CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2202769119

(fair use applies)

A call for an independent inquiry into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus
Neil L. Harrison nh2298@columbia.edu and Jeffrey D. Sachs
May 19, 2022

Since the identification of theSARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China, in January 2020 (1), the origin of the virus has been a topic of intense scientific debate and public speculation. The two main hypotheses are that the virus emerged from human exposure to an infected animal [“zoonosis” (2)] or that it emerged in a research-related incident (3). The investigation into the origin of the virus has been made difficult by the lack of key evidence from the earliest days of the outbreak—there’s no doubt that greater transparency on the part of Chinese authorities would be enormously helpful. Nevertheless, we argue here that there is much important information that can be gleaned from US-based research institutions, information not yet made available for independent, transparent, and scientific scrutiny.

When it comes to deciphering the origins of COVID-19, much important information can be gleaned from US-based research institutions—information that has yet to be made available for independent, transparent, and scientific scrutiny.

The data available within the United States would explicitly include, but are not limited to, viral sequences gathered and held as part of the PREDICT project and other funded programs, as well as sequencing data and laboratory notebooks from US laboratories. We call on US government scientific agencies, most notably the NIH, to support a full, independent, and transparent investigation of the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This should take place, for example, within a tightly focused science-based bipartisan Congressional inquiry with full investigative powers, which would be able to ask important questions—but avoid misguided witch-hunts governed more by politics than by science.

Essential US Investigations

The US intelligence community (IC) was tasked, in 2021 by President Joe Biden (4), with investigating the origin of the virus. In their summary public statement, the IC writes that “all agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident” (4). The IC further writes that “China’s cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019].” Of course, such cooperation is highly warranted and should be pursued by the US Government and the US scientific community. Yet, as outlined below, much could be learned by investigating US-supported and US-based work that was underway in collaboration with Wuhan-based institutions, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), China. It is still not clear whether the IC investigated these US-supported and US-based activities. If it did, it has yet to make any of its findings available to the US scientific community for independent and transparent analysis and assessment. If, on the other hand, the IC did not investigate these US-supported and US-based activities, then it has fallen far short of conducting a comprehensive investigation.

This lack of an independent and transparent US-based scientific investigation has had four highly adverse consequences. First, public trust in the ability of US scientific institutions to govern the activities of US science in a responsible manner has been shaken. Second, the investigation of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 has become politicized within the US Congress (5); as a result, the inception of an independent and transparent investigation has been obstructed and delayed. Third, US researchers with deep knowledge of the possibilities of a laboratory-associated incident have not been enabled to share their expertise effectively. Fourth, the failure of NIH, one of the main funders of the US–China collaborative work, to facilitate the investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 (4) has fostered distrust regarding US biodefense research activities.

Much of the work on SARS-like CoVs performed in Wuhan was part of an active and highly collaborative US–China scientific research program funded by the US Government (NIH, Defense Threat Reduction Agency [DTRA], and US Agency for International Development [USAID]), coordinated by researchers at EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), but involving researchers at several other US institutions. For this reason, it is important that US institutions be transparent about any knowledge of the detailed activities that were underway in Wuhan and in the United States. The evidence may also suggest that research institutions in other countries were involved, and those too should be asked to submit relevant information (e.g., with respect to unpublished sequences).

Participating US institutions include the EHA, the University of North Carolina (UNC), the University of California at Davis (UCD), the NIH, and the USAID. Under a series of NIH grants and USAID contracts, EHA coordinated the collection of SARS-like bat CoVs from the field in southwest China and southeast Asia, the sequencing of these viruses, the archiving of these sequences (involving UCD), and the analysis and manipulation of these viruses (notably at UNC). A broad spectrum of coronavirus research work was done not only in Wuhan (including groups at Wuhan University and the Wuhan CDC, as well as WIV) but also in the United States. The exact details of the fieldwork and laboratory work of the EHA-WIV-UNC partnership, and the engagement of other institutions in the United States and China, has not been disclosed for independent analysis. The precise nature of the experiments that were conducted, including the full array of viruses collected from the field and the subsequent sequencing and manipulation of those viruses, remains unknown.

EHA, UNC, NIH, USAID, and other research partners have failed to disclose their activities to the US scientific community and the US public, instead declaring that they were not involved in any experiments that could have resulted in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. The NIH has specifically stated (6) that there is a significant evolutionary distance between the published viral sequences and that of SARS-CoV-2 and that the pandemic virus could not have resulted from the work sponsored by NIH. Of course, this statement is only as good as the limited data on which it is based, and verification of this claim is dependent on gaining access to any other unpublished viral sequences that are deposited in relevant US and Chinese databases (7,8). On May 11, 2022, Acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak testified before Congress that several such sequences in a US database were removed from public view, and that this was done at the request of both Chinese and US investigators.

Blanket denials from the NIH are no longer good enough. Although the NIH and USAID have strenuously resisted full disclosure of the details of the EHA-WIV-UNC work program, several documents leaked to the public or released through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have raised concerns. These research proposals make clear that the EHA-WIV-UNC collaboration was involved in the collection of a large number of so-far undocumented SARS-like viruses and was engaged in their manipulation within biological safety level (BSL)-2 and BSL-3 laboratory facilities, raising concerns that an airborne virus might have infected a laboratory worker (9). A variety of scenarios have been discussed by others, including an infection that involved a natural virus collected from the field or perhaps an engineered virus manipulated in one of the laboratories (3).

Overlooked Details

Special concerns surround the presence of an unusual furin cleavage site (FCS) in SARS-CoV-2 (10) that augments the pathogenicity and transmissibility of the virus relative to related viruses like SARS-CoV-1 (11, 12). SARS-CoV-2 is, to date, the only identified member of the subgenus sarbecovirus that contains an FCS, although these are present in other coronaviruses (13, 14). A portion of the sequence of the spike protein of some of these viruses is illustrated in the alignment shown in Fig. 1, illustrating the unusual nature of the FCS and its apparent insertion in SARS-CoV-2 (15). From the first weeks after the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 became available, researchers have commented on the unexpected presence of the FCS within SARS-CoV-2—the implication being that SARS-CoV-2 might be a product of laboratory manipulation. In a review piece arguing against this possibility, it was asserted that the amino acid sequence of the FCS in SARS-CoV-2 is an unusual, nonstandard sequence for an FCS and that nobody in a laboratory would design such a novel FCS (13).

Fig. 1.

This alignment of the amino acid sequences of coronavirus spike proteins, in the region of the S1/S2 junction, illustrates the sequence of SARS-CoV-2 (Wuhan-Hu-1) and some of its closest relatives. The furin cleavage site (FCS) is indicated (PRRAR'SVAS), and furin cuts the spike protein between R and S, as indicated by the red arrowhead. Adapted from Chan & Zhan (15).

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Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

[CONTINUED]

In fact, the assertion that the FCS in SARS-CoV-2 has an unusual, nonstandard amino acid sequence is false. The amino acid sequence of the FCS in SARS-CoV-2 also exists in the human ENaC α subunit (16), where it is known to be functional and has been extensively studied (17, 18). The FCS of human ENaC α has the amino acid sequence RRAR'SVAS (Fig. 2), an eight–amino-acid sequence that is perfectly identical with the FCS of SARS-CoV-2 (16). ENaC is an epithelial sodium channel, expressed on the apical surface of epithelial cells in the kidney, colon, and airways (19, 20), that plays a critical role in controlling fluid exchange. The ENaC α subunit has a functional FCS (17, 18) that is essential for ion channel function (19) and has been characterized in a variety of species. The FCS sequence of human ENaC α (20) is identical in chimpanzee, bonobo, orangutan, and gorilla (SI Appendix, Fig. 1), but diverges in all other species, even primates, except one. (The one non-human non-great ape species with the same sequence is Pipistrellus kuhlii, a bat species found in Europe and Western Asia; other bat species, including Rhinolophus ferrumequinem, have a different FCS sequence in ENaC α [RKAR'SAAS]).

Fig. 2.

Amino acid alignment of the furin cleavage sites of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein with (Top) the spike proteins of other viruses that lack the furin cleavage site and (Bottom) the furin cleavage sites present in the α subunits of human and mouse ENaC. Adapted from Anand et al. (16).

One consequence of this “molecular mimicry” between the FCS of SARS CoV-2 spike and the FCS of human ENaC is competition for host furin in the lumen of the Golgi apparatus, where the SARS-CoV-2 spike is processed. This results in a decrease in human ENaC expression (21). A decrease in human ENaC expression compromises airway function and has been implicated as a contributing factor in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 (22). Another consequence of this astonishing molecular mimicry is evidenced by apparent cross-reactivity with human ENaC of antibodies from COVID-19 patients, with the highest levels of cross-reacting antibodies directed against this epitope being associated with most severe disease (23).

We do not know whether the insertion of the FCS was the result of natural evolution (2, 13)—perhaps via a recombination event in an intermediate mammal or a human (13, 24)—or was the result of a deliberate introduction of the FCS into a SARS-like virus as part of a laboratory experiment. We do know that the insertion of such FCS sequences into SARS-like viruses was a specific goal of work proposed by the EHA-WIV-UNC partnership within a 2018 grant proposal (“DEFUSE”) that was submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (25). The 2018 proposal to DARPA was not funded, but we do not know whether some of the proposed work was subsequently carried out in 2018 or 2019, perhaps using another source of funding.

We also know that that this research team would be familiar with several previous experiments involving the successful insertion of an FCS sequence into SARS-CoV-1 (26) and other coronaviruses, and they had a lot of experience in construction of chimeric SARS-like viruses (27–29). In addition, the research team would also have some familiarity with the FCS sequence and the FCS-dependent activation mechanism of human ENaC α (19), which was extensively characterized at UNC (17, 18). For a research team assessing the pandemic potential of SARS-related coronaviruses, the FCS of human ENaC—an FCS known to be efficiently cleaved by host furin present in the target location (epithelial cells) of an important target organ (lung), of the target organism (human)—might be a rational, if not obvious, choice of FCS to introduce into a virus to alter its infectivity, in line with other work performed previously.

Of course, the molecular mimicry of ENaC within the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein might be a mere coincidence, although one with a very low probability. The exact FCS sequence present in SARS-CoV-2 has recently been introduced into the spike protein of SARS-CoV-1 in the laboratory, in an elegant series of experiments (12, 30), with predictable consequences in terms of enhanced viral transmissibility and pathogenicity. Obviously, the creation of such SARS-1/2 “chimeras” is an area of some concern for those responsible for present and future regulation of this area of biology. [Note that these experiments in ref. 30 were done in the context of a safe “pseudotyped” virus and thus posed no danger of producing or releasing a novel pathogen.] These simple experiments show that the introduction of the 12 nucleotides that constitute the FCS insertion in SARS-CoV-2 would not be difficult to achieve in a lab. It would therefore seem reasonable to ask that electronic communications and other relevant data from US groups should be made available for scrutiny.

Seeking Transparency

To date, the federal government, including the NIH, has not done enough to promote public trust and transparency in the science surrounding SARS-CoV-2. A steady trickle of disquieting information has cast a darkening cloud over the agency. The NIH could say more about the possible role of its grantees in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, yet the agency has failed to reveal to the public the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a research-associated event, even though several researchers raised that concern on February 1, 2020, in a phone conversation that was documented by email (5).

Those emails were released to the public only through FOIA, and they suggest that the NIH leadership took an early and active role in promoting the “zoonotic hypothesis” and the rejection of the laboratory-associated hypothesis (5). The NIH has resisted the release of important evidence, such as the grant proposals and project reports of EHA, and has continued to redact materials released under FOIA, including a remarkable 290-page redaction in a recent FOIA release.

Information now held by the research team headed by EHA (7), as well as the communications of that research team with US research funding agencies, including NIH, USAID, DARPA, DTRA, and the Department of Homeland Security, could shed considerable light on the experiments undertaken by the US-funded research team and on the possible relationship, if any, between those experiments and the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. We do not assert that laboratory manipulation was involved in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, although it is apparent that it could have been. However, we do assert that there has been no independent and transparent scientific scrutiny to date of the full scope of the US-based evidence.

The relevant US-based evidence would include the following information: laboratory notebooks, virus databases, electronic media (emails, other communications), biological samples, viral sequences gathered and held as part of the PREDICT project (7) and other funded programs, and interviews of the EHA-led research team by independent researchers, together with a full record of US agency involvement in funding the research on SARS-like viruses, especially with regard to projects in collaboration with Wuhan-based institutions. We suggest that a bipartisan inquiry should also follow up on the tentative conclusion of the IC (4) that the initial outbreak in Wuhan may have occurred no later than November 2019 and that therefore the virus was circulating before the cluster of known clinical cases in December. The IC did not reveal the evidence for this statement, nor when parts of the US Government or US-based researchers first became aware of a potential new outbreak. Any available information and knowledge of the earliest days of the outbreak, including viral sequences (8), could shed considerable light on the origins question.

We continue to recognize the tremendous value of US–China cooperation in ongoing efforts to uncover the proximal origins of the pandemic. Much vital information still resides in China, in the laboratories, hospital samples, and early epidemiological information not yet available to the scientific community. Yet a US-based investigation need not wait—there is much to learn from the US institutions that were extensively involved in research that may have contributed to, or documented the emergence of, the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Only an independent and transparent investigation, perhaps as a bipartisan Congressional inquiry, will reveal the information that is needed to enable a thorough scientific process of scrutiny and evaluation.

Supporting Information
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Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

Monkey Pox

Truth versus Fearporn.

rwmalonemd.substack.com

(fair use applies)

BOLDING FROM ORIGINAL (not mine)

Monkey Pox
Truth versus Fearporn.
Robert W Malone MD, MS
18 hr ago

I keep getting asked the same question again and again; is this outbreak of monkey pox a real threat, or is this another case of overstated and weaponized public health messaging? I am going to save my answer to this question for the end of this article and instead focus on what monkey pox is, the nature and characteristics of the associated disease, what we know and don’t know.

The monkeypox virus, which originates in various regions of Africa, is related to SmallPox (Variola), which are both members of the genus Orthopoxvirus. However, it is important to understand that Variola (major or minor) is the species of virus which is responsible for the worst human disease caused by the Orthopox viruses. For example, Cowpox, Horsepox, and Camelpox are also members of this genus, none of which are a major health threat to humans, and one of which (Cowpox) has even been (historically) used as a Smallpox vaccine. My point is that just because Monkeypox is related to Smallpox, this does not in any way mean that it represents a similar public health threat. Anyone who implies otherwise is basically engaged in or otherwise supporting weaponized public health-related propaganda. In other words, spreading public health fearporn.

Monkeypox was first identified in 1958 in colonies of monkeys, and the first human case of the virus was identified in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Most likely this was just the first case identified, as people living in Africa have been in contact with monkeys and the other Monkeypox animal hosts for millennia. The “West African” monkeypox clade (clade = variant) circulating outside of Africa at this time causes a milder disease compared to the closely related virus found found in other regions of Africa (Congo clade).

The symptoms of monkeypox are somewhat similar to, but much milder than smallpox disease. The general clinical presentation of the disease caused by the West African monkey pox clade virus involves Influenza-like symptoms — fever, body aches, chills — together with swollen lymph nodes. A rash on the palm of the hand is often observed. In the latter stage of the disease, which may last for up to a month or more in some cases, may involve small lesions which develop a crust, and which can result in a small depigmented scar. There is no evidence of asymptomatic transmission. In other words, current medical knowledge indicates that it is only spread by person to person contact between an uninfected individual and someone who already has symptoms of the disease. Therefore, disease spread can be readily controlled by classical public health interventions such as contact tracing, temporary quarantine of those who have had physical contact with someone who is infected, and longer term quarantine of those who develop symptoms. Essentially all of the current cases in the west which we are seeing in the news are among men who have sex with men, and appear to be due to close physical contact. Monkeypox is endemic in many parts of Africa, and is a “zoonotic” virus, meaning it can be transmitted from a variety of animals (not just monkeys) to humans. Initial animal to human transmission followed by limited human to human transmission is probably the cause of the sporadic cases typically observed in Africa. Chicken pox, which is highly transmissible, is not part of the genus Orthopoxvirus, despite that name “pox.” Once again for emphasis, Cowpox and Camelpox are also in the genus Orthopoxvirus, and they are not particularly pathogenic when contracted by humans; just because Monkeypox is a “pox” virus in the genus Orthopoxvirus, does not mean it is particularly deadly.

Monkeypox is a double stranded DNA virus, which means that due to the double stranded nature of DNA each of the two strands act as a “check” on the other during replication. As a consequence of this “error checking”, this and other DNA viruses mutate much more slowly than RNA viruses do. Over time, DNA virus genomes are relatively stable. This means that, unlike SARS-CoV-2 (COVID) or influenza, Monkeypox is unlikely to rapidly evolve to escape either naturally acquired or vaccine induced immunity. For the purposes of making a vaccine, this makes it a much easier target that say, a rapidly evolving RNA Coronavirus such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19. Furthermore, from an immunological point of view, the various Orthopox viruses often are cross-protective. In other words, if you have been vaccinated with a smallpox vaccine, or previously infected by Cowpox, Camelpox, or Monkeypox, you are highly likely to be quite resistant to disease caused by the Monkeypox virus which is now being (quite rarely) reported in non-African countries.

Current data indicate that Monkeypox is not very infectious in humans - it has a low Ro (perhaps below 1), which is the term used to describe how efficiency an infectious disease can spread from human to human. Again, this is super good news for containment. An Ro of <1 generally means that (even in the absence of social distancing of other containment measures), for every person already infected, on average less than one other person will become infected. For comparison purposes, the Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 have an Ro in the range of 7 to 10. A virus with an Ro of less than one can be easily contained with the standard public health methods discussed above. A virus with an Ro of 7-10 essentially cannot be contained and will rapidly spread throughout the world, as we have seen with the Omicron variants. In the case of a virus with an Ro around 1 or less, traditional infectious disease containment methods such as contact tracing, identification and isolation of infected individuals can be all that is needed to control the virus. Now the fact that Monkeypox is being spread from human to human (rather than only arising from contact between a person and an infected animal) is not such good news, but since this transmission appears to be from very close contact, this means that it can be easily contained without resorting to a general population vaccination campaign. In this type of setting, if there is a significant outbreak, vaccination is often restricted to just the health care and/or first responder personnel most likely to be in contact with an infected person. Using a vaccine to help that containment via either “ring” vaccination or wide-spread vaccination strategies is generally unnecessary, and may even be counterproductive, depending on the safety of the vaccine - keeping in mind that no drug or vaccine is perfectly safe.

Let me take a moment to tell a personal story to illustrate this point. After the 9-11 events including the anthrax letters, I took a job involving clinical development of a wide range of biodefense vaccines under a US Department of Defense (DoD) contract (issued to Dynport Vaccine Company). One of the vaccine indications we worked on was for prevention of Smallpox. The Vice President of the United States at the time, Mr. Dick Cheney, was advocating for widespread vaccination against smallpox because it was thought that there was something like a 1% chance of a bioterror attack involving reintroduction of smallpox into the United States. The existing live attenuated smallpox vaccine began to be deployed throughout the United States to healthcare workers and first responders. Then multiple reports of vaccine-caused damage began to circulate. I was tasked with looking into historic DoD smallpox vaccine campaign records concerning these types of “adverse events”. Adverse events after administration of this live attenuated vaccine were well known, and generally fell into two categories. In some cases, a small subset of young warfighters and recruits had some previously undetected immunologic defect which resulted in them developing an ongoing infection by the live attenuated vaccine virus that was being used at the time. The other group developed more subtle symptoms including what now appears to have been vaccination-associated myo- and pericarditis - typically ascribed to an autoimmune process. These problems were known risks back when smallpox vaccination was common (and smallpox had not been eradicated) and therefore no surprise when the same vaccine was redeployed in the present. But smallpox had been eradicated, and Mr. Cheney’s worst case scenario never happened. Those who were vaccinated and damaged to protect against a non-existent threat provide a great example illustrating a completely upside down risk benefit ratio. All risk, no benefit. And, appropriately, the smallpox vaccination campaign was halted.

Key takeaway: this is not influenza or COVID - this virus mutates slowly, it is not highly infectious, naturally acquired immunity is potent and long lasting, and Orthopox vaccines are usually cross protective. The risk of immunologic escape is very, very low. And the spread of this virus can be readily stopped by simple, inexpensive classical public health measures. If it were otherwise, we would already have experienced a pandemic of Monkeypox decades ago.

Monkeypox disease severity can vary with different clades (found in different regions in Africa, which also suggest the virus has been around for a very long time). Luckily, this particular clade is less severe and appears to be endemic in Africa. Unfortunately, it has rarely been studied and so relatively little is known about the virus and associated human disease, largely because the infectious threat to the general population is so low. STAT news’ journalist Helen Branswell has recently interviewed CDC experts, and published an excellent summary of the clinical presentation:

“With one to three days of the onset of fever, a distinctive rash appears, often starting on the face. Many conditions can cause rashes but the monkeypox rash has some unusual features, notably the fact that vesicles can form on the palms of the hands. In countries where it is endemic, the virus is believed to mainly spread to people from infected animals when people kill or prepare bushmeat for consumption.

Once the virus jumps to people, human-to-human transmission can occur via respiratory droplets — virus-laced saliva that can infect the mucosal membranes of the eyes, nose, and throat — or by contact with monkeypox lesions or bodily fluids, with the virus entering through small cuts in the skin. It can also be transmitted by contact with clothing or linens contaminated with material from monkeypox lesions. (STAT News).

There was a prior outbreak of Monkeypox in the United States during 2003. That particular outbreak, the first reported outside of Africa, was traced back to the importation of small mammals from Ghana. As shown by this outbreak, multiple animals can contract the disease - during that outbreak, giant pouched rats and squirrels tested positive for the virus and eventually spread it to prairie dogs being sold as pets in multiple Midwestern states (per the CDC). Forty-seven people caught the disease from the prairie dogs. This is important and relevant history, because the current outbreak appears to be occurring from human to human transmission, with no single individual traced as as case zero. There have been a few other outbreaks outside of Africa over the years from travelers coming from Nigeria. It is currently thought that the Monkeypox virus is much more common in Nigeria than has previously been reported.

There is a vaccine that was licensed in the U.S. in 2019 for people 18 years of age and older to protect against smallpox and monkeypox; Bavarian Nordic’s Jynneos. A second vaccine, ACAM2000 made by Emergent Product Development, protects against smallpox and is also thought to offer some protection against monkeypox. Both vaccines are licensed only for people considered at high risk of contracting the disease because they are not entirely safe. In the 2003 Monkeypox outbreak in the U.S., smallpox vaccine was deployed to persons considered at high risk.

The U.S. already holds supplies of the vaccines in the Strategic National Stockpile, a hedge against public health emergencies. “To combat a smallpox emergency, the SNS holds enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate the entire U.S. population. In addition, the SNS has antiviral drugs that can be deployed to treat smallpox infections, if needed,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said via email. In my opinion, the 119 Million dollar smallpox vaccine purchase which was just authorized by the US HHS and Biden administration represents an unnecessary and unwarranted expense, unless there are data showing that the current strain is significantly different from the historic predecessor strains within this clade.

