psyche.
I’ve little doubt that paranoid and narcissistic traits run far above average in CT groups. This will also make them perfect targets for the straight-up psychopaths who run the major league grifts. Stoke their fears, fluff their egos, and they will give their wallets and gasp for more. Probably some intersection with addictive traits as well. Lots of very unhealthy enmeshments; all very incestuous. Completely self-confirming and self-amplifying too. CT-ers may be relatively small in physical number, but they do seem to occupy a disproportionate amount of everyone’s time and attention (which’d also fit hypothesis). And, of course, utterly unable to introspect or correct their own precious beliefs, or even entertain others’ opinions just for sake of debate, so emotional insecurity and maybe some OCD too. Certainly not over-endowed with empathy or humility as they proudly stand atop Mt. Stupid, casting their scornful eye over all of us little people slowly climbing that long curve below.
Ah, listen to me. Purple prose is my fail. Alas, when every internet moron looks like a nail…
#MorbidFascinations #HumanityIsSoDoomed
—
† I might’ve been a tiny bit ASD growing up, although long since replaced by much more impressive adult pathologies.
About narratives:
woo-meisters and anti-vaxxers create identifiable, self-enhancing templates. Humans display a solipsistic tendency towards story creation to explain the world, events, other people and themselves to which science can be a much-needed antidote.
Here are examples I’ve discovered:
— A child who has no problems ( or is superior in some way) is taken to the doctor and vaccinated; then, a horrendous injury occurs and disability occurs. The mother ( usually) on her own learns the truth about the dangers of vaccination, the malfeasance of the medical establishment and how other rebels have healed their children, fought back and told the world. She becomes a warrior for truth- an avenging angel- who will not be silenced , educating others, saving children.
— A humble researcher, observing human suffering, discovers how medical science has lied and profited off of illness and how simple herbs, foods and supplements can cure serious conditions previously deemed deadly or untreatable. He ( usually) battles the entrenched perpetrators and reveals their crimes to the world.
— A valiant doctor rebels against established authority and DARES to treat patients in a more natural manner ( see above), experiences success and is universally reviled by his/ her peers but recognised by the enlightened minority.
As in all myths, a few themes stand out: good triumphing over evil, a single protagonist initiating action against a group, overturning of widespread power/ authority and eventual recognition by the world at large. Someone pure without power rising up to meet entrenched evil.
Haven’t we seen this story somewhere else?
I recommend reading Ivan Oransky, cofounder of Retraction Watch, take on the whole issue (https://knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2021/question-lab-leak-theory-dont-call-it-conspiracy)
No, I’m fine calling it a conspiracy theory. If the “Laboratory AIDS”, now “Wuhan lab”, lot want to assert SARS-CoV-2 is a man-made virus escaped from a lab, they can damn well put up the evidence to prove it. Until they do, they can shut TF up.
There is enough useless noise and malicious agenda going around already; Evidence or GTFO is an absolutely acceptable pre-filter. It’s reasonable for us to assume SARS-CoV-2 made a zoonotic jump, because that’s what the last SARS virus did, and a whole bunch of other viruses have done. And though it’s not inconceivable that this or any other virus could have a man-made source, what is the point of speculating it? And I mean that as a genuine question.
If the answer is: we need to think through disaster planning strategies for research labs, then crack on. But that is not what is happening here: it is racist paranoid shit being flung in the air with the calculated intention of splattering everywhere.
Feynman said that scientists should bend over backwards to show how they might be wrong to everyone else. But that was to provide evidence of one’s own integrity (i.e. show all your workings), not to have that careful honesty abused and weaponized against themselves and others. Don’t feed the liars. Call them out.
To-date we have no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was born in a Wuhan lab. Whereas we do have fresh mountains of accumulated evidence identifying the diseases and sources of Big Lie propagandas. Plus a buttload of historical evidence which proves we ignore it at our peril. A good scientist weighs ALL the available evidence. Oransky et al need to learn how to look better: they’ll find all the evidence they need to arrive at a robust provisional (scientific) conclusion.
Evidence or GTFO. It should not be a hard concept.
@Denice:
Frequently. It’s annoying because it’s childish. Black vs White almost never exists beyond fairy tales; and the Grimms wrote those as teaching exercises for growing young thinkers, not to be taken as perfectly literal by adults!
On second thoughts: I fully apologize for saying that it’s “childish”. That is an insult to children, who are born with the capacity to question and learn, adapt and grow. It’s the people who beat that capacity out of the kids that I want to set fire to. Toxic emotional cripples, who cannot abide to exist in a universe that does not rotate around them.
The worst bit is: these people are not without power. Just being born into first-world society instantly gifts them extraordinary advantages that several billion alive today plus all of our ancestors would’ve gladly gnawed off a leg just to enjoy a small part of. And what they do is squander it. All. Of. It. Wanking themselves silly on their ridiculous pathetic Mary Sue power fantasies, instead of doing something—anything—that would make lives genuinely better. That’s cowardice.
I am sure there are myths for that too.
Some explicitly label their fantasy roleplaying ( Heckenlively as Aragorn; Joshua Coleman as V) but not everyone can be David vs Goliath, Parsifal, Frodo or Luke Skywalker because they’re women so the myths need tweaking. They become Warrior Moms, channeling Jenny McCarthy as we see so often at RI or AOA, who will do battle fearlessly to “rescue” their children and “teach” other mothers. They do “research”, they join groups, they attend protests, they lobby governmental officials and write profusely in self-congratulatory tones.
I’ve looked into a few of the outstanding ones who are often relatively well-to-do and well-educated ( although not in disciplines relevant to critiquing vaccine science):
Katie Wright, two master’s degrees ( her parents founded Autism Speaks), Alison MacNeil, a social worker/ therapist/ instructor ( father was in news), Louise Kuo ( a business executive), Mary Holland ( lawyer, professor), Jennifer Larson ( business owner).Kim Rossi literally learned martial arts in her vendetta against the world.
They are also- nearly without exception- staggeringly white, middle class and above.
@Denice: reading through those Warrior Moms, I can’t help but wonder if at least a few of them are on the Spectrum. Kim Rossi’s obsession (there is no other word for it) with martial arts comes to mind. And from personal experience, martial arts are disproportionately beneficial to autistics.
@ Julian Frost:
Certainly. From what we know about families with ASD and the aforementioned stats on undiagnosed family members with related cognitive issues; there was also a study that showed that when a single child who had siblings had an ASD it was more likely to be de novo variation but when more than one was diagnosed ( like the Staglianos/ Rossis) it was more likely to be genetic/ inherited.
I think we’ve also read commenters like that at RI – although they may have other issues- having an ASD doesn’t rule out other psychological/ cognitive problems- just like people w/o an ASD.
It seems that age cohort can be important because people in that age group ( anti-vax mothers) are highly UNlikely to have ever been diagnosed with ASD/ AS. A British study showed that older people who were never diagnosed when they were children would now be HFA/ AS frequently yielding an overall similar level compared to today’s children. Despite what Ann Dachel says!
So yeah, your beloved drug companies aren’t spinning any narratives? Only the anti-vaxxers are liars, the vaxxers are angelic.
