You can look at just about any Western country right now with high vaccination rates and you will find record numbers of infections. Israel had the highest rate of infections per capita in the whole world. You can’t explain this through increased testing. During the peak in January 2021 they had about 110,000 tests performed, with around 8,000 positive on a given day and around 7.5% of people would test positive. Right now they’re performing 400,000 tests every day, 60,000 people test positive, which is a 15% positivity rate.
It’s the same in the Netherlands, we’re seeing 47% of people test positive out of 135,000 tests, with a 7 day average of 64,000 people testing positive daily. In January last year, when the vaccine program started, we had around 5000 people testing positive, with a positivity rate of around 11%. More people are getting this virus right now, it’s not just a matter of more testing. Sewage RNA in the Netherlands shows this simple fact too:
What happened is that everyone had a highly similar immune response after receiving these vaccines. New variants then emerged that make effective use of that similar immune response. Delta made an attempt at this through AY.4.2, but then along came Omicron, which was a much better candidate with a massive head start.
This is how we ended up with BA.1 and BA.2. These viruses won’t send you to the ICU anymore, because everyone in the Western world has had some exposure to SARS-COV-2 by now, so the traditional immune overreaction no longer happens.
Rather, what you get now is that this is turning into a chronic virus, something more akin to herpes or hepatitis C. It mutated to allow it to suppress Interferon, meaning it continues to hide in your cells without alerting the innate immune system. this is probably part of the reason it has now largely shifted to small children, as children’s much stronger innate immune system is what has so far kept them safe. It can still kill people, but it now just takes much longer to kill people. Look up the death toll in South Africa, to see what I mean. Deaths from infections are delayed by a month compared to Delta, Omicron first needs time to exhaust your immune system.
With the vaccines, you’re left with an immune response that doesn’t work properly. It targets an old version of the virus and the virus evolved to use the immune response to its advantage. That’s why you’re seeing the record infections everywhere and that’s why you’re hearing all these reports of rapid reinfections.
This slowly kills people by exhausting the immune system. B cells keep churning out non-neutralizing antibodies that can’t stop the virus, T cells become exhausted and the body becomes vulnerable to secondary infections. Unlike previous variants it doesn’t behave like a regular respiratory infection, it’s not like a severe case of the flu.
It’s not normal to have 45% of the tested population test positive for this virus. Influenza doesn’t infect that large of a section of the population in a given season. The vaccines turned people into sitting ducks for this virus, the statistics are being manipulated to obscure this. Infections in the first 14 days after the first injection are counted as happening in “unvaccinated” people.
You can compare South Africa to Denmark or Israel, to see what’s going on. Highly vaccinated populations lead to a situation where growing numbers of people are chronically infected with Omicron. These chronically infected people keep constantly exposing other people too. Through antibody dependent enhancement the virus can infect your macrophages and start replicating inside of them, contributing to the exhaustion of the immune system.
You may have heard that Omicron is milder than Delta. It’s mostly slower than Delta. Here’s the death toll reported in South Africa:
And here are the cases:
For Delta, cases and deaths go up together. For Omicron, there’s a strange big delay of about a month. This is because Omicron behaves differently.
I can’t emphasize this part enough: What matters when you’re dealing with a rapidly mutating coronavirus that can repeatedly infect people is the quality of the immune response. The quality of the immune response induced by the vaccines is low, but the quantity is high. We already knew this in may, when a study announced:
In this study we profiled vaccine-induced polyclonal antibodies as well as plasmablast derived mAbs from individuals who received SARS-CoV-2 spike mRNA vaccine. Polyclonal antibody responses in vaccinees were robust and comparable to or exceeded those seen after natural infection. However, the ratio of binding to neutralizing antibodies after vaccination was greater than that after natural infection and, at the monoclonal level, we found that the majority of vaccine-induced antibodies did not have neutralizing activity.
And if you think these vaccines worked poorly against Delta, wait until you see how they’re going to perform against Omicron BA.2. You can forget about deaths and hospitalizations for a moment. Rather I want to ask you: What do you think is going to happen when you’re chronically infected with a corona virus? Here you can see the case rate by vaccination status in the UK:
These numbers are distorted, but now I’m going to show you numbers that should terrify you, if you understand what you’re looking at.