The WHO’s Van Kerkhove noted that some of these products have been licensed using what is known as the animal rule, where animal efficacy data are used as a surrogate because the lack of circulating smallpox means the vaccines or drugs can’t be tested for efficacy in people. As a result, any such product could only be used in the context of a clinical trial, she said.

“There are options. We just have to make sure that they’re used appropriately. One of the things related to vaccines is we want to make sure if the vaccines are needed and used, they’re used among populations that need them the most. There’s not ample supply of anything right now,” she said.

Still, she expressed confidence the outbreak can be controlled.

“What we need to do right now is focus on stopping the spread. And we can do that. We can do that with the appropriate messaging, with the appropriate testing … with supportive isolation and clinical care as necessary, with protecting health workers,” Van Kerkhove said. (STAT News).

The Bill Gates funded organization GAVI has provided their assessment of the medical threat posed by Monkeypox, which can be found here. Many readers of this substack will not be surprised by my assessment that this GAVI threat assessment is highly biased towards overstatement. For example, the article seeks to create parallels between Monkeypox and Ebola:

Similar to viruses like Ebola, transmission only happens in close proximity by contact with lesions, body fluids, respiratory droplets or contaminated materials such as bedding or clothes.

The article also states the following pants-on-fire disinformation;

Although symptoms often ease within a month, one in ten cases can be fatal. Children are particularly susceptible.

Factcheck determination by qualified subject matter expert -

This assertion represents a very biased interpretation of a data report from the World Health Organization:

In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported 4,594 suspected cases of monkeypox, including 171 deaths (case fatality ratio 3.7%). They are described as suspected because confirmation requires PCR testing, which is not easily available in endemic areas.

Those readers who have become sensitized to this type of information manipulation and weaponization will immediately notice two key things about this comment. First, the reported mortality of 3.7% (NOT 10%) of cases is from suspected, not confirmed cases. Secondly, this type of sampling is highly biased towards more severe disease- countries rarely will detect and do not report cases of mild disease to the WHO.

So, is the biothreat real? Is is imminent? Does it justify the global media hype? As I was waiting in an airport lounge to travel from USA to the UK two days ago, I saw a newsreel from CNN which was breathlessly reporting on this “threat” while displaying historic images of patients suffering from Smallpox disease. This provides a classical example of public health fearporn, in my opinion, and CNN should be reprimanded for broadcasting irresponsible propaganda - misinformation and disinformation- under the guise of journalism.

In my opinion, based on currently available information, Monkeypox is a virus and disease which is endemic in Africa, emerges sporadically after transmission into humans from animal hosts, and is typically spread by close human contact. It is readily controlled by classical public health measures. It does not have a high mortality rate. Unless there has been some genetic alteration, either through evolution or intentional genetic manipulation, it is not a significant biothreat, and has never been considered a high threat pathogen in the past.

So stop the fear mongering, misinformation and disinformation.

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

Ten different surveys all show the vaccines are not "safe and effective" -- not even close

This is my most important article since I started writing on Substack. It shows how anyone can prove to themselves that I've been telling the truth the whole time.

stevekirsch.substack.com

(fair use applies)

BOLDING IN ORIGINAL, not mine

Eight different surveys all show the vaccines are not "safe and effective" -- not even close
This is my most important article since I started writing on Substack. It shows how anyone can prove to themselves that I've been telling the truth the whole time.
Steve Kirsch
6 hr ago

Summary

I’ve written over 700 articles on my Substack. This is my most important article to date because it provides objective proof, that anyone can verify, that I have been telling the truth since I first became a “misinformation spreader” on May 25, 2021 with an article on TrialSite News entitled “Should you get vaccinated?”.

Please watch my 17-minute summary video where I show the highlights from each of the 8 surveys I recently did.

Eight surveys all show the COVID vaccines should be immediately halted

This is the most important video I've ever done. It is a quick 17 minute summary of the highlights of 8 different surveys which all show that the COVID vaccines are dangerous and should be immediately

rumble.com

17 min 13 sec

If you only watch one video this year, this is the one to watch. It can save your life.

The preliminary results show:

The vaccines have already killed more Americans than COVID
For kids 5-11, the 5-11 death report data indicates we are killing 336 kids for every child we might save from COVID if the vaccine was 100% perfect in protecting against death.
The second shot is the most dangerous and increases all-cause mortality (ACM) over the next 30 days by 5X, the first and third shots raise ACM by 3X, and the fourth shot appears to only mildly elevate your risk of death. The analogy is that if 3 bullets to your head haven’t stopped you, it’s unlikely the 4th bullet will make much of a difference.
It appears that the true number of COVID deaths, vaccine deaths, and annual deaths from heart attacks are relatively comparable with each other (within a factor of 2) since January 2020 to the present. This suggests that only around 650,000 people actually died from COVID, and a slightly larger number have died from the COVID vaccines. This is in line with our VAERS minimum estimate of excess deaths caused by the vaccine: 12,000 VAERS excess deaths in the US * 41 (under-reporting factor) = 492,000 deaths.
These are all estimates, but the numbers are so absurdly high that nobody should be taking these vaccines, especially kids. It’s unethical.
VAERS is very under-reported for deaths. All 15 deaths reported weren’t reported to the VAERS system suggesting that our 41X under-reporting factor minimum estimate is well within range.
All surveys have biases and confounders. We are certainly open to hearing from anyone who thinks that they have a more accurate survey or analysis method. Instead of shooting holes in the survey, it’s more constructive to show us the “right” way.
In order to attack this research, you need to attack the data or the methodology or both using data to prove we got it wrong, not hand-waving arguments.
This work will never be published in a medical journal because it is counter-narrative. Starting on May 21, 2022, it will be “peer-reviewed” by hundreds of thousands of people who will be looking for an error and they will post it here. Check the comments if you want to see the “peer review.”
You can replicate the surveys yourself if you don’t believe me.

We are in the process of repeating these questions with a randomly selected group of people with the survey being done by an independent polling company (the survey has already begun but the results will take 5 days).

In the meantime, the statisticians I work with tell me the signals observed here are too large to be explained by bias and they are also very consistent with previous estimates.

For example, I’ve walked into several large venues I’ve never been in before and asked the audience “how many people do you know who died from any cause right before they were going to get their first vaccine dose? How many after?” The results are always stunning.

So if you believe that people have selective recall and will be unable to recall a child’s death that was caused by COVID, then you should stop reading right now. However, if you think that people are primarily honest and answer objective questions honestly, you should keep reading. Also, if you are willing to survey your own followers, keep reading.

Introduction

I recently sent off eight different surveys (listed below) to my readers to get a sense for what the reality is out there. What I found was consistent with everything I’ve been saying for more than a year now, namely, the vaccines are too unsafe to use and especially deadly for our kids.

The blue pillers would argue, “That’s a biased survey because your readers are all anti-vaxxers with an agenda.” Oh really?

Great hand-waving argument, but where is your evidence that the responses were wrong? If you are a fact checker or work at HHS, I’m happy to give you the full data under NDA so you can actually look at the data BEFORE you make your accusations. After all, that should be the proper order, right? Evidence before accusation?

My readers actually see the world as it really is, whereas in the blue pill world, they see a different “reality”:

nobody dies from the COVID vaccine
there are no vaccine injured
masks work great to stop COVID
the vaccines are safe and effective
lockdowns work
6 feet protects you from being infected
none of the early treatment protocols work
there is no negative vaccine efficacy
the vaccine provide better protection than recovering from an infection
the unvaccinated are a danger to society
the unvaccinated are causing variants
there is significant asymptomatic spread
we should be testing people with no symptoms
vaccines are so safe they should be mandated even though everyone admits that 100% vaccination will not stop the virus

So show me the PROOF that my readers are “biased.” Make my day. Let’s have a debate on that one.

With that out of the way, the results I found are simply stunning. Here are the two most important highlights from the data that I show in detail in the videos below:

The cure is worse than the disease: more people have been killed by the vaccine than by COVID. Even if the vaccine was perfect and prevented 100% of the deaths, it still couldn’t be justified. What was stunning is that even though the disease started killing people in January 2020 and the vaccine got a very late start (December 2020), there have now been more people killed by the vaccine than by COVID. The total number killed so far by COVID and the vaccine is roughly the number of people killed by heart disease over 2 years so slightly over 1M people have been killed by COVID and the vaccine so far, with the vaccine slightly ahead of COVID.
We are killing an estimated 336 kids for every kid we might save from a COVID death. As we get more data, we’ll be able to refine this number. The calculation is described below. It’s quite stunning.

Please, don’t take my word for it. If you don’t believe me, do your own survey.

Or you can ask yourself, “why don’t they want to fact check these results?” or “why don’t they want to do any of these surveys?”

The introduction

Read this article. This will open your eyes to the possibility that I may be right. It’s right there in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

The surveys

I did five surveys with multiple questions. This allowed me to capture each response for anyone to analyze or verify:

I also did 3 social media surveys

Deaths in 5 to 11 year olds since 2020 (Twitter)
Deaths in our extended family since 2020 (Twitter)
Deaths in our extended family since 2020 (Gab)

Survey results available for download

The 3 social media surveys are in public view.

You can download the responses for each of the five detailed surveys using the links in this section. You will get the FULL data. Note that some entries are gamed and there are duplicates that were not filtered out for completeness.

The contact info and names were redacted but are available to fact checkers under NDA:

Validation on Twitter and Gab (3 surveys)

Here are three surveys I ran on Twitter and Gab.

The beauty of these Twitter and Gab surveys is you can easily run these surveys yourself with YOUR followers and see what you get. That is your truth, since you shouldn’t believe anything I write or anything my followers say. After all, I’m a big “misinformation spreader” as everyone knows. Also these polls are still open and they could be gamed by either side.

This is why you want to run your own poll.

Here’s the first poll.

Let’s assume the vaccines are perfectly safe. Then the three month period following Dose 1, 2, and 3 is just going to approximately reflect any normal 3 month period because we’ve already removed all the COVID deaths in the first line.

The expected number of background deaths in 3 months is 7% from the second to last line. But let’s look at the 3 months after dose 1, 2, and 3: 7+12+6=25%. Subtract 7% background and we get an 18% excess death rate. But only 14% died from COVID. So even though the vaccines didn’t roll out for almost a year, the vaccines have already killed far more people than COVID: 18% excess death after the vaccine vs. 14% excess deaths from COVID. In short, just the excess deaths 30 days after the vaccines show the vaccines have killed 1.28X more people than COVID. Please run this survey yourself.

What this means is that if you think COVID has killed 1M Americans since 2020 (which I think is high), then COVID vaccines have killed 1.28M Americans since 2021. Let that sink in. And remember, not everyone has been vaccinated yet.
Here are two surveys run by VaccineTruth2 on Twitter. The first is the “Twitter version” of the Gab poll. It’s a Twitter version because you only get four choices and each line must be 25 characters or less.

There are 50% more votes on this one. But we couldn’t ask the control question about the number who die naturally over a 3 month period because Twitter limits polls to just 4 options. But fortunately, there was no need to.

We know from the previous poll that the background death rate is about 1/3 of the Dose 1 rate. And that the dose 3 rate was about 85% of the Dose 1 rate.

So we can estimate Dose 1 + Dose 2 + Dose 3 = 29.1%

Subtract out the estimated 3 month background and we get 29.1 -7.1= 22% excess death rate. 22% is more than twice as large as the 9.2% COVID rate. Again, the results show that the vaccine is killing way more people than COVID (in this case twice as many)! That’s what the numbers show. Even though this makes our case even more compelling, I think the Gab poll is going to be the closer estimate since less “estimating” is required because we have the source numbers for the population we surveyed.

[CONTINUED NEXT POST]

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

[CONTINUED]

And our final Twitter poll is the most shocking of all:

COVID has a negligible impact on child death rates. Deaths in kids are caused by cancer, accidents, etc. and it doesn’t change much year over year. So the deaths in kids should be even over time (there will be some seasonality of course). The first two bars represent 22 months. The last bar is 7 months. So how can just as many kids die in 7 months as in the 22 months prior to that? That can only happen if kids are dying at 3 times the earlier rate.

So what happened on Oct 29, 2021? We approved the vaccine for 5 to 11 year olds! But not every kid got the shot.
So if we injected only 50% of the kids in that age group, then this basically is a kill rate that is 6 times the normal all-cause mortality rate. That’s huge. It’s the biggest killer of kids of all time. The CDC outside committee (ACIP) just recommended that your child SHOULD get this vaccine so they don’t die from COVID. Just one person voted “No.” This is minutes after I told them that the data shows the vaccines were killing kids at a far higher rate than COVID and they should do their own surveys to find the truth.

The pro-vaxxers will argue that correlation doesn’t mean causality. That’s right, but they need to follow that up on that “hand-waving argument” by naming the intervention that DID cause the 3X increase in the rate of death of kids. What was it and how come nobody has said anything? Nothing from the CDC on this. We are left with the conclusion that it has to be the vaccine.

Nobody is saying anything because the medical community would be discredited for decades for recommending such a deadly vaccine. So they say nothing other than try to create FUD.

That’s why they need to censor us and why they hope that you never run the same survey yourself. There is simply no other way to explain this result. This article will be heavily censored on social media.

Also, assuming that 5% of kids are dying from COVID which would be a huge stretch (if anyone has the numbers, please put it in the comments but my guess is far far less than 5%), then we are looking at killing at least 120 kids for every kid we’d save from COVID with a PERFECT vaccine (20X factor from the 5% and 6X factor if all kids were vaccinated).

Amazingly, this is nearly the same risk/benefit calculation that Toby Rogers did months ago (Toby estimated 117 kids were killed by the vaccine for every child we MIGHT save). Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Is there some noise in this data? Of course. But you can see the trends clearly. Even if we are off by a factor of 100, this is still troubling that we are killing more kids than we are saving, isn’t it?

Finally let me address claims that COVID is now killing our kids. Funny how this only started happening AFTER the vaccines rolled out for those kids, isn’t it??

My survey of kids 5 to18 who died showed that all 15 kids reported died from the vaccine. So if COVID is now a huge issue for kids, my data shows the problem is at least 10X bigger for the vaccine because we couldn’t find any of those kids who died from COVID.

I just found out I was right. Here are the numbers right from the October 26, 2021 VRBPAC presentation (see slide 16) which show that just 1.75% deaths in this age group are caused by COVID. So my 120X estimate…that’s wrong. I need to increase the 120X estimate by 5/1.75. We are killing 336 kids for every kid we would save if the vaccines are 100% successful. Wow.

The analyses

I published two analyses prior to this one:

The 5 to 18 survey

Since 2020, none of my readers knew of a single COVID death in kids 18 and under. But they know of 14 who appear to have been killed by the vaccine and I have the full story of all of them. I read through all the death reports. One of the death reports was clearly gamed in order to try to discredit the survey if it was included; the 14 remaining are real. In short, we are killing lots of kids to save no one from dying from COVID. We can’t even quantify how big this is; we suspect it is at least 14 to 1 but could be over 100 to 1. We don’t have enough data to quantify just how insane this is. We have totally lost it as a society that there are so many people who want to kill their own kids with these vaccines and we have a government that is egging them on to do so. Note: Of the 15 responses, one was gamed, one was a duplicate, and one reported 2 deaths.

The video walkthroughs of the summary data

There are two videos that walk you through the survey results. Both videos can be viewed at 720p.

Eight surveys: the highlights (17 minutes)

Everyone should watch this short video. I describe the key takeaways of the 8 different surveys.

Eight surveys all show the COVID vaccines should be immediately halted

This is the most important video I've ever done. It is a quick 17 minute summary of the highlights of 8 different surveys which all show that the COVID vaccines are dangerous and should be immediately

rumble.com

17 min 13 sec

Five different surveys all show vaccines are NOT "safe and effective" (50 min)

Five different surveys all show vaccines are NOT "safe and effective"

How will they spin this one? Five completely different surveys show the COVID vaccines aren't safe and effective, not even close. For example, the under 18 death survey since 2020 showed 15 deaths cau

rumble.com

50 min 44 sec

This goes into the 5 long surveys in detail. This is available in 720p resolution which makes it easier to read.

My offer to any “fact checker” organizations including HHS agencies

I’m happy to supply the full data under NDA provided:

The data is destroyed after use
Access to the data is restricted to one or two people responsible for the research
You commit up front to publishing the report on the analysis within a reasonable timeframe for verification. This ensures that if the data is verified, the “fact check” won’t get killed.

I am also happy to discuss the survey results on a live video call that is recorded and streamed. After all, I have nothing to hide.

How these surveys will be attacked

Arguments they will use include:

The phase 3 trials proved the vaccines were safe
The questions were biased
The respondents were biased
It’s not published in a peer-reviewed journal
The surveys didn’t have IRB approval
The surveys don’t support what the CDC has been saying so they must be wrong
I’m too busy to look at this, but the arguments must be wrong

Let me assure you that all of these arguments are excuses. No vaccine expert in the world is going to agree to challenge me on this.

Any vaccine expert who believes they can successfully argue any of these points is invited to a recorded discussion with me where you prove, with evidence, that I’m wrong. You can make your request at stevekirsch-request at protonmail.com.
You will need to come armed with your own survey showing I got it wrong. Or with the autopsy reports for everyone who died in the clinical trial. Hand-waving arguments without evidence supporting your views will not be accepted.

Next steps

Watch both videos (or at least the highlights video). Pick 720p resolution.
If you don’t believe the video, please do you own survey or analyze the data I’ve uploaded
Ask your doctor why my video is wrong and what the REAL numbers are. This has the effect of red-pilling your doctor.
Your doctor will be “too busy” to respond and will attempt to gaslight you telling you that this is just misinformation. He will attempt an “appeal to a higher authority” because he won’t have any facts or evidence to dispute what I wrote, i.e., he will tell you “trust me… if the vaccines were unsafe the FDA never would have approved them.” Or he will say this isn’t peer-reviewed even though 100,000 of my peers are reviewing this article and I’m sure thousands will comment on it.
After your doctor refuses to respond to you, tell all your friends that your doctor couldn’t produce any evidence that refutes the video and perhaps they could read this article and explain to you why this is misinformation.

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

I forgot to post the articles debunking Geert. Must have been a Freudian slip because I tend to agree with Geert. I haven't read these articles, I skimmed some of them, but that's it. I'm not a scientist, these are points best left to Geert to argue against. Geert's prediction is 2 months. I think it's prudent to at least be ready in the next 2 months in case he's right. In the scheme of things covid, 2 months isn't that long to wait to see if he's right or not. Maybe everyone who is reading is believing Geert, in that case if his prediction does come true, we'll have some articles showing how the 'establishment medical community' treated his warning.

ETA: ALL OF THESE ARE FROM A YEAR AGO - March 2021. It might be interesting to actually read through them as see how much they've already gotten wrong. I doubt any of them thought Omicron would come along and evade their vaccine....

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

The Doomsday Prophecy of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a Belgian virus expert, has scared the Internet by claiming the COVID-19 vaccines will doom humanity. No need to panic.A Belgian virus expert has scared the Internet by claiming the COVID-19 vaccines will doom humanity. No need to panic.

www.mcgill.ca

(fair use applies)

The Doomsday Prophecy of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche
A Belgian virus expert has scared the Internet by claiming the COVID-19 vaccines will doom humanity. No need to panic.
Jonathan Jarry M.Sc.
24 Mar 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has attracted a swarm of vocal contrarians like little else in the recent past. These public commentators, often bedazzled with advanced degrees, have painted themselves as brave mavericks escaping from the mainstream herd to denounce the cataclysmic consequences of public health measures. The latest example of this phenomenon comes in the form of Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, who recently published an alarming manifesto. In it, Dr. Bossche makes a number of incorrect or exaggerated claims about the use of mass vaccination during a pandemic and urges international health authorities to stop the current crop of COVID-19 vaccines or else risk unleashing “a global catastrophe without equal.” This is scary stuff, but it’s all quite misguided.

Analogies break down in the face of data

Dr. Bossche asserts that vaccines are like antibiotics in that, when they are both overused and imperfect, they allow germs to mutate in dangerous ways. With antibiotic use, the bacteria that have developed a mutation or acquired a gene that gives them protection from the antibiotic will escape death and soon become the dominant strain. That’s antibiotic resistance. Bossche claims that the same thing will happen with the coronavirus. Because, he says, the vaccines are imperfect, they will allow the virus to keep being transmitted from person to person and thus mutate inside of us, until a dangerous new variant emerges.

This is not complete nonsense. I reached out to Dr. Paul Offit, a paediatrician specialized in vaccines and immunology and the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, to get his thoughts on whether antibiotic resistance and vaccine-associated immune escape are indeed comparable. “In a sense it is, but he misses the main point,” Dr. Offit told me. A vaccine shows your body an inert part of the virus so that it can make neutralizing antibodies against it. If the body ends up making low levels of these antibodies, i.e. not enough to swiftly kill the virus when you catch it, this could allow the virus to stick around in your body for a little bit and make copies of itself. Some of these copies may by chance have the right kinds of errors in their genetic code to become variants of concern, although the mutation rate of this coronavirus is quite low.

“But if you have a vaccine that results in high levels of neutralizing antibodies, that’s not a way to create variants,” he continued. To use an analogy, if a gaggle of invaders is coming but you have only managed to round up a few soldiers, be prepared for a long siege during which the enemy might learn a thing or two about your defences and adapt. But if you have a full and overpowering army at your command, the invaders won’t stick around for long. So the question becomes: do the COVID-19 vaccines give us low or high levels of neutralizing antibodies?

While scientists don’t yet know exactly what levels of antibodies are needed to ward off disease, the approved vaccines do elicit the production of neutralizing antibodies. Meanwhile, a small study published in The Lancet showed that giving people who had never had COVID-19 a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine resulted in them making similar levels of anti-spike protein antibodies as individuals who had had COVID-19 but had not yet been vaccinated. A study of the Moderna vaccine in 34 participants showed “high levels of binding and neutralizing antibodies that declined slightly over time, as expected, but [that] remained elevated in all participants three months after the booster vaccination.” More broadly, data from the vaccine clinical trials and from countries that have vaccinated a large percentage of their population show a significant reduction in cases and mortality. The vaccines are working.

But what about asymptomatic transmission? Many vaccines prevent transmission of the virus from person to person, and there is mounting evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines do as well. Even if they don’t prevent all transmissions, it looks like they can drastically cut the transmission chain and also reduce the amount of virus that can be transmitted in these cases. Dr. Bossche’s idea that the coronavirus will simply continue moving from person to person and that vaccines will only prevent severe disease is contradicted by the data that is accumulating.