Better keep that straw man away from any open flames.
Keep that straw away from livestock as well. It’s mouldy.
Slightly unrelated, but what’s up with Nu? We had Mu and A1, but never this much clamoring that the sky was about to fall.
Could it be just a ruse to get the public on board in welcoming a new brew from Pfizer, and with new antibodies added! Maybe what’s happening in Europe is incentivizing that. Or, could it be that indeed the sky is falling, and Nu is already in Europe?! Anyway, I am definitely smelling a rat.
Carrie Madej would recommend that you take a borax bath.
For the oleaginous Gerg, lye would work too.
I think you’ll find that the smell is less rat and more cow pat.
And, for extra fun, did anyone read this Wiki article!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS-CoV-2_Omicron_variant
I suspect that the cases in travellers to Germany and Israel, the travellers had to be fully vaccinated to enter the country. If that’s the case, then by definition, anyone who travelled into those countries carrying the Omicron variant would have been fully vaccinated.
@Greg They did not happen in any highly vaccinated country. Why Botswana, and not Singapore ? Low vaccination rate does not cause any selection pressure.
Let’s try this again…
Aarno, I already conceded that more variants, including vaccine resistant ones, are likely in low vaxxed areas because they don’t have to compete with dominant vaccine resistant ones such as in high vaxxed areas. For the same reason, these strains are not usually a problem; by competing with one another, they are preventing a few from dominating Conversely, they pose a problem in highly vaxxed areas where selective pressure favours them.
So, the talking heads are actually getting it wrong. We are not playing with fire by not vaxxing Africa; we are playing with fire vaxxing.
@Greg Vaccine variants competing each other ? Viruses do not kill each other. Only competition here is what virus infects better, this one will spread faster.
@Greg,
You’re missing the point (maybe that’s the point) – More mutations occur the more infections you have, and the longer the infection takes to clear the person.
You get more infections with lower barriers to viral spread (immunity, testing, isolation, masks etc.).
The more mutations a variant has, the harder it is for the immune system it is to rapidly identify and remove the virus. More mutations also increase the chance that
Therefore, more infections lead to more mutations, more mutations leads to improved ability to evade immunity.
Is that too simple for your superior indirect?
Do you mean the Omicron strain in South Africa? They do not know how serious it is at present but they are taking reasonable precautions in the mean time. The reason for the concern is that there is a large mutation in the spike protein that could make it far more infectious and it appeared at about the same time as a surge in infections in South Africa.
This is the sort of mix-up that happens when one gets health news from The Weather Channel.
Wikipedia says that the Omicron strain (B.1.1.529) emerged in Botswana, which has 19.6% of the population fully vaccinated against COVID. Wasn’t someone around here saying that variant creation is driven by high levels of vaccine coverage?
And, as Prl asks the question, I am looking around to see who else it’s directed at, but I am finding I am the only person standing.
Prl, I will channel a little Bossche to account. Covid-2 is constantly mutating because that’s what these viruses do. Yet, even if it mutates to a more virulent strain, it might not necessarily take off; it needs to find a ripe situation where there are selective conditions that favour it.
With Omicron, it’s appearing to be vaccine resistant, so highly vaxxed areas are providing that right condition or selective pressure. Ask yourself, why is it increasing exponentially in South Africa and not Botswana where it started?
Botswana doesn’t favour it; it’s just another variant that cropped up there that natural immunity would’ve dealt with, and likely extinguishing it. But, in South Africa, a higher vaccination rate is providing the right kindle for that spark to take-off. Should it reach Europe or North America, that spark will be essentially running into a pool of gasoline.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/chart-shows-quickly-coronavirus-variant-122421144.html
Correction: ‘Botswana doesn’t favour it’.
With a 19.6 fully vaxxed rate, maybe Botswana is staring to slightly favour it over the rest of Africa that might have a close to zero vaxxed rate.
More reflections….
New variants are likely to crop up in less vaxxed areas because in higher vaxxed areas a vaccine resistant strain is likely to dominate. So, does the drug dealers not have a point that we can end the pandemic by vaccinating everything that moves? No! There would still be the issue of getting rid of the dominant vaccine resistant strain, and as we are witnessing with Delta.
Not vaccinating at all would’ve been a better way to end the pandemic. Variants may have cropped up but with none gaining a competitive edge. Eventually, they would’ve all died out
Fewer than 24% of South Africans are fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
So, claiming that the new Covid variant took off there because of a highly vaccinated population reflects ignorance, an attempt to deceive or trolling.
Or in this instance, probably all three.
@Greg, I think that you’re mixing where a variant occurs, with where it’s identified. South Africa identified the variant, because their medical system is more advanced than Botswana.
South Africa may have low vaccination rates, but they have high infections rates. What does this say about ‘natural immunity’?
Southern Africa also has lots of immunocompromised people (due to AIDS), and people with compromised immune systems have been shows to be fertile ground for viral mutations…
“Variants may have cropped up but with none gaining a competitive edge. Eventually, they would’ve all died out”
Variants WILL have cropped up. Some WILL have gained a competitive edge. Eventually they would have all died out, like the common cold…..
Looks like my question remains unanswered, though I did hear a loud “Whoosh” as the goalposts were repositioned to make 19.6% of the population “highly vaxxed”.
@Greg Why do think that omicron is vaccine resistant ? You yourself claim that an infection by unrelated coronavirus (not even a variant) provides protection,
Antibiotic resistance is a very different thing.
Aarno, I used ‘vaccine resistant’ to suggest that the vaccine (and we are talking about Pfizer’s) could be less effective at preventing transmission of Omicron as with Delta. In fact, I am still expecting that Omicron’s Spike will be recognizable enough that the vaccine will still be able to neutralize it.
Yet, as we see with Delta, if the vaccine is inefficient, or slow, at neutralizing it, that might be a problem. If it does a worse job than Delta, that would be a huge problem!
In this regard, the vaccine recognizing the protein might turn out to be a far worse problem. If it’s totally unrecognizable then maybe a fresh batch of Pfizer’s brew might do the trick. A recognizable variant, however, may defeat that, and with the original antigenic sin mucking things up. Remember the article I sent with Pfizer rep suggesting early imprinting might pose a problem with tweaking it’s vaccine?
So, if the S is no go, what options do they have other than going after the E, M or N. The fact that they are saying that it will take 100 days to take another kick at the can is suggesting to me that they do not have much options.
So, Collins thinks it’s most likely that Omicron will not escape the vaccines? Will the world now give a big sigh of relief? Reflect on this that I wrote earlier…
I said it many times, and I will say it again: It’s better to have a virus that totally escapes the vaccine and allowing for other more effective interventions. The worst situation is to have a leaky vaccine that does not allow it to escape, but also does not effectively neutralize it.
