Meanwhile, another study published in medRxiv (preprint) on December 8th, 2021, confirmed that vaccine-escape is happening with the Omicron variant, which means that the current batch of vaccines are not capable of neutralizing the Omicron variant. Too bad for everyone that’s already had 3 doses of the magic elixir. Go back to square one.
There are moments when the public health messaging during Covid reminds me of the well-known parable of the blind men and the elephant wherein the blind men argue about the nature of an elephant based on the kernel of truth at their fingertips despite being utterly unable to see the larger reality standing before their eyes. But we are not living through a harmless parable. Our public health officials, vaccine makers, and media are manipulating our perception of reality. They are trying to blind us from seeing the full elephant by using deliberate oversimplification, half-truths, and out-of-context facts to manufacture (and exploit) an illusion of unprecedented danger. The most damaging lies are the ones that are built on a distortion of the truth.
So, it’s time for another deep dive into the evolution of variants and the subtleties of our immune systems to get some perspective…
Table of Contents
Unravelling the Contradictions: How Can Natural Immunity Be Long-Lasting and Still Not Protect You Against Next Year’s Variant?
Let’s imagine you got infected by the original Wuhan strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Your immune system has now been trained to give you natural immunity… to the original Wuhan strain. The current batch of vaccines are likewise based on this Wuhan strain. The Alpha variant is genetically very similar, so your immune system will also recognize and neutralize the Alpha variant. But as mutations stack up, it becomes harder and harder for your immune system to recognize and neutralize new variants as they become increasingly genetically distinct from the variant that infected you. You may still have long lasting immunity to the Alpha variant, but perhaps only partial cross-reactive immunity to the Lambda variant, and so on. The further new variants drift from the genetics of the variant you catch, the less efficient your adaptive immune response will be in neutralizing these new variants.
Figure 2: Prior immunity becomes less and less effective as new variants evolve. |
Note, this is a separate and compounding issue to the gradual fading of immunity, which I discussed in my recent book, Autopsy of a Pandemic #CommissionsEarned. So, to be clear, there are two separate issues that affect our immune system’s ability to protect us against re-infection: 1) fading immunity as the adaptive immune system gradually forgets its training and 2) the issue of genetic drift, which eventually allows newly emerging variants to bypass our immunity even if we still have immunity to a previous variant.
With a fast-mutating virus like a coronavirus, it was always just a matter of time until some new variant would be able to start re-infecting people even if they acquired long-lasting immunity through a previous infection (or through vaccination – more on that boondoggle in a moment). It’s called immune escape. So, beyond a certain point, long-lasting immunity doesn’t matter because the virus has moved on from what your immune system has been trained to do. The only way to prevent our immune systems from being left behind by the never-ending conveyor belt of new variants is to periodically update our adaptive immune systems to recognize changes to the evolving virus. And no, this is NOT a case for a lifetime regimen of booster shots, as you will soon see.
With enough time and without updates, immune escape will happen with ALL viruses, including viruses that have much slower genetic drift. It’s just that a slowly evolving virus like measles might take a lifetime, or longer, to accumulate enough mutations to start to escape the protection of your natural (or vaccine-induced) immunity. But if you could extend your life by a few extra centuries, even if your immunity to measles never fades, the ever-evolving measles virus would eventually be able to re-infect you unless your adaptive immune system is periodically updated to recognize new variants before new variants become too unfamiliar.
The following chart shows how much the genetics of the measles virus have changed (and diversified) from the variant circulating in the 1930s. No virus remains unchanged as time passes by. As long as a virus exists, the mutations never stop.
Read the full article here https://www.juliusruechel.com/2021/12/a-half-truth-is-whole-lie-omicron.html
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