“The Covid vaccines aren’t truly vaccines”

[Spryte]

1 hour ago, Quill said:

 

Now that excess deaths (from all causes) for the past two years is several hundred thousands more than average, those same people say *nothing* about death stats anymore. 

I agree with everything you wrote. Wanted to also add that if I hear a peep about death stats, it’s always that Covid deaths are being over-counted, making the dubious distinction between dying of Covid complications and dying “with Covid,” occasionally stating that the excess deaths are due to people being too afraid to access routine care (not mentioning that in some areas, mine included, it’s been almost impossible at times, due to hospital overwhelm). I do seem to be hearing those first two lines a bit less often now, though, so maybe they have cycled off the list of talking points. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Spryte

[BeachGal]

We may very likely be able to choose some of the newer Covid vaccines, possibly soonish. This site has a tracker for Covid vaccines and where they're at.

https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

Vaccine developers have created a variety of different types of vaccines. Some might pan out to be much better than what we currently have -- fewer side effects, fewer doses and easier distribution.

[Melissa in Australia]

7 hours ago, Katy said:

We do stay home. I’m completely fine with that but I think when hospitals get overwhelmed they should triage the anti-vaxxers to a ward to die instead of to ICU beds. 

One of DH’s coworkers had a sister recently hospitalized for covid. Not vaccinated.  One hospital refused to take her. They said they didn’t have the treatment she wanted and they were saving their one remaining ICU bed for someone vaccinated or there for trauma or heart attack, not for someone who chose to get sick.

Another hospital did take her but the nurses kept making comments. Apparently  she had a hot flash and wanted to cut off her hair. The nurse said, “No, you want to look pretty in your coffin.” Apparently every nurse working there said similar things about how she was going to die. They’re done hiding their contempt for idiots. She lived. She’s still not vaccinated. 

We won’t get there. This will become like the flu. Endemic.

How evil

will they also deny treatment for fat people. The majority of people who die of Covid are overweight 

will they deny treatment for smokers. Their health problems are self inflicted

 

will they deny treatment for people playing sport? That increases chance of hurting yourself greatly

 

 

[BeachGal]

4 hours ago, wathe said:

Yes.  Many endemic infectious diseases have huge burden of illness.

Malaria is endemic to the tropics.  627 000 deaths in 2020 - not nothing, that's for sure.

And of those deaths from malaria, more than one-half are children! Every year.

The good news is that there is now Mosquirix, a 4-dose malaria vaccine with very few serious side effects that, although not 100% effective, does help prevent severe malaria. It is the first vaccine for a parasitic disease and should save thousands of people. Hurray!

And then there's this promising malaria drug, Imatinib, in phase 2 trials, that targets an enzyme, potentially preventing resistance if the the parasite mutates as it has with other drugs.

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2021/Q4/update-therapeutic-malaria-treatment-shown-to-be-100-effective-in-phase-2-trial.html

Meanwhile, a second approach is still in clinical trials. A cancer drug repurposed to treat malaria has been shown to be nearly 100% effective in helping to defeat the disease in just three days. This is according to the results of a Phase 2 clinical trial, the results of which were published recently in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

The trial of the therapeutic drug shows that addition of the drug Imatinib to the customary malaria therapy enables clearance of all malaria parasites from 90% of patients within 48 hours and from 100% of patients within three days, says Philip Low (rhymes with "now"), Purdue University’s Presidential Scholar for Drug Discovery and the Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the College of Science, who co-directed the international research team. The patients receiving Imatinib were also relieved of their fevers in less than half of the time experienced by similar patients treated with the standard therapy.

“In our trial, 33% of the patients treated with the standard therapy (but without the Imatinib supplement) still suffered from significant parasitemia after three days,” Low said. “Delayed clearance rates are a precursor to and an indicator of potential drug resistance, which has been a problem with malaria for decades. So, this could be significant.”

...

“Because we’re targeting an enzyme that belongs to the red blood cell, the parasite can’t mutate to develop resistance — it simply can't mutate proteins in our blood cells,” Low said. “This is a novel approach that will hopefully become a therapy that can’t be evaded by the parasite in the future. This would constitute an important contribution to human health.”

[ktgrok]

8 hours ago, Spirea said:

I see this. I know a lot of antivaxxers. Our area is only around 50%. It's frustrating. I don't want them to get sick. But they know there's a vaccine. They do have the opportunity to research and choice to vaccinate. My family needs to live a normal life. We can't keep restricting because others won't vaccinate. I feel we've done what we can and need to let it go and run its course.

Please remember that those under 5 cannot be vaccinated still. They don't have a choice. 

[Dianthus]

3 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

Please remember that those under 5 cannot be vaccinated still. They don't have a choice. 

