Mass vaccination against Omicron will take away our very last opportunity to prevent SARS-CoV-2 from making a natural selection in favor of hosts who have preserved a fully functional innate immune defense.
Ok. So I think what you are saying is that omicron has mutated so far from the original spike that at this point the vaxxed S-antibodies no longer outcompete the vaxxed innate immune system, enabling it to give the vaxxed sterilizing immunity to omicron.
And that if Fauci, Gates, & Pharmas & governments back off, there is chance to get off this merry-go-round of vaxes for life until they kill you.
Yes, and that we will of course take another bite at the apple by re-unleashing Covid by making omicron specific vaccine and mass vaccinating children 0-4. This merry go round will of course turn deadlier because of our drug addiction to unscientific vaccine application.
I'm no immunologist but I don't think Omicron has mutated to a point that S-antibodies will not recognize it. Remember that SARS1 antibodies recognized SARS-CoV2 and there was only a 70% similarity. Even with these 30+ mutations, Omicron is still way over 90% in similarity to Delta. The problem is that the S-antibodies do not work well against Omicron but still get produced. This is Original Antigenic Sin. Would be interested to hear Geert's views on OAS as a possible outcome.
Does "S-antibodies can no longer *outcompete* innate immune system" equal "not *recognize* the spike protein?"
I was thinking specifically of this statement:
"By evolving more and more resistance to S-directed, neutralizing antibodies (Abs), SARS-CoV-2 is increasingly setting free the host’s innate Abs (as they’re no longer suppressed)."
It is the vaxxed who's innate Abs have been suppressed, not the unvaxxed. So I think Geert is referring to vaxxed hosts here, & is hinting at an off-ra p for them. His next article seems to affirm this.
I think he has always considered OAS as a likely outcome. This is the 1st ray of hope I have seen from him.
That said, I think its too soon, by a few weeks, to be sure what is going on. US & Euro populations are very different from SA, in terms of vax levels & overweight/comorbidities. It may lose its "mildness* when it hits our vaxxed pop.
The fact that they are going in precisely the opposite direction on this is, at this point, unsurprising. See: South Africa approves Pfizer booster.
My only hope at this point is that their narrative (that there could be no possible downside to increasing vaccination and boosters at this point even if they are not really effective) is becoming obviously absurd even to the early faithful. I do not think their narrative is going to change.
"Given the continued ignorance and lack of understanding of the pandemic & detrimental consequences of mass vaccination by public and global health authorities, the chances that the disaster I’ve previously alluded to can be prevented are slim "
You are being too generous. I don't believe public and global health authorities are ignorant or lack understanding. They are just plain evil.
Some experts think Omicron seems like (another) lab leak of a gain of function experiment. This time, to create a mutant strain that could survive against convalescent plasma and monoclonal antibodies.
Dear Geert, thank you for what you are doing. I must confess that I still find your writing a bit opaque: you are apparently targeting a lay audience, but in my case at least, you are assuming too much prior knowledge.
As an intelligent expert, you elide details which are obvious, boring and repetitive, but which I get stuck on.
Please take this as constructive criticism: I believe what your saying deserves a wider audience but right now that belief is based as much on intuition as on understanding.
Might it be an idea for me to send you all my "stupid" questions, and that could get turned into a reference article which you could refer people to?
I’m a little confused. Are you saying that Omicron is the best option for a vaxxed person to get infected and hence have sterilizing immunity? Thereby allowing them to get off the hamster wheel of injections?
What about the unvaxxed and not previously infected? I’m assuming the highly infectious Omicron should just be a mild sniffles for them.
There are plenty of stories about how the unvaccinated have a higher hospitalization rate than the unvaccinated, including for Omicron. This is also what we would expect from first principles. Examples:
Ending vaccination campaigns wouldn't stop viral evolution any more than universally vaccinating would (given our inability to do that in a short enough timeframe, and given reservoirs in animals). We'll be living with it; we should give our immune systems practice before they encounter the real virus, which is what vaccines do.