Fauci said that the virus is never going away? Now, there is something thing to be concerned about.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nih-dir-collins-covid-vaccines-will-most-likely-protect-against-omicron-variant-but-too-soon-to-tell
My argument is not that 19.6 is highly vaxxed, but vaxxed enough that selective pressure starts favoring such a vaccine resistant strain. Here is an example: Let’s say we have a normal Covid-2 strain that is not vaccine resistant. With 100 people in a population with a vaxxed rate of 20% that are exposed to that strain, 80% will be infected and with 20% spared.. Compare this to Omicron that might be vaccine resistant; all of the 100 people might get infected. In other words, Omicron will gain a 20% selective edge in a 20% vaxxed population. And, for extra fun, we can imagine it hitting Portugal with a close to 90% fully vaxxed rate!
Of course, there are a few caveats to this example. Not everyone exposed to a virus will be infected, and Omicron might not be totally vaccine resistant. Still the basic principle of Omicron gaining a competive edge in more vaxxed areas holds.
@Greg Vaccines are effective against delta variant- I would again cite a paper:
Reis BY, Barda N, Leshchinsky M, Kepten E, Hernán MA, Lipsitch M, Dagan N, Balicer RD. Effectiveness of BNT162b2 Vaccine against Delta Variant in Adolescents. N Engl J Med. 2021 Nov 25;385(22):2101-2103. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc2114290. Epub 2021 Oct 20. PMID: 34670036; PMCID: PMC8552532.
Why do you repeat same lie ?
That’s because you’re a moron. There is no positive selection to speak of in an 80% susceptible population.
@Narad,
and plenty of opportunities for mutations to produce new variants.
So, Pfizer has contingency plans to deal with Omicron? Hhmmnn! I am thinking they are about to add some N to their brew. And, even if a weary public felt that they already had their full, how can they refuse one more cup under this ‘pressing’ circumstance. Sure the antivaxx heathrens will continue to refuse, but thank God for the ‘sensible’ majority!
“Pfizer has contingency plans to deal with Omicron?”
We don’t know that the existing vaccine covers the Omicron strain. They should have a pretty good idea in a few days. Remember all the vaccine needs to do is keep you from dying. Reduced infection and transmission are a bonus.
“I am thinking they are about to add some N to their brew”
If they need to update the vaccine it will about 90 days, so let’s hope not. On the other hand, the present vaccine is unlikely to be totally ineffective against the Omicron strain, so if you haven’t already…..
“if a weary public felt that they already had their full”
Except the 5 million who are already dead. They can’t give a damn anymore. Don’t be one of them.
“the antivaxx heathrens will continue to refuse”
The antivaxxers are a lost cause. Those who are vaccine hesitant because of the disinformation spread by the antivaxxers are still reachable. Where I live the percentage of vaccine hesitant has gradually reduced from 20% to 10%, and now it’s getting close to 5% as over 92% have had at least one dose. People dying around them and ending up in ICU and on ventilators tend to galvanise them into action.
“thank God for the ‘sensible’ majority!”
I’m not sure the gods had anything to do with it. Otherwise where were they when the virus mutated to infect humans and become pathogenic?
N protein messes up innate immunity:
Zhao Y, Sui L, Wu P, Wang W, Wang Z, Yu Y, Hou Z, Tan G, Liu Q, Wang G. A dual-role of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein in regulating innate immune response. Signal Transduct Target Ther. 2021 Sep 1;6(1):331. doi: 10.1038/s41392-021-00742-w. PMID: 34471099; PMCID: PMC8409078.
So adding it to the brew wouyld be risky.
Any time Gerg uses “I” and “thinking” in the same sentence, it’s pretty much a moral certainty that there’s nothing behind the veil except a pair of high heels and what one would pray is leftover poutine.
The rat is really starting to stink.
So, Omiron has been around since July, yet alarm and bedlam about it started just a few days ago? And, from a few countries in Africa, today it is being reported as hitting Europe shores? This is the same Europe that has been on fire with ‘Delta’ cases for weeks now?
https://www.delta-optimist.com/coronavirus-covid-19-national-news/covid-variant-spreads-to-more-countries-as-world-on-alert-4805006
Hhmmnn!
Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/life/op-ed-weird-covid-stats-profiles-in-europe-raising-big-questions-german-fourth-wave-french-fifth-wave/article#ixzz7DTU4UX3z
@Greg Omicron variant was first reported to WHO in November 2021. Ask South Africans what caused the delay.
@Greg Germany situation is caused by no lockdown with inaquate vaccination rate. During winter, this does not do.
Lord, how often I have encountered this!
How often I have explained this, and yet it’s still not getting through. Maybe I will try once more. Heck — maybe I will be respectful and not address you as drug dealers.
Doctors, healthcare representatives, public health officials, we have had those deaths because Covid vaccination is serving as a perfect incubator for the virus. Without covid vaccination, we would have seen less cases — and less deaths. If it’s saving anything, it’s what it is creating. Why can’t you get this through your thick skull, drug dealers — ahemmnn, doctors, healthcare representatives, public health officials?!
Do you mean Nov 2020, Aarno? So let me get this, since Nov 2020 it was already known, tagged as a VOC, and named Omicron?!
https://twitter.com/CaptBunnykiller/status/1464338273409638400?t=D0JmQGKDRXJJBSdA3M_ExA&s=01
More interesting stuff…
https://twitter.com/Suzy_1776/status/1464330334804324357?t=pj31dRnvnmI6E0osDo5EdA&s=09
Correction: I could not verify this screenshot with what’s on the WHO’s site. I could not also find any documents collaborating that Omicron has been around since Nov 2020
As usual, Gerg loses.
@Greg Where doi you get your dates (I know the answer actually):
https://www.who.int/news/item/26-11-2021-classification-of-omicron-(b.1.1.529)-sars-cov-2-variant-of-concern
It was reported to WHO November 24, 2021
@Greg So you imagine that vaccination caused COVID deaths. What about. among other thing, that deaths started before vaccination was available.
Tande AJ, Pollock BD, Shah ND, Farrugia G, Virk A, Swift M, Breeher L, Binnicker M, Berbari EF. Impact of the COVID-19 Vaccine on Asymptomatic Infection Among Patients Undergoing Pre-Procedural COVID-19 Molecular Screening. Clin Infect Dis. 2021 Mar 10:ciab229. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciab229. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33704435; PMCID: PMC7989519.
Vaccination does prevent asymptomatic transmission:
Stop repeating a stupid lie.
More reflections on the stinking rat….
So, Botswana being the ‘epicenter’ of Omicron has reported just 25 cases for its 2.35 million population, yet the strain is on pace to dominate in the UK in just days?!. Hhmmnn!
https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/rest-of-africa/malawi-records-3-cases-of-omicron-3647704
And you really trust the data results coming out of Botswana?
I like them blaming unnamed ‘foreign diplomats’. Were they tested entering or exiting the country? How many non foreigners do they test?
Considered the low about of testing (10), I doubt that they are testing enough.
But hey, If you say that we can trust Botswana, Malawi and South African data, that’s enough for me. Your word is all I need.
I wondered why Nu and Xi were skipped as variant names after seeing this post (the Greek alphabet runs Mu, Nu, Xi, Omicron), and I had a bit of a look around and didn’t find anything describing why, but I just heard an explanation of why in a news report:
Nu was not used as an informal variant name because “Nu variant” and “new variant” are pronounced the same way in English, and using Nu as a variant name would be potentially confusing.