Yes, I have a 1 yr old. It is rare for children to have extreme covid cases.

[wathe]

4 hours ago, BeachGal said:

And of those deaths from malaria, more than one-half are children! Every year.

The good news is that there is now Mosquirix, a 4-dose malaria vaccine with very few serious side effects that, although not 100% effective, does help prevent severe malaria. It is the first vaccine for a parasitic disease and should save thousands of people. Hurray!

And then there's this promising malaria drug, Imatinib, in phase 2 trials, that targets an enzyme, potentially preventing resistance if the the parasite mutates as it has with other drugs.

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2021/Q4/update-therapeutic-malaria-treatment-shown-to-be-100-effective-in-phase-2-trial.html

Meanwhile, a second approach is still in clinical trials. A cancer drug repurposed to treat malaria has been shown to be nearly 100% effective in helping to defeat the disease in just three days. This is according to the results of a Phase 2 clinical trial, the results of which were published recently in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

The trial of the therapeutic drug shows that addition of the drug Imatinib to the customary malaria therapy enables clearance of all malaria parasites from 90% of patients within 48 hours and from 100% of patients within three days, says Philip Low (rhymes with "now"), Purdue University’s Presidential Scholar for Drug Discovery and the Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry in the College of Science, who co-directed the international research team. The patients receiving Imatinib were also relieved of their fevers in less than half of the time experienced by similar patients treated with the standard therapy.

“In our trial, 33% of the patients treated with the standard therapy (but without the Imatinib supplement) still suffered from significant parasitemia after three days,” Low said. “Delayed clearance rates are a precursor to and an indicator of potential drug resistance, which has been a problem with malaria for decades. So, this could be significant.”

...

“Because we’re targeting an enzyme that belongs to the red blood cell, the parasite can’t mutate to develop resistance — it simply can't mutate proteins in our blood cells,” Low said. “This is a novel approach that will hopefully become a therapy that can’t be evaded by the parasite in the future. This would constitute an important contribution to human health.”

But is it a real vaccine?

(Just kidding)

[Happy2BaMom]

13 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

How evil

will they also deny treatment for fat people. The majority of people who die of Covid are overweight 

will they deny treatment for smokers. Their health problems are self inflicted

 

will they deny treatment for people playing sport? That increases chance of hurting yourself greatly

 

 

I don’t agree that non-vaxxers should be shunted to the side for care but the comparison to fat people and smokers is one I see a lot and it really isn’t valid. There are no readily available, highly effective vaccines for obesity or smoking. Nor has either condition previously overwhelmed hospitals to the point where other people were unable to access care. Ditto for sports injuries. 

No, non-vaxxees should not be left to die. But  it is absolutely true that their intransigence to get vaccinated or take *any* precautions have led to the situation where *many* other people repeatedly cannot get the care they need, at least here in the States. 

And I won’t even get into the situation in my state, where our hospital systems are literally collapsing, even with the National Guard deployed to nearly all of them. So many HCWs - including doctors - have left or are leaving that people in the field say it will be a decade before the system fully recovers. They’re telling people to drive carefully, because there’s no guarantee of a bed in the event of a serious accident. Surgeries to remove cancers, replace joints, and treat heart conditions are being delayed for weeks and sometimes months. 

So it does beg the question…why do the non-vaxxed continue to have instant and constant priority over everyone else, all the time? Why is that fair? 

Edited December 24, 2021 by Happy2BaMom

[Bootsie]

I think one of the issues is that many of us who are not science people have never really thought about how and why vaccines work before this.  We just accepted that they provided protection from disease.  We have thought of vaccines somewhat as a bullet proof vest or shield that protects us from disease.  Of course, it is illogical to think of a vaccine as something that is like a field force repelling a virus away from me, but I know that I have never thought about what exactly does the vaccine do--does it keep a particle from entering and being present in my body?  Does it prevent a virus from being able to enter a cell?  Does it prevent the virus from being able to replicate?  Does it prevent the virus from being able to exit the cell?  Does it prevent me from experiencing the symptoms of the virus?  

Does anyone have a any idea of what we know about the presence of asymptomatic cases in the vaccinated populations for other vaccines?  Is this siutation much different for COVID than for other vaccines? Or, have we had experience of mass testing  of vaccinated populations for previous diseases to determine asymptomatic incidence?  

[Guest]

Does anyone have a any idea of what we know about the presence of asymptomatic cases in the vaccinated populations for other vaccines?  Is this siutation much different for COVID than for other vaccines? Or, have we had experience of mass testing  of vaccinated populations for previous diseases to determine asymptomatic incidence?  

