Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Coronavirus: The Plague of The 21st Century?

I’m saying we have no mitigation strategies that might have proven useful beyond vaccines.
I took it for granted that most all of the decisions surrounding the response to covid has been market driven. Is there another rational I’m not aware of?
The rest has been just pushing back on the vax claims of effectiveness.
I agree, there really is no point.
Looking at Europe and UK for how it’s going to play out with Omicron.

I've never got a smallpox vaccination, and neither have you. Very few people EVER got smallpox vaccinations. Dr. Jenner's innovation was to immunize with cowpox, a related virus. Modern vaccinations were actually vaccinia virus. And that vaccination had an initial effectiveness of about 95%. Some vaccinated people DID still get smallpox. It prevented most serious illness and death, EXACTLY like the current Covid vaccinations.

As for measles, I probably have an unmeasurable level of circulating antibodies because antibody level contraction is how the immune system works. But I bet I have memory T and B-cells that remember how to make measles antibodies. Most media is fixated on antibody levels, which always contract. This is not a defect in the vaccinations. It's a normal immune system feature. Evolution has selected for it, because it has positive survival value. It's just a lot easier to measure IgG levels than to run any of the other tests that tell you about a patient's immunity. But that doesn't mean it's the right test. That level just tells you they have some sort of antibody floating around. It may not be effective in binding SARS-COV2. It may not even be against SARS-COV2 at all! They can run binding assays against SARS-COV2, but they are rarely done.

Just like PCR tests telling us somebody has a lot of viral RNA in their nose: It's not measuring live virus, just certain RNA fragments. That may be because a lot of the virus has been destroyed by the immune system, and all that RNA coming out is not contagious. But labs are set up to run PCR tests en masse. It's relatively cheap when you do a lot of them at once. They could run plaque assays for live virus, but no medical labs do because it would be too expensive.

The reason I say mRNA vaccines are better than currently licensed alternatives is because of the rare thrombocytopenia events from adenovirus vaccines like J&J and AstraZeneca. These are not from the immunizing material. They are from the human or chimp adenovirus that carries the spike RNA segment into the cells. There is a clotting protein that can bind to the adenoviruses they used, and can cause some very bad clots. These have actually killed some people, so until they fix those adenoviruses I would not recommend those vaccines when we have mRNA vaccines without that problem. BTW: Some other existing vaccines (IE. Sputnik and Ebola) use adenovirus carriers.

Want to actually learn about viruses and the immune system? Here's the best link ever: microbe.tv They have several blogs, but the ones you need are TWiV and TWiM. This Week in Virology and This Week in Immunology respectively. They have been around quite a while. TWiV is on episode 844 and TWiM is on episode 256. Each episode is one or two hours long. The host, Dr. Racaniello also is teaching a virology course on line. You can take it for free, but do start at the beginning.

We also DO have some non-vaccine drug therapies that work ( a lot better than hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, according to random blind clinical trials). Those are Remdesivir, Molnupiravir, and Paxlovid. The US government has actually supported the development and testing by buying or committing to buy millions of doses. Remdesivir works by jamming RNA replication. Molnupiravir works by making RNA replicating so full of errors the replicated strand can never work. Paxlovid works by binding to the viral protease, preventing it from cutting up a multi-protein amino acid strand into functional proteins the virus needs for replication.

I listed them in order of increasing effectiveness, but they only work when given early while viral replication can be blocked. Ideally, that would be right after exposure. Remdesivir has an EUA. I think Molnupiravir has been approved by the FDA, but doesn't have an EUA yet. Paxlovid is in the approval process.

We also have a whole bunch of Monoclonal Antibodies that have EUAs. They also need to be given very early to be effective, and have the disadvantage of being evaded by new variants. The problem is that these are short or very short term solutions. MABs work for about 3 months (assuming you don't catch another variant that they don't protect against), and the drugs just work for the time you take them. So vaccination is way more effective.

For what it’s worth I got the smallpox vaccine when I was a small kid. The old circular multi pricks into the skin. I still have the marks.

What do you make of the Robert Kennedy Junior’s book on the assumption that Dr .Fauci is the mega devil and it’s not working in the best interests of all of us?

Is he institutionalized? I'd say that one dug under the cuckoo's nest.

What, this guy?

Guests urged to be vaccinated at anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr’s party

So what should we do? Just sit back and collate all of this nonsense? There is a great war coming. I am trained in firearms and I know how to use them. But perhaps I might be getting a little soft. [censored] you

Ok PIA. I bow to your superior knowledge. You’ve put in the time and watched the correct PhD’s.

Mind you, I’ve had first hand experience getting PCR labs done, fighting chronic infection and going out of network to get competent medical treatments. It is a good way of getting a layman’s education in human immune response. Not recommended but it can accelerate your learning. I was also raised by a battle hardened RN with decades of public health experience but I admit, she didn’t have a PhD or publish papers.

I’m particularly sensitive to the long covid aspects of Delta and will be very interested in the treatment of the sufferers by Healthcorp. I’m hoping the unfortunate numbers of afflicted will not be consigned to an opiate treatment or some other non restorative but financial liability mitigating or remunerative protocols.

So it sounds like we should not have any problems with Omicron just as we didn’t have with Delta in regard to the mRNA vacs. That’s reassuring. Was that how it went with small pox?

I’ve been hearing Omicron has the transmissibility of measles. If the covid mRNA vaccines are, as you wrote, the most effective and they work exactly like smallpox or measles vaccines work, does that imply a similar level of immune response to covid as it did for smallpox or measles. Does the Covid vaccine have similar leakage rates for viral spread thru the vaccinated as do the other mentioned vaccines?

