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

Joe withdrew mandatory vaccine and testing for private companies. It looks like OMICRON did what the mandates couldn't - between those unvaxxed who have survived OMICRON, and the vaxxed + boosted, over 200M Americans have natural or vaccine immunity - for now.

DeathSantis is at it again: His death toll is not high enough yet. He's set up many MAB sites, so they can treat people who could have gotten vaccinated, but didn't. Problem is they are using MABs for anybody, instead of just for the immunocompromised who really need them, and the supply has always been limited. Now to top that off, his suppliers, Lilly and Regeneron have announced their initial MABs are not effective against Omicron (Almost all cases in Florida). A peer-reviewed and published study just recently said Regeneron's MAB is 1000 times less effective and Lilly's 3000 times less effective. Between that and the manufacturer's announcements, the FDA is cancelling their EUAs.

He's blaming Biden for that. He insists it's people's right to get ineffective treatments, which the FDA is specifically tasked with controlling. I suppose he'll want snake-oil and bleeding next. How about "laying on of hands" (or Reiki, it's modern equivalent), or The Power of Positive Thinking, Ron?

MABs are a good idea, but monoclonal antibodies are only effective for variants they match. A few mutations from immune-evasion evolution, and they don't interact with the new variant very well. But I suppose "evolution" is something he denies, as well! Months after vaccination or a suitable natural infection, our germinal centers do something called somatic hypermutation, where thousands of different but closely related mutations occur during antibody maturation, and the results are tested against the viral antigen. This natural process can produce antibodies that are thousands of times better at binding to the antigen! Those "better antibodies" are available for mass production when needed in the event of reinfection. This process can never happen with MABs. Which is one reason why vaccination is so effective against new variants.

Ron's Folly

You realize your views similar to Desantis, they just differ in form?
Desantis is playing to his base and your advocating for the PMC base play.

I read recently that the US spend a little over 3% of overall healthcare spending on public health. The number was predicted to fall just under 3% in the next couple of years.

While you downplay the notion of public health mitigation efforts, insisting that vax and MAB’s are the only way to go, I don’t recall you having much support for little else. The whizbang mRNA vaccines were sold as being quickly tailored to variants in the beginning but, for various reasons, there hasn’t been any adjustments for delta or the Cron. Breakthru’s aplenty with each of those variants, having been extremely lucky that the Cron didn’t go into the lower RT and turn lung tissue into bloody tar like Delta.

MAB’s have a similar story line.

We can play the ‘with/from’ game of the death totals but I think you miss the point that both rightwing political parties have not covered themselves in glory in handling the pandemic. At the moment, I give the edge in effectiveness to the previous administration. Operation warp speed, lock downs, halting air traffic, more financial assistance, etc..

I don’t see what the current dominant right wing government has down to top that list in order to mitigate infections structurally.

I really don't understand the healthcare system and how they handle patients. I have been told, by medical folk, that there is a number of patients, for instance, who insist they don't have any corona virus and want a specific medicine which may, or may not, be available. Basically they are in a hospital and are rejecting their services, taking up a bed that somebody else can actually use, etc. What I don't understand is why the hospital hasn't simply sent that patient away as their services are not wanted and they are wasting their time. I have been told that even after their lives have been saved they remain angry with the hospital, staff, doctors, etc.

I also don't understand why the government is paying the bills of anti vaxxers who are in hospitals because they chose to be there because they wouldn't get a vaccination! They chose to be sick! Some may say that's not true but, I think, EVERYBODY has been told the facts, time after time after time and they refused the advise which is proven virtually every day with statistics on who needs the help and why (anti-vaxxers) They are responsible and my taxes should not pay for their care!

Then there are the parents of children who get covid because the parents didn't allow masks or vaccinations. In that case, if the children survive, they should be taken away from the parents that almost killed them before they do it again!

Its really time that those folks who are all growed up start to take responsibility for their resistance to reality. They are, obviously, not going to do that on their own but the previous thoughts might make, at least, a small dent in that regard.

As far as I can tell the anti-vaxxers and covid deniers, are actually, at least in part, for the ongoing covid mess. That being the case ...........

Just a few mean spirited thoughts............

Does anybody understand what "PMC base play" means? You keep posting jargon that I suppose is quite familiar to you, but is just ignored by everybody here because they don't understand what you are talking about.

The rather huge difference between what I advocate and DeSantis advocates is that I like treatments that work, and DeSantis is promoting some MABs that even their manufacturers and the FDA claim don't work against Omicron. See: Not opinion, but fact!