 

I don’t know much about that, but I do remember when the Chicken Pox vaccine was first available, some people said their kids still got CP, it was just very mild with maybe a few sores total and a fever for a day or two. But my second child was not given the CP vax at first and he never contracted it because we never knew anybody who had it. I finally got him vaxed for it when he was around ten. 

[KSera]

17 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

Does anyone have a any idea of what we know about the presence of asymptomatic cases in the vaccinated populations for other vaccines?  Is this siutation much different for COVID than for other vaccines? Or, have we had experience of mass testing  of vaccinated populations for previous diseases to determine asymptomatic incidence?  

I don’t know which illnesses do and don’t do that, but I know it’s supposed to be quite common with flu, which is frequently asymptomatic (some studies suggest more often than not). Also pertussis (here’s a recent study on that one https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31257450/)

 

[Tanaqui]

Quote

Of course, it is illogical to think of a vaccine as something that is like a field force repelling a virus away from me, but I know that I have never thought about what exactly does the vaccine do--does it keep a particle from entering and being present in my body?  Does it prevent a virus from being able to enter a cell?  Does it prevent the virus from being able to replicate?  Does it prevent the virus from being able to exit the cell?  Does it prevent me from experiencing the symptoms of the virus?  

Your immune system needs to learn how to best attack a virus before it can easily defeat it.

A traditional vaccine gives you a small dose of the virus - in most vaccines nowadays this is a DEAD virus, though some vaccines still use the LIVE virus and we'll get to that in a second - in order to teach your body how to attack it. Your body is not very smart, and cannot really tell the difference between a full on viral infection and a small bit of dead virus. That brief exposure to some dead virus gets it to up its metaphorical army and learn to smash it to bits.

Let's go back in time a bit to the history of vaccination. A long time ago - actually, within living memory - smallpox was a scourge. It killed so many children that in some parts of the world they considered it the gateway between the living and the dead, which you had to pass through because nobody escaped it. At some point, people noticed that if you got it once, you didn't get it again. And using that knowledge plus folk ideas about medicine, the Chinese had the bright idea to start giving children a small, "mild" case of smallpox on purpose by infecting them with dried up pus from smallpox scabs. And this mostly worked, except that this was a weak live virus instead of a dead virus, and the huge failure mode is that sometimes when you get a live dose you get the real illness. Worse, you can spread it to others. Still, the success rate was overall pretty good, and smallpox is terrifying, and this treatment, variolation, spread all over and eventually reached Europe.

Once it hit Europe and became widely acceptable, Jenner had his own insight. Combining variolation with the folk observation that milkmaids don't get smallpox he thought that perhaps you can prevent smallpox with a safer dose of cowpox instead. And he was right. Cow in Latin is "vacca", and this of course is the origin of "vaccination". You give children a live dose of the cowpox virus from pus of an infected cow or human, and then they  are immune to both smallpox and cowpox for life.

With this insight, scientists were eventually able to crack the code to vaccination entirely. If you have a weak dose of the disease, or a dead dose, or a weak dose of a similar, safer disease, then you don't get sick.

Live doses are more effective with fewer doses, and because the vaccinated patient IS mildly contagious they often cause secondary immunization in family members. However, because of the risk of a full-blown infection they're mostly not used in developed nations. It's just not worth it unless the actual disease is in circulation and also you don't expect the patient to be able to complete a whole round of shots.

Vaccinations are also more effective if the disease is in circulation. It's like your body got the code to fight the bad guys, but unless your body SEES the bad guys every day, and is continually having to chase out invaders, it might forget. Why keep old, useless information about? This is one reason we do need boosters even in diseases that don't mutate very quickly - vaccination has been so very effective that you might never come in contact with measles in your daily life, so your body eventually decides it's not worth the cost of being immune to a threat that doesn't exist.

And of course, with other viruses like the flu, the virus itself mutates very quickly and last year's vaccines might not be useful against this year's disease.

Which brings us to this newer type of vaccine, the mrna stuff. When a virus attacks your body, it inserts itself into your cells and forces them to make more virus instead of doing their job as cells. A virus cannot reproduce on its own. It can only reproduce by inserting itself into a host cell and reprogramming that cell to do nothing but make more virus.

And that is pretty much how the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines work as well. Instead of giving you a dose of the virus for your body to train against, they enter your cells and tell them "Make this protein from the virus". And your body does that, and then the immune system goes "Oh, heck no" and starts defending against it. Same result, different mechanism. You don't actually give any part of the live or dead virus to the patient, you just give the instructions for how to make a spike protein that the virus has.

[Bootsie]

46 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

Your immune system needs to learn how to best attack a virus before it can easily defeat it.