If the effectiveness wanes quickly and transmissibility is high, are you saying that’s exactly how smallpox or measles vaccination protocols played out as well? I thought you wrote that they work exactly the same. Feel free to correct any misinterpretations I’ve made of your descriptions.

Is that why Biden was saying you could stop wearing a mask after getting vacced? Was the rationale that, although there’s no such thing as a sterilizing vaccine, the rate of viral transmission is so low that wearing a mask is mute.


I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve met that think that, because they’re vaccinated, they won’t get infected.

That alone is indicative of a public health failure to me. I can’t imagine where they would have gotten such bad advice.

Long Covid is going to be a major drag on our productivity and health care spending for a long time, unless somebody comes up with a cure. But some aspects of it like ischemic damage to organs may be irreversible short of something like stem cell regrowth of the damaged organs. And even then, growing new kidney cells may be great, but regrowing your damaged brain will change who you are a bit, The very good news is doctors report very few Long Covid cases among the vaccinated who get reinfected. (A very good reason to get vaccinated.)

Corona viruses have been with us since we have existed. Some are adapted to other mammals, some to many mammals. The four that previously infected humans probably were just as lethal to begin with. What changed is not those viruses. It's our immune systems. We have coevolved to respond well to corona virus infections, even new spillovers from other animals and new antibody-resistant variants. SARS-COV2 kills mostly old people, and in the past centuries that did not matter since all those people would have already been dead from other illnesses. We now have antibiotics and vaccines that extend our lifespans beyond their "design parameters".

What will most likely happen is most people will gain enough T and B-cell immunity to be affected by Covid infection as a minor annoyance. Just like the common colds caused by the four other human corona viruses. Probably MERS as well.

As for "super transmission ability" claims for Omicron (and every earlier variant), I doubt them. Those are based on epidemiological data like spread rate, but a major factor in Rt is human behavior. If people decide they are tired of PPE and distancing, and get together in big indoor gatherings, Rt will shoot up. If they all did what they have been told about not spreading the virus. it would drop to zero. Transmissibility among the vaccinated has also been overstated because some studies equated PCR detection of RNA fragments with shedding of infectious virus. Later studies looked for live virus, and found much less for a much shorter period. So vaccination does cut transmission to about 2 days.

Vaccine effectiveness against infection contracts for almost everything (except HPV for some unknown reason), but vaccine effectiveness against serious illness and death does not assuming you have a functional immune system. The problem is that as you age, your immune system degrades. We also have quite a few individuals who are immunosuppressed for various medical reasons. No vaccine can give you antibodies if you have no B-cells. But that's not a death sentence: Even people with no B-cells and thus no antibodies have activated T-Cells from exposure to infection or vaccination.

It's not a public health failure to say you don't have to wear a mask if vaccinated, if the consequence is getting a Corona cold. You should, if you want to avoid that cold. That's why I do, and why I got a booster. I don't want that cold. The best evidence for this idea is all these unvaxxed people who are dying, and all the vaxxed people saying they just tested positive with few or no symptoms.

‘ The very good news is doctors report very few Long Covid cases among the vaccinated who get reinfected.’


That is, unfortunately, to soon to call: Long COVID risk no lower with breakthrough infection

The link to the preprint is embedded in article.

‘ We have coevolved to respond well to corona virus infections, even new spillovers from other animals and new antibody-resistant variants. SARS-COV2 kills mostly old people, and in the past centuries that did not matter since all those people would have already been dead from other illnesses. We now have antibiotics and vaccines that extend our lifespans beyond their "design parameters".

Strong eldercide or ‘life not worth living’ Greg Abbot vibe here. Not sure if that was your intent though. I might be misunderstanding your point.

‘ As for "super transmission ability" claims for Omicron (and every earlier variant), I doubt them. Those are based on epidemiological data like spread rate, but a major factor in Rt is human behavior. If people decide they are tired of PPE and distancing, and get together in big indoor gatherings, Rt will shoot up.’

A recent study from a country doing pretty good contact tracing. They seem to have controlled variables so you don’t have to go on your hunch:

‘ Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.’

Community transmission and viral load kinetics of the SARS-CoV-2 delta

Looking at the infection rates of SA, Denmark and the UK, I think I’ll go with the data here. Assuming behavior hadn’t changed much between the ongoing Delta spread and the emergent Omicron, the acceleration of infection cases would imply a much higher transmissibility of Omicron. I would think with all the heightened news of Omicron you would see behavior change towards a more defensive posture from the public, not less. Just guessing.


‘If they all did what they have been told about not spreading the virus. it would drop to zero.’

Overlooking the scolding authoritarian tone, you realize people can do as they’re told, still get infected, and wind up with serious perhaps lifelong health complications?
People can’t control air quality of the buildings they work in. I don’t believe the CDC has a legitimate theory of viral transmission yet. As far as I know they have not copped to the primary path being aerosol spread. Accepting aerosol spread would lead to levels of safety in the workplace requirements (another form of public health..) and that’s going to be a financial cost on employers. Or it’s simply incompetence and gross negligence. Remember meat packers?

There’s vaccine hesitancy for a lot of structural reasons. I don’t see any effective strategy from our political class or the health institutions they oversee to address it. A botched job from the get go. Looks only to get worse. Wasn’t there violent protest thruout vaccine history? As far back as the smallpox vaccine? What excuse would you give for the shoddy performance of our political leadership a as nd the health departments to anticipate and overcome this historic occurrence?

I’m surprised you think it’s ok to have people be told they could ditch the mask if they get the jab, knowing what we know about transmissions from those vaccinated.