That journal illustrates clear bias. Saying that's it's peer reviewed is amusing, given that the editorial board includes NO epidemiologists, but does include lawyers "Representing the Vaccine Injured in All 50 States"
Regardless, neither of the mRNA vaccines cause persistent production of spike proteins, so at most this would be an explanation of the increased risk of myocarditis due to vaccination. That risk is still much lower than the risk of myocarditis due to infection with covid-19.
Comparing myocarditis post-covid-19 or post-vaccine: For this, I'd exclude research that's fishing expeditions. If you do population surveillance, you'll find undiagnosed cases; so the alarmist papers about post-covid-19 cases made invalid assumptions.
In terms of the basic correlation -- hospital-identified myocarditis in patients diagnosed with covid-19 was 0.146%, vs a baseline of 0.009% for patients not diagnosed with covid-19 -- supporting the assertion that acute infection is associated with an increased rate of myocarditis: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm
I believe it was Dr. Peter McCullough who said that the myocarditis caused by the Covid vaccines is far more serious and damaging than the kind caused by natural Covid infection.
Ending vaccination won't stop evolution, but it will continue randomly. Mass vaccination will focus the evolution TOWARDS vaccine escape variants. Vaccine escape variants will survive most easily in a vaccinated infectee, whereas all other variants will get quickly neutralised.
On the flip side, more infections => more chances to involve. Reducing the number of human cases (through vaccination) would reduce the opportunity for evolution within human hosts (and evolutionary forces are likely different in animal reservoirs).
However, eventual waning of immunity with means that neither natural infections nor vaccines will provide permanent protection against endemic transmission -- and such transmission offers the opportunity to evolve towards immune escape.
The dynamics are more complicated, and neither of us can claim with confidence that we know what's most likely to lead to evolution of more variants, given the particulars of human society.
But Omicron is might well have evolved in a single person (possibly immunocompromised) ... claims that this is because of vaccination or because of not enough vaccination are both claims informed by ideology rather than science.
1st premise: If hospitals are being overloaded, this is a problem. However, you rephrased that in a pejorative way that I avoid (even when dealing with people who see eye-to-eye with me on the value of vaccinations, I don't see value in attacking those who aren't vaccinated). To date, all the evidence I've seen indicates that widespread vaccination reduces hospital overload.
2nd premise: Consider the logical extreme of this claim -- if viral evolution was always possible of producing viral escape, wouldn't chicken pox, polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, & etc all have evolved to escape our antibodies? The underlying question is: can the virus evolve rapidly (flu; HIV*; ...) to escape antibodies? If so, neither natural nor vaccine-derived immunity is likely to be permanent. (And it may not be permanent anyway -- as illustrated by how varicella produces chicken pox and then shingles decades later.)
I don't accept the premise that vaccination has no effect on the attack rate or the length of illness; since I think vaccination reduces both, it reduces the opportunity to evolve.
I agree that vaccination adds selective pressure, but not that statement is not enough to answer the question of whether or not vaccination will produce more or fewer variants.
(And so far, it hasn't appeared that highly vaccinated places were the origin for most variants of concern.)
3rd premise: There are many claims here I don't accept. I'll focus on one, to save us both the tediousness of arguing over everything:
What is your source for the claim that lipid-packed RNA circulates (in a functional form) for 15 months? If true, at this point it should be easy to identify spike-production months after the last vaccination for most people who are vaccinated.
* there's a new vaccine candidate for HIV, but ...
1st premise: hospitals aren't overloaded where I am. What I saw out of Italy and NYC was enough to make me take notice, though. We should learn from others' mistakes, not repeat them.
An interesting historical article about the vagaries of "herd immunity" -- the people of St. Kilda had regular infections every time a boat visited, presumably due to viruses which were in circulation outside the island: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19227604/ . The population was small enough that the disease would go through all the people (hosts) and then die off. It is unclear if subsequent reinfection was due to viral drift, alternate viruses, or declining immune response ... but I do know we can have multiple infections from the same virus through our lives. E.g. when he was young, my son got sick (I'm pretty sure it was RSV; scary when it produces bronchiolitis) repeatedly until we stopped bringing him to chlorinated pools.