Xi was not used as an informal variant name because it’s spelt in English the same way as a common Chinese name, as well as it being the name of the current Chinese President.
A.1 was an early (Jan 2020) variant mainly found in the USA, and it was never given a Geek letter name. I’m not sure even why it was mentioned. There are lots of formally named variants, most of them named by the letter-dotted-numbers convention, and only 13 of them (so far) have been assigned Greek letter names..
https://cov-lineages.org/lineage_list.html
NY’s governor just declared a state of emergency because of Omicron: hospitals may restrict nonessential services, surgeries and nonemergency care if hospital capacity dips. People are being asked to uses masks in public venues and get vaccinated. NY has about 20 million residents about two thirds of whom are fully vaccinated and 80% who have had at least one shot. Flights from the areas affected are being restricted.
Gerg said:
“The rat is really starting to stink.
“So, Omiron has been around since July, yet alarm and bedlam about it started just a few days ago? And, from a few countries in Africa, today it is being reported as hitting Europe shores? ”
The link HE provided said:
“LONDON (AP) — The new potentially more contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus popped up in more European countries on Saturday, just days after being identified in South Africa, leaving governments around the world scrambling to stop the spread.”
“Just days after being identified…”
We can add Άγνοια ημερολογίου to the list of maladies which plague our deluded anti-vaxxer.
Oh, it’s been on the list for a while. For example, he was demanding Pfizer release the one-year results of the Comirnaty trials less than ten months after the first shots were put in arms. We just hit the one-year anniversary of the completion of the second shot, but unfortunately for Greg, one year results aren’t a primary outcome. 6 month outcomes are, and were released in July for the first 24,000 participants (data through March). (Greg also doesn’t understand that it takes time to write up studies, so he’ll probably throw yet another conniption fit over the “delay”).
“unfortunately for Greg, one year results aren’t a primary outcome. 6 month outcomes are”
LOL, what a tosspot. Then again, Gerg is easily one of the stupidest narcissists ever to plop out of the Devil’s arsehole, so it’s all purely performative anyway. The grandstanding posturing is to him the valuable part; the throwaway burble just the excuse to indulge in lots more of that.
(Not that movement antivaxxers were ever famous for desiring to understand how things work, never mind ensuring their understanding is accurate. But Gerg really elevates that worship of personal ignorance to a personality cult of precisely One.)
Here is another interesting thought. Omicron symptoms are reported as mild, so maybe it might be a good thing if it gains a competive edge over Delta. With the failure of the vaccines, maybe Omicron emergence may offer our best chance at ending the pandemic, and as we have weaker strains following one another.
Someone else is thinking the same way as me..
https://www.ibtimes.co.in/omicron-variant-found-even-among-fully-vaccinated-india-high-alert-843224
Wait! A German health minister is also agreeing with me. How fitting that after royally f’ing up with the vaccines, a vaccine resistant strain might just prove to be our best ticket out of this mess. Sure, we might not be able to undo the poisoning of the masses, but this crap might just end.
And, being the quintessential screw-ups that you are, to think you guys are banning flights from South Africa! Omicron infected South Africans should be invited to migrate here and where luxury mansions will await them and their families. Of course, this would also be conditional on them agreeing to welcome tours of all our major towns and cities.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/omicron-variant-could-christmas-gift-145126781.html
Greg,
Thank you for showing us all how ‘conformation bias’ works is real-time. Your search for people who agree with you is commendable. But is also somewhat predictable.
Good to know that we can count on you to go to every length to find support for your position, besides any actual data.
David, what data did I not provide, suggesting that the vaccines are breeding cases, and, far worse, sustained cases?! I pointed to relatively low vaxxed India and Africa being spared the current wave that is scorching Western Europe. Even in Europe, I pointed to low vaxxed Eastern Europe quickly overcoming their surge, and where as things are far more chronic in Western Europe with their cases increasing or plateauing.
David, I will make you guys a deal; if you can provide me a reasonable explanation for why low vaxxed Romania and Bulgaria were so successful at shedding their surges other than the vaccines are crap and natural immunity is far superior, I will concede. I will admit that I was way out of my league thinking I could argue immunology with you guys. I will leave this blog with my tail between my legs and never to be heard from again. It will be like my fourth banishment from this blog, but this one permanent!
David, the weight is on your shoulders. I am sure your colleagues would greatly appreciate you vanquishing me for good. I am laying down at the altar, David. Seize the opportunity!
https://www.euronews.com/2021/11/29/covid-19-spike-felt-across-europe-as-vaccination-remains-stagnant
Oddly, I seem to recall hearing that before.
You should have read your own link, but it’s always good times when you fail to. BTW, how’s that thar UAE doing?
I’m sorry Greg, but I can’t ‘provide me a reasonable explanation’ because I got stumped with your first assumption. I couldn’t see where ‘Romania and Bulgaria were so successful’, with death rates during September-November 5-to-10-fold higher than the UK (and excess deaths in Romania and Bulgaria twice the number of Covid-19 deaths). Doesn’t seem very successful to me. Can you share your data?
Interesting point, the number of cases in the three countries were much closer that the death rates – but the Britons just weren’t dying as much. Makes you wonder why. Maybe it’s Ivermectin?
So I guess it all depends on how you define success: people not getting infected or not dying?
@Greg Perhaps lockdowns help:
https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-president-restrictions-november-5
blockquote>
I’m sorry Greg, but I can’t ‘provide me a reasonable explanation’ because I got stumped with your first assumption. I couldn’t see where ‘Romania and Bulgaria were so successful’, with DEATH RATES (emphasis mine).
You see that, Has! You keep spouting off how I am a narcissist that sees everyone as my intellectual inferior, but after I graciously laid down at the altar for David to slay me with his knowledge, all he could muster was a strawman. Has, please assist me in understanding how I am not rightful to feel superior!
@Greg,
All I asked you and your superior intellect to do was to define ‘successful’.
@Gerg: “I will leave this blog with my tail between my legs and never to be heard from again.”
Here’s a much better idea: instead of reveling in death and misery for your own adulation, go eat a fuking shotgun already you parasitic shit.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/morgues-fill-up-in-romania-and-bulgaria-amid-low-covid-vaccine-uptake
It’s not a truth until it is uttered by lord Fauci himself. You know better than that… I thought travel restrictions were racist though. Weird that our current anti-racist president went full racist though.
@Greg You really think that more infection a great think ? You seems to know lots of knowledge about omicron variant, what is your source ?
About f*king royally, there is Singapore data:
https://www.moh.gov.sg/
Why do you not speak about Singapore anymore ?
@Greg
But what abut ‘natural immunity’? Wasn’t that supposed to be better that vaccination? Why aren’t ‘naturally’ immune people saving Southern Africa?
South Africa has an estimated 32M ‘recovered’ =~3M tested cases and a ~8-fold under count. So this is almost twice the number of vaccinated 17M (partially and fully vaccinated).
We constantly hear that ‘natural immunity’ should be used in calculating population immunity. By this measure, South Africa has >80%, not <20%.
Why isn’t anyone arguing that we people with ‘natural’ immunity can still get infected – and infect others? Maybe this is a ‘failure’ of ‘natural immunity’?