A traditional vaccine gives you a small dose of the virus - in most vaccines nowadays this is a DEAD virus, though some vaccines still use the LIVE virus and we'll get to that in a second - in order to teach your body how to attack it. Your body is not very smart, and cannot really tell the difference between a full on viral infection and a small bit of dead virus. That brief exposure to some dead virus gets it to up its metaphorical army and learn to smash it to bits.

Let's go back in time a bit to the history of vaccination. A long time ago - actually, within living memory - smallpox was a scourge. It killed so many children that in some parts of the world they considered it the gateway between the living and the dead, which you had to pass through because nobody escaped it. At some point, people noticed that if you got it once, you didn't get it again. And using that knowledge plus folk ideas about medicine, the Chinese had the bright idea to start giving children a small, "mild" case of smallpox on purpose by infecting them with dried up pus from smallpox scabs. And this mostly worked, except that this was a weak live virus instead of a dead virus, and the huge failure mode is that sometimes when you get a live dose you get the real illness. Worse, you can spread it to others. Still, the success rate was overall pretty good, and smallpox is terrifying, and this treatment, variolation, spread all over and eventually reached Europe.

Once it hit Europe and became widely acceptable, Jenner had his own insight. Combining variolation with the folk observation that milkmaids don't get smallpox he thought that perhaps you can prevent smallpox with a safer dose of cowpox instead. And he was right. Cow in Latin is "vacca", and this of course is the origin of "vaccination". You give children a live dose of the cowpox virus from pus of an infected cow or human, and then they  are immune to both smallpox and cowpox for life.

With this insight, scientists were eventually able to crack the code to vaccination entirely. If you have a weak dose of the disease, or a dead dose, or a weak dose of a similar, safer disease, then you don't get sick.

Live doses are more effective with fewer doses, and because the vaccinated patient IS mildly contagious they often cause secondary immunization in family members. However, because of the risk of a full-blown infection they're mostly not used in developed nations. It's just not worth it unless the actual disease is in circulation and also you don't expect the patient to be able to complete a whole round of shots.

Vaccinations are also more effective if the disease is in circulation. It's like your body got the code to fight the bad guys, but unless your body SEES the bad guys every day, and is continually having to chase out invaders, it might forget. Why keep old, useless information about? This is one reason we do need boosters even in diseases that don't mutate very quickly - vaccination has been so very effective that you might never come in contact with measles in your daily life, so your body eventually decides it's not worth the cost of being immune to a threat that doesn't exist.

And of course, with other viruses like the flu, the virus itself mutates very quickly and last year's vaccines might not be useful against this year's disease.

Which brings us to this newer type of vaccine, the mrna stuff. When a virus attacks your body, it inserts itself into your cells and forces them to make more virus instead of doing their job as cells. A virus cannot reproduce on its own. It can only reproduce by inserting itself into a host cell and reprogramming that cell to do nothing but make more virus.

And that is pretty much how the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines work as well. Instead of giving you a dose of the virus for your body to train against, they enter your cells and tell them "Make this protein from the virus". And your body does that, and then the immune system goes "Oh, heck no" and starts defending against it. Same result, different mechanism. You don't actually give any part of the live or dead virus to the patient, you just give the instructions for how to make a spike protein that the virus has.

Thanks for this in-depth explanation of vaccines.  

If I have a vaccine, so my immune system has learned something about fighting a virus, what happens then if I have the virus enter my body?  Do my cells then know how to prevent the virus from entering?  Or, do the cells know how to defend themselves if the virus enters a cell?  Or, does that vary from vaccine to vaccine and virus to virus?  

[Tanaqui]

The white blood cells know how to attack the virus. The virus might successfully infiltrate a few cells, but it can't get very far because your immune system has learned how to detect that virus and also how to hunt it down and kill kill kill.

Your immune system can target the virus, if it's immune, and also cells that have already been infiltrated. It destroys the virus and the afflicted cells.

So it's not like a magic forcefield that keeps you safe. It's more like a defensive army of elite soldiers. Your immune system has the enemy's profile and battle plans, and it keeps a continuous lookout for those viral cells it's already been warned against. If it sees them, it sounds the alarm and attacks, and it attacks anything that might have been converted to the dark side.

(This is also why being sick makes you feel so, well, sick. Your immune system is fighting a battle, and it doesn't really care if some of your cells are casualties.)

[Tanaqui]

I said "viral cell", that's not really accurate. Viruses are weird, and they don't quite have cells. They're not even properly alive.

[kokotg]

I've taken the liberty of photographing this page from my Valuetale book about Louis Pasteur (the Value of Believing in Yourself) because it offers this helpful illustration about how vaccines work: