As I’ve suspected, a recent CDC study (along with data from the UK) seems to indicate that over the past several months a significant percentage of people (at least 13%) who have been hospitalized over the past few months due to the Delta variant were in fact fully vaccinated.
Contrary to assertions from the Associated Press and Anthony Fauci that fully vaccinated people comprise only 1% of those being hospitalized or killed by C-19, the study found that 13% of patients hospitalized with C-19 had been fully vaccinated.
As a fully vaccinated person, this is a bummer, but not a surprise. I personally know of a few people who were fully vaccinated but still ended up contracting Covid.
Nice Pumpkins you have there. Where are the catapults.
Nonapod,
That 13% number doesn’t seem so bad to me. We know the vax is leaky. How leaky? If the hospital is in an area with 70% of everyone vaccinated, 13% would be good. It it is an area with 45 or 50% vaccination it’s somewhat worse.
Of course, all the f’ing lying about the reality from health professionals really angers me.
Nonapod and TommyJay–
You might be interested in “30 facts you need to know– your COVID crib sheet”–
“Here are key facts and sources about the alleged ‘pandemic,’ that will help you get a grasp on what has happened to the world since January 2020, and help you enlighten any of your friends who might be still trapped in the New Normal fog”
HT to one of Gerard Van der Leun’s readers, who linked to it.
About the site: “OffGuardian was launched in February 2015 and takes its name from the fact its founders had all been censored on and/or banned from the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ sections. Our editors & admins are based in the US, UK & Europe. OffG is dedicated to open discourse and free expression, and will often host articles on both sides of any particular issue. Unless stated otherwise, all opinions reflect the views of the author, not the site or its editors.”
Nonapod:
In addition, I have read a report that a large percentage of those vaccinated people are hospitalized with mild cases of COVID and are hospitalized for some other condition.
TommyJay,
I agree that 13% isn’t horrible, assuming it’s reasonably accurate. But if you read down the article you’ll see that there’s reasons to suspect that the 13% number may be a bit low since they excluded a large subset of people.
Then there’s UK data:
In the UK from February through August 2021, 62% of all Covid-19 Delta variant deaths were among the fully vaccinated.
Now, keep in mind that these deaths likely included a lot of people who already had pretty serious conditions and were vaccinated early because of them. But it’s still a distressingly high percentage.
Now… I’m not an immunoligist, or a virologist, or a medical doctor, or any kind of medical professional. I’m just a guy who regularly reads tons of science articles.
All that said, my sense is that the mRNA vaccines may be a bit too specific in their targetting of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein when compared to the more comprehensive immune response that is conferred by so called “natural” immunity (meaning the immunity you’d get by just contracting and recovering from Covid) or perhaps the immunity from a more traditional vaccine (although in fariness, the J&J vaccine is traditional and so far it doesn’t seem significantly better than the mRNA ones). In particular, this may be true when looking at the Delta variant and perhaps future variants.
And to be clear, I’m absolutely not saying that you shouldn’t bother getting vaccinated if you haven’t already been. I still strongly believe it’s better to be vaccinated than not.
Biden moved the goal post to 98%of the country vaccinated.
I seriously want to know about children, especially girls, getting a mRNA vaccine, year, after year. They say mRNA vaccines have been tested with other disease. Has any of these vaccine test with mRNA tested girls, being repeatedly exposed to mRNA , year after year, and the effect on their “egg” cells?
Maybe I am asking a stupid question, but I want to know.
And what about kids brains?
My first sense is, when you get past any ethical issues with the use of fetal cells, is that older people should get shots. But it gets murky to me, the younger you go.
One thing I’ve noticed. Here in Michigan that among earliest groups that could be vaccinated were healthcare workers, long term care staff, first responders, and school system employees, who are also the groups who seem to be most vocal in opposing mandates.
Speaking of pumpkins, I’m seeing them in grocery stores already. It’s not even October!
JimNorCal–
The annual pumpkinification of supermarket shelves started in my area in August– not just the usual pumpkin cakes, cookies, muffins, and breads, but also pumpkin coffee creamer, egg nog, ice cream, and cake frosting. What really got my attention, though, was pumpkin-flavored tea and coffee, pumpkin pasta sauce (no joke!) and pumpkin-flavored lip balm (the kind people use in cold weather– not lipstick).