David, your argument doesn’t make sense. 80% of South Africa wasn’t exposed at one shot and was subsequently infected. South Africans got gradually infected over two years and potentially 80% of them are now naturally immune. That they are seeing relatively less cases than Europe supports my argument that their immunity is superior. David, you may have well argued that because millions of people were infected with measles in the past, that proves natural immunity to measles was useless.
What is your argument – besides ‘vaccine bad’?
That’s it, thank you very much! Is there anything else?
PS: Why am I sensing that David is different!
@Greg South Africa infection rate:
COVID cases 3000000 population 60 million, infection rate 5%.
Greg, thank you for providing a fantastic example of ‘conformation bias’.
For you: ‘vaccinated people infected’ + ‘mild symptoms’ = ‘vaccine failure’.
Or it could be: ‘vaccinated people infected’ + ‘mild symptoms’ = ‘vaccine successful at prevention of severe disease’.
I don’t know, and nether do you (even if you think you do). I guess the question could be: if you’re wrong, how would you rather err? But I think we know the answer…
You know it.
This would be laughable if it wasn’t so damn sinful. So, Omicron proves that we should vaccinate Africa? The continent with the lowest vaccination rate and cases?
Should we vaccinate Africa and they start experiencing comparable surges in cases — and the will!- hell will once again come to them. Their pitiful healthcare is woefully incapable of handling cases at Europe’s level. One can only pray that they continue to refuse these talking heads ‘kind’ gestures.
https://www.wsav.com/news/coronavirus/omicron-brings-covid-19-vaccine-inequity-home-to-roost/
You really do ‘believe’ the official case/hospitalization/death numbers from African countries, don’t you? How naive can you be?
He apparently thinks that “Vanden” is a middle name or something. Just like painter Vincent Gogh.
More insights from the smartest man through all this….
https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog/mass-vaccination-will-push-sars-cov-2-spike-protein-beyond-omicron
Quoting Bossche….
It appears many, including myself, are confused about what Bossche is referring to as innate antibodies. Reflecting on another of his videos in which he mentioned that innate antibodies occur after cells become infected, he appears to be making a distinction between antibodies that are generated by antigen presenting cells at the humoral level through the MHC-2 process (Abs), and antibodies that are generated at the cell-mediated level through the MHC-1 process (innate Abs).
Being that both processes are in response to the same virus, I never considered the two antibodies would be different. I also thought that they were both adaptive responses.
The Khan video below is helpful in understanding the distinction.
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/human-biology/immunology/v/cytotoxic-t-cell-mhc-i-complexes
Bossche is also not conceding that cross-reactive T-cells and antibodies, as per Swadling et al and Abela et al, are also available to fight the infection. Remember that this is also a big bone of contention between him and Bhakdi. Without vaccination, it’s quite conceivable that the innate antibodies and cross-reactive antibodies and T-cells by themselves could stop a new strain such as Omicron if it indeed has escaped the vaccines. However, if it hasn’t, then the perils that Bossche described of the acquired antibodies out competing the other antibodies would stand.
Again, if Omicron has escaped the vaccines, then it has provided us a glorious new lease on life to do what we should have done in the first place: protect the elderly and let her rip! Not holding my breath though that you screw-ups will learn.
Quoting myself…
If pre-programmed CD8 T-cells that are triggered by infection through the MHC-1 complex produce antibodies, isn’t it fair to consider those antibodies non-specific, innate ones. Technically, those antibodies are not resulting from spefic training from the virus, as with those produced by the MHC-2 complex.
Bossche also goes on to argue that these short-lived innate antibodies from asymptomatic infection will not produce memory cells. It appears he is wrong here with the data suggesting otherwise.
He just told you that you’re going to die from all of this. Great footnote, though.
I’m no where near as knowledgeable as Bossche so from my lay common sense perspective it seems that Bossche is always on one side of this (perhaps for publicity or perhaps because he is a true believer or perhaps because he wants folks to apply caution) but I’d like to know whether there is an equal chance the vaccines cause selection (I hate the ’cause to mutate’ language as it sounds cartoonish to me since a virus is not living.) for variants that were also not dangerous even though more transmissible to the vaccinated. Indeed that seems distinctly possible with the new Omicron variant. Bossche is focused on the doomsday situation (and I’m no pro-mRNA vaxxer) nonetheless if vaccines do anything at all to reduce spread (also dubious but let’s say they do some modest % for the sake of argument) they could theoretically cause selection for new variants (the Bossche argument) but where he loses me is why would those variants necessarily be more deadly? Indeed in my (again lay) estimation they would be no more deadly than variants that occurred without the vaccine. Moreover the selection process should be accelerated if the vaccines are effective (outside of those they maim of course). And I’ve read some writings by virologists that generally speaking viral selections proceeds towards transmissibility and away from mortality (this makes sense as those who die can’t transmit). It would be interesting to know whether anyone more neutral studied the phenomenon Bossche is referring to and what their conclusions were.
Quoting myself…
Reflecting on Dr Vanden Bossche’s video with Dr MacMillan that I linked a few weeks ago, he discussed two infection scenarios for the unvaxxed child or young person. First, he spoke of asymptomatic infection where innate antibodies completely block the virus and preventing it from getting into cells. Next, he considers some cells getting infected and resulting in the production of spike antibodies. So, clearly, Vanden Bossche is indeed making a distinction between the MHC-1 antibodies, or, MHC-1 inspired antibodies, and the ‘innate antibodies’ that come before.
What are those ‘innate antibodies’ that he is considering then? Is Vanden Bossche suggesting phagocyte immune cells as innate antibodies? When he describes high affinity spike antibodies out competing innate antibodies in binding to the virus, is he suggesting that it is the innate phagocytes (macrophage, neutrophils, dendritic cells) that are getting out competed. I am reflecting on this while also thinking of that study that I linked, also a few weeks ago, reporting that mRNA vaccination was suppressing innate immunity as evidenced by decreased innate cytokines. Hhmmnn!
Dr Vanden Bossche, if you are listening, please clarify your ‘innate antibodies’!
Actually, Jlbatx, I saw Bossche, and Drs Malone andMacMillan in an interview, and Bossche corrected Dr Malone on this. He is not saying that these vaccine resistant strains will necessarily evolve to be more deadly, as in Ebola deadly, just more contagious and less amenable to the vaccines. The doomsday situation that he is envisioning is an emerging strain that renders all vaccines and vaccination effort useless, and with the vaccinated populous whose innate, natural immunity is also destroyed becoming hopeless preys, and even the unvaxxed being shafted from an unchecked virus overwhelming their immunity.
@Greg You will notice that Bossche said that infection would prevent new infection, caused by omicron variant.
Of course antibodies against new variants are different. gens are different, that is why we speak about a new variant.
CD8 cells are part of adaptive immunity. T cell receptors recognizing MHC + epitope are generated same way as antibodies.
@jtbax If you really go for common sense. you would notice that if there are more viruses circulating, there will be more mutations. Reducing virus load will reduce number of mutations. You know a way to reduce number of COVID cases, do you not ?