But even if the COVID-19 vaccines were “leaky,” meaning they still allowed some vaccinated people to transmit the virus to others, there is evidence that they could still efficiently contain the spread of the disease. Edward Nirenberg, a science blogger who addressed Dr. Bossche’s claims in great detail, points to Marek’s disease. It is caused by a herpesvirus and it gives chickens a number of health problems, including cancer. Thankfully, there is a vaccine against it, but over time, newer and more virulent strains of the virus have been detected, and this made scientists think it was because the vaccine was leaky, that it did not allow the chicken to mount a good enough immune response. Interestingly enough, the use of this seemingly leaky vaccine in chickens led to a reduction in the incidence of Marek’s disease by 99%. Potentially leaky vaccine but stellar disease reduction.

Another important counterpoint to Dr. Bossche’s claim is that we can simply reformulate our vaccines to match new variants of concern. There is a reason why a new flu vaccine is made each year: the influenza virus drifts and shifts and the vaccine needs to be reformulated to be a better match for the specific viruses that are predicted to be common during the next flu season. Similarly, if a new SARS-CoV-2 variant emerges and is so different that our current crop of vaccines don’t match it, scientists can simply tweak their vaccines. It’s not an instantaneous solution, as massive vaccination campaigns require manufacturing and deployment at scale, but it’s a fix we know well and have implemented in the past.

And lest we forget: the variants of concern making headlines now arose before we had any vaccine against the coronavirus. Dr. Bossche’s concern about imperfect vaccines allowing the virus to mutate should be dwarfed by the much larger, evidence-based worry of allowing the virus to mutate inside of unvaccinated people. Without vaccines, the virus is allowed to jump from person to person and make imperfect copies of itself, and this flawed replication process is like a worldwide game of Russian roulette. Most times, the virus will not mutate or its mutation will be harmless, but the more people incubate the virus, the bigger the chance of a dangerous mutation emerging by chance. Vaccines can put a stop to that.

If Dr. Bossche fears the current vaccines so much, what is his solution?

The innate immunity gambit

Our immune system is divided into two main branches: innate and adaptive. Basically, innate immunity is a bit like Dory the amnesiac fish from Finding Nemo. It doesn’t remember much. You can throw the same virus at your innate immune system and it will not remember it. It will not get any stronger fighting it each time. By comparison, the adaptive immune system has a memory built in. It remembers tiny invaders and fights them back with more vigour each time. Vaccines make use of the adaptive part of our immune system.

Dr. Bossche, however, seems to be a big fan of the innate immune system and he worries that all of these COVID-19 vaccines and public health measures are getting in the way of our innate immune system fighting off the coronavirus. He claims that keeping people in lockdown during the pandemic is not beneficial to their innate immune system, which requires exposure to viruses and bacteria to remain in tip-top shape. This is a bad argument. As Dr. Offit pointed out to me, even at home we are exposed to legions of microorganisms. “The food you eat isn’t sterile,” he reminded me, “the dust you inhale isn’t sterile, the water you drink isn’t sterile.” We get exposed to a lot of microorganisms.

This innate immunity gambit on the part of Dr. Bossche is something typically seen in wellness communities obsessed with the naturalistic fallacy, where strengthening your immune system is as simple and as natural as taking in the sun, walking in the woods, and hugging people. For Dr. Bossche, however, the solution is not long walks on the beach, but an alleged new type of vaccine focused on training the innate immune system. One of the cell types of the innate immune system is a natural killer cell, and Dr. Bossche claims to be developing a natural killer cell vaccine. Have we seen any evidence of this? No. I believe I speak for many scientists when I say: show us the evidence.

Imagine you were a public health advisor and were confronted with this choice: to heed Dr. Bossche’s apocalyptic warning and stop all COVID-19 vaccinations (scenario #1) or to ignore him and follow the evidence (scenario #2). What would you do?

In scenario #1, you get rid of vaccines and lockdowns and allow the virus to spread, practically unimpeded, through the population, killing more and more people and leaving many with long-term health consequences. As the virus spreads, it mutates here and there and new variants of concern emerge. And maybe, at some point, Dr. Bossche validates a new kind of vaccine that works in a completely different way and it eventually allows us to curb the pandemic. Maybe.

In scenario #2, we vaccinate as many people as we can and as quickly as we can. Cases and deaths go down. If new variants of concern that escape from the protection granted by the vaccines emerge, scientists reformulate the vaccines. This strategy is based on vaccines that target the adaptive arm of our immune system, the same principle that allowed us to slay smallpox and bring polio and measles down to their knees.

I know which scenario I would choose.

Pattern recognition

Finally, a few words on Dr. Bossche himself and the rhetorical tricks he uses in his manifesto. I am sometimes accused of attacking the person instead of simply addressing the arguments, but appraising the messenger and the phrasing of the message can be very useful.

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche is a veterinary doctor who also has a Ph.D. in virology. His LinkedIn profile lists several jobs in upper management positions, including a three-year stint as the senior program officer for vaccine discovery at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He is no stranger to vaccines. His academic publications essentially stop in 1995, except for one 2017 article about his natural killer cell vaccine idea published in a journal belonging to a publishing group, OMICS Group Inc, that has been called “predatory” and was sued by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive practices.

When you read Dr. Bossche’s open letter, you should pick up on the Galileo gambit, which is when you infer that because Galileo was laughed at but ultimately correct, your laughable idea must also be correct. You should pick up on his apocalyptic language (“there is no time to spare”, “if we are committed to perpetuating our species”) and turns of phrases that would be more at home in a superhero movie (“guardians of mankind”). You should pick up on the tactic too often used by anti-vaccination promoters: “I am all but an antivaxxer.” You should subsequently pick up on the types of people who grab this manifesto and endorse it for their audience, people like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and Del Bigtree, known figureheads of the modern anti-vaccination movement.

And if you have been at this for a while, like Dr. David Gorski who has followed and denounced the anti-vaccination movement since time immemorial, you may even pick up on similarities with the disgraced Andrew Wakefield. “Dr. Vanden Bossche is using an eerily similar argument about COVID-19 vaccines and SARS-CoV-2,” he wrote for the blog Science-Based Medicine, “to the one used by Wakefield about [the measles-mumps-rubella] vaccine and measles. Actually, it’s not just eerily similar, it’s almost exactly the same, namely that immunity from vaccines is an evolutionary selective pressure just like the evolutionary selective pressure from antibiotics to which the organism can become resistant.”

In short, if we are concerned about the virus mutating to evade vaccine protection, the solution is to vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible and to eventually reformulate the vaccines to match variants of concern that acquire this ability. And if we are concerned about the anti-vaccination movement, we should wonder why they were so quick to prop up the portentous letter of an alleged pro-vaccine scientist.

Take-home message:

Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche is a veterinarian who recently released an open letter boldly claiming that the COVID-19 vaccines will be harmful to humanity by allowing the virus to mutate in dangerous ways
If we are worried about dangerous variants emerging, it is much riskier to allow the virus to spread between unvaccinated people
If coronavirus variants emerge for which the current vaccines offer little to no protection, the vaccines can be reformulated to be a better fit, much like the annual flu vaccine
Dr. Bossche proposes the use of a new type of vaccine based on natural killer cells, which he claims he is working on but for which there is no published evidence

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

Addressing Geert Vanden Bossche’s Claims — Deplatform Disease

The short version : Geert Vanden Bossche has recently published a letter in which he argues that the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 is going to precipitate a public health disaster because the vaccines will select for viral variants that can escape their protection and drive them towards high

www.deplatformdisease.com

(fair use applies)

Addressing Geert Vanden Bossche’s Claims
Written By Edward Nirenberg
Mar 15

The short version:

Geert Vanden Bossche has recently published a letter in which he argues that the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 is going to precipitate a public health disaster because the vaccines will select for viral variants that can escape their protection and drive them towards higher virulence. His claims are speculative, he offers no evidence to support his arguments, and makes several comments which are blatantly incorrect. The core of his argument relies on the assumption that COVID-19 vaccines do not have a significant effect on transmission. This has been repeatedly confirmed to be false in multiple studies. Furthermore, even if his assumptions about the effects of the vaccine on transmission are true, his conclusions are incorrect based on established precedent from Marek’s disease, a viral illness of birds with a vaccine that does not strongly affect transmission- but it still shows meaningful public health benefits in the populations of chickens where it is used. The vaccines will absolutely be critical to ending the pandemic, and fortunately the modular nature of the technology allows for rapid reformulation and adjustment as necessary (and thus far, though precautions are being taken with novel variants to produce vaccines specific to their set of problematic mutations, there isn’t significant enough evidence to suggest that total reformulation of the vaccines is needed), but no issues raised in this letter warrant a re-evaluation of our current COVID-19 vaccination policy.

I won’t be addressing the contents of Dr. Vanden Bossche’s resume as it’s irrelevant to the fact that he is currently making unsupportable claims, but for those seeking a backgrounder on the subject, Dr. Iannelli has graciously obliged. I also won’t be linking to his original letter.

I’ll be blunt: there is very little within this letter that is even close to being correct, and there is almost no evidence presented to support any of its claims. I’ll now go through it point-by-point to explain where it’s wrong.

It's not exactly rocket science, it’s a basic principle taught in a student’s first vaccinology class: One shouldn’t use a prophylactic vaccine in populations exposed to high infectious pressure (which is now certainly the case as multiple highly infectious variants are currently circulating in many parts of the world).

There is no such principle. It in fact directly goes against current policies for responding to outbreaks of e.g. measles, mumps, meningococcal disease, etc. and more generally is directly at odds with the incredibly effective ring vaccination strategy.

To fully escape selective immune pressure exerted by vaccinal antibodies, Covid-19, a highly mutable virus, only needs to add another few mutations in its receptor-binding domain

This claim remains to be substantiated and in fact has considerable evidence against it. While it’s true that variants of concern demonstrate reduced antibody neutralization, we do not have an absolute correlate for which antibody levels would be protective and therefore the meaning of this is hard to determine. The antibody titers induced by the vaccines are MUCH higher than those seen with infection, and we see hallmarks of memory responses induced by these vaccines from even a single dose, meaning that even though there is a drop in neutralization, it may not mean a loss in protection.

Novavax’s recent Phase 3 clinical trial did show reduced efficacy against B.1.351 which has a constellation of problematic mutations that manage to reduce antibody binding affinity and also increase affinity for ACE2, however the key point is that: no one in the vaccinated group developed severe disease. The simplest explanation I can propose for this is: there is no significant change to the T cell response with the variants in either recovered or vaccinated individuals and T cell responses are critical determinants of patient clinical course. Importantly, it is possible that vaccines may simply need a bit more time for high-affinity antibodies against the variants to be generated (see “affinity maturation”; also addressed in more detail in the context of HIV here). It is also worth noting that in studies examining the antibody responses to variants of concern, some individuals do already exhibit antibodies that cross-neutralize problematic strains at similar levels.

Nonetheless, it is not as though we are sitting idle and allowing SARS-CoV-2 to accumulate escape mutations. For one thing, Moderna has completed enrollment of a phase 1 trial for a variant-specific mRNA vaccine targeting B.1.351 which bears a constellation of concerning mutations in its spike protein shown to dramatically reduce antibody binding. Evidence has already confirmed that antibodies against B.1.351 cross-neutralize with ancestral variants. Pfizer and Novavax are also working on updated vaccines against the variants of concern in case they may be needed. Critically, it would seem that immunocompromised individuals are critical in the evolution of problematic SARS-CoV-2 variants, and thus protecting them from infection is imperative (and a vaccination strategy -our current vaccination strategy- will play a key role in that, but I’ll revisit this shortly when discussing evidence for the effects of the vaccines on transmission).

Not only would people lose vaccine-mediated protection but also their precious, variant-nonspecific (!), innate immunity will be gone (this is because vaccinal antibodies outcompete natural antibodies for binding to Covid-19, even when their affinity for the viral variant is relatively low).

This is absolute, unvarnished nonsense. Bossche is referencing the production of natural IgM, which is generated by B1-B cells as a stopgap measure against infections until more potent responses can be initiated; these antibodies are polyreactive, nonspecific, and critically: constitutively produced. They are always present for as long as B1-B cells generating them live. IgM is pentameric and thus even though it has lower affinity than antibodies that have had the opportunity to evolve superior binding affinity, it can compensate with the fact that it has 10 binding sites instead of 2.

However, IgG antibodies bear many of the same effector functions (actually, they tend to be better at many of them, as Table 10.27 shows) and they can diffuse into extravascular sites unlike IgM. Principally, antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 could be of value if they are neutralizing. Bossche presents no evidence to support that natural IgM is neutralizing (rather than just binding) SARS-CoV-2.

Bossche subsequently goes on to define:

*NACs: Natural asymptomatic carriers ; refers to subjects who do not develop any clinical symptoms at all, or develop at most mild (involving upper respiratory airways only), after PRIMARY CoV infection

**nonNACs: Relates to subjects who develop severe Covid-19 symptoms after PRIMARY infection

Firstly, an asymptomatic patient does not develop mild symptoms. This is not what asymptomatic means. An asymptomatic patient does not develop ANY symptoms. There is another term -paucisymptomatic- which describes individuals who develop only mild disease.

He then argues that in NACs, the reason for their lack of progression to the disease state is a rapid NK cell response that clears the virus. This is possible, but he presents no evidence to support it. Current models attribute the lack of progression to (severe) disease in these patients to a rapid interferon response, and while interferon responses can promote NK cell activity to clear virally infected cells, the literature does not discuss a role for the cells, given that interferon can induce direct intracellular effectors that suppress viral replication and furthermore the presence of antibodies among asymptomatic individuals. Overexuberant NK cell responses are implicated in the development of severe COVID-19: afucosylated antibodies are extremely potent inducers of NK cell antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC), and these are noted to be enriched in severe COVID-19. NK cell-mediated ADCC is extremely powerful for controlling viral infections, particularly before the adaptive immune system gets an opportunity to produce its effectors, and afucosylated antibodies are valuable players in that process, but the inflammation that results can be harmful to the health of the host if uncontrolled, such as if SARS-CoV-2 is given an opportunity to replicate extensively in a host, as might be the case in an individual whose immune system has not been primed against the virus with vaccination.

An extremely incorrect depiction of dendritic cell-NK cell interactions made by Geert Vanden Bossche.

He then commits an immunological faux pas so egregious that it genuinely shocks me where he shows a dendritic cell (DC) activating an NK cell via antigen presentation on an MHC class I protein. It is basically at this point that I cannot presume that this letter is written in good faith given Dr. Bossche’s background. This is absolutely not how NK cells work.

For one thing, the presence of MHC class I protein on a cell indicates to an NK cell that no viral infection is present and functions as an inhibitory signal (indeed, it is a common feature that viruses suppress expression of MHC class I proteins on cells they infect because this prevents them from being recognized by cytotoxic T cells that can kill the cell they are relying on to replicate). For another, NK cells do not examine the contents of the antigen in the MHC binding cleft. They do not have T cell receptors (with the exception of iNKT cells) and therefore have no ability to do this. There ARE reciprocal NK cell-DC interactions where each supports the other (e.g. DCs may produce cytokines promoting the activation of NK cells and NK cell cytokines can promote DC maturation, and NK cells have been known to kill immature dendritic cells in the body) but the mechanism proposed here is overtly at odds with decades of immunology research.

Frankly, to focus on NK cells for a vaccine against an infectious disease is extremely unusual (they can be very important in cancer immunotherapy though). The goal of vaccines broadly is to elicit long-lived immunological memory against a particular infectious agent. NK cells are part of the innate immune system, and while they do exhibit epigenetic modifications after infection in what has been termed trained immunity, this is not the principle by which most vaccines work. Vaccines have to achieve robust activation of dendritic cells because they are key antigen presenting cells and they need to trigger generation of memory helper T cells, ideally T follicular helper cells, memory B cells, long-lived plasma cells, and potentially cytotoxic T cells (depending on the agent)- they act virtually independently of NK cells (though NK cells may play a supportive role through ADCC on challenge with the antigen).

It is very much downhill from here. While he does not use the term, the rest of the argument Bossche makes relies on a false assumption: currently available vaccines for COVID-19 are leaky vaccines. Correlates of vaccine-induced protection: methods and implications defines leaky vaccines as follows:

According to [the leaky vaccine model], the risk of infection/disease in all vaccinees is reduced (by VE %) compared to non-vaccinees, none of the vaccinees being fully protected.

The assumption that no vaccinee is totally or permanently protected implies one or both of the following:

i) No amount (titre) of the immune marker is totally protective or, if it is, no individual can maintain that titre for a long period (because of waning or transient immunosuppression);

ii) The degree of protection is a function of the level of the immune marker – the simplest explanation being that protection is a function of both the level of the immune marker and the challenge dose.

[continued next post]

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

[continued from above post]

In other words, leaky vaccines are vaccines which are not able to significantly affect transmission of the pathogen. The critical question here is firstly: are COVID-19 vaccines leaky vaccines?

This study compared PCR positivity among asymptomatic individuals who had received an RNA vaccine to those who had not been vaccinated and found it was approximately 80% lower. This is a very strict bar and it likely underestimates the ability of the vaccines to reduce transmission, because PCR can detect as few as ~100 copies of viral RNA. SARS-CoV-2, being a coronavirus, likely requires several hundred viral copies to initiate productive infections from one person to the next. An asymptomatic individual who tests positive may not necessarily be contagious.
Novavax’s vaccine demonstrated sterilizing immunity (the virus failed to even initiate infection) in nonhuman primate studies.
ChAdOx-nCoV-2019 also showed significant reductions in PCR positivity among vaccinees compared with unvaccinated controls.
The SIREN study showed that Pfizer’s vaccine prevents infection with B.1.1.7 variants.
Pfizer’s vaccine was able to reduce viral load by a factor of about 4 among vaccinees compared with unvaccinated controls.
The Johnson and Johnson/Janssen vaccine showed significant reductions in PCR positivity among vaccinees compared with controls.

And so on. In short, nothing about the COVID-19 vaccines suggests that they are leaky.

For a moment though, let’s entertain the notion that the vaccines are leaky. In general, you would have a hard time identifying any human vaccine that could be called leaky (though emerging findings regarding influenza vaccines give hints that there may be a leaky vaccine effect involved, given their excellent efficacy among children, who are critical vectors, I am not so convinced- though if we do grant that they are leaky, this only serves to undermine Bossche’s argument). The classic example of a leaky vaccine is actually the one for Marek’s disease, caused by a herpesvirus that infects chicken and causes lymphoma among other illnesses. It has been observed that over time Marek’s disease virus has become more virulent, and this has been attributed classically to a leaky vaccine effect. Still, as Osterrieder et al write (emphasis mine):

Box 2 | Marek’s disease vaccines — an open-ended success story Immunization against Marek’s disease (MD) was started in the late 1960s and first used avirulent Marek’s disease virus (MDV) or a virus very closely related to MDV, turkey herpesvirus 1 (HVT), which does not cause disease. Vaccination reduced the incidence of MD by 99% and presents a unique example of the successful application of a modified-live virus (MLV) vaccine against an extremely aggressive agent that can routinely causes >90% morbidity and mortality in susceptible, unvaccinated hosts7,116. Because MDV strains are constantly evolving towards greater virulence in the face of vaccination109 (BOX 1), combination vaccines consisting of HVT and gallid herpesvirus type 3 or an attenuated MDV strain, CVI988-Rispens, are currently used117–119.

Clearly then, even a leaky vaccine can be used with great efficacy. What’s more is there is new research challenging the dogma of leaky vaccines selecting for greater virulence (emphasis mine):

We used controlled experiments involving natural virus transmission to reveal that vaccination with a leaky vaccine, which only marginally reduces transmission, can significantly reduce post-transmission disease development and mortality among unvaccinated contact individuals. Our analysis indicates that this effect is mediated by a reduction in exposure dose experienced by susceptible individuals when exposed to vaccinated shedders, leading to lower pathogen load and concomitant reduced symptoms in contact birds. The primary objectives of vaccination of livestock with leaky vaccines are to improve animal welfare and to reduce production losses caused by disease symptom development. Our results show that even partial vaccination against MD can substantially reduce disease symptoms and mortality in the whole flock, leading to universally positive impacts on animal welfare and productivity, and these conclusions may extend to leaky vaccines used in other systems.

Ending COVID-19 will require vaccination- this is not a matter of debate or discussion. Viruses evolve towards greater transmissibility, but they cannot evolve unless they have hosts. Fortunately, SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses are unique in that they have a proofreading RNA-dependent RNA polymerase that slows mutation rates by a factor of about 20, which means they are slower to mutate, but this is irrelevant if they can infect well over 20 times more people than other RNA viruses. Vaccines clearly reduce viral load, prevent severe disease, and disrupt transmission, and they can thankfully be readily modified to address problematic variants as is done every season for influenza with great effect. They are the way out until someone proposes something better. Bossche doesn’t and his claims are baseless.

References
[go to link for references and some graphs]

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

This one is too long and too hard to format, I'm leaving the quote boxes in place. It's going to take 3 posts. This one gets personal and imho is obnoxious. ymmv....

Countering Geert Vanden Bossche’s dubious viral open letter warning against mass COVID-19 vaccination

Geert Vanden Bossche is a scientist who published an open letter warning of global catastrophe due to deadly variants of COVID-19 selected for by mass vaccination. His argument sounds a lot like an ar

sciencebasedmedicine.org

(fair use applies)

Countering Geert Vanden Bossche’s dubious viral open letter warning against mass COVID-19 vaccination
Geert Vanden Bossche is a scientist who published an open letter warning of global catastrophe due to deadly variants of COVID-19 selected for by mass vaccination. His argument sounds a lot like an argument Andrew Wakefield once made for MMR. There’s even grift likely involved!
David Gorski
March 18, 2021

[Editor’s note: Scott Gavura had circumstances pop up that prevented him from producing a post for today. As a result, I’m posting this. Some of you might have seen it already published elsewhere (although this is an edited/abridged version of the original post). If you haven’t, it’s new to you. A viral “open letter” by Geert Vanden Bossche has gone viral, and antivaxxers have been citing it as slam-dunk evidence that COVID-19 vaccination will lead to global catastrophe. As a result, I thought it worth providing this rebuttal and links to an even better rebuttal, to SBM readers in order to disseminate this information more widely. Enjoy!]

I’ve frequently discussed how in the age of the pandemic, at least in terms of antivaccine misinformation and pseudoscience, everything old is new again. Over the last several months, I’ve listed a number of examples of this phenomenon of antivaxxers recycling hoary tropes to apply them to COVID-19 vaccines; for example, claims that vaccines kill, cause infertility, cancer, autoimmune disorders, and Alzheimer’s disease, and are loaded with “toxins“, among several others, such as the claim that they “alter your DNA“. One such claim that I hadn’t yet seen is another favorite antivax claim, although admittedly it’s a rather niche claim in that you don’t hear it too often. Specifically, I’m referring to the abuse of evolutionary theory by antivaxxers to claim that vaccines select for more deadly variants of pathogenic viruses and bacteria, making mass vaccination programs dangerous or even potentially catastrophic. Such claims are generally an offshoot of another favorite antivaccine claim, namely that the diseases being vaccinated against are so innocuous that vaccinating against them is overkill and allowing infection and “natural herd immunity” to occur is better, a trope that has also been resurrected about COVID-19, a disease that’s killed well north of 500K people in just the US in a little over a year. This brings us to our topic, a misinformation-filled “open letter” by a scientist named Geert Vanden Bossche that went viral over the weekend. It’s been accompanied by a video interview posted to—where else?—antivaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense website. Reading the letter, what it reminded me, more than anything else, is an article that Andrew Wakefield wrote about the MMR vaccine and measles, published a few months before the pandemic hit. (Truly, those were simpler times.)

