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Coronamonomania Lives Forever, Part 30

By October 1, 2021Commentary

I am intensely interested in public policy, but I try to avoid politics although the two are unfortunately inseparable.  A couple of recent events should clarify to everyone that we have a group in this country, the woefully misnamed progressive movement, that views our children just like the Chinese, the Nazis, the Stalinists, the North Koreans, the Islamic extremists and every other authoritarian group viewed children in their countries.  To these people, children are mere tools to be molded to the image ideologues desire.  We see Terry McAuliffe, that execrable excuse for a human being, saying in the Virgina Governor’s race that parents have no right to determine what their children are taught, in the context of critical race theory and gender identity nonsense.  We are talking about very young children here.  And then in a hearing our national Secretary of Education says the same thing.  This is horrifying–these whackos in the universities have brainwashed future teachers and are counting on those graduates to brainwash the students in public, and even private, schools.  These teachers are encouraged to hide what they are doing from parents in the process.  If you are a parent of a school-aged child, you must support school choice, get a school board that supports parent’s control over what their children learn and do everything you can to eliminate the power of teachers’ unions.  You must assume that your children’s minds are being filled with garbage.  For the sake of your children, you must fight this with every fiber of your being.  Children have a right to be children, and parents have every right to control what is taught to their children when it is political, social, sexual, cultural or otherwise of any controversial nature.  I am completely outraged about what is happening to our children in most schools today.  And we wonder why childhood mental illness is up so dramatically.

Now to the epidemic, where public policy is equally horrifying and inept.  One thing to keep in mind as the proportion of cases among the vaxed rises, is that this means that right now today, the proportion of vaxed among active cases, those people who are infectious, has also risen.  I believe that at this moment we are experiencing at least a 50/50 split of cases among the vaxed and unvaxed in Minnesota.  But are the vaxed as infectious?  One explanation for the odd plateauing, instead of a rise, we are seeing in cases in Minnesota could be that it is the result of a lot of vaxed cases, and these vaxed cases aren’t as infectious, so the average number of people they are infecting has dropped.  I think R(t), or the reproduction rate at any given time in any given population, is a worthless number and impossible for anyone to accurately calculate.  But it looks to me like on average, even with the dread pirate Delta, each infected person in Minnesota is maybe infecting one other person.  That is interesting.

I would further note that if you really want to understand the percent of current cases in Minnesota that are among the vaxed population, you have to ignore children under 12, who are not eligible for vaccination.  Taking those cases out of the calculation would lead to an even higher percent of vaxed cases, especially now that we are back to school testing insanity.

I want to caution again that what I say about breakthrough cases is not designed to cast doubt on the vaccines or discourage people from getting vaccinated.  The durability against infection appears a little lower than I might have expected, but this is confounded by our very problematic testing methods and weird determinations that a person is positive.  Effectiveness against hospitalization and death appears good for most age groups.  What is really striking to me is that the frail elderly are going to die, period, in the near future, CV-19 or no CV-19, vaccine or no vaccine.  To imagine that a vaccine was going to protect this group, which still accounts for most deaths, was unrealistic.  The flu vaccine doesn’t protect them either.  We really are where we were in the early stages of the epidemic where one group overwhelmingly accounts for severe illness and death.

This paper is getting a lot of attention from all sides and I don’t know why.  It is poorly designed.  Like other similar studies it is an attempt to ascertain whether vaccinated people who become infected have less serious illness and are less infectious, as measured by cycle numbers, in this case in the context of the Delta variant.  The study is sponsored in part by the Zuckerberg foundation and has authors with an agenda, and unfortunately today you always have to ascertain this for any study.  Their bottom line is that the vaxed are dangerous too so we have to be masked forever.  When you see the conclusion, you know the study is just being designed to get there.  And the conclusion is that vaxed cases have viral loads as high as do unvaxed ones.  But how do they get there.  Maybe by prospectively monitoring a large cohort of people?  No, by examing samples from people who walked in voluntarily to get a test.  So you have serious selection confounding right off the bat, because if in fact vax people have lower viral loads at the same stage of infection, and have more asymptomatic infections, then you are testing and mis-sampling the entire population and your average viral load is going to look much higher than it actually is.  Viral loads also vary substantially over the course of an infection, so if the samples weren’t derived either daily from the start of the infection or all drawn at the same point in the person’s infection, you also have confounded your findings.  And here is an interesting quibble, there were two collection sites and different sequencing equipment was used at the sites, so not necessarily consistent cycle number identification.  Also bizarrely, no where can I find the actual breakdown of the number of vaccinated and unvaccinated people involved in the study, so there is no way to compute relative infection rates. There are other methodological issues, but the authors interestingly don’t note any of them, which is a sign of the weakness of the paper.  (Medrxiv Paper)