K, I found some info on Bossche’s natural antibodies…
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6384419/
More reflections on Bossche’s innate antibodies that he is suggesting is getting out competed by Spike antibodies.
So, indeed Bossche’s ‘innate antibodies’ are in reference to the toll-like receptors on phagocytes. Interestingly, Nussenzweig et al indeed confirmed that with mRNA vaccination these receptors are getting suppressed, or ‘down-regulated’ for Aarno.
The next Interesting inquiry is the consideration of how these innate receptors are getting suppressed. Are they getting suppressed because, as Bossche explains, they are getting out competed for binding by Spike antibodies? Or, are they getting suppressed intentionally by mRNA coding shutting them down as it attempts to deliver its payload?
Another doctor coming around to my thinking. As I recall, I was one of the first to suggest that a new strain that escapes the vaccine might not be a bad thing. I argued this over a month ago. I even challenged Bossche that this might not necessarily amount to doomsday, and I must say his most recent article that I linked seems to be suggesting that Omicron might just provide us with a new lease on life — and that’s if we don’t screw things up again by continuing the vaccines.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/omicron-variant-speed-end-pandemic-doctor-hemmati
Mother Nature must be shaking her head in disbelief, facepalm and all: ‘I keep trying to help the ignorant f’ers, but they always screw-up.’
Do you want everyone to be impressed by the fact that there are people who agree with you? You don’t usually see someone ‘name-drop’ without knowing the person’s name…
@David: Gerg just wants us to be jealous about all the great blowjobs he’s getting.
@Greg You really trust good behaviour of viruses ? They may kill you, you kniw.
Viruses wouldn’t dare kill Gerg. He’s too beautiful.
Everyone else who dies? That’s a sacrifice he is willing to make.
https://gizmodo.com/many-severe-covid-19-survivors-go-on-to-die-within-a-ye-1848144418
As I keep explaining, the mRNA vaccination train is bound to end at Station Failure. Covid rebounding in Israel after their serial boosting is assurance of that.
Can you show the data? Hard to know what you’re talking about these days…
@David: “Can you show the data?”
Gerg’ll show you his ass, which is exactly the same thing as far as he’s concerned.
“Hard to know what you’re talking about these days…”
It’s brown and torrential, if you haven’t yet figured it yourself.
This is, of course, a false statement
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/
Perhaps readers here are new to me. I will leave Narad to attest that I have had a long history. For me, the Covid vaccination blunder was foretold. I expected nothing less from you ‘professionals’ who continue throw kids under a bus and run over them — and continue to lie about it!
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-12-autism-jersey-year-old-children.html
What this have do with vaccines ?
An interesting quote:
“We no longer see as many differences in prevalence by race. Black and Hispanic children have the same ASD prevalence as white children in multiple states, and many ADDM sites show that autism prevalence is no longer highest among children from affluent communities.”
Up-thread, I wrote this…
And, here is Hotez agreeing…
I am not bringing up the quote to toot my own horn. Well, maybe just a little:)
The point is that everyone is screaming about Omicron, but the devil is already here. It’s Delta that is responsible for over 99% of worldwide infections.
And, get this, mRNA vaccination has no answer for it! That should be the true headline worthy of screaming.
The vaccine cannot be tweaked to handle Delta, and the argument that it’s successful at preventing sickness and deaths is exceedingly deceptive. It’s saving cases from sickness and deaths, but those are cases occurring because mRNA vaccines cannot stop them, and, perhaps far worse, they are umpairing other immune responses from stopping them. Now, where is the success in all this?!
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/why-omicron-and-delta-could-be-a-twin-epidemic.html
Vaccine efficiency against delta variant is well known:
Reis BY, Barda N, Leshchinsky M, Kepten E, Hernán MA, Lipsitch M, Dagan N, Balicer RD. Effectiveness of BNT162b2 Vaccine against Delta Variant in Adolescents. N Engl J Med. 2021 Nov 25;385(22):2101-2103. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc2114290. Epub 2021 Oct 20. PMID: 34670036; PMCID: PMC8552532.
Perhaps you should actually read some papers, then you would know vaccine effectiviness
“Why Delta and Omicron Could Be…”
You seem to have overlooked the words “could be” in your link. In other words, it’s all speculation at this point in time. You seem so keen to claim victory before the evidence is even in. In the mean time, there is no evidence after 4 weeks that the omicron variant is causing any more morbidity and mortality than the delta variant and some early evidence that it is less.
The virologists are mostly cautiously optimistic. Let’s hope their optimism proves correct, and that the death and destruction gleefully predicted by the antivaxxers proves false. They have caused enough death and destruction already by spreading vaccine hesitancy with their misinformation, exaggerations and outright lies 😉
Hhmmnn…
And…
So, after poisoning a substantial portion of the world, the virus still won? Never in my wildest, antivaxx dreams did I expect you guys to fail so miserably.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/omicron-may-challenge-vaccine-protection-224541319.html
“Alex Sigal tested 14 blood samples from 12 people ”
14 blood samples. 12 people.
Wow, I’m completely underwhelmed.
“All 12 people were vaccinated”
Were they double-dose vaccinated with the second dose more than 2 weeks before the test? And what about the effect of the booster shot? Especially as that is now the recommendation. You know, because the booster increases antibody levels by a factor of about 11.
“Mikael Dolsten … … he’d be worried … would make him concerned …”
How does that justify your conclusion that “the virus still won”.
Setting aside antibody levels, what about protection from severe disease, ICU admission, artificial ventilation, and death. Do you still think the virus won if the vaccines succeeded in reducing those parameters?
“after poisoning a substantial portion of the world”
I think you mean:
After preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths in the USA alone, and preventing many orders of magnitude more hospitalisations, ICU admissions, and ventilated patients, it is possible the we may now need a variant specific vaccine if, indeed, it turns out, by looking at more than the antibody levels of 12 people, that morbidtiy and mortality rates start increasing (for which, BTW, there is still no evidence after more than 4 weeks since the first known case)
“Never in my wildest, antivaxx dreams did I expect you guys to fail so miserably”
Hmmm…I can’t remember having anything to do with coming up with the vaccine, but I sure am glad those scientists put in 12 hours days and 7 days a week for over 12 months to help save my ass. But, yeah, if they saved your ass as well, I would possibly count that as a fail 😉
Reflect further, half of the subjects were essentially boosted by natural infection, and it was still a 40-fold drop. Imagine the drop for just the vaccine! ‘Partial escape’? I dread imagining what a full one would’ve been like.
And, what does this ‘partial escape’ amount to? Well, nature has found a way to defeat the vaccines and its accompanying antigenic sin. Folks once again will have a chance to gain a broad breath of antibodies from mild Omicron. They will be much better protected down the road. Yet, rather than concede this and wave the white flag, the call is to continue with the dangerous failed experiment. The dangerous experiment being now pointless, and, for that reason, all the more dangerous.
All this based on a study of just 12 patients.
In the mean time…
It’s been over 4 weeks since the first case of omicron and there’s still not even a hint that the sky is about to fall in. Omicron is probably more transmissible than delta and there is probably a degree of immune escape but the vaccines seem to be holding out against morbidity and mortality.