Dr. Vanden Bossche has publicized his letter on Twitter:

[QUOTE/]In this open letter I am appealing to the @WHO and all stakeholders involved, no matter their conviction, to immediately declare such action as THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY OF INTERNATIONAL CONCERN. Please read and share: https://t.co/0Fupw9JInP #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/I24mSjpVKM
— Geert Vanden Bossche (@GVDBossche) March 6, 2021[/QUOTE]

More recently, he set up his own website to publicize his letter:

We've put together a website to gather all information, scientific documents and interviews I've posted on this public health emergency. We'll try to work on further translations and regular updates. DVM, PhD | Geert Vanden Bossche
— Geert Vanden Bossche (@GVDBossche) March 15, 2021

Along with science, maa-aan!

The science behind the catastrophic consequences of thoughtless human intervention in the Covid-19 pandemic. Read full document here: https://t.co/DPDFlg4U45 pic.twitter.com/TISexYqyTq
— Geert Vanden Bossche (@GVDBossche) March 13, 2021

He’s also started making rounds on the podcast/vlog interview circuit:

You can watch yesterday's interview with Philip McMillan here: Mass Vaccination in a Pandemic - Benefits versus Risks: Interview with Geert Vanden Bossche Thanks for all your support, we will need it. #COVID19 #openthedebate
— Geert Vanden Bossche (@GVDBossche) March 7, 2021

Before I get to Vanden Bossche’s open letter and his “warning to the world” that mass vaccination with the current COVID-19 vaccines is likely to lead to a global catastrophe due to the proliferation of ever-more-transmissible COVID-19 variants (as if the COVID-19 pandemic itself hasn’t been a global catastrophe!), let’s just review what Wakefield claimed about the MMR vaccine back in 2019. Central to the concept in his article, published via the in-house journal of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), an organization I like to refer to as the John Birch Society of medical societies given its penchant for conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, was that the MMR vaccine, by selecting for more aggressive measles strains, could result in a “sixth extinction event”. (I kid you not.) He even entitled his nonsensical screed “The Sixth Extinction: Vaccine Immunity and Measles Mutants in a Virgin Soil“.

As I go through Dr. Vanden Bossche’s open letter, I’ll point out the similarities, while also noting differences when they occur. By the time I get through this, I suspect you’ll understand why the misinformation that Dr. Vanden Bossche is selling (and I use the word “selling” intentionally, as I suspect there’s grift involved) is nonsense and nothing more than repackaged antivax tropes.

Quoth Bossche: “I am all but an antivaxxer!”

Before he gets to his concerns, like anyone spreading antivaccine disinformation, whether as an antivaxxer or someone who’s misguided, Dr. Vanden Bossche, like RFK Jr., must proclaim himself so very firmly “not antivaccine“:

I am all but an antivaxxer. As a scientist I do not usually appeal to any platform of this kind to make a stand on vaccine-related topics. As a dedicated virologist and vaccine expert I only make an exception when health authorities allow vaccines to be administered in ways that threaten public health, most certainly when scientific evidence is being ignored. The present extremely critical situation forces me to spread this emergency call. As the unprecedented extent of human intervention in the Covid-19- pandemic is now at risk of resulting in a global catastrophe without equal, this call cannot sound loudly and strongly enough.

As stated, I am not against vaccination. On the contrary, I can assure you that each of the current vaccines have been designed, developed and manufactured by brilliant and competent scientists. However, this type of prophylactic vaccines [sic] are completely inappropriate, and even highly dangerous, when used in mass vaccination campaigns during a viral pandemic. Vaccinologists, scientists and clinicians are blinded by the positive short-term effects in individual patents, but don’t seem to bother about the disastrous consequences for global health. Unless I am scientifically proven wrong, it is difficult to understand how current human interventions will prevent circulating variants from turning into a wild monster. Racing against the clock, I am completing my scientfic [sic] manuscript, the publication of which is, unfortunately, likely to come too late given the ever increasing threat from rapidly spreading, highly infectious variants. This is why I decided to already post a summary of my findings as well as my keynote speech at the recent Vaccine Summit in Ohio on LinkedIn. Last Monday, I provided international health organizations, including the WHO, with my analysis of the current pandemic as based on scientifically informed insights in the immune biology of Covid-19.

Dr. Vanden Bossche has also taken to social media to air his concerns, and his message has been enthusiastically embraced by antivaxxers:

Let’s just say this. If you claim to be “not antivaccine” but your message is so attractive to a rabid antivaxxer and leader of the antivaccine movement like Del Bigtree that he spends an hour promoting it, you are either deluding yourself about being “not antivaccine,” or you’re a useful idiot for the antivaccine movement, possibly both.

Unfortunately, Dr. Vanden Bossche’s open letter has gone viral and is being spread on antivaccine social media everywhere as “slam dunk” evidence that COVID-19 vaccines will cause a global catastrophe by selecting for the evolution of highly transmissible and deadly variants of COVID-19 that will escape immunity due to vaccines. (I note that Dr. Vanden Bossche only set up his Twitter account two weeks ago and already has over 16K followers.) In any case, I got a particularly strong “brave maverick” vibe from this passage:

While there is no time to spare, I have not received any feedback thus far. Experts and politicians have remained silent while obviously still eager to talk about relaxing infection prevention rules and ‘springtime freedom’. My statements are based on nothing else but science. They shall only be contradicted by science. While one can barely make any incorrect scientific statements without being criticized by peers, it seems like the elite of scientists who are currently advising our world leaders prefer to stay silent. Sufficient scientific evidence has been brought to the table. Unfortunately, it remains untouched by those who have the power to act. How long can one ignore the problem when there is at present massive evidence that viral immune escape is now threatening humanity? We can hardly say we didn’t know – or were not warned.

There you have it, the lone scientific maverick who is the only one willing to speak out about against a “horror” being perpetrated by conventional medicine and science that “they” don’t want you to know about or discuss, a horror that’s so “urgent” that he must speak now. Not for him is the too-slow process of seeking feedback from fellow experts or publishing in the scientific literature (even on a pre-print server). Don’t you see? The situation is just too urgent! And Dr. Vanden Bossche’s concerns are based on Science! He reminds me of another doctor who spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination based on an unbending principle of immunology to justify his concerns, without any clinical or epidemiological evidence to support it. In any case, for someone who is so “not antivaccine”, Dr. Vanden Bossche sure is good at providing ammunition to the antivaccine movement.

So it’s not surprising that Dr. Vanden Bossche’s letter reminds me of Andrew Wakefield’s warning about the MMR vaccine. At this point, I will also mention that, because Ed Nirenberg produced an excellent rebuttal of Dr. Vanden Bossche’s mangling of immunology in his letter, I’ll stick more to my lane (mostly, anyway), although there will be some overlap. I will note that it is truly astounding how many statements that a supposed “expert” in immunology and vaccines can make that are just plain out-and-out wrong.

[continued next post]

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

[continued part 2 of 3]

On COVID-19 vaccines, Dr. Vanden Bossche channels Andrew Wakefield’s MMR misinformation

Let’s compare Dr. Vanden Bossche’s letter to what Wakefield wrote back in 2019. Here’s the crux of his concern, in which he likens escape from vaccine immunity to antibiotic resistance:

THE key question is: why does nobody seem to bother about viral immune escape? Let me try to explain this by means of a more easily understood phenomenon: Antimicrobial resistance. One can easily extrapolate this scourge to resistance to our self-made ‘antiviral antibiotics’. Indeed, antibodies (Abs) produced by our own immune system can be considered self-made antiviral antibiotics, regardless of whether they are part of our innate immune system (so-called ‘natural’ Abs’) or elicited in response to specific pathogens (resulting in so-called ‘acquired’ Abs). Natural Abs are not germ-specific whereas acquired Abs are specifically directed at the invading pathogen. At birth, our innate immune system is ‘unexperienced’ but well-established. It protects us from a multitude of pathogens, thereby preventing these pathogens from causing disease. As the innate immune system cannot remember the pathogens it encountered (innate immunity has no so-called ‘immunological memory’), we can only continue to rely on it provided we keep it ‘trained’ well enough. Training is achieved by regular exposure to a myriad of environmental agents, including pathogens. However, as we age, we will increasingly face situations where our innate immunity (often called ‘the first line of immune defense’) is not strong enough to halt the pathogen at the portal of entry (mostly mucosal barriers like respiratory or intestinal epithelia). When this happens, the immune system has to rely on more specialized effectors of our immune system (i.e., antigen-specific Abs and T cells) to fight the pathogen. So, as we grow up, we increasingly mount pathogen-specific immunity, including highly specific Abs. As those have stronger affinity for the pathogen (e.g., virus) and can reach high concentrations, they can quite easily outcompete our natural Abs for binding to the pathogen/virus. It is precisely this type of highly specific, high affinity Abs that current Covid-19 vaccines are inducing. Of course, the noble purpose of these Abs is to protect us against Covid-19. So, why then should there be a major concern using these vaccines to fight Covid-19?
Well, similar to the rules applying to classical antimicrobial antibiotics, it is paramount that our self-made ‘antiviral antbiotcs’ [sic] are made available in sufficient concentration and are tailored at the specific features of our enemy. This is why in case of bacterial disease it is critical to not only chose the right type of antibiotic (based on the results from an antibiogram) but to also take the antibiotic for long enough (according to the prescription). Failure to comply with these requirements is at risk of granting microbes a chance to survive and hence, may cause the disease to fare [sic] up. A very similar mechanism may also apply to viruses, especially to viruses that can easily and rapidly mutate (which is, for example, the case with Coronaviruses); when the pressure exerted by the army’s (read: population’s) immune defense starts to threaten viral replication and transmission, the virus will take on another coat so that it can no longer be easily recognized and, therefore, attacked by the host immune system. The virus is now able to escape immunity (so-called: ‘immune escape’).

I have to point out that coronaviruses, in particular SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, do not mutate especially fast as RNA viruses go. This particular coronavirus happens to have a proofreading mechanism that results in a low mutation rate compared to that of a lot of other RNA viruses, such as, for example, the influenza virus. Seriously, as a “vaccine expert”, how is it that Dr. Vanden Bossche does not know this? Even so, concern about immune escape is one reason why Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna used the entire SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, rather than specific segments of it that might serve as antigens, so that the polyclonal antibody immune response generated would be broad and unlikely to be “escaped” with single mutations—or even multiple mutations. A recent review article suggests that immune escape by variants of SARS-CoV-2 is a possibility, but one that hasn’t been definitively observed or demonstrated yet:

So is there cause for concern? Clearly, variability in the spike glycoprotein can affect the efficiency of antibody neutralisation. The role of spike protein variability inT cell immunity is likely to be elucidated in experimental studies in the next few months; a priori, the enhanced repertoire of T cell epitopes makes the loss of cytotoxic activity or recognition improbable. But only ongoing clinical trials will show whether vaccinated individuals recognise SARS-CoV-2 variants differently, and whether mutations decrease vaccine protection in some vaccinated individuals. The ongoing phase 3 trial of an adenovirus-vectored spike-based vaccine (Johnson & Johnson, NCT04505722) in South Africa, where the 501Y.V2 (B.1.351) strain with the Glu484Lys substitution is rapidly replacing pre-existing variants,11 might provide an opportunity to examine this question. Ultimately, most vaccines are based on a recombinant spike protein sequence.

And, echoing what I’ve said before:

Thus if evidence emerges that particular variants do appear to influence vaccine efficacy, it should be possible to periodically reformulate the vaccines so that they better match the circulating strains.

Exactly. If there emerge SARS-CoV-2 variants that are less susceptible to the immunity produced by COVID-19 vaccines, the answer is to reformulate the vaccines!

Now, let’s compare the passage above to what Andrew Wakefield wrote about MMR and vaccines:

Antibiotic use has selected out multiply resistant, more dangerous, and more pathogenic strains of bacteria. This growing threat has led what many senior public health officials in the UK and the U.S. to describe as the “post-antibiotic apocalypse” and the “end of modern medicine.” It is estimated that 50,000 annual deaths occur in Europe and the U.S. from infections that “antibiotics have lost the power to treat.” So in fewer than 80 years, we have reached the point at which, for example, with prosthetic surgery, wards are being closed down, patients are being sent home, and operations are no longer possible, because once the prosthesis becomes infected with such bacteria, it is virtually impossible to get rid of them. Are vaccines destined for a similar fate? It’s a very interesting question. One answer is, why not? For vaccines, resistance equates to strains of the microbe, the virus, or the bacteria that can elude the imperfect immunity created by the vaccine.

See what I mean? Dr. Vanden Bossche is using an eerily similar argument about COVID-19 vaccines and SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, to the one used by Wakefield about MMR vaccine and measles. Actually, it’s not just eerily similar, it’s almost exactly the same, namely that immunity from vaccines is an evolutionary selective pressure just like the evolutionary selective pressure from antibiotics to which the organism can become resistant. In the case of antibiotics, it’s called developing antibiotic resistance; in the case of vaccines, it’s called immune escape. And it’s true. There is always concern that a virus or bacteria can mutate to a form such that the antibodies produced by a vaccine against it no longer bind to it, so that the vaccine-induced immune response no longer kills or neutralizes the pathogen.

Again, this is an argument antivaxxers have made dating back at least to the pertussis vaccine. It’s a common argument among antivaxxers that the reason we’re seeing more cases of pertussis in people who have been vaccinated against it is because pertussis is either “evolving resistance”, or because it is shifting to a different strain not covered by the vaccine. A certain friend of the blog has written about this (at least twice), as has Skeptical Raptor. You can read the links if you want to know more, but the short version is that the acellular pertussis vaccine works but its immunity wanes (as it does after natural infection); this can be corrected with additional booster shots. Also, as I said at the time, while it is possible that the B. pertussis bacteria is developing “resistance” to the vaccine through natural selection, the evidence that it is doing so struck me as weak and preliminary, just as the evidence claiming that SARS-CoV-2 is evolving to be “resistant” to current vaccines strikes me as weak and preliminary. After all, as Nirenberg and the review article I quoted above note, while it is true that variants of concern demonstrate reduced antibody neutralization, we do not as yet have an absolute correlate regarding how high an antibody level is required to be protective, making the practical meaning of this observation difficult to determine.

Nirenberg goes further and notes that the antibody titers induced by vaccines are MUCH higher than those seen after infection, and we see hallmarks of memory responses induced by these vaccines from even a single dose, suggesting that, even though there is a decrease in neutralization by vaccine-induced SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, that might not portend a loss in protection. (Indeed, thus far, it appears that this is the case.) Even if it were evolving resistance, once again, the answer would be to reformulate the vaccine in order to include the altered antigens, the same conclusion made when considering the possibility that B. pertussis was evolving resistance or that evolutionary drift was leading to the predominance of strains not covered by the vaccine. Again, the possibility that COVID-19 might be developing “resistance” to vaccines or “immune escape” is not a reason to halt the vaccination campaign. It’s a rationale for developing reformulated booster vaccines that cover variants not well covered by the currently-used COVID-19 vaccines.

In fact, I basically said the same thing in 2019 when writing about Andrew Wakefield’s invocation of the same argument regarding the MMR vaccine and measles variants. I noted then that there was no evidence that mass vaccination with MMR had produced variants of the measles vaccine resistant to the immunity produced by the vaccine, just as I note now that there is as yet no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 variants are resistant to the immunity produced by current COVID-19 vaccines.

Up to this point, at its core and leaving aside minor variations, Dr. Vanden Bossche’s argument about COVID-19 vaccines and COVID-19 is pretty close to exactly the same argument that Wakefield fallaciously made about MMR and measles. It’s at this point, though, that Dr. Vanden Bossche throws in a twist specific to COVID-19 in which he argues that undertaking a mass vaccination campaign during a pandemic is dangerous. Why? He claims that it’s because there’s so much coronavirus circulating and so many people might produce suboptimal levels of antibody to the virus that, as is the case when antibiotics are used at levels too low to eliminate bacteria and thereby result in strong evolutionary selection for resistant strains of bacteria, a mass vaccination program is doomed to result in resistant variants of coronavirus, particularly when the vaccination program has started out “targeted”:

As if this was not already heavily compromising innate immune defense in this population segment, there comes yet another force into play that will dramatically enhance morbidity and mortality rates in the younger age groups: MASS VACCINATION of the ELDERLY. The more extensively the later age group will be vaccinated and hence, protected, the more the virus is forced to continue causing disease in younger age groups. This is only going to be possible provided it escapes to the S-specific Abs that are momentarily raised in previously asymptomatically infected subjects. If the virus manages to do so, it can benefit from the (momentarily) suppressed innate immunity, thereby causing disease in an increasing number of these subjects and ensuring its own propagation. Selecting targeted mutations in the S protein is, therefore, the way to go in order for the virus to enhance its infectiousness in candidates that are prone to geting [sic] the disease because of a transient weakness of their innate immune defense.

This is a very confused argument. First of all, note how Dr. Vanden Bossche is conflating vaccine-induced immunity with natural immunity. He’s arguing that vaccinating the elderly protects them, but because the virus will therefore be “forced” to infect the young it will only be able to do so if it can somehow escape immunity to the antibodies to spike protein (S-specific Abs) transiently raised in asymptomatic subjects. (He bases this on the observation that in those infected with COVID-19 asymptomatically, S-specific Ab levels decline faster than in those with symptomatic infections.) He’s also conflating innate immune responses with specific immune responses induced by either infection or vaccination. I’ll refer you to Nirenberg’s demolition of Dr. Vanden Bossche’s nonsense about “innate immunity”, as he explains why it’s nonsense better than I can.

What I’ll do instead is to point out that Dr. Vanden Bossche, whether he realizes it or not, is supporting the “conventional argument” with respect to COVID-19 vaccination. Specifically, scientists have long been pointing out that, the more we let COVID-19 circulate, the more likely virus variants that can escape the immune response to the vaccine (and/or to natural infection) are to emerge, and they use this argument as a rationale for vaccinating as many people as possible as fast as possible, in order to slow that circulation of the virus to as low a rate as possible, thus reducing the opportunities for strains resistant to the vaccine and strains able to re-infect previously infected people to emerge. Basically, it’s a race against evolution to get as many people as possible vaccinated before the virus can evolve “resistance” to the vaccine, and we’re fortunate that, contrary to Bossche’s claim, SARs-CoV-2 does not mutate very fast for an RNA virus.

[continues next post]

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

[continued - part 3 of 3]

But wait, says Dr. Vanden Bossche. Mass vaccination will only work if the vaccine prevents or decreases transmission; i.e., if it is not “leaky” (although he doesn’t use the term). His argument is that the COVID-19 vaccine is “leaky”, that it does not prevent transmission, allowing the evolution of nasty variants in the absence of symptomatic disease. So-called “leaky” vaccines are vaccines that prevent disease, but do not appreciably slow transmission of the pathogen. An example of a “leaky” vaccine is the vaccine against Marek’s disease, highly contagious and deadly viral disease of chicken that is a major problem in the poultry industry, and Dr. Vanden Bossche relies on this precedent, as Nirenberg explains:

For a moment though, let’s entertain the notion that the vaccines are leaky. In general, you would have a hard time identifying any human vaccine that could be called leaky (though emerging findings regarding influenza vaccines give hints that there may be a leaky vaccine effect involved, given their excellent efficacy among children, who are critical vectors, I am not so convinced- though if we do grant that they are leaky, this only serves to undermine Bossche’s argument). The classic example of a leaky vaccine is actually the one for Marek’s disease, caused by a herpesvirus that infects chicken and causes lymphoma among other illnesses. It has been observed that over time Marek’s disease virus has become more virulent, and this has been attributed classically to a leaky vaccine effect.

As I noted when Andrew Wakefield explicitly used the example of Marek’s disease to claim that a “leaky” vaccine to MMR would cause a global catastrophe by selecting for deadly measles variants, yes, a leaky vaccine changes the selective pressure and permits the evolution of highly virulent strains because the virus retains the ability to continue to spread among vaccinated populations, leading to the vaccine selecting for the most virulent mutations. However, even if this phenomenon occurs with a human vaccine—it doesn’t, as far as we know—that’s an even more compelling reason to be vaccinated. After all, if a human vaccine lets deadlier versions of a disease flourish, that is all the more reason to be protected from those deadly strains. As any chicken farmer knows (or any veterinarian like Dr. Vanden Bossche should know), vaccinating against Marek’s disease has population health benefits in that it prevents mass death due to the disease, even if the vaccine can allow more virulent strains to evolve. Moreover, as Nirenberg points out, there is an increasing body of evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine is not “leaky”. Sure, we don’t yet have a firm grasp of how much the vaccine decreases transmission, but there is good emerging evidence that it does significantly decrease transmission. He also points out that there is new research challenging the previous dogma that “leaky” vaccines always select for more virulent strains of pathogen and cannot produce herd immunity.

Basically, Dr. Vanden Bossche’s open letter is a mess that directly channels Andrew Wakefield. As I like to say, if you ever write anything that channels Andrew Wakefield, you really should reconsider your life choices.

Who is Geert Vanden Bossche?

What’s particularly dangerous about Dr. Vanden Bossche’s misinformation is that, on the surface, he appears to be a vaccine expert, whom antivaxxers touting his open letter (and all the follow-up “science” he’s been Tweeting and posting to his website) have been describing as a “world’s expert” in vaccines. Before this open letter, I hadn’t recalled ever having heard of Dr. Vanden Bossche before, so I looked around. His LinkedIn profile lists several impressive positions, including Head of the Vaccine Development Office for the German Centre for Infection Research (for seven months, August 2017-February 2018); Chief Innovation & Scientific Officer for Univac, where he claimed to be an inventor of a new vaccine technology based on natural killer (NK) cells (2014-2016); and the managing director of VARECO, claiming to be a consultant about vaccine development (2012-present). He also states that he’s worked with GAVI: The Vaccine Alliance and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, although searching the websites, I could find no reference to him other than a report written by him and others to GAVI about progress on an Ebola vaccine. He does apparently have some history working on vaccines.

However, Dr. Vincent Iannelli asked the question, “Who is Geert Vanden Bossche?” too and is…unimpressed. And so am I. I searched PubMed for what I expected to be an extensive publication record on vaccines and found…eight publications, the most recent of which was from 1994 and none of which have anything to do with vaccines. However, Dr. Vanden Bossche’s claims to have worked with the Gates Foundation, GAVI, and other vaccine-related enterprises does seem to be legitimate, which makes me wonder: Has he gone crank or is he a grifter?