Here you can see positive tests in the Netherlands from the GGD, our health agency that arranges the COVID tests:
For people looking to confirm their own positive at home test, you’re looking at 91% testing positive. For people whose test is not to confirm a positive at home test, 23.9% are testing positive. The 39.7% refers to the positive rate in those people where it’s not clear whether they’re looking to confirm a test they did themselves at home. Put all these numbers together and you arrive at the ~45% testing positive that I mentioned earlier.
Because “anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists” like me are not allowed to go to the gym or the restaurant without having a swab stuck up our nose, the Netherlands also has access to statistics for people who are unvaccinated and looking to receive a temporary QR code to be given entrance to an event. And here you can see the positivity rate, for the “anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists”:
Here you can see that just 3.7% are testing positive! But if you had any doubt left, this should be the final nail in the coffin:
How do you wish to explain South Africa? Are they missing 99% of their cases, due to inadequate testing? When you vaccinate people, you make them more susceptible to infection with the Omicron variant. In highly vaccinated populations like Israel and Denmark, you start to see positive feedback loop effects, as all the vaccinated people who get infected also have the ability to spread the virus.
Is it seasonal?
We can lay that idea to rest too.
But it can’t be that bad right? The Dutch numbers I showed you here suggest 12 times as many cases per capita in the vaccinated population. That would be major news if it were really this bad, don’t you think?
Well let’s see what has happened so far. In Germany, they initially reported that just 4.42% of Omicron cases were in the unvaccinated. Then a few days later they backpedaled, said the original number was an error and suddenly announced a much higher number for unvaccinated Omicron cases. In Australia, we’re seeing similar rates, with the vaccinated catching Omicron at tenfold higher rates.
In highly vaccinated nations, the virus doesn’t have to pass through unvaccinated hosts, to get from one vaccinated person to the next. Unvaccinated people will exert different immune pressure than vaccinated people, so with unvaccinated people out of the equation, the virus can evolve to optimize infection of vaccinated people, developing traits that would put it at a disadvantage in the bodies of unvaccinated people.
We’re now reaching the point where infection with SARS-COV-2 is chronic. We’re now getting reports of people who get infected with BA.1, recover and subsequently get infected with BA.2, just a month later. If you’re continually having to fight off this virus, it will exhaust your immune system. And with everyone around you now vaccinated too and thus constantly shedding the virus, the vaccination campaign hasn’t just rendered your own body more susceptible to infection, it has increased your own exposure to virus particles from the environment.
Look at everything that has happened and tell me: What other explanation could there be for what’s going on now, other than the Omicron strain using your vaccine induced immune response to its own advantage?
-How else are you going to explain its sudden rise around Europe, completely replacing Delta at an unprecedented speed?
-How else are you going to explain the massive increase in virus in sewage and the massive increase in overall cases?
-How else do you explain the higher case rates in the UK for the vaccinated?
-How else do you explain the highest case rate in the whole world in triple vaccinated Israel, where ICU’s are now rapidly filling up again?
-How else do you explain this variant being more infectious than anything seen so far?
-How could it have such a big advantage over Delta that it rapidly drives Delta into extinction, if not through evasion of adaptive immunity?
-How else do you explain this variant being in retreat again in South Africa, but continuing to cause record infections in highly vaccinated populations?
-How else do you explain the rapid acquisition of new mutations, that eliminate the last antibodies from vaccinated serum that still worked?
-How else do you explain the higher percentage of positive tests than we’ve ever seen so far?
-How else do you explain the overwhelming clustering of mutations in the receptor binding domain of the Spike protein?
This is exactly what it looks like: A virus that has now evolved to use your immune response to its own advantage. It generally won’t directly kill you. Rather, every time it infects you it ages and exhausts your immune system. You witness a depletion in naive T cells. Every time it infects you, your body responds with a derivative of the inadequate immune response it learned from being overwhelmed with the Wuhan version of the Spike protein.