Not bad for a vaccine not specifically designed for this variant.
I’d say that that’s a lot to garner from four pages (PDF). But Gerg uses the crappiest news aggregator availiable and leaves it at that.
Your unabashed cheer-leading for the gene therapies leads me to believe that you have an economic interest, even if small and remote. When I see such hard, hard support – with no variation in favor of considering alternatives, I always think of the change that may come in 2022. With 19,000 CDC-recognized “vax” deaths so far and clear cardiac damage that may just be the tip of an iceberg, I see you and others that are unwavering in support of Pharma capitalism crawling to find recognition when and if the current human trials result in the “unforeseen” disaster. I listen to TWiV just to hear smart people continue to paint themselves into smaller and smaller corners, completely unaware that evidence of the grandest mistake in history in leaking out everywhere.
Ah, the pharma shill gambit, favorite ad hominem of antivax cranks everywhere.
Well, “Jimbeaux,” I do not have a financial interest, not even a small and remote one. But the grifters promoting COVID antivax disinformation (e.g., Brett Weinstein, Joe Rogan, America’s Frontline Doctors) sure do have an economic interest in what they promote. Oddly enough, that doesn’t appear to bother you. I wonder why…
“You support vaccines to prevent a disease in the middle of a pandemic that’s killing people! You have to be a shill.”
Anyone who follows that chain of logic is probably too far gone for facts to help.
Note that the person also misrepresents VAERS reports as confirmed deaths from vaccines – which is blatantly untrue.
Another interesting Omicron development…
Just about all the initial Omicron travel cases were vaxxed individuals. Explaining this, the excuse given was that being fully vaxxed was a requirement of many countries. Yet, when we look at the community transmission in South Africa, and, now the US, a greater percentage of vaxxed individuals are coming down with Omicron relative to their numbers. Again, this can be seen as testimony to the strength of natural immunity.
https://metro.co.uk/2021/12/12/covid-omicron-symptom-seen-in-90-of-us-patients-identified-15757851/
That’s impressively stupid even for Gerg. I wonder if he’ll figure it out.
Narad, 29% of the US population is completely unvaxxed, but they are accounting for 19% of the Omicron cases. Yes, the data is suggesting that Omicron is finding the vaxxed more.
Reflecting that a lot of unvaxxed individuals were likely naturally exposed, it shouldn’t be surprising that they have broad, cross-reactive antibodies to deal with a new strain. This is in contrast to vaxxed individuals whose Spike imprinting — largely specific to the original virus — is impeding them from mounting a broad response to deal with the new strain.
https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/
According to this article, even in Denmark the finding is Omicron is preferring the vaxxed.
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/omicron-variant-prefers-the-vaxxed
Another report, Narad….
‘Most cases of Omicron in the US appear in fully vaxxed individuals.’ Hhmmnn! So, will Fauci now recommend that the vaxxed only hang with the unvaxxed for the vaxxed protection?
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/dr-fauci-says-tough-tell-205317358.html
It’s apparently in retrograde again.
And, in case anyone missed my earlier post, I’ll ask again. Why is Botswana, the epicenter of Omicron, to this date only reporting 25 cases, yet Omicron is on the verge of becoming the dominant strain in the UK in just days? Could Botswana’s president statement below shed some light on this ‘mystery’?
https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/rest-of-africa/malawi-records-3-cases-of-omicron-3647704
Ohh how saucy are you!, I suspect that when it comes to these vaccines anyone who queries your assertions or raises the concerning potential flaws will automatically be labeled as an antivaxxer and served up spaghetti.
“potential flaws”
Many of those have been postulated. I am more concerned about “actual flaws”, which are few and exceptionally rare.
“labeled as an antivaxxer and served up spaghetti”
Okay, I hereby label you an anti-vaxxer. Please provide a mailing address for the spaghetti. Don’t worry, we use plastic liners for the sauce.
I don’t buy it, Kathy. The people raising these objections are almost all antivaxxers. Anything will do when it comes to vaccines, even when it has been clearly explained why the concerns raised have no foundation, they continue to spread fear and uncertainty.
@Kathy
“I suspect that when it comes to these vaccines anyone who queries your assertions or raises the concerning potential flaws will automatically be labeled as an antivaxxer”
Yes, that is one of their tricks. They will also say you are not a medical doctor therefore you have no right to an opinion. And, finally, they will call you a moron. They have no intelligent arguments, they simply repeat whatever Fauci declares. Call any expression of skepticism a conspiracy theory, and insist they are on the side of Science.
If you are expecting rational informative discussions here, you will be disappointed.
@Indie rebel, I was indeed rather hoping for rational, intelligent and genuine discussion. But I suspect sadly that you are right and that this is not really what is on offer here. I do wish that it was possible to raise concerns over what is a potentially flawed and unsafe vaccine roll out without it being immediately shot down with the predicable antivaxxer meme. I feel that it is an increasingly annoying deflective safety valve and used to prevent addressing the many Elephants in the room when it comes to both COVID and the use/necessity for a mass roll out of experimental mRNA vaccine technology. It seams that as skeptics we are at least in good company. As both the BMJ and the Lancet are beginning to question the safety and scientific data of these vaccines too.
You are right!, it is the actual flaws that should be of concern to us. They are in fact very concerning. I would be interested to hear why you believe that this mRNA vaccine is so wonderful. Even without delving into the deeper issues of damaging disruption to the immune system response. There seems very little I can find to recommend there use. Thank you for the antivaxxer award. Though, it is so freely given out these days it is loosing all actual meaning and becoming laughably predictable. It is fine you are welcome to keep the spaghetti.
I too hope for intelligent, rational and genuine discussion,
So please tell us more about the actual flaws of these vaccines.
We’ll be happy to talk about them.
But we do like to see facts, evidence, and genuine scientific research.
Also be aware that science starts from an assumption that all participants are telling the truth. Their claims then get appropriate and often critical evaluation.
And we are more worried about a disease that is causing long term harm to millions than speculation about possible harms that might show up a year or two or more in the future that have never been seen in vaccine yet.
SQUIRRELELITE
But we do like to see facts, evidence, and genuine scientific research.
When it comes to mRNA vaccines facts are in short supply because most of what is being debated is academic. The data to determine factually how safe the mRNA vaccines may prove to be is unavailable for any long term understanding simply because it is not available.
And we are more worried about a disease that is causing long term harm to millions than speculation about possible harms that might show up a year or two or more in the future that have never been seen in vaccine yet.
What is becoming apparent is that these vaccines do not prevent infection or infecting others. Nor do they offer any real long term protection for the individual. It would seem that it will be necessary to top up every three months if not more frequently to maintain efficacy. There is no data to determine if this will be safe as trials did not factor for this. But with each booster shot there is an increased risk of if it triggering immune enhancement syndrome or development of the little understood phenomenon of imprinting. It is also not known how vaccines will effect those with unstable immune systems and cytokine release syndrome. The fact is no one can actually be sure if the vaccines will prove to be of enough benefit to out way the risks. Especially now COViD is better understood and may naturally be mutating to become less severe.
Also be aware that science starts from an assumption that all participants are telling the truth. Their claims then get appropriate and often critical evaluation.