This is a large study from the VA health system attempting to compare adaptive immunity from infection versus that from mRNA vaccination.  It is a fascinating study, obviously heavily male population that skews old.  About 37,500 fully vaxed persons and 9500 people with prior infection were included.  The vaccinations and the infections all occurred in January and February of 2021.  Then infections among these groups in June through August 21 of this year were compared.  There was a subgroup of about 3900 persons who had been infected and were subsequently vaccinated and this group was excluded from the main analysis and will be reported on later.  I want to note importantly that no antibody testing was done to identify infections that went undetected prior to February 2021, or frankly, after February 2021.  So there is a substantial possibility that were a number of persons in both groups who actually had been infected at some point.  Be that as it may, the results are fascinating.  For adults under the age of 65, there was no difference in infection, hospitalization or death rates, in fact prior infection may have been more protective.  For those over 65, the two mRNA vaccines had a roughly 67% additional protection from subsequent infection compared to prior infection alone, Moderna offered a 61% and Pfizer a 45% additional protection against hospitalization and Moderna a 95% and Pfizer a 99% additional protection against death.  So according to this study for the oldest cohort, the vaccines were more protective than prior infection.  Something is wrong or at least unexplained.  What is the possible clinical explanation for such a stark difference?  Would have been helpful to see a broader description of events by smaller age brackets.  And part of the problem may be that the absolute number of infections in the study period–June through August–was very small, only 110.  That makes comparisons iffy.  In addition, the strength of the protection was lower toward the end of the study period, so by a year, even among the elderly a prior infection might be as protective.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Long-term care residents and staff have had a bad epidemic.  This study examined antibody rates among these groups in over 200 facilities.  The prevalence was 35% in residents and 26% for staff.  The assay used was not looking for spike protein antibodies but nucleocapsid ones, so these are infected persons, with no attempt to ascertain vax status.  The antibody level declined below detection in about a year, indicating that more sensitive assays will be needed to be able to identify persons with prior infection.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Another of my favorite studies about where the rubber meets the road, in the upper respiratory tract.  Studying child and adult patients, the researchers found that mucosal tract antibodies tended to be higher in children than adults and in asymptomatic or mild cases than in severe ones, suggesting that early and robust building of antibodies helps limit disease.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Another paper assessing the durability of antibodies following actual infection.  At six and 12 months follow-up, detectable antibodies remained.  These were stronger in those who had a severe illness.  There was some lessening of protection against variants of concern.  Always important to remember in these papers that the memory B cell response is not being assessed, nor is any of the T cell arm of adaptive immunity.  (Medrxiv Paper)

Most European countries have tried to keep real school going.  This research is from the Czech Republic and purports to examine whether schools being open contributed to greater spread.  Part of the analysis is modeling based and it isn’t clear to why how well community prevalence was adjusted for, but in contrast to some other studies, this one found that closed schools were associated with fewer cases in school aged children.    (Medrxiv Paper)

Join the discussion 13 Comments

  • Peggy A Lewis says:

    “And the conclusion is that vaxed cases have viral loads as high as do unvaxed ones”

    They’re telling us that viruses are tricky and they learn tricks. Perhaps the vaccinated have nasal viral presence because our tricky friend DELTA learned that if antibodies are present in the host, eradication is eminent. Instead, those tricky suckers endeavor to stay localized and increase the chance of infecting another host.

    In other words lay low, jump from nose to nose without any REAL multiplication until the chance of exponential cell growth in an unvaccinated host is more likely.

    Perhaps my musings are just an odd laypersons uneducated explanation of selective pressure?

  • James Zuck says:

    Kevin, would you consider the Covid-19 vaccines a leaky vaccine or just a vaccine that loses effectiveness over time? What would make it one over the other?

    • Kevin Roche says:

      i don’t know what a “leaky” vaccine is. For a respiratory virus, which almost by definition has a high rate of mutation, vaccine effectiveness against infection is typically not super high and that may be because of variations in sequence or because of lessening of circulating antibodies. But the vaccines can still aid in preventing serious illness. The waning of immmune response is actually somewhat uncertain in my mind, because studies that only measure circulating antibodies are almost irrelevant. On a challenge more distant in time, the key factor is the capability of memory cells to respond quickly and signal for rapid antibody and T cell production. It appears that those memory cells are in fact present. We are at most 9 months out from vaccination (other than the clinical trials participants, so it is a little early to make judgment about long term response to new exposure.

  • Abhijit Bakshi says:

    The definition of a leaky vaccine is one whose protection against infection is not super high.

    It’s a commonsense definition and it would be great if we stop pretending that people who use useful terms like leaky are idiots. They are not. The idiocy is in ignoring the leakiness.

    —-

    As for the study claiming “Moderna offered a 61% and Pfizer a 45% additional protection against hospitalization and Moderna a 95% and Pfizer a 99% additional protection against death. …”

    I think at this point you’d have to be the most credulous person on the planet to believe that.

    Look at what’s happening in the world people.