I do not insist that vaccinations and MABs are the only way to go, and never have. I use isolation, masks, hand sterilization, distance, ventilation, etc. extensively. In fact, I have repeatedly pointed out the problems with MABs: They have to be given before symptoms appear to be most effective, and the FDA and medical establish reserve expensive drugs in short supply for seriously ill patients WHEN MABS DON'T WORK! The fact that MABs are very variant-specific is another limitation. In order to be effective, we would have to give them to everybody with a positive test, even though most of them would be fine without the expensive treatment. I have said that is why we need a dirt-cheap small-molecule drug (like ivermection) we can give to everybody before they leave the rapid-testing site. But when the results of the TOGETHER trial came out, I switched to universal distribution of fluvoxamine.

BUT: MABs that work against Omicron are great for identified high-risk patients and the immunocompromised who do not benefit from vaccination.

I have also said nice things about some of the anti-virals like Paxlovid, and lately Remdesivir. But they have the same economic problems as MABs, without being variant-specific. The FDA and medical establishment have tried to limit their use to seriously ill patients, when they have no effect. When given very early, they are fantastically effective.

There haven’t been any vaccine adjustments for recent variants, (except for Pfizer's Omicron-specific vaccine that is in trials right now), mainly because there is no need. The original vaccines are still highly effective against hospitalization and death no matter what the variant, and I've explained why that is the goal and why that happens. I guess you just skim my posts or something.

I've also explained that Omicron, Delta, and every other variant have little difference in their clinical behaviors. That is a popular myth in the mainstream media, but virologists and immunologist mostly agree that the difference is because we have so many people with some humoral immunity now. For people with no immunity, Omicron does go into the lungs and wreck havoc. That's why so many have mild cases and the ICUs are filled with the unvaccinated.

Trump was a raging dumpster-fire when it came to the pandemic. He disassembled pandemic response agencies and public health positions before the pandemic. He ignored it "because it is affecting Blue states", then used every opportunity for political gain including Warp Speed. He was hugely disappointed when vaccinations couldn't start before the election, because that was his "Great Man on the White Horse" play. He even told everybody the virus was nothing to worry about after he almost died from it, which began the politicization of anti-mask and anti-vax. Those have cost America hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. Even now, his supporters in governor offices and courts fight masking and vaccination efforts, and every other sensible public health measure supported by the Biden administration. It's a modern death cult.

If you are interested in an inside story of how the Covid vaccine development was so quick, watch TWIV 858 on YouTube:


They were actually working with Moderna on a Nepa virus vaccine development "drill" to see how fast Moderna could go from gene sequence to vaccine, when the SARS-COV2 RNA sequence was published by the Chinese. (They had already collaborated with Moderna on a Zika vaccine.) So they just plugged the SARS-COV2 sequence into the existing Nepa drill protocol, and had Moderna run with it. The answer was 1 month!

This was with the dual-proline sequence added that fused the spike protein so it could not enter cells through the normal ACE-II receptor. VRC had already figured out how to do that. Essentially, the timing was all perfect. The rest of the time until vaccination launch was all working out mass production, delivery, safety and dosage trials, FDA emergency authorization, etc.

Flor-i-duh...becoming purple one unvaxxed Rightwinger at a time. Oh well...

NPR said the quick development of the Corona virus vaxx has its genesis in 20 years of HIV vaxx research. THAT may be another reason why Rightwingers don't want the vaxx.

TWIV 860 on YouTube starts with a fundamental paper about recognition of "self RNA" versus "foreign RNA" (bacterial RNA, viral RNA, tRNA, and mitochondrial RNA) by proteins that are specifically in cells to recognize them. These proteins can pour out a cytokine that leads to cellular suicide (apoptosis), that is an important factor in the innate immune system. The authors theorized their results could lead to therapeutic RNA and mRNA vaccines. This paper was published in Immunity in 2005.

I bring it up as a historical point of interest: You need a lot of biochemistry to understand much of it, but I did learn some interesting things. Like the extant that RNA nucleotides are modified. Adenine, guanine, cytosine, & uracil are apparently the "high school version" of what is really going on! But I thought you might be interested because Katalin Karikó et al might just win a Nobel Prize for this.

I would not be surprised if Mikaela Shiffrin's poor performance at the Olympics was Covid-related. I think a lot of athletes are going to find their performance is not up to their pre-pandemic level. Mostly it's from the heart damage even asymptomatic infections can cause. Early in the pandemic, researchers at Ohio State University used MRI to find evidence of recent or active cardiomyopathy in around 40% of student athletes who had mild or asymptomatic infections. This could be unknown by the victims, until they tried to compete in their sport. Then their maximum cardiac output could be just a bit impaired.