Much has been done to promote these vaccines and there is huge vested interest in promoting them. But as more and more concerns are being aired and many are beginning to question both the efficacy and safety aspects of them. Though sadly any concerns and research that calls them in to question is being met with anti vax conspiracy labeling and those raising them are cancelled and castigated. How is this helping to assume that all participants are telling the truth?.
Though it may not be proven that the spike protein can trigger cancers. There is however genuine research showing that they do trigger cancer enhancement. With growing evidence that those with managed late stage cancers or in remission have seen a worsening or a return of their cancer shortly after vaccination. This could be due to immune cells getting redirected away from fighting cancer to instead mount vaccine immune response. But as cancer patients are seen as one of the groups who should benefit from vaccination to prevent COVID this is not good news and may well instead of protecting them speed up their demise.
As with the vulnerable elderly who were supposed to benefit most through vaccination. They may be at similar risk to the vaccines as they are to COVID putting extra strain on already week systems. This may speed up their demise. Though this is dismissed as of no importance this was not how COVID was seen.
Though the above concerns may not be substantiated this does not mean that they do not exist or that they should be dismissed without due consideration. Risk should always be assessed and measured with the benefit but as the purported benefits of vaccinations is waning. The risks and concerns of the side effects are growing.
@Kathy,
Good to hear from you.
I was particularly interested in the study just published by CDC yesterday.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7101a4.htm?s_cid=mm7101a4_e&ACSTrackingID=USCDC_921-DM72953&ACSTrackingLabel=This%20Week%20in%20MMWR%20-%20Vol.%2071,%20January%207,%202022&deliveryName=USCDC_921-DM72953
@Kathy
“As both the BMJ and the Lancet are beginning to question the safety and scientific data of these vaccines too.”
And so are highly qualified MDs like Robert Malone and Peter McCullough. They have been banned, ridiculed and debunked, simply because they question certain aspects of the official story.
They risked their careers and are constantly attacked. As highly successful medical professionals, they had absolutely NO motivation to take the “wrong” side politically.
Some scientists and physicians care more about discovering truth and helping people than about being politically correct.
There is no rational discussion at this blog. You will see all the standard official drug company marketing information, seldom with any actual evidence cited. Mostly just a lot of angry yelling. And if you dare to disagree, they just slap the typical labels on you — “troll,” “antivaxxer,” “conspiracy theorist,” and, don’t forget their favorite label “MORON.”
No, they have been ridiculed and debunked because they promote pseudoscience, bad science, lies, and ridiculous conspiracy theories. They richly deserved all the criticism.
And WHY would they do that? Do you really believe there is Science on the one hand, and Pseudoscience on the other?
I can understand why Fauci-Gates would push inadequately tested vaccines. I can’t understand who Malone and McCullough would jeopardize their careers and reputations just to promote “ridiculous conspiracy theories.”
I think it’s much more likely that YOU are interested in promoting the status quo, and keeping your career and funding.
Provide proof that the COVID vaccines are “inadequately tested”.
IR: “There is no rational discussion at this blog.”
Statements like this would make you think that Indie is the unchallenged Master of Projection, except that Antonio Brown (late of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) recently complained to reporters, “You guys is all about drama.”
I take it back. Mike Adams is still reigning champion. His latest complaint about Covid-19 vaccines includes the following:
“We are now witnessing the early signs of the dreaded vaccine zombie apocalypse:… animalistic lower brain stem lunacy.”…
The world is full of morons who are, in a very real way, cognitively retarded. Part of that retardation deprives these individuals of the ability to understand basic concepts in math, probability or risk assessment.”
Extra protective irony meter shielding is available from Amazon at only $15.99 per square inch, but there are no guarantees.
@BillyJoe
” The people raising these objections are almost all antivaxxers. Anything will do when it comes to vaccines, even when it has been clearly explained why the concerns raised have no foundation, they continue to spread fear and uncertainty.”
And they do this for no reason, right? Just to be ornery. And the “fact-checkers” clearly explain why anyone who questions the official story is an antivaxxer conspiracy theorist.
And because they call themselves “fact-checkers” we KNOW that everything they say is true.
“And they do this for no reason, right? ”
I don’t believe you don’t know the answer to your question. But maybe you are as clueless as you seem by asking that question. Maybe you are clueless to the various political, religious, financial and other psychological motivations behind what people do.
One of America’s most notorious antivaxxers made enough money from selling supplements that he was able to retire in his early fifties. This ex-practising doctor is now worth an estimated $100 million. Others are just contrarians. If the mainstream says yes, they say no. Some love the notoriety, fame, and publicity. Some are cranks who crave to go down in history.
“And the fact-checkers…”
It’s not a surprise that fact-checkers are being attacked. They have exposed the misinformation and outright lies of the antivaxxers, and other science deniers. If you have no answer then attack the source.
@Kathy
A lot of people, maybe most, have a deep need to trust the medical authorities. They want to feel safe. But some of us care more about finding out what is really going on. What is the use of feeling safe if it’s based on deception?
It is worth reading RFK Jr.’s book, which is only $3 for the kindle version at Amazon. Unfortunately, it is very long (about 900 pages), and extremely detailed, so most won’t have the patience to get through it.
But for anyone who is skeptical about Fauci-Gates and their vaccine empire, it is definitely worth the effort. Maybe not everything in the book is true — there is not a human being on earth who is never confused or deceived. But RFK Jr. is an excellent writer, and his story is fascinating (if also horrifying). He does not come across as a conspiracy theorist at all! I have never believed any of the conspiracy theorists, or any of the extremists on any topic. But this book has me convinced that power and corruption are now a very big part of our medical agencies, including the WHO, CDC, FDA, NIH, NIAID. They are all connected with the drug industry, and with research universities, mainstream news, and social media.
Just the fact that we KNOW censorship is going on should make us skeptical. But people like Orac think we need MORE censorship, not less. He thinks anyone who questions his beloved narratives is dumb as dirt, and/or malicious and financially motivated.
Well, each side looks at the other that way. I believe that whenever there is an intense controversy, like we have now, there is some confusion and error on both sides. That’s why I read pro-vaccines blogs like this one, and others, and also vaccine skeptics like RFK Jr.
“Orac…thinks anyone who questions his beloved narratives is dumb as dirt, and/or malicious and financially motivated.”
Or are so in love with their discredited claims and the idea of being one of the anointed few who know the Real Truth and bravely bear up under persecution, that they never question their beliefs or motivations, no matter how often they’re hit by a clue-by-four.
It doesn’t have to be either/or. Some are all of the above.
The journal has posted an ‘Expression of Concern’, stating “One of the authors has raised concerns regarding the methodology employed in the study, the conclusions drawn and the insufficient consideration of laboratory staff and resources” (https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/14/1/12/htm).
[…] those receiving it much more susceptible to cancer. That claim was deceptive. Indeed, the study was very poor quality and had no biological relevance to human cancer risk, although it did contribute to the fascist […]
[…] receiving it much more susceptible to cancer. That claim was deceptive. Indeed, the study was very poor quality and had no biological relevance to human cancer risk, although it did contribute to the fascist […]