  • guest says:

    Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens
    Published: July 27, 2015
    https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002198

    “…Author Summary
    There is a theoretical expectation that some types of vaccines could prompt the evolution of more virulent (“hotter”) pathogens. This idea follows from the notion that natural selection removes pathogen strains that are so “hot” that they kill their hosts and, therefore, themselves. Vaccines that let the hosts survive but do not prevent the spread of the pathogen relax this selection, allowing the evolution of hotter pathogens to occur. This type of vaccine is often called a ****leaky vaccine****. When vaccines prevent transmission, as is the case for nearly all vaccines used in humans, this type of evolution towards increased virulence is blocked. But ****when vaccines leak, allowing at least some pathogen transmission****, they could create the ecological conditions that would allow hot strains to emerge and persist. This theory proved highly controversial when it was first proposed over a decade ago, but here we report experiments with Marek’s disease virus in poultry that show that modern commercial leaky vaccines can have precisely this effect: they allow the onward transmission of strains otherwise too lethal to persist. Thus, the use of leaky vaccines can facilitate the evolution of pathogen strains that put unvaccinated hosts at greater risk of severe disease. The future challenge is to identify whether there are other types of vaccines used in animals and humans that might also generate these evolutionary risks…”

    [**** – emphasis added]

    • Kevin Roche says:

      Okay, this is scientific gibberish that is actually just another attempt to make up stuff about the vaccines. There is plenty of real evidence that effectiveness against infection is limited and that in the old, effectiveness against hosp. and death is limited. Don’t need to make up stuff like “leaky” vaccines. Theoretically any vaccine could create so evolutionary pressure on any pathogen, but so does natural adaptive immunity after infection–how do you think the variants arose and how do you think mutual flu strains arise? So enough with the leaky vaccine crap.

  • Abhijit Bakshi says:

    Just run an internet search for “leaky vaccine marek’s disease” and see what you find.

    Here are a few interesting results I found, about this totally non-sciencey made up term that is totally made up and is not at all sciencey, unlike “vaxxed” which is super sciency.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4516275/ “TITLE: ‘Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens’ AUTHOR’S SUMMARY: There is a theoretical expectation that some types of vaccines could prompt the evolution of more virulent (“hotter”) pathogens. This idea follows from the notion that natural selection removes pathogen strains that are so “hot” that they kill their hosts and, therefore, themselves. Vaccines that let the hosts survive but do not prevent the spread of the pathogen relax this selection, allowing the evolution of hotter pathogens to occur. This type of vaccine is often called a leaky vaccine. ….”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/07/27/leaky-vaccines-could-make-viruses-more-deadly-new-study-suggests/ “TITLE: ‘Imperfect vaccines could make viruses more dangerous, at least in chickens'”. In the text it quotes “Andrew Read, the Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and Entomology and Eberly Professor in Biotechnology at Penn State University” as saying “The experiment shows that strains too hot to exist in an unvaccinated world can actually persist when there’s a leaky vaccination”. Apparently nobody told the Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and Eberly Professor of Biotechnology at Penn State that the term leaky isn’t super sciencey.

    There are as many examples as you want to find, I just don’t have time for them.

    Instead of playing this game of I’m smarter than you peasants because, I assure you, I know Science Things and Science Things do not include the word Leaky, why not just admit that leaky is a term in common parlance with a clear and obvious meaning that has been talked about within the science of vaccination for a long time?

    You lose credibility when you try to dismiss a credible issue by this kind of semantic play.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      See my response above. Here is what is going on with you and others. You don’t want to get vaccinated, so you look for any excuse to say the vaccines don’t work or do something bad. That is the truth, just admit it, and don’t expect me to buy crap. This stuff about leaky vaccines is a failure to fundamentally understand the nature of evolution and the interaction of a pathogen and the immune system.

  • guest says:

    RE: “another attempt to make up stuff about the vaccines”
    The paper referenced in previous comment was written in 2015.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      it doesn’t matter when it was published, it never made sense and people are using this “theory” now attempting to claim that the vaccines make things worse. You have to use some common sense. Any form of immunity is imperfect and any form of immunity obviously, obviously puts pressure on the targeted pathogen which can result in favorable selection for mutations that aid in avoiding the immune response. The human immune system is “leaky” in that sense. So it’s just bullshit to bring it up as though there is something unique about the CV-19 vaccines.

  • Abhijit Bakshi says:

    “So it’s just bullshit to bring it up as though there is something unique about the CV-19 vaccines.”

    Nothing unique about:
    – a leaky vaccination;
    – made out of a totally novel and brand new technology;
    – being pushed on millions, even billions, of people around the world in the biggest medical experiment ever performed;
    – being literally forced on people around the world by governments and corporatist employers;
    – while people, including the author of this blog, refuse to consider alternatives to vaccination, such as cheap and readily available therapies for which there is considerable evidence that they work.

    Other than these things, yes, there is nothing unique at all about it. Everyone who disagrees is a terrorist who is full of BS.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      exaggerating my responses to your hyperbolic comments doesn’t change the fact that until you come to grips with your obsession with justifying not getting vaccinated you have no credibility. Nobody who reads this blog cares if you get vaccinated or not. I care, however, about the presentation of truthful information, and everything you wrote in this comment is basically bullshit.

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