PA+Cat, wow.
Thinking about it some more, I guess they need to move JackOLanterns/Ghosts up in the calendar as far as possible so that they can in turn move Turkeys up in the calendar so that Christmas can have more days to make money for retailers.
I really object to the COVID vaccines, especially mRNA, for young children, other than those with pre-existing health concerns. Unlike other diseases, this one doesn’t kill children. And since the mRNA shots don’t seem to prevent infection anyhow, why on earth give kids shots for something from which they’re not at risk? If they get COVID at all, like my eleven-year-old neighbor, they run a fever and feel crummy for a day or two. As I have thought from the beginning of this, we’d have been much better off to protect people like me (age 70s) and let younger, healthy people get the darned thing and get it over with. If we’d done that, we might now be approaching herd immunity.
Kate:
There seems to be a subgroup of children that does run the risk of dying from COVID, but it’s a very tiny group of children who have very severe pre-existing conditions. It’s possible they should be offered the vaccine, if and only if the risks of COVID in that population are worse than the risks of a vaccine in that population.
It seems that COVID vaccine is like regular flu vaccine – it helps but it is not a panacea. Some people get vaccinated but still get the disease. And some people have bad reactions. Which is why people are encouraged but not required to get flu vaccine.
I got vaccinated fairly early. I waited a month or two just to make sure there was nothing really squirrelly about it, then decided it was right for me because of my age and history of no bad reactions to flu shots. So far it seems to have worked. About a month ago I came down with some possible symptoms – sore throat and mild fever – but tested negative. I feel kind of bulletproof now because of the vaccine – maybe. I do not really know if that is the reason.
Medicine is not an exact science. In particular genetics which of course vary from person to person play a huge role.
What if 5+% of the vaxxed die or are debilitated by, say, blood clots within 10 years? Do we have any medical assurance that won’t happen?
As far as I can tell, no, we don’t. It’s just a fingers-crossed trade-off we made, given the crisis and our Zero Covid strategy.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have gone the vaxx route so heavily. But I emphasize the trade-off, because the authorities have largely ignored the trade-offs of the entire Covid effort.
Yes, Neo, I agree that children with serious health conditions should perhaps get appropriate COVID vaccines. They’re talking about half-doses, I think.
What really needs to happen is accelerated work on therapeutics.
jon baker, Kate —
It’s not the mRNA aspect of the vaccine that’s a problem, it’s the spike protein target.
A normal vaccine introduces the target to your system from outside; the mRNA vaccines induce your own cells to produce the target (temporarily, I believe). And then your immune system sees the target and creates antibodies against it. So far that’s not a problem. It’s not “rewriting your DNA”.
The problem is that the target was the spike protein, so now your body is producing huge amounts of it, and — what was entirely unforeseen — apparently the spike protein itself is toxic.
Barring another highly unlikely accident, this would not be the case with other mRNA vaccines for other diseases.
Of course, the other problem is that a singularly-focused vaccine therapy like this creates selective pressure on the virus to alter the spike protein, or in other words to create variants.
In future, I expect that mRNA vaccine designers will write them to target two or three separate proteins to mitigate the adverse selection effect.
In other news, and this is from a week ago but I don’t remember it getting any traction anywhere, apparently “Long Covid” is just like “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” and “Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome”: a psychogenic (and mediagenic) affliction of mostly affluent white middle-age women with no consistent symptoms or etiology and no treatment, but with activist groups determined to make sure they get the infinite attention they think they deserve and guaranteed funding from the government.
As soon as I heard about “long COVID” I thought it sounded like a lot of other mysterious syndromes like chronic fatigue and may or may not be at all related to COVID.
As for the variants, viruses tend to mutate and the new variants are more likely than not to be both more infectious and less likely to cause serious symptoms. COVID appears to be following that pattern, which is well established for other viruses. The idea that vaccines will select for more lethal variants is just a theory, but so far it hasn’t been borne out.
There is no reason whatsoever to imagine that in 10 years some dire fate will await those who have been vaccinated – except, of course, the normal effects of getting older.
As far as blood clots go, they are rare, mostly in people who have had the Johnson and Johnson or AstraZeneca shots – and COVID causes a far greater incidence of blood clots.
neo —
As for the spike protein, see this.
Good to know, thanks.
There’s always the issue with “fact-checkers” really being “orthodoxy-enforcers”, but they do make good arguments. And we certainly know that claims can get amplified and solidified by stages during transmission — on both sides of the pandemic controversy.
Also, I wasn’t trying to argue that the vaccines were causing “more lethal” variants, although I’m certainly aware of that hypothesis. Just that it was likely to select for variants on the spike protein that would reduce the effectiveness of the highly-targeted existing vaccines.
In the UK from February through August 2021, 62% of all Covid-19 Delta variant deaths were among the fully vaccinated. — Nonapod
That certainly sounds much worse. However, just as a guessing hypothetical, what if Delta really is less severe than Alpha and/or the vaccine works less well (poor immune response) for the very aged? Then the only deaths are the very old and very infirm. It bothers me that no one wants to address the Delta severity issue. (I’ve given up looking, so maybe there is more info. now.)
_____
All that said, my sense is that the mRNA vaccines may be a bit too specific in their targeting of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein when compared to the more comprehensive immune response that is conferred by so called “natural” immunity (meaning the immunity you’d get by just contracting and recovering from Covid) or perhaps the immunity from a more traditional vaccine (although in fariness, the J&J vaccine is traditional and so far it doesn’t seem significantly better than the mRNA ones). — Nonapod
I agree that an immune response to just a specific spike protein is less than ideal. The whole SARS-CoV-2 shell would be better, in theory. My inexpert opinion.
About the J&J vaccine: I looked at the standard public info. on the J&J vaccine several months ago, and it was amazingly poor. The the end result of the J&J vax is almost exactly the same as the mRNA vaxes; it causes your muscle cells to manufacture spike proteins. How it does it is different. They put a genetically engineered spike protein DNA inside a human adenovirus shell. That adenovirus shell penetrates your muscle cell wall and the nuclear wall and deposits the DNA inside the cell nucleus. Just like an adenovirus would.
One big difference is that that engineering DNA is a bit easier, but also the DNA molecule is much more stable than mRNA so the whole process including storage is much cheaper. One potential problem with the adenovirus delivery system is that your body can become immune to the adenovirus, rendering the whole shot useless. It’s not clear that booster shots are possible for that reason. (Last two sentences are possibilities only, as far as I know.)
_____
Thirdly, the spike protein in Covid-19 vaccines is genetically modified to enhance the immune response and to stop it binding to cell receptors in the same way the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein would. — Neo’s link
We don’t really know anything for certain, but that statement conflicts greatly with what I’ve read. The vax spike protein is supposed to be exactly the Alpha SARS-CoV-2 spike protein except that the base of the spike is modified. The real spike is attached to a shell whereas the vax one isn’t. Purportedly, the vax spike protein would collapse into a bunch of useless protein goo if it weren’t for the modified base region.
As far as I know, the only thing creating an enhanced immune response is the adjuvant chemical added to all(?) vaccines. The adjuvant is suppose to inflame your system is where some of the vax side effects come from.
Finally, the idea that the spike protein won’t attach to cell receptor sites? I’ve never heard that and highly doubt it.
Thanks, Bryan Lovely, I knew the mRNA shots weren’t changing recipients’ DNA. And thanks to Neo for the article about the spike proteins. I had heard about that but I’m glad to know that’s probably unfounded. We got the shots knowing researchers didn’t have data on long-term effects; we are at higher risk because of our age and decided it was worth the risk. I would still prefer that younger people who are not at high risk (i.e., not obese or having other conditions) not get these shots until more data is available, but political authorities and public hysteria have overruled me there.
There is no reason whatsoever to imagine that in 10 years some dire fate will await those who have been vaccinated – except, of course, the normal effects of getting older.
neo:
And you would know this how?
I didn’t just make up blood clots. Blood clots are already linked to some Covid vaccines:
___________________________________
Some COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to dangerous but incredibly rare blood clots. Now a small study is revealing new details on how those clots form.
Vaccine-induced antibodies attach to a protein involved in blood clotting at a similar spot that the anticoagulant drug heparin does, spurring platelets to form clots, researchers report July 7 in Nature.
Researchers already knew that COVID-19 vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca can sometimes cause the body to make antibodies that attach to a protein called platelet factor 4, or PF4, which then causes platelets to form clots (SN: 4/13/21; SN: 4/7/21; SN: 4/16/21).
Obviously this doesn’t mean that blood clots (or any other negative effect) must become a larger issue over time, but I don’t see how one can discount such possibilities further down the line, until we are further down the line.
Thalidomide was sold for three years to pregnant women before doctors put it together that the drug caused 10,000 birth defects or deaths in the babies, and had the drug withdrawn.
@PA+Cat
“but also pumpkin coffee creamer, egg nog, ice cream, and cake frosting. What really got my attention, though, was pumpkin-flavored tea and coffee, pumpkin pasta sauce (no joke!) and pumpkin-flavored lip balm”
A couple of years ago, a local Kwikee Lube had sign out front apologizing for having run out of pumpkin spice motor oil.
I’m fairly sure they were kidding.
Re: pumpkin pasta sauce… Check the current Cook’s Country. Yummy!
Will wonders never cease: former Democratic WA governors Locke and Gregoire have endorsed a Republican (gasp!) for Seattle city attorney (technically non-partisan but we all know the drill), because the Democrat wants to defund the police entirely and stop prosecuting misdemeanors (plus last year cheering on Twitter when the East Precinct was bombed, etc.).
Maybe the D establishment is learning that “no enemies to the left” is a bad idea.
@ Bryan Lovely
By the way and before I forget for the umpteenth time: belated thanks, repeated, for your own repeatedly linking to the James Lindsay materials.
Others may have covered some of the same ground over the last couple of decades, and not all of them in mere scattershot fashion.
But nothing I have seen to this point approaches the comprehensiveness and encyclopedic approach of Lindsay et al, to analyzing and cataloguing post-modernist and critical race theory authors and doctrines.
Neo would do well to link it somehow as a permanent reference; much in the manner of a blog roll linkage.
Distinct dearth of low-hanging fruit A-10 Warthog Fly-by Bait this morning!
Or am I mellowing into a tepid Pumpkin Spice Latte?
AesopSpouse and I were in Germany in the fall of 2018, and encountered an inexplicable (to us) craze for All Things Pumpkin.
As part of the same trip (business agenda), we ended up back in Wilmington, Delaware, and took time to visit Longwood Gardens, which is not far away in PA.
As I was checking out at the gift shop with a book on pumpkin recipes (among other things, of course), I mentioned some of the delicious pumpkin treats we had eaten in Germany, and that I was surprised to see them as there hadn’t been any such thing commonly available back in the seventies when we were last there during the harvest season.
(Our other trips had been in summer.)
She took credit for the craze herself, explaining that her husband had been posted there (as a diplomat in the late nineties IIRC), and she had planted pumpkin seeds so that her kids wouldn’t miss out on their favorite Halloween traditions. Her neighbors had enjoyed them so much, they had gotten seeds from her every year after that. (One thing we noticed in Europe generally was that gardens were planted on every available patch of fertile soil.)
Now, she might not have been the sole source of the pumpkins in Germany, but it makes a nice story, and what are the odds of us running into her in such a serendipitous manner?
* * *
This particular orange squash is native to Central America and Mexico, and unknown in Europe until after Cristoforo (The-Italian-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named) made his voyages.
Glad to oblige. I’m working my way through his podcast starting at the beginning. I’m on part 3 of 5 maybe of a readthrough of Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” and boy has it been enlightening. Yeesh.
He really seems to be on a mission, and he has the academic chops to analyze the other side on their own terms.
Petition urging Pres. Biden to apologize to Border Patrol agents he defamed:
MSNBC might focus on actual, you know, news. Eventually.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/staff-at-msnbc-are-panicking-over-networks-direction-under-rashida-jones
Staff at MSNBC are panicking over network’s direction under Rashida Jones
“Most alarming to some, Jones appears to be re-examining the mission of MSNBC, signaling she wants to battle CNN on breaking news rather than focus on its “personality-driven, opinion programming with big stars,” a source said.”
As I’ve suspected, a recent CDC study (along with data from the UK) seems to indicate that over the past several months a significant percentage of people (at least 13%) who have been hospitalized over the past few months due to the Delta variant were in fact fully vaccinated.
Contrary to assertions from the Associated Press and Anthony Fauci that fully vaccinated people comprise only 1% of those being hospitalized or killed by C-19, the study found that 13% of patients hospitalized with C-19 had been fully vaccinated.
As a fully vaccinated person, this is a bummer, but not a surprise. I personally know of a few people who were fully vaccinated but still ended up contracting Covid.
Nice Pumpkins you have there. Where are the catapults.
Nonapod,
That 13% number doesn’t seem so bad to me. We know the vax is leaky. How leaky? If the hospital is in an area with 70% of everyone vaccinated, 13% would be good. It it is an area with 45 or 50% vaccination it’s somewhat worse.
Of course, all the f’ing lying about the reality from health professionals really angers me.
Nonapod and TommyJay–
You might be interested in “30 facts you need to know– your COVID crib sheet”–
“Here are key facts and sources about the alleged ‘pandemic,’ that will help you get a grasp on what has happened to the world since January 2020, and help you enlighten any of your friends who might be still trapped in the New Normal fog”
https://off-guardian.org/2021/09/22/30-facts-you-need-to-know-your-covid-cribsheet/
HT to one of Gerard Van der Leun’s readers, who linked to it.
About the site: “OffGuardian was launched in February 2015 and takes its name from the fact its founders had all been censored on and/or banned from the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ sections. Our editors & admins are based in the US, UK & Europe. OffG is dedicated to open discourse and free expression, and will often host articles on both sides of any particular issue. Unless stated otherwise, all opinions reflect the views of the author, not the site or its editors.”
Nonapod:
In addition, I have read a report that a large percentage of those vaccinated people are hospitalized with mild cases of COVID and are hospitalized for some other condition.
TommyJay,
I agree that 13% isn’t horrible, assuming it’s reasonably accurate. But if you read down the article you’ll see that there’s reasons to suspect that the 13% number may be a bit low since they excluded a large subset of people.
Then there’s UK data:
In the UK from February through August 2021, 62% of all Covid-19 Delta variant deaths were among the fully vaccinated.
Now, keep in mind that these deaths likely included a lot of people who already had pretty serious conditions and were vaccinated early because of them. But it’s still a distressingly high percentage.
Now… I’m not an immunoligist, or a virologist, or a medical doctor, or any kind of medical professional. I’m just a guy who regularly reads tons of science articles.
All that said, my sense is that the mRNA vaccines may be a bit too specific in their targetting of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein when compared to the more comprehensive immune response that is conferred by so called “natural” immunity (meaning the immunity you’d get by just contracting and recovering from Covid) or perhaps the immunity from a more traditional vaccine (although in fariness, the J&J vaccine is traditional and so far it doesn’t seem significantly better than the mRNA ones). In particular, this may be true when looking at the Delta variant and perhaps future variants.
And to be clear, I’m absolutely not saying that you shouldn’t bother getting vaccinated if you haven’t already been. I still strongly believe it’s better to be vaccinated than not.
Biden moved the goal post to 98%of the country vaccinated.
I seriously want to know about children, especially girls, getting a mRNA vaccine, year, after year. They say mRNA vaccines have been tested with other disease. Has any of these vaccine test with mRNA tested girls, being repeatedly exposed to mRNA , year after year, and the effect on their “egg” cells?
Maybe I am asking a stupid question, but I want to know.
And what about kids brains?
My first sense is, when you get past any ethical issues with the use of fetal cells, is that older people should get shots. But it gets murky to me, the younger you go.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/09/27/joe-biden-we-need-up-to-98-vaccination-rate-before-we-go-back-to-normal/
One thing I’ve noticed. Here in Michigan that among earliest groups that could be vaccinated were healthcare workers, long term care staff, first responders, and school system employees, who are also the groups who seem to be most vocal in opposing mandates.
Speaking of pumpkins, I’m seeing them in grocery stores already. It’s not even October!
JimNorCal–
The annual pumpkinification of supermarket shelves started in my area in August– not just the usual pumpkin cakes, cookies, muffins, and breads, but also pumpkin coffee creamer, egg nog, ice cream, and cake frosting. What really got my attention, though, was pumpkin-flavored tea and coffee, pumpkin pasta sauce (no joke!) and pumpkin-flavored lip balm (the kind people use in cold weather– not lipstick).
PA+Cat, wow.
Thinking about it some more, I guess they need to move JackOLanterns/Ghosts up in the calendar as far as possible so that they can in turn move Turkeys up in the calendar so that Christmas can have more days to make money for retailers.
I really object to the COVID vaccines, especially mRNA, for young children, other than those with pre-existing health concerns. Unlike other diseases, this one doesn’t kill children. And since the mRNA shots don’t seem to prevent infection anyhow, why on earth give kids shots for something from which they’re not at risk? If they get COVID at all, like my eleven-year-old neighbor, they run a fever and feel crummy for a day or two. As I have thought from the beginning of this, we’d have been much better off to protect people like me (age 70s) and let younger, healthy people get the darned thing and get it over with. If we’d done that, we might now be approaching herd immunity.
Kate:
There seems to be a subgroup of children that does run the risk of dying from COVID, but it’s a very tiny group of children who have very severe pre-existing conditions. It’s possible they should be offered the vaccine, if and only if the risks of COVID in that population are worse than the risks of a vaccine in that population.
It seems that COVID vaccine is like regular flu vaccine – it helps but it is not a panacea. Some people get vaccinated but still get the disease. And some people have bad reactions. Which is why people are encouraged but not required to get flu vaccine.
I got vaccinated fairly early. I waited a month or two just to make sure there was nothing really squirrelly about it, then decided it was right for me because of my age and history of no bad reactions to flu shots. So far it seems to have worked. About a month ago I came down with some possible symptoms – sore throat and mild fever – but tested negative. I feel kind of bulletproof now because of the vaccine – maybe. I do not really know if that is the reason.
Medicine is not an exact science. In particular genetics which of course vary from person to person play a huge role.
What if 5+% of the vaxxed die or are debilitated by, say, blood clots within 10 years? Do we have any medical assurance that won’t happen?
As far as I can tell, no, we don’t. It’s just a fingers-crossed trade-off we made, given the crisis and our Zero Covid strategy.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have gone the vaxx route so heavily. But I emphasize the trade-off, because the authorities have largely ignored the trade-offs of the entire Covid effort.
Yes, Neo, I agree that children with serious health conditions should perhaps get appropriate COVID vaccines. They’re talking about half-doses, I think.
What really needs to happen is accelerated work on therapeutics.
jon baker, Kate —
It’s not the mRNA aspect of the vaccine that’s a problem, it’s the spike protein target.
A normal vaccine introduces the target to your system from outside; the mRNA vaccines induce your own cells to produce the target (temporarily, I believe). And then your immune system sees the target and creates antibodies against it. So far that’s not a problem. It’s not “rewriting your DNA”.
The problem is that the target was the spike protein, so now your body is producing huge amounts of it, and — what was entirely unforeseen — apparently the spike protein itself is toxic.
Barring another highly unlikely accident, this would not be the case with other mRNA vaccines for other diseases.
Of course, the other problem is that a singularly-focused vaccine therapy like this creates selective pressure on the virus to alter the spike protein, or in other words to create variants.
In future, I expect that mRNA vaccine designers will write them to target two or three separate proteins to mitigate the adverse selection effect.
In other news, and this is from a week ago but I don’t remember it getting any traction anywhere, apparently “Long Covid” is just like “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” and “Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome”: a psychogenic (and mediagenic) affliction of mostly affluent white middle-age women with no consistent symptoms or etiology and no treatment, but with activist groups determined to make sure they get the infinite attention they think they deserve and guaranteed funding from the government.
https://spectator.org/long-covid-myth/
Bryan Lovely:
As soon as I heard about “long COVID” I thought it sounded like a lot of other mysterious syndromes like chronic fatigue and may or may not be at all related to COVID.
As for the variants, viruses tend to mutate and the new variants are more likely than not to be both more infectious and less likely to cause serious symptoms. COVID appears to be following that pattern, which is well established for other viruses. The idea that vaccines will select for more lethal variants is just a theory, but so far it hasn’t been borne out.
As for the spike protein, see this.
huxley:
There is no reason whatsoever to imagine that in 10 years some dire fate will await those who have been vaccinated – except, of course, the normal effects of getting older.
As far as blood clots go, they are rare, mostly in people who have had the Johnson and Johnson or AstraZeneca shots – and COVID causes a far greater incidence of blood clots.
neo —
As for the spike protein, see this.
Good to know, thanks.
There’s always the issue with “fact-checkers” really being “orthodoxy-enforcers”, but they do make good arguments. And we certainly know that claims can get amplified and solidified by stages during transmission — on both sides of the pandemic controversy.
Also, I wasn’t trying to argue that the vaccines were causing “more lethal” variants, although I’m certainly aware of that hypothesis. Just that it was likely to select for variants on the spike protein that would reduce the effectiveness of the highly-targeted existing vaccines.
In the UK from February through August 2021, 62% of all Covid-19 Delta variant deaths were among the fully vaccinated. — Nonapod
That certainly sounds much worse. However, just as a guessing hypothetical, what if Delta really is less severe than Alpha and/or the vaccine works less well (poor immune response) for the very aged? Then the only deaths are the very old and very infirm. It bothers me that no one wants to address the Delta severity issue. (I’ve given up looking, so maybe there is more info. now.)
_____
All that said, my sense is that the mRNA vaccines may be a bit too specific in their targeting of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein when compared to the more comprehensive immune response that is conferred by so called “natural” immunity (meaning the immunity you’d get by just contracting and recovering from Covid) or perhaps the immunity from a more traditional vaccine (although in fariness, the J&J vaccine is traditional and so far it doesn’t seem significantly better than the mRNA ones). — Nonapod
I agree that an immune response to just a specific spike protein is less than ideal. The whole SARS-CoV-2 shell would be better, in theory. My inexpert opinion.
About the J&J vaccine: I looked at the standard public info. on the J&J vaccine several months ago, and it was amazingly poor. The the end result of the J&J vax is almost exactly the same as the mRNA vaxes; it causes your muscle cells to manufacture spike proteins. How it does it is different. They put a genetically engineered spike protein DNA inside a human adenovirus shell. That adenovirus shell penetrates your muscle cell wall and the nuclear wall and deposits the DNA inside the cell nucleus. Just like an adenovirus would.
One big difference is that that engineering DNA is a bit easier, but also the DNA molecule is much more stable than mRNA so the whole process including storage is much cheaper. One potential problem with the adenovirus delivery system is that your body can become immune to the adenovirus, rendering the whole shot useless. It’s not clear that booster shots are possible for that reason. (Last two sentences are possibilities only, as far as I know.)
_____
Thirdly, the spike protein in Covid-19 vaccines is genetically modified to enhance the immune response and to stop it binding to cell receptors in the same way the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein would. — Neo’s link
We don’t really know anything for certain, but that statement conflicts greatly with what I’ve read. The vax spike protein is supposed to be exactly the Alpha SARS-CoV-2 spike protein except that the base of the spike is modified. The real spike is attached to a shell whereas the vax one isn’t. Purportedly, the vax spike protein would collapse into a bunch of useless protein goo if it weren’t for the modified base region.
As far as I know, the only thing creating an enhanced immune response is the adjuvant chemical added to all(?) vaccines. The adjuvant is suppose to inflame your system is where some of the vax side effects come from.
Finally, the idea that the spike protein won’t attach to cell receptor sites? I’ve never heard that and highly doubt it.
Thanks, Bryan Lovely, I knew the mRNA shots weren’t changing recipients’ DNA. And thanks to Neo for the article about the spike proteins. I had heard about that but I’m glad to know that’s probably unfounded. We got the shots knowing researchers didn’t have data on long-term effects; we are at higher risk because of our age and decided it was worth the risk. I would still prefer that younger people who are not at high risk (i.e., not obese or having other conditions) not get these shots until more data is available, but political authorities and public hysteria have overruled me there.
There is no reason whatsoever to imagine that in 10 years some dire fate will await those who have been vaccinated – except, of course, the normal effects of getting older.
neo:
And you would know this how?
I didn’t just make up blood clots. Blood clots are already linked to some Covid vaccines:
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Some COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to dangerous but incredibly rare blood clots. Now a small study is revealing new details on how those clots form.
Vaccine-induced antibodies attach to a protein involved in blood clotting at a similar spot that the anticoagulant drug heparin does, spurring platelets to form clots, researchers report July 7 in Nature.
Researchers already knew that COVID-19 vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca can sometimes cause the body to make antibodies that attach to a protein called platelet factor 4, or PF4, which then causes platelets to form clots (SN: 4/13/21; SN: 4/7/21; SN: 4/16/21).
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-vaccine-antibodies-cause-blood-clots-side-effect
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Obviously this doesn’t mean that blood clots (or any other negative effect) must become a larger issue over time, but I don’t see how one can discount such possibilities further down the line, until we are further down the line.
Thalidomide was sold for three years to pregnant women before doctors put it together that the drug caused 10,000 birth defects or deaths in the babies, and had the drug withdrawn.
@PA+Cat
“but also pumpkin coffee creamer, egg nog, ice cream, and cake frosting. What really got my attention, though, was pumpkin-flavored tea and coffee, pumpkin pasta sauce (no joke!) and pumpkin-flavored lip balm”
A couple of years ago, a local Kwikee Lube had sign out front apologizing for having run out of pumpkin spice motor oil.
I’m fairly sure they were kidding.
Re: pumpkin pasta sauce… Check the current Cook’s Country. Yummy!
Will wonders never cease: former Democratic WA governors Locke and Gregoire have endorsed a Republican (gasp!) for Seattle city attorney (technically non-partisan but we all know the drill), because the Democrat wants to defund the police entirely and stop prosecuting misdemeanors (plus last year cheering on Twitter when the East Precinct was bombed, etc.).
Maybe the D establishment is learning that “no enemies to the left” is a bad idea.
@ Bryan Lovely
By the way and before I forget for the umpteenth time: belated thanks, repeated, for your own repeatedly linking to the James Lindsay materials.
Others may have covered some of the same ground over the last couple of decades, and not all of them in mere scattershot fashion.
But nothing I have seen to this point approaches the comprehensiveness and encyclopedic approach of Lindsay et al, to analyzing and cataloguing post-modernist and critical race theory authors and doctrines.
Neo would do well to link it somehow as a permanent reference; much in the manner of a blog roll linkage.
Distinct dearth of low-hanging fruit A-10 Warthog Fly-by Bait this morning!
Or am I mellowing into a tepid Pumpkin Spice Latte?
AesopSpouse and I were in Germany in the fall of 2018, and encountered an inexplicable (to us) craze for All Things Pumpkin.
As part of the same trip (business agenda), we ended up back in Wilmington, Delaware, and took time to visit Longwood Gardens, which is not far away in PA.
As I was checking out at the gift shop with a book on pumpkin recipes (among other things, of course), I mentioned some of the delicious pumpkin treats we had eaten in Germany, and that I was surprised to see them as there hadn’t been any such thing commonly available back in the seventies when we were last there during the harvest season.
(Our other trips had been in summer.)
She took credit for the craze herself, explaining that her husband had been posted there (as a diplomat in the late nineties IIRC), and she had planted pumpkin seeds so that her kids wouldn’t miss out on their favorite Halloween traditions. Her neighbors had enjoyed them so much, they had gotten seeds from her every year after that. (One thing we noticed in Europe generally was that gardens were planted on every available patch of fertile soil.)
Now, she might not have been the sole source of the pumpkins in Germany, but it makes a nice story, and what are the odds of us running into her in such a serendipitous manner?
* * *
This particular orange squash is native to Central America and Mexico, and unknown in Europe until after Cristoforo (The-Italian-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named) made his voyages.
https://www.thelocal.de/20161012/germanys-love-affair-with-the-pumpkin/
Recent history of production, and popular festivals — no one does festivals like the Germans!
I’ll tell that story some other time.
https://longwoodgardens.org/visit
Amazing tour of the former Pierre S. du Pont estate, and well worth the visit.
DNW —
Glad to oblige. I’m working my way through his podcast starting at the beginning. I’m on part 3 of 5 maybe of a readthrough of Marcuse’s “Repressive Tolerance” and boy has it been enlightening. Yeesh.
He really seems to be on a mission, and he has the academic chops to analyze the other side on their own terms.
Petition urging Pres. Biden to apologize to Border Patrol agents he defamed:
https://www.afa.net/activism/contact-officials/?vvsrc=%2fcampaigns%2f88610%2frespond
Admits he’s a troll. Could be the first honest thing he’s said in his life.