I suspect we don't agree on enough basic facts to have a productive discussion, though.
3rd premise: I skimmed the purported document (which is obviously from a 3rd party). I found discussion of half lives, but no numbers which I can map to the expectation that the mRNA vaccines are still circulating at 15 months. Which page are you looking at?
...trying to reduce this to a sound bite (if possible)...
immunization (specific) stunts development of ‘first responder’ (innate) immunity, especially in kids & especially during pandemic... resulting in delayed, deficient (innate) immune response to future mutations of the pathogen... and also clears the field (suppressing innate) for further mutations...
It's still too early to assert that Omicron is less virulent -- we just don't have enough data. If it really is, depending on how much less virulent, it might be a good thing.
But there appears to be at least partial cross-protection, both for immunity derived from infection and immunity derived from vaccination. By a similar token, there's some degree of immune escape -- again for both vaccinated individuals and those who've recovered.
Regardless, natural infection does not provide perfect protection even against the same disease (just as with vaccines) -- it's possible to get the same coronavirus multiple times in your life, as neutralizing antibodies wane.
If the vaccine antibodies have waned to nothing and no more shots arw taken by an individual, Covid-naive person, are OAS and ADE still a greater threat to that person if they get infected than they would be if that person was never jabbed?
I honestly believe that people in the USA are waking up . With my credentials BSPharm and PharmD, I have been educating many through word of mouth or social platform ( Twitter ) that is in now in locked position due to risk of being banned . I educate people about proper nutrition and take the supplements recommended by Dr. Zelenko who was banned from social media . My family including elders close to 90 only took the Pfizer series in January of 2021. Soon after news broke out and I began my research . We carry a pulse oximeter ; make sure our Vitamin D is in high 60s; 1000mg Quercetin ; 1500mg Liposomal Vitamin C ; Patented AREDS2 which contains 50mg zinc per serving ( OTC for macular degeneration ) Our oxygen saturation is always in the mid 90’s . I happened to cross people who are now triple vaxxed . They wanted their readings as I carry it with me at all times . 3 readings done . All readings came back at 89. Is this a coincidence , I can’t really say, but the lady tells me she gets colds all the time now . With warriors such as yourself , the world is pushing back . The mandate failed to pass in the Senate . We don’t know what the President will do . Thank you !
Ok. So I think what you are saying is that omicron has mutated so far from the original spike that at this point the vaxxed S-antibodies no longer outcompete the vaxxed innate immune system, enabling it to give the vaxxed sterilizing immunity to omicron.
And that if Fauci, Gates, & Pharmas & governments back off, there is chance to get off this merry-go-round of vaxes for life until they kill you.
Is that about it?
Yes, and that we will of course take another bite at the apple by re-unleashing Covid by making omicron specific vaccine and mass vaccinating children 0-4. This merry go round will of course turn deadlier because of our drug addiction to unscientific vaccine application.
And I'm taking today's article to mean "Yes."
I'm no immunologist but I don't think Omicron has mutated to a point that S-antibodies will not recognize it. Remember that SARS1 antibodies recognized SARS-CoV2 and there was only a 70% similarity. Even with these 30+ mutations, Omicron is still way over 90% in similarity to Delta. The problem is that the S-antibodies do not work well against Omicron but still get produced. This is Original Antigenic Sin. Would be interested to hear Geert's views on OAS as a possible outcome.
Lol, I'm not an immunologist either.
Does "S-antibodies can no longer *outcompete* innate immune system" equal "not *recognize* the spike protein?"
I was thinking specifically of this statement:
"By evolving more and more resistance to S-directed, neutralizing antibodies (Abs), SARS-CoV-2 is increasingly setting free the host’s innate Abs (as they’re no longer suppressed)."
It is the vaxxed who's innate Abs have been suppressed, not the unvaxxed. So I think Geert is referring to vaxxed hosts here, & is hinting at an off-ra p for them. His next article seems to affirm this.
I think he has always considered OAS as a likely outcome. This is the 1st ray of hope I have seen from him.
That said, I think its too soon, by a few weeks, to be sure what is going on. US & Euro populations are very different from SA, in terms of vax levels & overweight/comorbidities. It may lose its "mildness* when it hits our vaxxed pop.
The fact that they are going in precisely the opposite direction on this is, at this point, unsurprising. See: South Africa approves Pfizer booster.
My only hope at this point is that their narrative (that there could be no possible downside to increasing vaccination and boosters at this point even if they are not really effective) is becoming obviously absurd even to the early faithful. I do not think their narrative is going to change.
"Given the continued ignorance and lack of understanding of the pandemic & detrimental consequences of mass vaccination by public and global health authorities, the chances that the disaster I’ve previously alluded to can be prevented are slim "
You are being too generous. I don't believe public and global health authorities are ignorant or lack understanding. They are just plain evil.
and they just cleared booster for 16-17 years old
We will just boost ourselves to heaven at this rate.
Or hell
Makes me want to vomit
Some experts think Omicron seems like (another) lab leak of a gain of function experiment. This time, to create a mutant strain that could survive against convalescent plasma and monoclonal antibodies.
1. https://twitter.com/DrLiMengYAN1/status/1466623050024058883
2. https://twitter.com/MichaelWorobey/status/1464325657861574659
The Darkhorse podcast on Odysee talked about this too
Dear Geert, thank you for what you are doing. I must confess that I still find your writing a bit opaque: you are apparently targeting a lay audience, but in my case at least, you are assuming too much prior knowledge.
As an intelligent expert, you elide details which are obvious, boring and repetitive, but which I get stuck on.
Please take this as constructive criticism: I believe what your saying deserves a wider audience but right now that belief is based as much on intuition as on understanding.
Might it be an idea for me to send you all my "stupid" questions, and that could get turned into a reference article which you could refer people to?
Just an idea,
I’m a little confused. Are you saying that Omicron is the best option for a vaxxed person to get infected and hence have sterilizing immunity? Thereby allowing them to get off the hamster wheel of injections?
What about the unvaxxed and not previously infected? I’m assuming the highly infectious Omicron should just be a mild sniffles for them.
There are plenty of stories about how the unvaccinated have a higher hospitalization rate than the unvaccinated, including for Omicron. This is also what we would expect from first principles. Examples:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/omicron-variant-children-south-africa/ ("Rates of COVID-19 among hospitalized younger children in South Africa under five "is now second highest and second only to the incidence in those over 60.")
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/12/report-south-africas-omicron-hot-spot-spurs-cautious-optimism ("Of 38 patients in COVID-19 wards, 24 were unvaccinated, 6 were vaccinated, and 8 had an unknown status. And, of 9 patients with COVID-19–related pneumonia, 8 (including 1 child) were unvaccinated.")
Ending vaccination campaigns wouldn't stop viral evolution any more than universally vaccinating would (given our inability to do that in a short enough timeframe, and given reservoirs in animals). We'll be living with it; we should give our immune systems practice before they encounter the real virus, which is what vaccines do.
Unfortunately, the spike protein is toxic: https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/23/51. Mass-vax during a pandemic is like a dog chasing its tail.
That journal illustrates clear bias. Saying that's it's peer reviewed is amusing, given that the editorial board includes NO epidemiologists, but does include lawyers "Representing the Vaccine Injured in All 50 States"
https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/about/editorialTeam
Regardless, neither of the mRNA vaccines cause persistent production of spike proteins, so at most this would be an explanation of the increased risk of myocarditis due to vaccination. That risk is still much lower than the risk of myocarditis due to infection with covid-19.
1. Not my field, but the median appears to be 600 minutes in humans ( http://book.bionumbers.org/how-fast-do-rnas-and-proteins-degrade/ ). 2. A few weeks. ( https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/where-mrna-vaccines-and-spike-proteins-go ) ; 3. ribosomes. I've read people hypothesizing that LINE or SINE genes can integrate genes for the spike protein, but no evidence of this happening, let alone at scale.
Comparing myocarditis post-covid-19 or post-vaccine: For this, I'd exclude research that's fishing expeditions. If you do population surveillance, you'll find undiagnosed cases; so the alarmist papers about post-covid-19 cases made invalid assumptions.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34341797/ (see
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocarditis-is-more-common-after-covid-19-infection-than-vaccination/ for a write up for a lay audience) does an analysis based on data from hospitals, focused on young people, finding that the rate of myocarditis in 3 months following illness was ~450/million, or around 6x the rate estimated elsewhere for vaccines ( ~66.7/million; this is higher than the overall population incidence because of the age group).
In terms of the basic correlation -- hospital-identified myocarditis in patients diagnosed with covid-19 was 0.146%, vs a baseline of 0.009% for patients not diagnosed with covid-19 -- supporting the assertion that acute infection is associated with an increased rate of myocarditis: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7035e5.htm
Both https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2784800 and https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110737 show a non-zero rate of myocarditis which is well below the 66.7/million rate above.
I believe it was Dr. Peter McCullough who said that the myocarditis caused by the Covid vaccines is far more serious and damaging than the kind caused by natural Covid infection.
'There are plenty of stories about how the unvaccinated have a higher hospitalization rate than the unvaccinated...'
Is this what you intended to write, or is there one too many 'un's' in there? If so, which is it?
There was an error; I mean to write that there are stories about how the unvaccinated have a higher hospitalization rate than the *vaccinated*.
Ending vaccination won't stop evolution, but it will continue randomly. Mass vaccination will focus the evolution TOWARDS vaccine escape variants. Vaccine escape variants will survive most easily in a vaccinated infectee, whereas all other variants will get quickly neutralised.
On the flip side, more infections => more chances to involve. Reducing the number of human cases (through vaccination) would reduce the opportunity for evolution within human hosts (and evolutionary forces are likely different in animal reservoirs).
However, eventual waning of immunity with means that neither natural infections nor vaccines will provide permanent protection against endemic transmission -- and such transmission offers the opportunity to evolve towards immune escape.
The dynamics are more complicated, and neither of us can claim with confidence that we know what's most likely to lead to evolution of more variants, given the particulars of human society.
But Omicron is might well have evolved in a single person (possibly immunocompromised) ... claims that this is because of vaccination or because of not enough vaccination are both claims informed by ideology rather than science.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/12/06/omicron-evolution-coronavirus-possibly-one-person/8795603002/?gnt-cfr=1
I wish I could edit posts. More chances to evolve...
"Vaccination reduces not the number of cases."
Citation needed.
"These two things do not correspond. Natural immunity through disease is permanent, immunity through the RNA is not."
False. E.g. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm :
"In this case-control study, being unvaccinated was associated with 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with being fully vaccinated."
1st premise: If hospitals are being overloaded, this is a problem. However, you rephrased that in a pejorative way that I avoid (even when dealing with people who see eye-to-eye with me on the value of vaccinations, I don't see value in attacking those who aren't vaccinated). To date, all the evidence I've seen indicates that widespread vaccination reduces hospital overload.
2nd premise: Consider the logical extreme of this claim -- if viral evolution was always possible of producing viral escape, wouldn't chicken pox, polio, smallpox, measles, mumps, & etc all have evolved to escape our antibodies? The underlying question is: can the virus evolve rapidly (flu; HIV*; ...) to escape antibodies? If so, neither natural nor vaccine-derived immunity is likely to be permanent. (And it may not be permanent anyway -- as illustrated by how varicella produces chicken pox and then shingles decades later.)
I don't accept the premise that vaccination has no effect on the attack rate or the length of illness; since I think vaccination reduces both, it reduces the opportunity to evolve.
I agree that vaccination adds selective pressure, but not that statement is not enough to answer the question of whether or not vaccination will produce more or fewer variants.
(And so far, it hasn't appeared that highly vaccinated places were the origin for most variants of concern.)
3rd premise: There are many claims here I don't accept. I'll focus on one, to save us both the tediousness of arguing over everything:
What is your source for the claim that lipid-packed RNA circulates (in a functional form) for 15 months? If true, at this point it should be easy to identify spike-production months after the last vaccination for most people who are vaccinated.
* there's a new vaccine candidate for HIV, but ...
1st premise: hospitals aren't overloaded where I am. What I saw out of Italy and NYC was enough to make me take notice, though. We should learn from others' mistakes, not repeat them.
2nd premise: Why do you claim influenza is the only comparable mutagenic virus? RNA viruses generally have a high mutation rate (see e.g. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000003 ); consider HIV.
An interesting historical article about the vagaries of "herd immunity" -- the people of St. Kilda had regular infections every time a boat visited, presumably due to viruses which were in circulation outside the island: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19227604/ . The population was small enough that the disease would go through all the people (hosts) and then die off. It is unclear if subsequent reinfection was due to viral drift, alternate viruses, or declining immune response ... but I do know we can have multiple infections from the same virus through our lives. E.g. when he was young, my son got sick (I'm pretty sure it was RSV; scary when it produces bronchiolitis) repeatedly until we stopped bringing him to chlorinated pools.
I suspect we don't agree on enough basic facts to have a productive discussion, though.
3rd premise: I skimmed the purported document (which is obviously from a 3rd party). I found discussion of half lives, but no numbers which I can map to the expectation that the mRNA vaccines are still circulating at 15 months. Which page are you looking at?
...trying to reduce this to a sound bite (if possible)...
immunization (specific) stunts development of ‘first responder’ (innate) immunity, especially in kids & especially during pandemic... resulting in delayed, deficient (innate) immune response to future mutations of the pathogen... and also clears the field (suppressing innate) for further mutations...
????is this accurate...help me...
It's still too early to assert that Omicron is less virulent -- we just don't have enough data. If it really is, depending on how much less virulent, it might be a good thing.
But there appears to be at least partial cross-protection, both for immunity derived from infection and immunity derived from vaccination. By a similar token, there's some degree of immune escape -- again for both vaccinated individuals and those who've recovered.
Regardless, natural infection does not provide perfect protection even against the same disease (just as with vaccines) -- it's possible to get the same coronavirus multiple times in your life, as neutralizing antibodies wane.
Geert, you say Omicron undeniably results from population immune pressure. What if it actually results from an additional lab leak? https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/omicron-is-not-normal
If the vaccine antibodies have waned to nothing and no more shots arw taken by an individual, Covid-naive person, are OAS and ADE still a greater threat to that person if they get infected than they would be if that person was never jabbed?
Hello Sir ,
I honestly believe that people in the USA are waking up . With my credentials BSPharm and PharmD, I have been educating many through word of mouth or social platform ( Twitter ) that is in now in locked position due to risk of being banned . I educate people about proper nutrition and take the supplements recommended by Dr. Zelenko who was banned from social media . My family including elders close to 90 only took the Pfizer series in January of 2021. Soon after news broke out and I began my research . We carry a pulse oximeter ; make sure our Vitamin D is in high 60s; 1000mg Quercetin ; 1500mg Liposomal Vitamin C ; Patented AREDS2 which contains 50mg zinc per serving ( OTC for macular degeneration ) Our oxygen saturation is always in the mid 90’s . I happened to cross people who are now triple vaxxed . They wanted their readings as I carry it with me at all times . 3 readings done . All readings came back at 89. Is this a coincidence , I can’t really say, but the lady tells me she gets colds all the time now . With warriors such as yourself , the world is pushing back . The mandate failed to pass in the Senate . We don’t know what the President will do . Thank you !