It’s here that his LinkedIn profile helps, specifically, his entry under Univac:

I founded Univac as [sic] inventor of a new vaccine technology which I subsequently further developed as CSO of the Company. The technology enables the development of universal vaccines educating the host immune system to redirect immune targeting away from canonical antigens to a widely divergent spectrum of vitally vulnerable pathogen-derived ‘self-mimicking’ antigens, irrespective of MHC polymorphism. Although ‘non-self’ and exposed on the surface of infected or pathologically altered cells, these antigens are not effectively recognised upon natural infection or disease.
This new type of vaccines harnesses the power of the immune system by unlocking the untapped potential of self-centered Natural Killer (NK) cells capable of recognising these unconventional antigens. The resulting type of immune response is unprecedented and licenses the host immune system to readily eliminate infection or to cure disease across a broad range of unrelated pathogens and/ or mammalian species. This sharply contrasts with conventional targeting of natural immune responses as induced by conventional vaccines.
Because of their fast (NK cells) and universally protective effect, Univac vaccines are uniquely suited to prevent pathogenic agents from escaping host immune responses as of an early stage of infection or immune-mediated disease. The technology obviates the need for traditional adjuvants, multiple boost injections or expensive manufacturing processes and is readily compatible with intradermal or mucosal administration. Hence, it also offers unprecedented advantages in terms of safety, convenience and cost-effectiveness.

And now, back to his open letter:

Paradoxically, the only intervention that could offer a perspective to end this pandemic (other than to let it run its disastrous course) is …VACCINATION. Of course, the type of vaccines to be used would be completely different from conventional vaccines in that they’re not inducing the usual suspects, i.e., B and T cells, but NK cells. There is, indeed, compelling scientific evidence that these cells play a key role in facilitating complete elimination of Covid-19 at an early stage of infection in asymptomatically infected subjects. NK cells are part of the cellular arm of our innate immune system and, alike [sic] natural Abs, they are capable of recognizing and attacking a broad and diversified spectrum of pathogenic agents. There is a sound scientific rationale to assume that it is possible to ‘prime’ NK cells in ways for them to recognize and kill Coronaviruses at large (include all their variants) at an early stage of infection. NK cells have increasingly been described to be endowed with the capacity to acquire immunological memory. By educating these cells in ways that enable them to durably recognize and target Coronavirus-infected cells, our immune system could be perfectly armed for a targeted atack to the universe of Coronaviruses prior to exposure. As NK cell-based immune defense provides sterilizing immunity and allows for broad spectrum and fast protection, it is reasonable to assume that harnessing our innate immune cells is going to be the only type of human intervention left to halt the dangerous spread of highly infectious Covid-19 variants.

If we, human beings, are committed to perpetuating our species, we have no choice lef [sic] but to eradicate these highly infectious viral variants. This will, indeed, require large vaccination campaigns. However, NK cell-based vaccines will primarily enable our natural immunity to be better prepared (memory!) and to induce herd immunity (which is exactly the opposite of what current Covid-19 vaccines do as those increasingly turn vaccine recipients into asymptomatic carriers who are shedding virus). So, there is not one second left for gears to be switched and to replace the current killer vaccines by life-saving vaccines.

As I suspected, Dr. Vanden Bossche is selling something. He’s selling his idea of a vaccine designed to activate natural killer cells. It’s hard for me not to believe that he’s grifting, and this demonization of existing COVID-19 vaccines based on speculative science and no strong data yet is a sales pitch. Come to think of it, the similarities between Dr. Vanden Bossche and Andrew Wakefield strike me as stronger than ever now, given that, as well documented by Brian Deer, Wakefield basically published his fraudulent science to support the claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism in order to make a market for his own single vaccine against the measles. Naturally grifters are going to use the same arguments, although I don’t see any fraud in Dr. Vanden Bossche, other than his scientifically risible arguments.

Amusingly, as I was looking this post over earlier this morning for a final edit, I saw that no less a grifter than RFK Jr. himself had published a “rebuttal” to Dr. Vanden Bossche’s open letter by someone named Rosemary Frei, “The ‘Not-So-Hidden Agenda’ Behind Bossche’s Concern Over COVID Mass Vaccination“. Noting how quickly Dr. Vanden Bossche’s letter was embraced by antivaxxers, Frei then writes:

But from my experience as a former long-time medical writer and journalist (1988-2016) — particularly a four-month stint with media-relations giant FleishmanHillard in 1994 (yes, I’ve worked for the dark side) — this has all the hallmarks of a drug-company astroturf campaign. It’s another step in the decades-long erasure of the fact that our sophisticated and highly effective immune systems work well and don’t need any assistance from the biomedical/pharmaceutical industry.

There’s abundant evidence that Vanden Bossche has a not-so-hidden agenda. For example, just before the three-minute mark in the video interview of Vanden Bossche by McMillan, Vanden Bossche indicates he’s a long-time vaccine developer. He adds he’s now focusing on vaccines that “educate the immune system in ways that are to some extent more efficient than we do right now with our conventional vaccines.” Clearly he’s got significant conflicts of interest. Therefore he has zero credibility when it comes to advising the public or anyone else about how to avoid negative effects of mass vaccination. However, Bigtree, Coleman and others don’t point out any of the red flags. Despite taking Vanden Bossche’s assertions extremely seriously, these high-profile alternative-media figures don’t even do basic due diligence such as looking into McMillan, who’s the man who interviewed Vanden Bossche, or the company McMillan is apparently affiliated with, Vejon Health.

It appears that Vejon Health is a dormant company, if it exists at all. Even more hilariously (and a bit uncomfortably) Frei is pretty spot on when she notes:

However, this is on very shaky ground. Because, among other things: 1) Neither in the original March 6 piece nor his March 13 follow-up does Vanden Bossche provide any direct, non-theoretical evidence that this is happening; 2) The ‘natural antibodies’ that are produced after encountering a pathogen are only a small part of a quick, effective and broad-based first-line immune-system defense — known as ‘innate’ or ‘passive’ immunity — which in fact largely comprises other components; and 3) Vanden Bossche downplays the effectiveness of the antibodies our bodies naturally produce as part of the second-line (‘adaptive’) part of the immune system that also has served us extremely well for millennia.

You know what? I think that grifters recognize fellow grifters, and Frei recognized that Dr. Vanden Bossche is stoking fear of existing COVID-19 vaccines to produce a sales rationale for his own NK-based vaccine, just as Andrew Wakefield stoked fear of the MMR in order to support his own measles vaccine. Truly, in the age of COVID-19, everything old is new again, and the antivaccine grift continues.

Author
David Gorski
Dr. Gorski's full information can be found here, along with information for patients. David H. Gorski, MD, PhD, FACS is a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute specializing in breast cancer surgery, where he also serves as the American College of Surgeons Committee on Cancer Liaison Physician as well as an Associate Professor of Surgery and member of the faculty of the Graduate Program in Cancer Biology at Wayne State University. If you are a potential patient and found this page through a Google search, please check out Dr. Gorski's biographical information, disclaimers regarding his writings, and notice to patients here.

Heliobas Disciple · May 22, 2022

Here's another. It was linked in the last one so I'll include it too.

Rebuttal: The ‘Not-So-Hidden Agenda’ Behind Bossche’s Concern Over COVID Mass Vaccination
In her rebuttal to Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche’s open letter to the WHO, Rosemary Frei, MSc, outlines what she says are “a few of the dozens of clues” suggesting that Bossche’s argument “is a continuation of the overall COVID deception.”
By Rosemary Frei
03/16/21

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Defender is committed to providing a space for scientific debate. This piece is a rebuttal to this article regarding an open letter Geert Vanden Bossche, Ph.D., DVM wrote to the World Health Organization.

On March 6, an open letter by Geert Vanden Bossche, Ph.D., DVM, and a video interview of him by Phillip McMillan, MD, from a company called Vejon Health, were posted online.

On the surface, Vanden Bossche appears to perhaps be addressing credible concerns about COVID.

He’s saying that the current crop of COVID vaccines will cause the novel coronavirus to mutate into a “super-infectious virus.” And therefore he’s calling for an immediate halt of the use of the current vaccines.

If humans are “committed to perpetuating our species, we have no choice but to eradicate these highly infectious viral variants” via “large vaccination campaigns,” Vanden Bossche claims at the conclusion of his open letter. However, he continues, in contrast to the currently used COVID vaccines, these new vaccines must focus on stimulation of mass production of the component of the immune system known as natural killer cells, he asserts.

But Vanden Bossche bases his views on unproven hypotheses. This is similar to, and builds on, high-profile modeling-paper authors who use theoretical frameworks to inflame fears about the supposed dangerousness of the new variants.
Despite this, Vanden Bossche’s views were very quickly and positively received by high-profile vaccine sceptics such as Del Bigtree in his March 11 episode (starting at 57:25) and Vernon Coleman in his March 13 video and article.

Bigtree and Coleman virtually unquestioningly accept and amplify Vanden Bossche’s views. They strongly insinuate to their overwhelmingly credulous subscribers that there’s virtually no fact-checking or pause for sober second thought required.

But from my experience as a former long-time medical writer and journalist (1988-2016) — particularly a four-month stint with media-relations giant FleishmanHillard in 1994 (yes, I’ve worked for the dark side) — this has all the hallmarks of a drug-company astroturf campaign. It’s another step in the decades-long erasure of the fact that our sophisticated and highly effective immune systems work well and don’t need any assistance from the biomedical/pharmaceutical industry.

There’s abundant evidence that Vanden Bossche has a not-so-hidden agenda. For example, just before the three-minute mark in the video interview of Vanden Bossche by McMillan, Vanden Bossche indicates he’s a long-time vaccine developer. He adds he’s now focusing on vaccines that “educate the immune system in ways that are to some extent more efficient than we do right now with our conventional vaccines.” Clearly he’s got significant conflicts of interest. Therefore he has zero credibility when it comes to advising the public or anyone else about how to avoid negative effects of mass vaccination.

However, Bigtree, Coleman and others don’t point out any of the red flags. Despite taking Vanden Bossche’s assertions extremely seriously, these high-profile alternative-media figures don’t even do basic due diligence such as looking into McMillan, who’s the man who interviewed Vanden Bossche, or the company McMillan is apparently affiliated with, Vejon Health. Bigtree, for example, relies heavily on the McMillan interview for the content of his March 11 segment.

As far as I know, McMillan and Vanden Bosch aren’t among the thousands of M.D.s, Ph.D.s, and other people with graduate degrees or equivalent qualifications who have thoroughly debunked the official COVID narrative over the last 12 months. Rather, the pair suddenly popped out of the woodwork.

Also, McMillan isn’t anything close to an expert on vaccines. On his website he describes himself as a “dementia authority.” The most recently published paper of his that I can find is from 2016 and is on Alzheimer’s in the journal Medical Hypotheses. (In that paper, he and his co-author propose nutritional supplementation to lower the body’s burden of aluminum, a high level of which is linked to Alzheimer’s.) In addition, when one clicks on Vejonhealth.com one gets a message indicating the website isn’t in use. Indeed, Vejon appears to be a dormant company.

So I ignored McMillan’s interview and Vanden Bossche’s open letter when I first learned about them last week. But then on March 12, I was contacted by the producer of something called the Gary Null Show on the Progressive Radio Network.

The producer, Richard Gale, asked me to be a guest. I agreed to do the interview on March 15.

About 1.5 hours before the interview was to start, I contacted Gale and asked what the interview would focus on. Gale told me Null wanted to discuss Bigtree’s segment on the Vanden Bossche letter and Gale sent me a link to it. So I quickly read the open letter and watched the full interview and Bigtree segment on it. A field of red flags popped up in my mind.

At the appointed interview start time of 12:30 p.m. on March 15, Null proceeded to read live to air, for about 12 minutes, some key points from the open letter. He told the audience to take them seriously. Then Null put me on the air. But he wouldn’t let me talk about the letter. Instead, he repeatedly interrupted my efforts to do so and he insisted I only discuss the new variants. So I hung up. And I’ve been edited out of the archived broadcast of Null’s show.

I’m going to be interviewed live today (March 16) starting at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time by Ryan Cristián of The Last American Vagabond. We’ll talk about the Vanden Bossche letter and McMillan interview. Apparently Ryan’s on the same page as me.

Meanwhile, my tweets about the open letter and the Null interview have gotten a lot of reaction. And, as it happens, since Sunday people have been emailing to encourage me to read Vanden Bossche’s letter and watch his interview. Many are swayed by his calling for an immediate halt of the use of the current crop of COVID vaccines and by the fact that people like Bigtree are propagating his messages.

So I decided to write this article to expose a few of the dozens of clues showing that this curious case is a continuation of the overall COVID deception.

Here are some more of those clues:

1. In his March 11 segment, Bigtree shows a slide with Vanden Bossche’s background. It indicates he’s affiliated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and other vaccine proponents. Del dubs Vanden Bossche a “world-renowned vaccine creator.” Coleman calls him “a very eminent vaccine specialist.”

But, when combined with the contents of his open letter, it’s impossible to believe that he’s in fact an insider who’s now turned against his very high-powered comrades. (More on this below.) It’s more likely that he’s their accomplice.

Another indication that the letter is designed to propagandize rather than to let objective evidence speak for itself is the wording Vanden Bossche uses. He writes, for example, that he was “racing against the clock” to write “this agonizing letter” in which he “put(s) all of my reputation and credibility at stake” to help “turn the tide” against this “irrepressible monster” that the virus could soon become unless we heed Vanden Bossche.

2. In his open letter Vanden Bossche also writes, “I can assure you that each of the current vaccines have been designed, developed and manufactured by brilliant and competent scientists.” However, he doesn’t say a word about the massive adverse-event rate and very scant efficacy profile of the vaccines that were created by these “brilliant scientists.”

3. Vanden Bossche also asserts that there’s an “ever[-]increasing threat from rapidly spreading, highly infectious variants.” But as I detailed in my Feb. 3 article and accompanying video on the new variants, there is no proof that they are highly infectious or will be any time soon.

4. There is the possibility of viral resistance, as for example I note in my March 9, 2021, article and accompanying video. But it’s not the major threat Vanden Bossche attempts to scare us about by saying the virus is likely to mutate so much and so quickly because of the current mass vaccination campaigns that soon it could escape all current attempts to stop its spread. Remember, for example, that yearly flu mass vaccination hasn’t caused influenza to spiral out of control and decimate the global population.

5. Vanden Bossche also writes that some antibodies are made by the innate immune system, but that these ‘natural’ antibodies are non-specific. He also states that they have “suboptimal” “maturity, and are “rather limited and only short-lived.” He claims they are a very weak link in our immune reactions to pathogens such as the novel coronavirus: “the combination of viral infection on a background of suboptimal Ab [antibody] maturity and concentration enables the [novel corona] virus to select mutations [, thereby] allowing it to escape the immune pressure.”

However, this is on very shaky ground. Because, among other things: 1) Neither in the original March 6 piece nor his March 13 follow-up does Vanden Bossche provide any direct, non-theoretical evidence that this is happening; 2) The ‘natural antibodies’ that are produced after encountering a pathogen are only a small part of a quick, effective and broad-based first-line immune-system defense — known as ‘innate’ or ‘passive’ immunity — which in fact largely comprises other components; and 3) Vanden Bossche downplays the effectiveness of the antibodies our bodies naturally produce as part of the second-line (‘adaptive’) part of the immune system that also has served us extremely well for millennia.

A March 11 commentary by Michael Yeadon and Marc Girardot has similar information to my points 3, 4 and 5. However the pair present it in a way that’s very pro-mRNA-vaccine and pro- much of the official-COVID-narrative — neither of which I endorse.

6. Vanden Bossche also has no references in that original document. He does include some in his follow-up, March 13, document posted on his website. But that March 13 document, like the March 6 one, hasn’t been posted on the website of a journal, never mind a peer-reviewed one, nor reviewed in any more serious a manner. And in an unusual approach, he doesn’t attach each reference to a particular statement in his document; rather, he lists the references at the end of the article under categories such as ‘Natural antibodies.’

7. Vanden Bossche drives at the need for “large vaccination campaigns.” These, he writes, should be for “NK [natural-killer]-cell–based vaccines” that “will primarily enable our natural immunity to be better prepared … and to induce herd immunity.”

But it’s not very logical to believe that the only solution to the theoretical possibility of immune escape, as espoused by someone who’s got a long and strong focus on vaccination as opposed to other ways to improve health, is yet more mass vaccination.

Not to mention that the concept of herd immunity is contrived. After all, if your immune system is protecting you against a pathogen, it doesn’t matter whether someone else’s is or not.

I do agree that we should stop the use of the current vaccines. But we also need to stop production and use of antivirals and antibodies and all other parts of the COVID-industrial complex.

COVID has an extremely high survival rate. So why develop yet another expensive, invasive and experimental solution to a problem that barely exists, if it does at all?

It’s all very curious.

Originally published by Rosemary Frei.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Children's Health Defense.

psychgirl · May 22, 2022

Well, at this point despite those strong arguments against Dr VB in that article, I choose to trust and believe in his research.
If I’m wrong, and he’s NOT correct or trustworthy, then I’ll admit it.
But at this point I choose to err on the side of caution especially now that infections are rising again.

Just ten days/two weeks ago two coworkers of mine were pretty sick; one had a positive test for Covid with low fever and severe body aches/headache; the other young girl didn’t get tested until five days into her “bug” which gave a negative result.
What else could it have been though? I guess it could have just been the flu. She had 102 fever with severe body aches etc. Urgent Care put her on antibiotics.
I don’t feel so great this morning myself, but hopefully it’s just my yearly bad reaction to the cottonwood trees blooming on our property.

naegling62 · May 22, 2022

It looks like Geert needs to take a 3rd party in whenever he gets a massage just so he has a witness.

libertylover · May 22, 2022

Heliobas Disciple said:
There’s abundant evidence that Vanden Bossche has a not-so-hidden agenda

The above quote comes from Rosemary Frei, MSc (not HD-sorry). You will find from her following website: About - Rosemary Frei that she "pivoted in early 2016 to full-time, independent activism..."

Pot meet kettle. Shocking I tell you.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

psychgirl said:
Well, at this point despite those strong arguments against Dr VB in that article, I choose to trust and believe in his research.
If I’m wrong, and he’s NOT correct or trustworthy, then I’ll admit it.
But at this point I choose to err on the side of caution especially now that infections are rising again.

Just ten days/two weeks ago two coworkers of mine were pretty sick; one had a positive test for Covid with low fever and severe body aches/headache; the other young girl didn’t get tested until five days into her “bug” which gave a negative result.
What else could it have been though? I guess it could have just been the flu. She had 102 fever with severe body aches etc. Urgent Care put her on antibiotics.
I don’t feel so great this morning myself, but hopefully it’s just my yearly bad reaction to the cottonwood trees blooming on our property.

I'm in Florida and a friend here was just diagnosed with flu too. It's not flu season in May in Fl. They are double vaxxed. Geert did say we'd see an increase in flu cases in the vaxxed as their innate immune system is depressed for all viruses, not just covid. So maybe this is just more confirmation. I too believe Geert is on to something. We only have another month and a half to see if he's right. No matter what, I believe he is sincere and trustworthy, even if in the end he got his science wrong. Those critics who got personal against him or had the audacity of accusing him of being in it for money or something else outrageous are the ones, as libertylover posted above, who need to look in the mirror.

ETA: OK - so this is weird/ but not if you listen to Geert.

I decided to check when flu season is in FL in case I was wrong. It's runs from Oct to May but mostly peaking in the winter months. I clicked on an official FL report of flu cases. and look at this graph for 2022.. hmm And it's not just that flu was down during COVID (it's a flat line on that chart for 2020-2021), this chart goes back to 2018 which is what I'd compare it to. How do you make sense of this? You don't - unless you listen to Geert. Geert makes sense of it

https://www.floridahealth.gov/diseases-and-conditions/influenza/_documents/2022-w18-flu-review.pdf

FROM PAGE 3

HD

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

White House sees decision on Moderna COVID shot for kids under 5 in next few weeks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said on Sunday he expects a U.S. Food and Drug Administration decision on authorizing Moderna's vaccine for children under age five within the next few weeks. Moderna completed its application and FDA experts are...

news.yahoo.com

(fair use applies)

White House sees decision on Moderna COVID shot for kids under 5 in next few weeks
Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein
Sun, May 22, 2022, 9:52 AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said on Sunday he expects a U.S. Food and Drug Administration decision on authorizing Moderna's vaccine for children under age five within the next few weeks.

Moderna completed its application and FDA experts are looking closely at the data, Jha said on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, adding that the analysis is likely to be completed in the next few week and that a final decision would follow a meeting of the agency's expert advisers.

"So my hope is that it's going to be coming in the next few weeks," he said.

Jha said he expects more cases of monkeypox in the next few days, but that the United States is equipped to handle the virus because treatments and vaccines for it are available.

A large outbreak of monkeypox outside of Africa, where it is typically found, has caused concern among health experts. So far there have been 92 confirmed cases in areas not endemic to the virus - mostly in Europe - with one in the United States.

"I am confident we're going be able to keep our arms around it," Jha said, "but we're going to track it very closely and use the tools we have to make sure that we continue to prevent further spread and take care of the people who get infected."

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

WHO chief: The COVID pandemic is 'most certainly not over'

The COVID-19 pandemic is “most certainly not over,” the head of the World Health Organization warned Sunday, despite a decline in reported cases since the peak of the omicron wave. The U.N. health agency's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told officials gathered in Geneva for...

news.yahoo.com

(fair use applies)

WHO chief: The COVID pandemic is 'most certainly not over'
Sun, May 22, 2022, 12:17 PM

BERLIN (AP) — The COVID-19 pandemic is “most certainly not over,” the head of the World Health Organization warned Sunday, despite a decline in reported cases since the peak of the omicron wave. He told governments that “we lower our guard at our peril.”

The U.N. health agency's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told officials gathered in Geneva for opening of the WHO's annual meeting that “declining testing and sequencing means we are blinding ourselves to the evolution of the virus.” He also noted that almost 1 billion people in lower-income countries still haven't been vaccinated.

In a weekly report Thursday on the global situation, WHO said the number of new COVID-19 cases appears to have stabilized after weeks of decline since late March, while the overall number of weekly deaths dropped.

While there has been progress, with 60% of the world's population vaccinated, “it’s not over anywhere until it’s over everywhere,” Tedros said.

“Reported cases are increasing in almost 70 countries in all regions, and this in a world in which testing rates have plummeted,” he added.

Reported deaths are rising in Africa, the continent with the lowest vaccination coverage, he said, and only 57 countries — almost all of them wealthy — have vaccinated 70% of their people.

While the world's vaccine supply has improved, there is “insufficient political commitment to roll out vaccines” in some countries, gaps in “operational or financial capacity” in others, he said.

“In all, we see vaccine hesitancy driven by misinformation and disinformation,” Tedros said. “The pandemic will not magically disappear, but we can end it.”

Tedros is expected to be appointed for a second five-year term this week at the World Health Assembly, the annual meeting of the WHO's member countries.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

What We Know About Long COVID So Far

Among the many confounding aspects of the coronavirus is the spectrum of possible symptoms, as well as their severity and duration. Some people develop mild illness and recover quickly, with no lasting effects. But studies estimate that 10% to 30% of people report persistent or new medical...

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What We Know About Long COVID So Far
Knvul Sheikh and Pam Belluck - New York Times
Sun, May 22, 2022, 11:56 AM

Among the many confounding aspects of the coronavirus is the spectrum of possible symptoms, as well as their severity and duration. Some people develop mild illness and recover quickly, with no lasting effects. But studies estimate that 10% to 30% of people report persistent or new medical issues months after their initial coronavirus infections — a constellation of symptoms known as long COVID. People who experience mild or moderate illness, as well as those without any underlying medical conditions, can nonetheless experience some debilitating long-term symptoms, including fatigue, shortness of breath, an erratic heart rate, headaches, dizziness, depression and problems with memory and concentration.

Such lingering medical issues are so varied that one study by a patient-led research group evaluated 203 symptoms that may fluctuate or even appear out of the blue after people seem to have recovered.

As Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the chief of research and development at the VA St. Louis Healthcare System and a clinical public health researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, said, “If you’ve seen one patient with long COVID, you’ve seen one patient with long COVID.”

How doctors currently diagnose long COVID

There is little consensus on the exact definition of long COVID, also known by the medical term PASC, or post-acute sequelae of COVID-19. While the World Health Organization says long COVID starts three months after the original bout of illness or positive test result, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sets the timeline at just after one month.

Some researchers and health care providers use other time frames, making efforts to study and quantify the condition more difficult, said Al-Aly, who has conducted many studies on long-term post-COVID issues.

When patients experiencing persistent symptoms go to their doctors, tests like electrocardiograms, chest X-rays, CT scans and blood work don’t always identify physiological problems, Al-Aly said. Researchers are working to pinpoint certain biological factors, called biomarkers, that correlate with persistent COVID symptoms. These could include signs of inflammation or certain molecules produced by the immune system that might be measured by blood tests, for example.

For now, doctors must rely on their patients’ descriptions of symptoms and rule out alternative explanations or causes.

Some post-COVID clinics have multidisciplinary teams of specialists evaluate patients to figure out the best treatment options.

What causes long COVID?

It’s unclear what exactly drives long COVID, but research has begun to offer some clues. Some experts theorize that an immune response that goes into overdrive when you first get sick may lead to inflammation and damage throughout the body, eventually resulting in long COVID symptoms, said Dr. Michael Peluso, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco.

“We know that during acute COVID-19, some people have a really revved-up immune response and some people have a reduced immune response, and that response can determine the trajectory of how well somebody does,” he said.

Another explanation, experts say, could be that your immune system never fully shuts down after the initial infection.

Who is at risk?

Research offers some hints about which patients might face a greater risk of long-term symptoms. In a study of 209 patients published in January, researchers found four factors that could be identified early in a person’s coronavirus infection that appeared to correlate with an increased risk of having ongoing symptoms two to three months later.

One factor was the level of coronavirus RNA in the blood early in the infection, an indicator of viral load. Another was the presence of autoantibodies — antibodies that mistakenly attack tissues in the body as they do in conditions such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. A third factor was the reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus, which can cause mononucleosis and infects most people, often when they are young, and then usually becomes dormant.

The fourth factor was having Type 2 diabetes, although experts say that in studies involving larger numbers of patients, diabetes might be only one of several medical conditions that increase the risk of long COVID.

Studies from post-COVID clinics have also found other preexisting medical conditions that may put people at risk for long COVID. In a report on the first 100 patients treated for neurological and cognitive symptoms at a post-COVID clinic at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, 42% reported previously having depression or anxiety, although such patients might simply be more comfortable seeking neurological treatment, doctors said. Other preexisting conditions included autoimmune diseases and headaches.

Studies also suggest that the risk of developing long COVID peaks in middle age, Peluso said. The average age of patients in the Northwestern study was 43. An analysis of 78,252 private health insurance claims across the United States found that people between the ages of 36 and 64 made up about two-thirds of the long COVID patients. (But that study did not include most Medicare recipients, so it involved relatively few older patients.)

Women may be disproportionately affected, with some studies finding that about 60% of patients are female. A similar pattern has emerged in other long-term conditions like ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome), which has several symptoms similar to those of long COVID.

Because the pandemic has had a significant effect on Black and Latino communities in the United States, and those groups have more limited access to medical care, they may have high numbers of long COVID cases as well, Peluso said.

Can vaccines protect against long COVID?

The picture is still coming into focus, but several studies suggest that getting a COVID vaccine can reduce — but not eliminate — the risk of longer-term symptoms.

The United Kingdom’s Health Security Agency conducted an analysis of eight studies that had looked at vaccines and long COVID before mid-January. Six found that vaccinated people who then became infected with the coronavirus were less likely than unvaccinated patients to develop symptoms of long COVID. The remaining two studies found that vaccination did not appear to conclusively reduce the chances of developing long COVID.

In that analysis, one study, which has not been peer-reviewed, of about 240,000 U.S. patients found that those who had received even one dose of a COVID vaccine before their infections were 7 to 10 times less likely than unvaccinated patients to report symptoms of long COVID 12 to 20 weeks later. But another large study of electronic patient records at the U.S. Veterans Health Administration, also not yet peer reviewed, found that those who were vaccinated had only a 13% lower risk than unvaccinated patients of having symptoms six months later. Vaccinated patients mostly benefited by being less likely to develop lung problems and blood-clotting difficulties, said Al-Aly, one of the study’s authors.

“Reliance on vaccination as a sole mitigation strategy is wholly inadequate,” Al-Aly said. “It is like going to battle with a shield that only partially works.”

Seeking medical care

If you are concerned about any lingering symptoms after a confirmed or suspected coronavirus infection, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Checking in with your primary care provider is a good first step. More doctors are becoming aware of long COVID symptoms and can recommend tests that might at least rule out other causes of your symptoms.

“Even though we say that long COVID is when symptoms last for a month or three months after infection, you don’t have to wait that long to get help,” Al-Aly said. “People should really honor their symptoms.”

If you’re not getting help from a primary care doctor, you may want to seek out a post-COVID clinic, though Al-Aly acknowledged that “it’s easier said than done.” Access to post-COVID clinics can be difficult for those without adequate medical insurance. And, in some states, people may have to travel hundreds of miles to get to the nearest one. You can look up post-COVID clinics near you on the Survivor Corps database.

Bring your medical records if you are visiting a new provider and make a list of all your symptoms, especially if you are experiencing cognitive issues and are likely to forget some health concerns when your appointment comes around.

Some long COVID issues can be managed with existing medications or treatments for symptoms like headaches or gastrointestinal problems. Physical therapy and “cognitive rehab,” including approaches often used for patients who have experienced strokes or brain injuries, can also be helpful over time. Some people benefit from tailored physical and mental health rehabilitation services and breathing exercises, which can help them slowly build back strength and endurance for physical activities.

Other possible tools against long COVID, including antiviral treatments, are only beginning to be studied. The National Institutes of Health is devoting more than $1 billion to a major research effort called the Recover Initiative, but progress has been slow so far. Lawmakers are pushing for better funding for long COVID research and medical care.

Several groups, such as Body Politic, Long COVID Alliance and Survivor Corps, provide emotional support, as well as resources for seeking treatment, disability benefits and patient advocacy.

People with long COVID may also want to consider joining a research trial, Peluso said. You may be able to find continuing clinical studies at universities and academic centers near you, or sign up to be part of the Recover Initiative.

“Participating in research can be very empowering,” Peluso said.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

Virus Expert Just Issued This "Disruptive" Warning

COVID cases are rising fast, up to more than 100,000 a day, and hospitalizations are rising with them. Not only is COVID not "over" but we are on the brink of another surge. To address what you can do to stay safe, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, appeared on...

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Virus Expert Just Issued This "Disruptive" Warning
Alek Korab
Sun, May 22, 2022, 12:01 PM

COVID cases are rising fast, up to more than 100,000 a day, and hospitalizations are rising with them. Not only is COVID not "over" but we are on the brink of another surge. To address what you can do to stay safe, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, appeared on This Week this morning. Read on for five pieces of advice that can save your life—and to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss these Sure Signs You've Already Had COVID.

1 Virus Expert Says, First and Foremost, Do This Now

Want to avoid getting seriously ill from this new surge, and protect children, also? "First and foremost, my advice is, if you have not gotten vaccinated in the last five months, if you have not gotten boosted, you need to go out and do that. Now is a good time to do it. What we know is vaccines continue to provide a high level of protection against people getting seriously ill. So that's advice number one."

2 Virus Expert Says Also Do This ASAP

Eric Adams, the Mayor of New York City, said of mask mandates: "We're not at that point yet. We're not at the point of doing anything other than urging New Yorkers while you're indoors in large settings, social settings, wear your mask. We have more tools. So we don't have to fight the war we had before. This is a new war, and we're gonna use all those tools to do so."

"I agree with Mayor Adams that when you're in indoor space, you should be wearing a mask," said Jha. "I feel that very strongly that in crowded indoor spaces, in places with high transmission, people should be doing that." He said part of his job in the administration is "to make sure that people have access to masks, people have access to vaccines, access to therapeutics and testing."

3 Virus Expert Said Don't Think of This Virus as "Normal" and "We're Not Done Yet"

"All these infected people….," others might think, "Maybe people aren't as sick. This is just part of life now," said host Martha Raddatz. "I wouldn't say it's quite part of life in the sense that I wouldn't say it's quite back to sort of normal, because look, we have a lot of infections out there, it's still quite disruptive," said Jha. "And 300 people a day are still dying of this disease. That's way too much. What I would say is we've certainly started really breaking that link between infections and deaths through two mechanisms, right? One is by getting people vaccinated and boosted, and second through making therapies widely available. Those things really do help a lot. And that's why, despite how many infections there are, death numbers are still relatively low. We've gotta keep working on it. We're just not done yet."

4 You Have to Use the Tools We Have or You're at Risk, Says Virus Expert

"Given that a lot of people aren't following your advice, I've been flying around the country a lot lately, people don't have masks on, give us a sense of what discussions are going on in terms of approaching this in a different way. You've said month after month after month, put your masks on, get a vaccine, get a booster, but the numbers aren't really moving. So what kind of discussions do you have about another plan?" asked Raddatz.

"So look, there are a set of things that we know about how to fight this pandemic, right?" said Jha. "They are many of the things you've mentioned. We don't have a new set of tools that we're gonna roll out. The ones that work vaccinations, therapies, testing, masking, and improving indoor air quality—those are the major tools. The discussions going on that we have is we're looking at the numbers and asking which of those tools are most important at this moment? Which ones do we want to emphasize? Certainly, I think we wanna help people understand that, uh, we are in a different moment than we were two years ago, right? We are at a point where lots of people are vaccinated and boosted, where we do have widespread therapies available. We're not in the same battle, as Mayor Adams said, we're not in the same battle as we were two years ago. And so the key discussion now is how do we help Americans through this moment? And this is really important, how do we prepare for future variants? How do we prepare for the evolution of this virus? And how do we make sure we have the resources to do it so we can protect Americans as this virus continues to evolve."

5 Virus Expert Said There May Be Yet Another Surge in the Fall

How to prepare for a new surge this fall and winter? "Well, there are two sets of things we can do," said Jha. "I mean, first is we should be communicating as we are, and we do this every day, what's happening with the virus and where our expectations are and what we're planning for. What we know is that this virus is evolving very quickly and every iteration of it is has more and more immune escape,makes it harder for this virus to be contained unless we continue vaccinating people and keeping people up to date. So that's what we know. We also are planning for a variety of scenarios, including a wave of infection this fall and winter, and making sure that we have a new generation of vaccines that are being worked on right now that we have–availability of treatments and testing. And we have the resources, by the way, one of the reasons I've been talking a lot about the need for Congress to step up and fund this effort is if they don't, we will go into the fall and winter without that next generation of vaccines, without treatments and diagnostics, that's gonna make it much, much harder for us to take care of and protect Americans."

6 Virus Expert Said This About Monkeypox

Monkeypox has been discovered in the USA. "This is not a new virus to us," said Jha. "We've known about this virus for decades. We have a case in Massachusetts at Mass General, we have at least one confirmed case in New York, tracking others. I would not be surprised if we see a few more cases in the upcoming days. Anytime we have an infectious disease outbreak like this, we should all be paying attention. But I feel like this is a virus we understand, we have vaccines against it. We have treatments against it. And it's spread very differently than" COVID. "It's not as contagious as COVID. I am confident we're gonna be able to keep our arms around it, but we're gonna track it very closely." As for yourself, to protect your life and the lives of others, don't visit any of these 35 Places You're Most Likely to Catch COVID.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

Dr. Jha urges Congress to fund 'new generation' of COVID vaccines for possible fall surge

The Biden administration is planning for a likely wave of COVID-19 infections this fall and winter by ensuring both a "new generation" of vaccines and access to treatment and testing, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said on Sunday -- but he stressed that plan depended on...

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BOLDING MINE

Dr. Jha urges Congress to fund 'new generation' of COVID vaccines for possible fall surge
ISABELLA MURRAY ABC NEWS
Sun, May 22, 2022, 12:23 PM

The Biden administration is planning for a likely wave of COVID-19 infections this fall and winter by ensuring both a "new generation" of vaccines and access to treatment and testing, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said on Sunday -- but he stressed that plan depended on congressional funding.

"We have the resources," Jha told ABC "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz. "One of the reasons I've been talking a lot about the need for Congress to step up and fund this effort is if they don't, Martha, we will go into the fall and winter without that next generation of vaccines, without treatments and diagnostics. That's going to make it much, much harder for us to take care of and protect Americans."

White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha tells @MarthaRaddatz that decision about FDA authorization for vaccines for children 5 and under could be coming “in the next few weeks.” Dr. Jha urges Congress to fund 'new generation' of COVID vaccines for possible fall surge pic.twitter.com/HZeGdtCZPc

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 22, 2022

Jha has been urging lawmakers to approve President Joe Biden's request for an additional $22.5 billion in COVID funding, warning that the nation has spent much of the money dedicated to pandemic testing and treatments, including what was in the $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan signed into law last year. That request, however, remains stalled in Congress amid GOP opposition.

Meanwhile the U.S. is experiencing another COVID wave, with cases rising in nearly every state. Official infection numbers are up to more than 100,000 per day and COVID-related seven-day average hospitalizations rose by around 24% from the prior week, according to the latest CDC data. Experts say this surge is due in part to the virus' continued variants and subvariants, some of which are increasingly contagious. Vaccination, the White House says, remains a key strategy at preventing severe illness death and lessening the spread.

"What we know is that this virus is evolving very quickly and every iteration of it has more and more immune escape [which] makes it harder for this virus to be contained unless we continue vaccinating people and keeping people up-to-date," Jha said on "This Week."

With the recent spikes in COVID cases and hospitalization numbers, Jha said vaccination or boosters were crucial and that he felt "very strongly" Americans should wear masks indoors again.

"When you're in an indoor space, you should be wearing a mask," he said. "First and foremost, my advice is if you have not gotten vaccinated in the last five months, if you have not gotten boosted, you need to go out to do that now."
Raddatz pressed Jha on whether the administration had considered a new public health strategy considering their consistent advice had not broken through to all quarters of the public.

But, Raddatz asked, had the administration been considering another public health strategy considering their consistent advice (vaccines, masking) had not broken through to all quarters of the public?

"You said month after month after month, put your masks on, get a vaccine, get a booster, but the numbers aren't really moving. So what kind of discussions do you have about another plan?" Raddatz said.

"We want to help people understand that we are in a different moment than we were two years ago, right? We are at a point where lots of people are vaccinated and boosted, where we do have widespread therapies available," Jha said.

“We’re not in the same battle as we were two years ago,” WH COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Jha says. “And so the key discussion now is how do we help Americans through this moment and—this is really important—how do we prepare for future variants?” Dr. Jha urges Congress to fund 'new generation' of COVID vaccines for possible fall surge pic.twitter.com/zW9EpS0fXi

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 22, 2022

"And so the key discussion now is: How do we help Americans through this moment? And, this is really important, Martha, how do we prepare for future variants, how do we prepare for the evolution of this virus, and how do we make sure we have the resources to do it so we can protect Americans as this virus continues to evolve?"

With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week backing booster eligibility for children 5 to 11 at least five months after their initial shots, Raddatz pressed Jha on when kids not yet eligible may be able to get their first shots.
"But what about 5 and under? How soon might we see that?" Raddatz asked.

"What I know is that Moderna has completed its application, those data are being looked at very closely right now by FDA [Food and Drug Administration] experts. And my expectation is that as soon as that analysis is done, probably within the next few weeks, we're going to get that expert outside committee," Jha said, referring to an FDA advisory committee. "And then after that, FDA's going to make a decision."

"My hope is that it's going to be coming in the next few weeks," he said.

Jha also talked about another infection that has gained increasing attention: monkeypox. Biden recently said it was "something that everybody should be concerned about."

On monkeypox cases, Dr. Ashish Jha tells @MarthaRaddatz that “this is a virus we understand.”

“We have vaccines against it, we have treatments against it, and it spreads very differently than SARS-CoV-2.” Biden says monkeypox cases something to 'be concerned about' pic.twitter.com/L6jCArk5Hs

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 22, 2022

Jha, however, cautioned that there were significant differences between the COVID pandemic and the latest monkeypox cases, which have two confirmed infections so far in the U.S.-- in Massachusetts and New York.

The U.S. is equipped with vaccines against it, Jha noted. And monkeypox has long been studied around the world.

"I would not be surprised, Martha, if we see a few more cases in the upcoming days. And I think the president's right:
Anytime we have an infectious disease outbreak like this we should all be paying attention," he said. "But I feel like this is a virus we understand. We have vaccines against it, we have treatments against it, and it spreads very differently than SARS-CoV-2. It's not as contagious as COVID."

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

Omicron patients may develop Long COVID less frequently than those who had other variants, study finds

Is there a silver lining to the current wave?

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Omicron patients may develop Long COVID less frequently than those who had other variants, study finds
Erin Prater - Fortune
Sun, May 22, 2022, 3:09 PM

Those who had Omicron may develop Long COVID less frequently than those who had other variants, the authors of a new study out of Japan concluded.

The study, published this week to journal preprint server medRxiv, found that only one Omicron patient out of 18 interviewed had long-term symptoms, versus 10 out of 18 in a group of similar patients who had other COVID variants.

Symptoms were similar among those who experienced Long COVID, regardless of variant, wrote the authors, who are affiliated with the National Center for Global Health and Medicine Hospital in Tokyo.

The study defined Long COVID, which it refers to as "post COVID-19 condition," as at least one symptom that lasts for at least two months, with an onset within three months of COVID infection. Symptoms seen in patients included fatigue, difficulty breathing, cough, hair loss, depression, brain dog, difficulty concentrating, and memory issues. Researchers were unable to rule out alternate diagnoses that could cause these symptoms, the report stated.

The study represents the first time epidemiological data on Long COVID in Omicron patients has been examined. But more research is needed to see if findings are applicable to Omicron patients as a whole, and to determine the long-term impact of the variant "on health-related quality of life and social productivity," the paper stated.

Long COVID may already affect between 7 million and 23 million Americans who previously had the virus, or up to 7% of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Different estimates of how many people are affected with long COVID vary widely, from 10% to 80% of COVID survivors.

More than half of COVID survivors report symptoms that persist after six months, Penn State College of Medicine researchers reported last year.

Long COVID is a poorly understood condition that could potentially impact over a billion worldwide in just a few years, says Arijit Chakravarty, a COVID researcher and CEO of Fractal Therapeutics, a drug development firm. Experts say that it’s quickly growing into a major public health concern already overwhelming primary-care physicians.

Just what is Long COVID? It depends on whom you talk to.

The World Health Organization defines long COVID as a condition that occurs in someone who had COVID, with symptoms that cannot be explained by another diagnosis, that last for two months or more. The symptoms can persist following the initial onset, or come and go over time, the organization says, adding that a diagnosis of long COVID usually wouldn't be made until three months after acute illness.

The Mayo Clinic defines long COVID as a set of symptoms stemming from COVID that persist for more than four weeks after diagnosis.

In reality, long COVID is likely an umbrella term for a combination of issues and conditions: people who have long-term COVID infections who are able to continue to spread the disease; people whose COVID after-effects clear up after a few weeks; and people with long COVID itself.

What’s more, COVID patients whose disease was severe enough to require ICU admission may suffer post-ICU complications like muscle weakness, shortness of breath, cognitive issues, anxiety, and depression—symptoms that look a lot like long COVID, but are not, further muddying the waters. Those issues might occur due to extended periods of immobility and ventilator use, and other traumatic medical events.

It seems like most any ailment—from ear numbness, a sensation of “brain on fire,” and hallucinations—could be symptoms of Long COVID, according to a landmark July study published in British medical journal The Lancet.

The study identified more than 200 potential Long-COVID symptoms in 10 organ systems, with 66 symptoms typically lasting more than seven months. Researchers surveyed nearly 4,000 sufferers with confirmed or suspected COVID from nearly 60 countries, with illness of a month or longer.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

PREPRINT STUDY OUT OF CHINA

Bolding mine. Possible theory of why hepatitis is breaking out in children right now.

SARS-CoV-2 ORF1abA1061S potentiate autoreactive T cell responses via epitope mimicry: an explanation to hepatitis of unknown cause

The World Health Organization have recently announced outbreak news of acute, severe hepatitis of unknown cause in children under a Covid-19 pandemic. Whether it is associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is still under debating. Here, we performed...

www.biorxiv.org

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SARS-CoV-2 ORF1abA1061S potentiate autoreactive T cell responses via epitope mimicry: an explanation to hepatitis of unknown cause
Yu Wang, Yuexing Liu

doi: SARS-CoV-2 ORF1abA1061S potentiate autoreactive T cell responses via epitope mimicry: an explanation to hepatitis of unknown cause

This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review

Abstract

The World Health Organization have recently announced outbreak news of acute, severe hepatitis of unknown cause in children under a Covid-19 pandemic. Whether it is associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is still under debating. Here, we performed genomic sequence alignment analysis of the genome of SARS-Cov-2 (Wuhan-hu-1) to the human genome reference. Sequence analysis revealed that the SARS-CoV-2 ORF1ab1056-1173 presented high identities with the human protein PAPR1453-176(3Q6Z_A). After searching the fully sequenced SARS-CoV-2 genomes deposited in GISAID (GISAID - Initiative), we detected 170 SARS-CoV-2 variants with mutation in ORF1ab1061, where alanine (A) was substituted by serine (S). This alteration made a 7-amino acid peptide (VVVNASN) in ORF1ab1056-1062 identical to its counterpart in PARP1453-59(3Q6Z_A). HLA prediction suggested that the peptides with high identities in PARP14 and ORF1ab could be presented by a same globally prevalent HLA-A*11:01 molecule. And in consistent with the first reported case of hepatitis of unknown, SARS-CoV-2 ORF1abVVVNASN variants were mostly identified as Delta lineages in UK by the late 2021, with an overall frequency of 0.00161%. Thus, our preliminary results raised a possibility that infection by SARS-CoV-2 ORF1abVVVNASN variant might elicit an autoimmune T cell response via epitope mimicry and is associated with the outbreak of unknown hepatitis. We anticipated that these findings will alert the human societies to pay more attention to rare mutations beyond the spike proteins.

Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.

Author Information

Yu Wang1 3 (oucwangyu{at}163.com) and
Yuexing Liu2
1 Shanghai Institute for Nutrition and Health, CAS;
2 Guangzhou Laboratory, Guangzhou 510005, China

The paper can be found here:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.16.491922v2.full.pdf

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

EXC: The Infamous Wuhan Lab Recently Assembled Monkeypox Strains Using Methods Flagged For Creating 'Contagious Pathogens'. - The National Pulse

The Wuhan Institute of Virology assembled a monkeypox virus genome, allowing the virus to be identified through PCR tests, using a method researchers flagged for potentially creating a “contagious pathogen,” The National Pulse can reveal.Support our important research by clicking here. The study...

thenationalpulse.com

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EXC: The Infamous Wuhan Lab Recently Assembled Monkeypox Strains Using Methods Flagged For Creating ‘Contagious Pathogens’.
Are we here because of China’s experiments again?
by Natalie Winters
May 22, 2022

The Wuhan Institute of Virology assembled a monkeypox virus genome, allowing the virus to be identified through PCR tests, using a method researchers flagged for potentially creating a “contagious pathogen,” The National Pulse can reveal.

The study was first published in February 2022, just months before the latest international outbreak of monkeypox cases which appear to have now reached the United States.

The paper, which was authored by nine Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers and published in the lab’s quarterly scientific journal Virologica Sinica, also follows the wide-scale use of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests to identify COVID-19-positive individuals.

Researchers appeared to identify a portion of the monkeypox virus genome, enabling PCR tests to identify the virus, in the paper: “Efficient Assembly of a Large Fragment of Monkeypox Virus Genome as a qPCR Template Using Dual-Selection Based Transformation-Associated Recombination.”

Screen-Shot-2022-05-21-at-12.19.53-PM-800x380.png

Monkey pox viruses – referred to as “MPXVs” in the paper – have strains that are “more pathogenic and [have] been reported to infect humans in various parts of the world.”

“Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) is the gold standard for the detection of orthopoxvirus (including MPXV). For pan-orthopoxviruses detection, the E9L (DNA polymerase) gene has been shown to be an excellent target for qPCR assays. For MPXV detection, Li et al. reported that the C3L (complement-binding protein) gene could be used as the qPCR target for the MPXV Congo Basin strain,” explained the paper before noting that China lacked sufficient genetic information on the virus for PCR detection:

“Since MPXV infection has never been associated with an outbreak in China, the viral genomic material required for qPCR detection is unavailable. In this report, we employed dual-selective TAR to assemble a 55-kb MPXV genomic fragment that encompasses E9L and C3L, two valuable qPCR targets for detecting MPXV or other orthopoxviruses.”

“The primary purpose of assembling a fragment of the MPXV genome is to provide a nucleotide template for MPXV detection,” reiterated the study, which relied on the process of transformation-associated recombination (TAR) to isolate a genomic fragment of the monkeypox virus.
https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/05/19/wuhan-lab-journal-publishes-gain-of-function-research/
“As an efficient tool for assembling large DNA fragments up to 592 kb in length, TAR assembly has become essential for preparing infectious clones of large DNA/RNA viruses,” explained researchers.

The paper acknowledged that TAR “applied in virological research could also raise potential security concerns, especially when the assembled product contains a full set of genetic material that can be recovered into a contagious pathogen.”

“In this study, although a full-length viral genome would be the ideal reference template for detecting MPXV by qPCR, we only sought to assemble a 55-kb viral fragment, less than one-third of the MPXV genome. This assembly product is fail-safe by virtually eliminating any risk of recovering into an infectious virus while providing multiple qPCR targets for detecting MPXV or other Orthopoxviruses,” posited researchers.

The unearthed study follows the Wuhan Institue of Virology conducting similar research into strains of bat coronaviruses that could infect humans while admitting its facilities lacked proper laboratory safety protocols.

Read:

1 s2.0 S1995820X22000414 Main | PDF | Polymerase Chain Reaction | Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction

monkeypox

www.scribd.com

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSYRQoiyUg8
North Korea and China, mass irrationality
18 min 36 sec
May 22, 2022
Dr. John Campbell

North Korea and China deny basic scientific rationality https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia...President Biden with President Yoon Suk-yeol We've offered vaccines, not only to North Korea but to China as well, and we're prepared to do that immediately We've got no response Declined offers from SK and others already, covax Symptomatic cases, + 220,000 = 2.5 million people have been sickened by "fever" Under treatment, 741,000 Medicines, oxygen, electricity, frequent blackouts, fridges Deaths, 66 Nationwide lockdown Claimed successfully kept Covid out by sealing borders State media Herbal tea, gargling salt-water, ibuprofen Kim Jong-un, officials bungled distribution of national medicine reserves Mobilised a million health workers, find people with fevers, quarantine China Dr. Michael Ryan https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireSto... We understand why the initial response of China was to try and suppress infections to the maximum level (but) that strategy is not sustainable a suppression-only strategy is not a sustainable way to exit the pandemic for any country Unchecked transmission, North Korea, Eritrea could spur the emergence of new variants Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus zero-COVID, not sustainable WHO is deeply concerned at the risk of further spread in North Korea, Worrying numbers of people with underlying conditions Has asked North Korea to share more data, no response WHO had offered vaccines, medicines, tests and technical support, no response UK Britain reduces its Covid-19 alert level from four to three, Omicron-variant wave of the virus was subsiding. Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 newly classified as variants of concern ONS https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati...

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni6KtUtBZhk
TWiV 902: Autoantibodies drive severe COVID-19
2 hrs 7 min 55 sec
May 22, 2022
Vincent Racaniello

TWiV reviews recent cases of monkeypox, presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA but not infectious virus in feces, and the association of autoantibodies to interferons with severe COVID-19.
Show notes at TWiV 902: Autoantibodies drive severe COVID-19

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

In rebuke to Pentagon, Navy board finds 3-0 for vax objector amid questions of mandate's lawfulness

"[W]e are encouraged that the truth was revealed in this Board, and we hope this ground-breaking case sends a strong message to the Department of Defense," said counsel for Navy Lt. Billy Moseley.

justthenews.com

(fair use applies)

In rebuke to Pentagon, Navy board finds 3-0 for vax objector amid questions of mandate's lawfulness
"[W]e are encouraged that the truth was revealed in this Board, and we hope this ground-breaking case sends a strong message to the Department of Defense," said counsel for Navy Lt. Billy Moseley.
By Natalia Mittelstadt
Updated: May 22, 2022 - 10:58pm

In a stinging rebuke to the Pentagon, a Navy administrative separation board voted unanimously to retain an officer who refused to comply with the military's COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Navy Lt. Billy Moseley, who has been an officer for 22 years, could have chosen to retire from the military when he was ordered to receive the COVID vaccine. He also could have submitted a Religious Accommodation Request, since he objected to the vaccine for religious reasons.

Risking his retirement, Moseley chose instead to take his case to the administrative separation board after learning "that the Navy and the other services intended to implement a blanket denial policy," according to a press release from his attorney, R. Davis Younts.

Moseley consulted with legal and medical experts and "became convinced that as an officer he had an obligation to take a stand against the unlawful order and be a voice for thousands of enlisted Sailors," the press release continued.

Younts told Just the News Moseley is one of the first Navy service members — maybe even the first officer — to go to the board over the COVID vaccine mandate.

Any service member who has been in the military for more than six years is entitled to the board for due process. In the Navy, the board's recommendation on whether to retain or separate (another term for firing) a member of the service is binding.

Younts argued at the board hearing that the mandate for the experimental COVID vaccines was not a lawful order since the military has not made fully FDA-approved versions of the vaccines available to military members.

The military defense attorney told Just the News that the attorneys for the Navy agreed with him that there are no FDA-approved vaccines available, only interchangeable vaccines. Younts added that if there are no FDA-approved vaccines available, then the president would have to authorize the experimental shots that are currently available, which hasn’t happened.

On Friday, the board voted 3-0 that Moseley's failure to follow the COVID vaccine order did not count as misconduct and that he should remain in the Navy. Younts said that the board members weren't convinced that the vaccine order was lawful.

He added that this precedent "puts the Navy in an interesting position" regarding the other service members who have also refused the COVID vaccine.

While this is "only one case of thousands and we have many more clients facing prosecution by the military, we are encouraged that the truth was revealed in this Board, and we hope this ground-breaking case sends a strong message to the Department of Defense," Younts' press release concluded.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

Newstream | KCNA Watch

kcnawatch.org

(fair use applies)

Epidemic Spread and Treatment Results in DPRK
Date: 23/05/2022 | Source: KCNA.kp (En) | Read original version at source

Pyongyang, May 23 (KCNA) -- According to information of the state emergency epidemic prevention headquarters, more than 167,650 fevered persons (about 18,440 less than the previous day), over 267,630 recoveries (about 31,550 less than the previous day) and one death were reported from 18:00 of May 21 to 18:00 of May 22 throughout the country.

As of 18:00 of May 22 since late April, the total number of fevered persons is over 2,814,380, of which more than 2,334,910 (82.964%) have recovered and at least 479,400 (17.034%) are under medical treatment.

The death toll stands at 68 and the fatality rate is at 0.002%. -0-

www.kcna.kp (Juche111.5.23.)

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

North Korea claims 'positive trend' in COVID spread; yet to reply to Biden's vaccine offer- Republic World

www.republicworld.com

(fair use applies)

North Korea Claims 'positive Trend' In COVID Spread; Yet To Reply To Biden's Vaccine Offer
As the country is reeling under the sudden spike in COVID-19 cases, North Korea claimed that a "positive trend" has been seen as the outbreak is slowing down.
Written By Anurag Roushan
22nd May, 2022 20:59 IST

As the country is reeling under the sudden spike in COVID-19 cases, North Korea claimed that a "positive trend" has been seen as the outbreak is slowing down. According to local media reports, the country has seen a drop in fever cases with numbers dropping below 200,000.

On Saturday, May 21, the country reported as many as 186,090 new cases, 299,180 recoveries and one death, CNN reported, citing the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). For the last one week, the country has been reporting more than 200,000 "fever cases" per day in an outbreak that has affected over 2.5 million people and killed at least 67.

North Korea claimed to be COVID-free before the current outbreak was announced earlier this month. The country also claimed to have reported its first cases earlier this month, calling the outbreak "explosive" and raising concerns about the country's crumbling healthcare infrastructure's ability to cope with the situation. During his visit to South Korea, US President Joe Biden said that his country offered to provide vaccines to North Korea but did not receive any response from the Kim Jong Un-led regime.

North Korea yet to import any COVID-19 vaccines: Report

According to reports, North Korea is yet to import any COVID-19 vaccines and has previously turned down offers, including one from China last year to deliver roughly three million doses of Sinovac vaccines. Some analysts believe that the timing of Biden's visit and his meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol influenced Pyongyang's sudden openness about its COVID concerns.

"The fact that Kim Jong Un has decided to come out and publicly announce this health crisis is quite telling," Lina Yoon, a senior Korea researcher at Human Rights Watch told CNN, adding that it might have a political element.

South Korea offers to help North in battling COVID outbreak

It is pertinent to mention here that South Korea also stated that it intends to have working-level talks with its neighbouring country, ostensibly to assist it in combating the spread of the deadly virus.

"The government is actively reviewing to officially propose to North Korea holding a working-level meeting in coming days," Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean official as saying. Meanwhile, South Korea's Unification Ministry also stated that the country will offer "practical help" in the coronavirus response to the North as soon as possible.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

CDC Now Recommends COVID-19 Testing for All Domestic Air Travel, Including the Vaccinated

www.theepochtimes.com

(fair use applies)

CDC Now Recommends COVID-19 Testing for All Domestic Air Travel, Including the Vaccinated
By Jack Phillips
May 22, 2022

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is recommending that all domestic travelers undergo COVID-19 testing before and after they travel—regardless of vaccination status.

In an update on the agency’s website, anyone traveling within the United States may want to consider “getting tested as close to the time of departure as possible,” and no more than three days before a flight. It previously only recommended testing for people who have not received COVID-19 vaccines or up-to-date booster shots.

The CDC update is also recommending that people take a test before or after a trip if they went to crowded spaces “while not wearing a well-fitting mask or respirator.”

In April, a Florida federal judge struck down the CDC mandate that required people to wear masks inside airports or on airplanes. Justice Department officials have signaled they will challenge the rule, implemented after President Joe Biden took office in early 2021, in court.

A spokesperson for the agency told AFAR Magazine on May 19 that “COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease and death,” but added, “since vaccines are not 100 percent effective at preventing infection, some people who are up to date can still get COVID-19.”

“People who are up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines may feel well and not have symptoms but still can be infected and spread the virus to others,” the spokesperson said.

In January of this year, the CDC also implemented a change to its international travel rule, requiring plane passengers aged 2 and older to show a negative COVID-19 test from no more than a day before boarding a flight or proof of recovery from COVID-19 within the previous 90 days. Foreign nationals have to show proof of COVID-19 vaccination as well.

Neither the CDC nor the White House has given any public indication of when the mandatory testing rule for international travelers will be relaxed. Travel groups have pushed for that rule to be removed for months now.
In a letter to the White House, a group representing more than 250 organizations called for an end to the rule, saying it’s only caused “slow economic recovery of the business and international travel sectors.”

After the federal judge’s order was handed down last month, the CDC issued a new recommendation that people inside airports and airplanes wear masks, despite nearly all major airliners having scrapped enforcement.

And during a news briefing last week, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who has been criticized for her agency’s messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic, said that people living in counties that the agency deems to have high COVID-19 transmission should wear masks in indoor settings.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

Chinese Regime Locks Down Mega Port City of 14 Million Under ‘Zero-COVID’ Policy

www.theepochtimes.com

(fair use applies)

Chinese Regime Locks Down Mega Port City of 14 Million Under ‘Zero-COVID’ Policy
By Alex Wu
May 22, 2022

The Chinese communist regime has locked down another major city—Tianjin in northern China—under its strict “Zero-COVID” policy. Meanwhile, mandatory mass testing is being conducted in the city. Authorities warn those who violate the regulations that they will not only be punished but that it would even “affect their future generations.”

Tianjin is one of China’s four cities that are directly controlled by the central government, and a major port city in the north. The authorities announced on May 19 that they would implement a closed “static management” policy for the population of nearly 14 million, restricting the free movement of people and vehicles.

Since the lockdown of Shanghai in late March that caused tragedy and suffering for the residents in the city, attracting worldwide attention and criticism, the Chinese regime has avoided using the word “lockdown” and instead preferred the vague term “static management,” which is essentially a strict lockdown situation.

In the notice, Tianjin authorities stated that from May 21, all residents in Tianjin would remain static in their place of residence, and citywide COVID-19 nucleic acid testing for all residents would be conducted.

According to more detailed official announcements by the city’s districts, people are prohibited from “random movement” outside their homes until the nucleic acid test results are released.

On the same day, the Tianjin Metro operation authorities also issued an announcement on its official social media account on Weibo, saying that the stations of many lines of the Tianjin Metro were temporarily closed.

This is following the shutdown of public transportation and unannounced lockdowns recently in Beijing, the capital city that is 84 miles away from Tianjin, due to the worsening of a new wave of COVID-19 outbreak. Beijing officials also announced that they would tighten the “static management” of the capital in the meantime.

With the escalation of epidemic prevention and control, Tianjin authorities announced on May 20 that nucleic acid testing in the five central districts of Nankai, Hongqiao, Hexi, Hedong, and Heping would be launched that same night, earlier than previously announced.

Prior to the citywide lockdown in Tianjin, some districts had already been locked down.

Beichen District announced a lockdown on May 19, restricting people’s movement and gathering and vehicles entering and leaving the district.

The Epoch Times obtained video showing Beichen District being locked down and police preventing drivers from going to the district.

Dongli District also issued an announcement on May 20 to implement a 3-tiered lockdown in the district.

On May 19, the neighborhood committee of Huafengjiayuan Community in Dongli District, Tianjin issued an announcement warning residents: “For the spread of the epidemic caused by residents who go out without permission after finishing nucleic acid test, the public security organs will hold them accountable, and it will affect their future generations. Hope everyone thinks twice before acting.”

The official threat against citizens to “affect their future generations” has attracted wide attention and criticism on social media. This is not the first time that such a threat was made by Chinese communist officials during a lockdown.

A video that has been widely circulated on the internet since May 11 shows a young couple in Shanghai who had a negative nucleic acid test but were coerced at their home by several policemen to be forcibly transferred and quarantined in a centralized isolation facility.

It can be heard in the video that the husband refused, and the police threatened: “If you refuse to be transferred, you will be punished by the public security. After you are punished, it will also affect your future three generations!” The husband replied, “We’re the last generation, thank you.”

Li Jing contributed to the report.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

Arizona Governor Approves Ban on School COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

www.theepochtimes.com

(fair use applies)

Arizona Governor Approves Ban on School COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates
By Mimi Nguyen Ly
May 22, 2022

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Friday said he had signed into law a measure that bars state health officials from adding a COVID-19 vaccine to the list of inoculations needed to attend public schools.

He also signed a second bill that bans mask mandates in any state or local government buildings, which include libraries, courthouses, and other public buildings.

Ducey’s office announced late Friday afternoon that he had signed the two bills—House Bill 2086 (pdf) and House Bill 2453 (pdf)—along with 18 others. The measures will take effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourns its ongoing 2022 session.

The two bills mark the latest efforts by majority Republican lawmakers to limit what they have called government overreach. All House and Senate Republicans voted for the two measures, with no support from any Democrats.

The text of H.B. 2086 says that “immunization against COVID-19 or any of its variants is not required for school attendance in Arizona.” It also says that it “[r]equires an immunization to be required by [Department of Homeland Security] rule before the immunization is permitted to be required for in-person school attendance.”

The latter bill, H.B. 2453, will prohibit any local or state government from “imposing any requirement to wear a mask or face covering on the governmental entity’s premises, except where long-standing workplace safety and infection control measures that are unrelated to COVID-19 may be required.”

Ducey, a Republican, has already signed other legislation this year targeting COVID-19 related restrictions. In April, he signed into law a measure to block government entities from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination for employees, and another measure blocking schools from enforcing masks for students under 18, unless their parents explicitly approve.

Ducey had previously backed COVID-19 restrictions early in the pandemic prior to joining many other Republican in opposing mandates. The governor had ordered business closures, issued orders requiring mask-wearing at public schools, and did not object when municipalities and county governments issued mask mandates during 2020.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

Beijing extends work-from-home order as COVID-19 cases rise

Beijing extended orders for workers and students to stay home and ordered additional mass testing Monday as cases of COVID-19 rose in the Chinese capital.

medicalxpress.com

(fair use applies)

Beijing extends work-from-home order as COVID-19 cases rise
May 23, 2022

Beijing extended orders for workers and students to stay home and ordered additional mass testing Monday as cases of COVID-19 again rose in the Chinese capital.

Numerous residential compounds in the city have restricted movement in and out, although conditions remain far less severe than in Shanghai, where millions of citizens have been under varying degrees of lockdown for two months.

Beijing on Monday reported an uptick in cases to 99, rising from a previous daily average of around 50.

In total, China reported 802 new cases Monday, marking a steady decline interrupted only by small-scale localized outbreaks. Despite that, the government has hewed to strict quarantine, lockdown and testing measures under its "zero-COVID" approach, even while the outside world is opening up.

Shanghai reported 480,000 people were still confined to their homes, while 1.59 million were permitted to move around their neighborhoods and 21.2 million were under lighter restrictions.

The reopening of transport links out of Shanghai created an exodus of migrant workers and foreigners, desperate to escape shortages of food, medicine and daily necessities. Among those who remain, many were still restricted to one hour of shopping time, entrusted with bringing home supplies for their entire building.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

More confirmation about what Geert has predicted, without mentioning Geert or his study, but the same conclusion.

Doctor Exposes The True Dangers of Monkeypox Amid Mass Pandemic Hysteria

Dr. Peter McCullough of https://www.americaoutloud.com/ and author John Leake of https://couragetofacecovid.com/ join The Alex Jones Show to break down the true dangers of the monkeypox amid outbreak hysteria. **Support Infowars: https://www.infowa…

www.bitchute.com

29 min 59 sec

Dr. Peter McCullough was on with Alex Jones. At 17 min 30 secs into the video he was asked for his closing comments. Here is my transcript of what he said:

Dr. Peter McCullough: I would say that as we look to the future, we are going to have more cases of Covid19. There's no doubt about it. Cases are on the rise. For those of you who've already had the infection, you're natural protection you have now, you're protected against severe outcomes. Can you have another case that is mild, that is like a mild common cold? That's certainly true. Those of you who've taken the vaccine, one shot, two shots or even more, you are still susceptible to Covid19 and in fact you could have potentially more severe outcomes. [...] (He goes on to recommend early treatments.)

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

Sars-Cov-2 was Lab Made Under Project DEFUSE

Sars-Cov-2 is a Result of Years of Documented Scientific Work

igorchudov.substack.com

(fair use applies)

Sars-Cov-2 was Lab Made Under Project DEFUSE
Sars-Cov-2 is a Result of Years of Documented Scientific Work
Igor Chudov
15 hr ago

This long article will explain how Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was created as a result of intentional laboratory work. It will also show that the blueprint for Sars-Cov-2 was described in the “Project DEFUSE” proposal by Peter Daszak, which was preceded by years of relevant lab work and virus manipulation.

I intend this to be a comprehensive “popular science” style article, that has references and abundant links but is generally understandable for regular science-minded people, like journalism or computer science majors.

This article does not introduce any new ideas and is instead meant to be a summary of accumulated knowledge about “lab origin”.

I do not set out here to investigate or debunk the coverup efforts to hide the lab origin of Sars-Cov-2. These coverup efforts involve scrubbing data, as well as promoting a so-called “zoonosis theory”, which is pushed by the NIH, EcoHealth Alliance, and its funders and acolytes. I will simply lay out laboratory-designed features of Sars-Cov-2 and will highlight past research where such features were first discussed prior to 2020. This article is non-judgmental and sticks to facts.

My hope is that reading this article will make you want to send it to your smart friend, who will be able to understand it and will become convinced that “lab origin” is not “baseless misinformation”.

Contents

Prashant’s Jan 2020 article about strange HIV Gp120 and “gag” inserts in Sars-Cov-2 was withdrawn in haste and under pressure during the weekend, which is unusual.
HIV-originated Gp120 inserts in Sars-Cov-2, described by Prashant, are meaningful and instrumental to COVID-19’s infecting immune cells, similarly to HIV.
Furin Cleavage Site in Sars-Cov-2 does not exist in other betacoronaviruses and is instrumental for pathogenicity.
Dr. Fauci is an expert on HIV and Gp120 glycoprotein and is a co-author of many articles and a coinventor of three Gp120 related patents, and no doubt understood what Prashant’s preprint meant, right away. Fauci and his associates, together with the likely creator of Sars-Cov-2 Peter Daszak, set out to cover up the origin of Sars-Cov-2.
Peter Daszak’s 2018 “Project DEFUSE” proposal describes exactly what Sars-Cov-2 actually is.
Sars-Cov-2 was possibly cultured on a Moderna MSH3 cell line containing a patented Moderna gene sequence CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG.

Hat Tips

While I followed the lab origin theory starting with the Pradhan article, four people were instrumental in expanding my knowledge of the “lab origin” of Covid-19. It is JikkyLeaks (Twitter @JikkyLeaks), Arkmedic (substack), @Daoyu15, and Charles Rixey (Twitter @CharlesRixey, substack). Many ideas discussed were first brought up by DRASTIC research. They, in addition to the respected scientists I am citing, came up with almost all the ideas.

The only idea that I came up with, around February 2022, is described in the subsection “HIV Inserts Infect Immune Cells”.

“Uncanny Similarity” to HIV Gp120 and gag Protein

In early 2020, as news of a novel virus killing people in Wuhan emerged, the first genomic sequence of the virus was published around January 20. On January 31, a preprint by Prashant Pradhan was published, alleging that Sars-Cov-2 “borrowed” certain genetic sequences from the HIV virus:

Inexplicably, this paper was withdrawn only two days later, on February 2, under murky circumstances. Mind you, Prashant’s article was published on Friday, Jan 31, 2020, and was withdrawn on Sunday, Feb 2, 2020. So urgent and important was the withdrawal, that important editors had to be roused from their weekend activities to withdraw the article.

A fact check was promptly posted on Feb 7, 2020, that confidently declared HIV inserts a “baseless conspiracy theory”. Its author, Jessica McDonald, seems to be an intelligent and informed person on a mission to cover things up that her employer wants to cover up. That fact check made a conclusion that was obviously false even in January 2020 but is worth reading if you have time.

What are these inserts? Are they meaningless? Is the story baseless? Who asked to write a fact check calling this story “baseless”?

HIV Gp120 Inserts are Significant and Unusual

To remind my readers, Sars-Cov-2 is an RNA virus, that has a strand of ribonucleic acid (RNA), enclosed within a viral envelope, surrounded by “spikes”. The spikes have unique attachment points (receptor binding domains) that attach to certain receptors on human cells. That attachment allows the virus to open up the cellular membrane, inject its RNA into the cells, and hijack the cell’s ribosomes to make new copies of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, as encoded by its viral RNA. A good basic video of this is here:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA70ZdYhhCg
1min 40 sec

What Pradhan found is that the viral RNA contains highly unusual (for betacoronaviruses) sequences that appear to be lifted from the HIV virus and inserted into the Sars-Cov-2 genome.

Fact-checkers stated that these small sequences are meaningless. They are not.

Far from being useless genetic junk, the HIV inserts in Sars-Cov-2 are very important functionally. Despite appearing discontinuously, the proteins that they encode come together in the final coronavirus spikes:

Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.

Prashant provides a picture, that I further annotated:

These colored proteins that I circled, are on the outside of the spike and are responsible for interaction with human host cells. Prashant explains:

The insert 1 corresponds to the NTD (N-terminal domain) and the inserts 2 and 3 correspond to the CTD (C-terminal domain) of the S1 subunit in the 2019-nCoV spike glycoprotein. The insert 4 is at the junction of the SD1 (sub domain 1) and SD2 (sub domain 2) of the S1 subunit (Ou et al., 2017). We speculate, that these insertions provide additional flexibility to the glycoprotein binding site by forming a hydrophilic loop in the protein structure that may facilitate or enhance virus-host interactions.

A video illustration of HIV Gp120-specific binding sites is seen in this video:

JikkyLeaks (fan account) @Jikkyleaks

The 4 HIV inserts that Prashant Pradhan identified are on receptor binding sites of the spike protein. The points most likely to contact with a cell. What are the odds that those inserts were located at those sites in a natural process? #pradhanwasright @c0v1d1984

April 13th 2022

406 Retweets808 Likes

31 seconds

We all have heard that Sars-Cov-2 enters host cells via a so-called “ACE2” receptor, that is abundant in human lungs. This is typical for many coronaviruses, and the original SARS from 2003 also targeted ACE2. This is what makes SARS-Cov-2 airborne.

That is not all it can do, however. SARS-Cov-2 has another card up its sleeve.

Sars-Cov-2’s HIV Inserts Infect Immune Cells, Like HIV Does

SARS-Cov-2 also has a unique secondary mechanism: its HIV inserts also allow SARS-Cov-2 to act just like HIV and infect T cells of the immune system, contributing to post-COVID immune depletion, without using ACE2 receptors at all. I wrote a long substack article about that, but for the sake of completeness let me restate its major points:

A Nature article, written by, among other people, Shi Zheng-Li (the Chinese Batwoman from Wuhan Institute of Virology), noted that many patients who had severe Sars-Cov-2 had “lymphopenia”, that is, depletion of the all-important immune T-cells
The article shows Sars-Cov-2 virus is able to infect T-cells via a unique (to coronaviruses) mechanism that works like HIV, that also infects the same cells, causing AIDS
They “show that the infection is spike-ACE2/TMPRSS2-independent”
Infection of T-cells occurs via “LFA-1, the protein [that] exclusively expresses in multiple leukocytes”
It turns out that HIV’s gp120 protein, parts of which Pradhan found in Sars-Cov-2, is the one that “Activates LFA-1 on CD4 T-Lymphocytes and Increases Cell Susceptibility to LFA-1-Targeting Leukotoxin”
Just like HIV, Sars-Cov-2 kills T cells: “infection of T cells induced cell death that is likely in mitochondria ROS-HIF-1a-dependent pathways”

Igor's Newsletter

Sars-Cov-2 Kills T-Cells, Just Like HIV

Is Sars-Cov-2 airborne HIV? Two days ago, an interesting article came out: This article was not written by a bunch of random scientists, but instead was written by people from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including the infamous batwoman Shi Zheng-Li. Just keep this in mind. It was originally submitted in Sep 2021 and revised in January 2022, so it d…

Read more

2 months ago · 331 likes · 265 comments · Igor Chudov

To summarize this part: HIV inserts in Sars-Cov-2 are translated into instrumental proteins, that form highly important “attachment points” on the spike protein. Those attachment points, or “receptor binding domains”, allow attaching to several varieties of human cells, including ACE2 expressing cells and immune T cells expressing LFA-1. These HIV Gp120 inserts facilitate entry and destruction of T cells, in a manner similar to HIV, using LFA-1.

Furin Cleavage Site

Another, separate feature discussed in Pradhan’s article, is the “Furin Cleavage Site”, or FCS. That site, also located in the spike protein, is a sequence of proteins encoded as “PRRAR”, that cleaves (separates) the spike protein into two parts when it encounters cellular enzyme furin. It facilitates effective infection. FCS is not present in any other sarbecoviruses.

Arkmedic explains:

And just to complete the quad-trick we need the last insert sequence identified in Pradhan’s paper which is QTNS——PRRA. This is a really interesting sequence which we will come to later, because is the furin cleavage site. It’s interesting because beta coronaviruses likes this don’t have a furin cleavage site, this is the only one. Surely this site couldn’t have come from HIV-1? Well, it’s not from the GP120 protein like the other three sequences, it’s completely different and on a different location of the virus which I’ll show you soon but for now let’s run the BLASTp.

This allows for very high infectivity and pathogenicity of Sars-Cov-2:

Unlike regular mutations (changes) usually replacing one nucleotide for another, a complete and functional “insert” is highly unlikely to be acquired by random viral evolution in bats or other animals.

Thus, the PRRAR furin cleavage site insert is a result of human engineering and is key to Sars-Cov-2 pathogenesis.
Arkmedic’s picture provides a highlight of the FCS (colored green on the picture below):

Here’s a video of how Furin Cleavage Site works:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgGe7W5B6-o
32 min 19 sec

[continued next post]

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

[CONTINUED FROM ABOVE]

Anthony Fauci is an Expert on HIV and Gp120

Around the time Prashant's article appeared, a lot of secret email activity (h/t @Jikkyleaks) was happening, discussing how to hide the conclusions of Prashant’s article.

To understand this situation, please note that the director of NIAID, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is actually an expert on HIV and Gp120. Fauci is a co-inventor of THREE patents involving HIV’s Gp120:

Dr. Fauci is also a co-author of many articles about HIV’s Gp120 glycoprotein:

Thus, around January 31, 2020, Fauci would have a full and instant understanding of what HIV Gp120 inserts meant for SARS-Cov-2. What did Dr. Fauci do? He convened with his top associates Trevor Bedford and Kristian Andersen, as well as Peter Daszak, and discussed how they can hide these explosive findings.

Who is Peter Daszak and why is Peter talking to Fauci about hiding evidence of Sars-Cov-2 being a lab product?

Well, Peter is the author of the proposal that gave us SARS-Cov-2.

Peter Daszak and the DEFUSE Project

There is a document, called “Project DEFUSE: Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses”.

This document, oddly enough, described a set of objectives that aligns exactly with what was implemented as Sars-Cov-2 and described above!

I annotated Peter’s 2018 proposal with (numbers) so I can explain how these sentences describe SARS-Cov-2 specifically and make it easy for you to see how they relate to my article.

The search for a furin cleavage site represented Project DEFUSE’s desire to move on from 2003 Sars-1’s less effective trypsin cleavage site to something more infectious, transmissible and pathogenic, which would be a furin cleavage site. This concept was worked on by scientists as early as 2006 when Kathryn Follis et al attempted to replace the SARS-1 trypsin cleavage site with a furin cleavage site. This shows that the DEFUSE Project is based on preexisting laboratory discoveries.
An excellent explanation of interaction of Sars-Cov-2 with DC-SIGN and L-Sign is in a PLOS article “DC/L-SIGN recognition of spike glycoprotein promotes SARS-CoV-2 trans-infection”. Read that link if you have 10 minutes.

DC-SIGN is a dendritic cell lectin that binds to HIV’s Gp120 — and Gp120 is what was added to Sars-Cov-2.
Here Project DEFUSE describes testing their new virus on human cells expressing above mentioned DC-SIGN.
Project DEFUSE anticipated problems infecting immune cells (monocytes and macrophages) and thus added specific Gp120 sequences allowing Sars-Cov-2 to infect those specific cells via the above-mentioned LFA-1 mechanism.
Project DEFUSE tested the result in transgenic (humanized) mice, having human ACE2 receptors in their lungs. The mice had to be humanized: as we know, Sars-Cov-2 was able to infect people, but not mice, at the beginning of its history. (Side Note: Later on, another famous virologist, Ralph Baric of UNC, worked on allowing Sars-Cov-2 to infect regular — not transgenic — mice. And guess what, somehow the later variants of Sars-Cov2 (Omicron) do infect mice, a development that may or may not be related to Baric’s research. Baric was also on the email thread with Fauci shown above.).
I believe that “commercial gene blocks” mentioned by Project DEFUSE are HIV’s Gp120 and Gag protein blocks.
Testing on humanized mice was not enough for Project DEFUSE authors, and they finally tested their assembled product on “HAE cells”, which are “human airway epithelial” cells just like the cells you have in your lungs.

The last sentence (7): “test ... in Human Airway Epithelial [cells] and in vivo pathogenesis”, semantically, means lab testing in Human Airway Epithelial cells, and then in vivo testing in live HUMANS.

Stop for a second and read that again. What?

I am not sure if the authors really meant that sentence to mean testing Sars-Cov-2 in humans, as English is not my native language. But my understanding is that the plain meaning of the above-quoted sentence is to refer to testing in humans, describing in-vivo testing after in-vitro testing on explicitly human cells.

Whatever “in … HAE cells and in vivo pathogenesis” meant to the author, Sars-Cov-2 has plenty of in vivo pathogenesis in humans, as the families of 6,299,692 dead COVID patients would readily attest to.

Sars-Cov-2 has a Sequence from Moderna Patent 9,587,003 from 2018

Sars-Cov-2 has a nucleotide sequence CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG. Oddly enough, a reverse complement to this sequence exists in a Moderna Patent 9,587,003, that describes certain human cancer cell lines. The probability of that sequence being in Sars-Cov-2 due to random chance is estimated to be around one in 100,000,000,000. The most likely explanation for how that sequence could end up in Sars-Cov-2 is that Sars-Cov-2 was cultured in Moderna-owned MSH3 cell culture at some point.

For people who enjoy trying NIH’s BLAST tool to hunt genes, I wrote an article on how exactly to match the Sars-Cov-2 CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG sequence to the Moderna patent sequence. Try it out and have fun.

Disclaimers and Uncertainties

Let me mention a few things that my article leaves out:

I proved (based on the work of others) that Sars-Cov-2 was designed in a lab. I did not identify the lab, or the person who did it (although Sars-Cov-2 originates from the DEFUSE Project). I am very aware that Wuhan is the home of Wuhan Institute of Virology. That said, WIV is not the only possible source of Sars-Cov-2.
The DEFUSE Project proposal was rejected by DARPA. However, EcoHealth Alliance was given money by DoD, NIH, and other players such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Saying that DEFUSE was never implemented, is incorrect. Project DEFUSE was implemented and the result is Sars-Cov-2, which matches Project DEFUSE. Here, federal money was given via DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) for the exact purpose stated in Project DEFUSE.
The sequence CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG in Sars-Cov-2 does NOT prove or even imply that Moderna was involved in creating Sars-Cov-2. It merely proves lab origin.
We do NOT know whether Sars-Cov-2 was released intentionally or accidentally. This article does NOT attempt to identify any specific persons or reasons involved in releasing it.
This article does not prove or even imply that Sars-Cov-2 was implemented with the intent, from the beginning, to be released and wreak havoc on humanity. I am leaving this topic out.
Whether “Covid Vaccine” was created before Sars-Cov-2 was known officially, is a very important question, that I do not want to discuss in this article, even though I discussed it in the past.

Further Reading

For those curious to learn more, arkmedic provides outstanding details on gp120 inserts, how they look, why they are unusual and lab-made, and their functionality. Please spare a half-hour of your time when you get a moment to read the article below:

Arkmedic's blog
Absolute proof: The Gp-120 sequences prove beyond all doubt that "COVID-19" was man-made
Following on from December’s article “How to BLAST your way to the truth about the origins of COVID-19” where I explained how the four “inserts” described in Pradhan’s Feb 2020 paper showed definitively that the SARS-CoV-2 genome had to have been man-made, there has been considerable interest and a lot of push-back from those whose reputations are on th…
Read more
a month ago · 104 likes · 80 comments · Dr Ah Kahn Syed

Famous economist Jeffrey Sachs wrote an article in PNAS that is pointing out SOME lab-made features of SARS-Cov-2 and is asking for an investigation.

However, unfortunately, Jeffrey Sachs is a brilliant economist and not a virologist. His well-intentioned and extremely well-written article left out HIV-related features, and other facts, that are monumentally important, perhaps due to article size restrictions. Jeffrey’s article is what prompted me to write this post — because I felt that he unintentionally omitted the most crucial details.

Recommended Reading

Arkmedic's blog
Stuff you didn't know about medicine
By Dr Ah Kahn Syed

DRASTIC's COVID-19 Origin Investigations - General Political & Data Analysis
By Charles Rixey, MA, MBA (c)

Have fun people, and send this post to that smart friend of yours who is not sure if Sars-Cov-2 is lab-made.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

Another post that supports what Geert is saying:

comparing covid maps of the US

if vaccines stop covid spread, then why is all the covid spread in the highest vaxxed counties? and why are serve cases rising most in the most vaccinated?

boriquagato.substack.com

(fair use applies)

comparing covid maps of the US
if vaccines stop covid spread, then why is all the covid spread in the highest vaxxed counties? and why are serve cases rising most in the most vaccinated?
el gato malo
19 hr ago

this is a county by county map of vaccination rate published HERE by the new york times.

it’s in percentages, green is high, and dark green highest.

as can be readily seen there are several zones of very high vaccination rates:

the coastal west
the northeast
florida, especially south florida around miami (but less so in west and panhandle)
the upper midwest around northern illinois, WI, MN, iowa
puerto rico and alaska
the lower half of 4 corners in AZ, NM
the southern edge of texas

there is also a wide diagonal band of low vaccination stretching from georgia/alamaba northwest to montana and idaho.
(data seems to be missing for VT. it’s one of the highest vaxx states in the US)

now, if vaccination were working to stop covid spread, you’d expect to see these areas manifest lower infection rates.

this is doubly true right now, especially in the northern latitudes where covid seasonality would be predicted to have ended infections for the summer.

(florida, texas etc tend to get a summer surge, but have it’s still a bit early for it)
but instead, we see this:

the hotspots map (measured in cases per 100k people, so population density is already accounted for) looks almost exactly like the vaccination map.

this overlap is far too striking to ignore.

of the 7 zones i mentioned above, 5, arguable 6 are hotspots.

the northeast has been a hotspot for months. the norther midwest has now joined them, out of season, on exactly the minn, wis, northern illinois arc that is highly vaccinated and stopping right in mid illinois where the vaxx rate changes, esp in the south east corner.

west coast, same.

florida is especially telling as the hotspots are all east coast and focused in miami, right where all the vaccination is. this is awfully precise to simply ignore:

the only 2 places with high vaxx NOT following this pattern are 4 corners and the southern TX border and 4 corners is arguable as it does have a high rate, just not quite dark red yet. (let’s give it a minute and see what happens) perhaps it’s climate or population density or just lag. these areas should not be in seasonal expression now and don’t get the constant travelers from the northeast that florida gets so that may have effect as well.

and this issue is not confined to cases. as i have discussed several times before, hospitalization is spiking all across the NE in the over 70’s age group who is nearly 100% vaccinated (over 95% everyplace) and highly boosted as well.

this would be the OAS canary in the coal mine as this group has the least effective generalized immune response, relies most on specific antibodies, and therefore would manifest such an issue most clearly and earliest.

this makes it quite worrying that every single state in the NE is in a significant uptrend during what should be the tail end of the seasonal downtrend toward nearly no covid for summer.

this is a jarring outcome that is in no way consistent with vaccine working, especially after such cohort depletion, build up of natural immunity, and an overall milder variant in omicron.

and it’s focused on the oldest and most vaxxed. these rises are not the same in younger groups.

even new hampshire, who changed their definition of hospitalization so dramatically, is now back in surge.
this:

bought them a temporary reprieve in reported hospitalization, but the sharp increases have returned and this would seem to indicate that the current rise is all serious patients being treated for covid with covid specific drugs.

comparing current hospital admissions in over 70’s to a year ago is stark. they are rising in a time of year they would be predicted to fall and their absolute levels are vastly above last year.

the best performers are still up 70-80% vs a year ago. many are at or over triple the counts.

perhaps most worrying, many of the worst performers (RI, MA, NY) were states already very hard hit by covid.

this speaks to significant failure to generate natural immunity and this issue so far looks isolated to the higher vaxxed regions

and that should worry people.

(i’d love to see a map of booster rates is anyone has one. that could be very telling.)

every week that this keeps going on is more and more damaging to the vaccine case and increasingly supportive of the theory that the vaccines have caused antigenic fixation, lead to hoskins effect/OAS variants, and that the vaccinated are now preyed upon by a virus that inevitably evolved to take advantage of herd level antigenic fixation caused by leaky vaccines with narrow immuno-training vectors.

and herd level antigenic fixation is very, very bad.

bad cattitude

homogenizing herd level antigenic fixation

antigenic fixation is a well studied issue, especially around influenza. how it came to have the oddly religion invoking name of “original antigenic sin” (OAS) is anyone’s guess, but it probably giv…

Read more

2 months ago · 759 likes · 367 comments · el gato malo

all the research about inability to ever generate N antibodies post vaccination and thus generate sterilizing immunity is looking similarly relevant.

bad cattitude

variant specific boosters fail to elicit variant specific response

THIS is a very interesting paper written by a bewilderingly large number of authors (66 in total), many from NIH and NIAID. it carries the somewhat technical and tepid title of: it would, frankly, be…

Read more

3 months ago · 535 likes · 225 comments · el gato malo

and this issue is spreading. oregon and california are starting to show similar patterns to the northeast. (washington is rising but has had idiosyncratic seasonal patterns in the past and i’m not sure why it varies so much from others)

so too is florida, though their seasonal pattern is also more complex and their numbers are not really up yoy yet. that said, their current rise in over 70’s looks worrying and data everyone ignores in the northeast always seems to kick up national firestorms and blame fests when it happens on desantis’s watch, so perhaps brace for it.

i keep saying i am really hoping to be wrong about this, but the evidence is really piling up and it looks more and more inescapable to conclude that the covid vaccines have broken herd immunity formation both for spread and increasingly for severity. the CDC data on this is so definitionally rigged and slanted by using inaccurate denominators as to render it unfit to draw clinical conclusions from and the society level data is increasing revealing this.

and so we land here: right where nobody wanted to but that so many warned we would.

Heliobas Disciple · May 23, 2022

https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-vaccines/is-it-true/is-it-true-does-the-vaxzevria-astrazeneca-vaccine-contain-animal-dna

(fair use applies)

Australian Government Department of Health

Is it true? Does the Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) vaccine contain animal DNA?
The AstraZeneca vaccine uses a chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine vector. This is a harmless, weakened adenovirus that usually causes the common cold in chimpanzees. It has been genetically changed so that it is impossible for it to grow in humans. Find out more below.

Does the AstraZeneca vaccine contain animal DNA?

The AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective. Find out what is in the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The AstraZeneca vaccine uses a chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine vector. This is a harmless, weakened adenovirus that usually causes the common cold in chimpanzees.

The adenovirus vaccine vector, known as ChAdOx1, was chosen as a suitable vaccine technology for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine as it has been shown to generate a strong immune response from one dose in other vaccines.

It has been genetically changed so that it is impossible for it to grow in humans.

Chimpanzee adenoviral vectors are a very well-studied vaccine type, having been used safely in thousands of subjects.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has proven to be safe and effective.

With new COVID-19 vaccine developments every day, it’s normal to have questions or concerns, and possibly feel hesitant about getting a vaccine. That's why we're providing accurate, evidence-based answers to questions about COVID-19 vaccines.

Last updated:
4 September 2021

wobble · May 23, 2022

mRNA Vaccines Significantly Associated With Deadly Blood Clots, Major Study - Truth Patriots

Share to other PATRIOTSBlood-clotting condition cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT), which can cause serious neurological damage, is significantly associated with mRNA Covid vaccination, a major study in leading medical journal Vaccines has found. The research team analysed 1,154,023 adverse event...

thetruthpatriots.com

CORONA Main Coronavirus thread

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