Israel is now expanding their fourth shot to everyone above 18. The fourth shot however is going to do exactly what the third shot did. The breadth of the immune response declines further, as the immune system once again learns to zoom in on the Wuhan spike protein. This means that it protects people for a few weeks, but then once the honeymoon period is over, they’re rendered even more vulnerable to this virus.
The evidence is out there for all to see. There is no way to cover this up anymore.
Wow. Truly terrifying to consider. Does the idea of immune exhaustion and permanent chronic illness apply to the unvaccinated as well due to the evolutionary pressure that the vaccinated have put on the virus’s traits? Or is it simply the virus adapting to crap immune responses that fail to dislodge it effectively, thus letting it stick around for god knows how long in the vaccinated?
Thanks for your work, I really enjoy your non-covid posts about the philosophical state of society and the world as well. Very frank and refreshing compared to the everyday pablum of my peers.
>Does the idea of immune exhaustion and permanent chronic illness apply to the unvaccinated as well due to the evolutionary pressure that the vaccinated have put on the virus’s traits? Or is it simply the virus adapting to crap immune responses that fail to dislodge it effectively, thus letting it stick around for god knows how long in the vaccinated?
Probably not for most of them, unless they have relevant pre-existing conditions of course. With repetitive exposures to different variants, the unvaccinated will develop an immune response that preferentially targets structural proteins exhibiting little change (ie mainly membrane and nucleocapsid). This should allow for the development of proper sterilizing immunity.
With Delta we saw a Marek’s disease type effect. Breakthrough infections were encouraged by viral replication at a pace that overwhelms the adaptive immune response. The side effect this had was more severe infections in the unvaccinated.
Omicron’s advantage on the other hand, is almost entirely down to immune evasion. Almost all mutations cluster on the receptor binding domain. Those mutations only have an advantage in the context of an antibody response focused on the old Wuhan version of the spike protein.
The reason all these immune evading mutations only seen together in Omicron become dominant now, is because they normally put the virus at a disadvantage for one reason or another. They only have a fitness advantage in a context of high Wuhan spike directed immunity. If they didn’t generally reduce fitness, we would have expected to see them show up before, but most that we’ve seen before never grew dominant and some have never been seen before at all.
We’ve reached the point now where mutations that decrease fitness in the unvaccinated can become dominant, provided they have some fitness advantage in the spike vaccinated population. The two demographics exert very different immune pressures and so adapting to the larger cohort will come at the cost of reduced adaption to the smaller cohort.
The Omicron spike actually has reduced ACE2 binding strength compared to previous variants. The benefit incurred from immune evasion is so large that it justifies whatever negative side-effects these mutations have. In other words, as it adapts to the vaccinated population, it begins to incur changes that make it more difficult for it to overwhelm the immune response in naturally immune people.
So as time passes, the few unvaccinated people left in highly vaccinated places will find themselves constantly exposed to a variant that has evolved to fit into a different niche. Because immunity in the unvaccinated is very broad and diverse, it’s much harder for a variant to emerge that adapts to the immune pressure they exert.
A bit of additional data that has now come into play. BA.1.1 is becoming more prevalent in the US, while BA.2 is hitting the high vex and high mRNA populations harder (Denmark, Israel etc). BA.1.1 is actually a subvariant of BA.1, quite likely from natural mutation.
But from enough cogent discussion elsewhere, I think there’s a very strong argument that both BA.1 and BA.2 were both lab-releases, as there were traces of both even back in late Nov. Yes, someone is truly dicking around with us right now. That adds another level of complexity to the analysis.
As of now, based on eyeballing data trends.. the highly vexed via mRNA countries will be hit hard by BA.2. Israel’s quickly rising hospitalization and deaths provides the template.. Denmark, Norway, Singapore (where I am) should follow that template. UK initially jabbed with significant % of AZ, before boosting with Pfizer, so it’s outcome will be more of a mixed bag, worth watching closely.
US actually is only about 60+% vex with low booster rate… yet daily deaths are now approaching 3000, similar to a year ago levels. That could signify BA.1.1 are more lethal than BA.2, or just that the medical folks are exhausted and short-staffed after 4 or 5 waves, and just can’t deliver decent care anymore, and not forgetting the 42% obesity rate for Americans. So a lot more confounding factors there. Again, bears watching closely.
>But from enough cogent discussion elsewhere, I think there’s a very strong argument that both BA.1 and BA.2 were both lab-releases, as there were traces of both even back in late Nov. Yes, someone is truly dicking around with us right now. That adds another level of complexity to the analysis.
I’m pretty convinced the original virus came from a lab.
In regards to Omicron, I don’t know, there’s far less concrete evidence to draw conclusions on.
I think there’s an argument to be made that a variant jumped into rodents, evolved into what we now knows as Omicron and then began jumping back into humans. We know deer are constantly getting infected. I don’t think a lot of people are studying what’s happening in rodents, but we know that some variants had increased their ability to jump into rodents as an incidental by-product of their need to evade the Spike antibodies.
If it came into existence in rodents then that means we’re probably just looking at the start of what Omicron is going to do to humans. We would expect it to begin to drop mutations that enhanced its fitness in rodents but have no benefit in humans (ie reverting back to the Wuhan spike), while acquiring some new ones. The much more optimistic scenario would be if Omicron evolved in immunodeficient people for an extended period of time, but that looks unlikely for multiple reasons, including the fact that a lot of these mutations only seem to have a fitness advantage when they occur together.
Omicron itself will also probably be jumping back from humans into wildlife populations. With its new RBD it will be able to find a different range of susceptible animal hosts than previous variants did and then those animal hosts will be able to churn out new variants that couldn’t evolve on their own in humans. With record numbers of infections and with no effective sterilizing vaccines, the authorities stand no chance of preventing jumps into new animal reservoirs.
I thought I would post the following link on omicron origin for your review. Best!
https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/omicron-is-not-normal
Great points, thanks. I’m the only one in my family who’s even questioned these vaccines. It’s been a sobering experience. How do you get through to someone who continues to “believe” despite evidence to the contrary?
My brother had Covid about a year ago, got vaxxed afterward, and now has it again. WTF.
>My brother had Covid about a year ago, got vaxxed afterward, and now has it again. WTF.
Yeah that’s what happens when you get vaccinated after an infection. You lose your natural immunity, which is long-lasting, and you replace it with vaccine induced immunity, which lasts for about six months (if you’re lucky, with Omicron it’s probably even less).
All these vaccine induced reinfections that people suffer damage their immune system, thereby enabling further reinfections. Herd immunity is now out of the question.
Can you explain how Omicron, with reduced fitness, became so prevalent in record time in mostly unvaccinated population in South Africa? Thanks!
Good. After the tyrannical hysteria of society’s various rulers and the sheeplike idiocy of most of their followers, whatever comes is sorely deserved. At their own hand, no less!
Hi,
Love your work. Most people’s personal blogs are pretty small-scale, but yours really covers a lot of ground.
Just some anecdata from the (tiny) control group in (they say) 98.5% vaccinated Canberra, Australia. One-third of one percent of the local population apparently tested positive to omicron on one day recently, even though it’s impossible to get tested. My double-vaxxed and probably boosted sister is very ill. (I certainly didn’t want that.) But I’m starting to suspect I could marinate in a sauna of omicron and not get more than a bit of a headache.
I really don’t understand why all these vaccinated people aren’t jumping up and down and complaining that they were meant to be “protected”. I would certainly complain. Maybe they’re too sick. Too confused.
However I just have to keep my un-vaxxed head down, and not draw attention to my perfect health.
Everyone is testing positive as they changed the PCR criteria
https://www.who.int/news/item/26-11-2021-classification-of-omicron-(b.1.1.529)-sars-cov-2-variant-of-concern
What a mess. It’s a good thing though, that the Omicron appears to be the antithesis of the dreaded antibody dependent enhancement (ADE). Did humanity dodge that bullet?
Probably not. People seem to think that antibody dependent enhancement means you’re faced with some sort of sudden severe disease. Antibody dependent enhancement is different in almost every virus where we encounter the phenomenon. In the case of SARS-COV-2, antibody dependent enhancement enables the virus to replicate itself inside your macrophages, leading to a reduction in your immune competence. This expresses itself in the form of lymphopenia after infection with SARS-COV-2. It can lead to reactivation of Epstein Barr virus and other nastiness.
-How else are you going to explain its sudden rise around Europe, completely replacing Delta at an unprecedented speed?
Through the natural evolutionary process of a virus to become more transmissible but less dangerous.
-How else are you going to explain the massive increase in virus in sewage and the massive increase in overall cases?
See above.
-How else do you explain the higher case rates in the UK for the vaccinated?
a) more people are vaccinated than not, b) restrictions for the unvaxxed clearly do prevent infections overall
-How else do you explain the highest case rate in the whole world in triple vaccinated Israel, where ICU’s are now rapidly filling up again?
This comparison is not valid as it depends on so many factors. How much testing is going on, how healthy are the people in general, what are the treatment options, hospital policies like what’s the definition of an ICU, who gets there etc. etc.
-How else do you explain this variant being more infectious than anything seen so far?
See above. Again, not a valid comparison as we never have successfully monitored the infectiousness of *anything* throughout the whole population, including healthy people.
-How could it have such a big advantage over Delta that it rapidly drives Delta into extinction, if not through evasion of adaptive immunity?
a) by being more infectious (see above), b) by being less threatening and thus evading detection by the immune system for longer, which is likely also why it’s more infectious (less dangerous = fewer or later sympoms = more time to spread = greater viral load). And by the way: Delta outcompeted all other variants, even though it originated BEFORE any vaccination campaign. It’s a natural process.
-How else do you explain this variant being in retreat again in South Africa, but continuing to cause record infections in highly vaccinated populations?
Again no comparison, different age categories, testing scheme, social situation, previous immunity, weather etc.
-How else do you explain the rapid acquisition of new mutations, that eliminate the last antibodies from vaccinated serum that still worked?
Natural selection + time
-How else do you explain the higher percentage of positive tests than we’ve ever seen so far?
Because it’s more infectious (see above).
-How else do you explain the overwhelming clustering of mutations in the receptor binding domain of the Spike protein?
That’s clearly vaccine-driven selection, no two ways about it. Doesn’t automatically mean that the vaccine somehow makes things worse, though (besides it’s obvious temporary detrimental effect to the immune system).
~~~~
Your logic is flawed at it’s very basis, by the way. Either it evades antibodies or not. So either it uses antibodies to get into cells – which however means they recognize the virus, and we would see worse outcomes, because the immune system can’t do it’s normal job and COVID would just outright kill you. Or it just evades the antibodies and doesn’t care about them, and is more infectious in general.
The body will only reproduce antibodies if the virus interacts with them. If the virus reacts with vaccine antibodies, those will be produced INITIALLY. If the infection stretches on, ultimately new antibodies will emerge against other domains of the virus. If they bind more strongly, they will get preferred status. This is how antibodies are adjusted to new virus mutations during the natural infection process over multiple years or decades. Virus mutations are perfectly normal. Many people catch colds twice a year or even more frequently. It has nothing to do with chronic immune fatigue or anything like that (but the people probably aren’t in ideal health either).
Could the vaccine give the disease a headstart because the body produces shitty antibodies? Yes.
Could the vaccine help the virus spread with mad speed? Technically, yes. But like mentioned above, if that were the case we would likely see a lot more hospitalizations, because logically if antibodies help a virus into cells more quickly it can also infect your whole body more quickly. And CoV-2 isn’t just some sneezy cold – other than the casual respiratory viruses it can eff up your lungs quite bad on it’s own and infect you in places you didn’t even know you have.
> more people are vaccinated than not
rates =/= numbers
>a) by being more infectious (see above),
Yeah but this is where you beg the question: What is it exactly, that makes it more infectious?
Unless it has a significant degree of immune escape it would need to have a very massive increase in innate infectiousness. And if that happens to be the case, it raises the question: Why aren’t we noticing this in countries with lower vaccination rates?
And perhaps most importantly: If there were tricks left that other variants could have used to increase infectiousness, why do we only see them all of a sudden with Omicron?
The advantage that it has seems pretty straightforward: Immune escape.
>Through the natural evolutionary process of a virus to become more transmissible but less dangerous.
We’ve so far noticed the opposite with COVID. Alpha was worse than Wuhan, Delta was worse than Alpha. There’s no directly obvious factor that necessitates a steady reduction in virulence.
>This comparison is not valid as it depends on so many factors. How much testing is going on, how healthy are the people in general, what are the treatment options, hospital policies like what’s the definition of an ICU, who gets there etc. etc.
Yeah that’s fair if you’re comparing countries with similar rates. But South Africa is seeing 2% of the case rate that Australia is seeing. If the difference is that massive, “how healthy are the people” and “what’s the definition of an ICU” are the sort of answers that become unsatisfactory. If becomes a very awkward mental exercise to come up with a scenario that can explain this type of discrepancy, especially when we consider that weather doesn’t cut it (see: Australia) and South Africa is not the epitome of health either (see: HIV).
You could of course throw all the potential explanations at it to see what sticks, to avoid the elephant in the room, but that’s not critical thinking, that’s wishful thinking.
It can’t all be down to different testing regimes either, because you would expect very high positive rates in South Africa compared to the countries with higher case rates. However, that’s not what we’re seeing. The countries like Denmark, Israel and the Netherlands that see extremely high case rates, are also seeing extremely high rates of people testing positive, much higher than South Africa is seeing.
The correlation between vaccination rates and Omicron case rates around the world is very strong and importantly, we didn’t really see that correlation before Omicron.
>Your logic is flawed at it’s very basis, by the way. Either it evades antibodies or not. So either it uses antibodies to get into cells – which however means they recognize the virus, and we would see worse outcomes, because the immune system can’t do it’s normal job and COVID would just outright kill you. Or it just evades the antibodies and doesn’t care about them, and is more infectious in general.
No, it’s not some sort of binary. Mutations can reduce affinity of antibodies. This leaves you with antibodies that are unable to neutralize the virus but nonetheless bind to it. See:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2021.698365/full
It’s also incorrect to assume that antibody dependent enhancement per definition means the virus just outright kills you. There was already ADE going on with Delta. Antibodies bind to the NTD region, thereby increasing affinity for the ACE2 receptor and enhancing infection of cells. This doesn’t mean the virus somehow ends up with a 100% mortality rate.
>But like mentioned above, if that were the case we would likely see a lot more hospitalizations, because logically if antibodies help a virus into cells more quickly it can also infect your whole body more quickly.
Not necessarily, because as I’ve mentioned before, many antibody evading mutations carry fitness disadvantages, like reduced ACE2 receptor affinity. Such mutations only manage to become dominant when prevalence of the affected antibody in question is high in the population. Omicron’s relative “mildness” may be part of the price it pays for evading most antibodies in the RBD.
In addition tissue tropism has changed with Omicron. As it now replicates slower in lung tissue but faster in bronchial tubes, it generally won’t directly hit you the way Delta does.
Put simply, as the virus has to change drastically to evade the vaccine induced immune response, we can expect those required changes to also drastically affect the manner in which it behaves in our bodies.
Finally, I would like to point out that we are in fact seeing record breaking hospitalization numbers, in Canada, Denmark, Israel and the United States.
I am generally with you. Where I have my problems is with the rate of hospitalisations. Here in Germany the panic promoters count everybody in Hospital who is infected as being in hospital because of the infection. Same in many other countries. What is interesting is that in New York they have suddenly begun to downplay the number of hospitalisations. Now only the ones are counted that are in Hospitals because of Covid. Seems like the panic promoters are starting to catch on that they are hurting their most important cause: inoculation promotion.
>What is it exactly, that makes it more infectious?
I don’t know either. But infectiousness usually comes from transmission first and foremost. The more virus you shed, the more likely somebody else will get infected. Of course, if the viral load didn’t change from Delta, there would be a possible argument for immune evasion that goes further than just vaccine antibodies.
>If there were tricks left that other variants could have used to increase infectiousness, why do we only see them all of a sudden with Omicron?
Because mutations are a step-wise process. Of course you are right, immune escape is another way to increase infectiousness. But there could be the escape of previous coronavirus immunity (pre-2020 strains), or the escape of vaccine immunity. It doesn’t have to somehow escape the immune system in general (though like I said, by being less dangeorus it can also avoid alerting the immune system early, thus becoming more infectious).
>We’ve so far noticed the opposite with COVID. Alpha was worse than Wuhan, Delta was worse than Alpha. There’s no directly obvious factor that necessitates a steady reduction in virulence.
This statement is not backed by any reliable numbers and does not allow for a claim of causation. An alternative explanation would be that treatment was terrible at the beginning (Alpha/Wuhan), with intubation and high-dose antivirals. Treatment got better around when Delta arrived. Or all the old/weak people had already died.
>especially when we consider that weather doesn’t cut it (see: Australia) and South Africa is not the epitome of health either (see: HIV)
South Africa is a comparable epitome of health simply because the population is much younger. The averages are Netherlands 43, South Africa 28. This makes a vast difference in terms of respiratory diseases, even if they have a generally lower standard of health. As far as I know, the average age for a COVID death is around 80. I don’t know their testing regimen or anything, so in all honesty I can’t comment on whether 2% is too low or if it’s understandably low.
>The correlation between vaccination rates and Omicron case rates around the world is very strong and importantly, we didn’t really see that correlation before Omicron.
Accepted. But again, this doesn’t automatically prove your claim. There are alternative explanations.
>It’s also incorrect to assume that antibody dependent enhancement per definition means the virus just outright kills you. There was already ADE going on with Delta. Antibodies bind to the NTD region, thereby increasing affinity for the ACE2 receptor and enhancing infection of cells. This doesn’t mean the virus somehow ends up with a 100% mortality rate.
It doesn’t have to outright kill you, that’s true, but we would expect worse outcomes. Get it into your head: if antibodies enhance virus entry into cells, the immune system is more easily overwhelmed. That would necessarily result in a stronger reaction and thus, an increase in symptoms. It has nothing to do with infectiousness, unless it only goes for one type of cell, say in the nose or throat, but not for other types of cells. Only then could we see increased multiplication, higher viral loads but no increase in symptoms. It’s possible, but we are seeing a DECREASE in symptoms. That is the elephant in the room against your claim. Also, the idea that ADE was going on with Delta is not proven. It’s a theory and it’s possible according to in vitro or even just model evidence, which means next to nothing out in the field. Antibody-epitope-interaction isn’t that simple. The study you posted just shows that mutations will focus on the areas that are necessary for the virus to bind, which is perfectly logical in any scenario of natural selection. It wouldn’t target useless domains, because if they are useless they don’t give it any advantage.
>Not necessarily, because as I’ve mentioned before, many antibody evading mutations carry fitness disadvantages, like reduced ACE2 receptor affinity. Such mutations only manage to become dominant when prevalence of the affected antibody in question is high in the population. Omicron’s relative “mildness” may be part of the price it pays for evading most antibodies in the RBD.
Get your story straight. Is it evading antibodies, or is it using them for its advantage? Those two are entirely different. If it’s evading antibodies, they have a reduced affinity and will be de-selected by the immune process, as tightly-binding and/or neutralizing antibodies will be overrepresented in a complex with the pathogen (seeing as they are tightly-binding, i.e. more likely to be bound at any point in time). Original antigenic sin just results in an INITIAL disadvantage when fighting a virus, because the body produces useless (loosely-binding and/or non-neutralizing) antibodies. Antibody-dependent enhancement is much more complex, and would be much more detrimental to the host – which we are not seeing with Omicron at all. If you are just saying that the virus evades antibodies from the vaccine, then yes, obviously that’s the case. But from what I gather you are saying that vaccination somehow makes it worse, and while that’s a possibility, it’s currently a weak one at best.
>In addition tissue tropism has changed with Omicron. As it now replicates slower in lung tissue but faster in bronchial tubes, it generally won’t directly hit you the way Delta does.
See, there is one possible answer to why it’s more infectious that doesn’t have anything to do with immunity or antibodies.
>Finally, I would like to point out that we are in fact seeing record breaking hospitalization numbers, in Canada, Denmark, Israel and the United States.
Not if compared to the case numbers. Nice try, though.
So every person that was injected with mRNA Vaccine presents the same immune response to the Virus.
Basically we have turned billions of people into genetically cloned individuals with regard to fighting this Virus.
We have turned them in to one GIANT monoculture.
Monocultures typically get infected by pests pretty easily…..
Yeah. That’s the problem. We have generated an immunological monoculture, against a virus that can rapidly mutate and continues to circulate.
The Spike protein based vaccines present the Spike protein in its open configuration. Even a natural infection will generate Spike based immunity against both the open and the closed configuration, so even the Spike immunity from the vaccines is just a small portion of naturally occurring Spike immunity, it targets just a handful of epitopes on the Spike protein.
It’s a huge mistake that’s going to cost us dearly and every additional dose of these vaccines makes it worse.
In my view, this is a perfect explanation for what we are seeing.
Do not forget that along with creating a monoculture, along with vaccinating everybody, we have also tried to keep infection numbers low. So even though people were “protected”, we did not give them the chance to develop proper immunity.
Essentially we have “immunized” everybody, then kept them away from the virus. The virus has developed a way to avoid the antibodies from the vaccine (IF it ever actually worked), and it has become more infectious. The result is that we now have a more infectious (but apparently overall less dangerous) virus that sails through a society of people without any prior immunity to it.
Now you see why South Africa and Sweden are fine, but most everybody else has exponentially rising case numbers. The population there simply had the chance to build up a proper immune reaction over time, whereas everybody else stayed either naive or vaccinated with a useless pharmaceutical.
We are essentially back in March 2020, with a more infectious virus and with less restrictions.
If only we could have seen this coming
Amazing article. Great comments too.
Thanks for posting these.
“These viruses won’t send you to the ICU anymore, because everyone in the Western world has had some exposure to SARS-COV-2 by now, so the traditional immune overreaction no longer happens.”
Except here in New Zealand, where we have a high vaccination rate but most people have had no exposure to covid. It will be interesting to see what happens. They’re currently battening down the hatches and preparing for omicron…
Your country is a joke. How do you get everybody vaccinated and then still sit in the corner, shaking with fear? But don’t worry, my country isn’t any better. We know the vaccines are trash but are still trying to force them on everybody.
What will be the impact on post-vaccination conceived babies that will be arriving this Spring and Summer? Also, what about cardio problems, or is it mostly on the respiratory side?
I don’t know, I haven’t looked much into that, but maybe someone else can answer.
No worries-too speculative at this point I guess. Thanks for your work.
Do you have a link to rapid reinfection claim you mentioned?
The claim from the beginning was that natural immunity is “robust and long-lasting”.
Do we know if people who were infected before (with original Wuhan, Alpha or Delta variants) are getting infected with Omicron?
One of the reasons for rapid reinfection is that it takes a while for antibodies to mature (after the initial infection), 6-8 weeks. Since there’s a lot of viral pressure at the moment, you are exposed to more virus (possibly new variant) with immature and
suboptimal antibodies. It seems that once this wave passes and viral load is reduced,
natural immunity could be established.
I had Delta or Omnicrom ? for 3 weeks, worst symptom was a stuffy/runny nose that would not quit, untested tho because I figured why bother. I worked thru it myself via my stockpile of meds. I was symptom free for 3 weeks after that, and thought I was good to go! Then my daughter came home with symptoms, tested positive, lost both senses so probably Delta? but mild otherwise. I treated her, a week later my husband got something probably from my daughter, tested positive, I treated him and he also received mono antibiodies tho probably unnecessary due to very mild case. Again, worst in the nasal passages and throat congestion. Then a week later, Boom, I got hit hard with it again. I was pretty damn sick for a week, high fever, sluggishness, terrible nasal and throat congestion, tested positive so I could get mono antibodies which took away the fever thankfully. I was so pissed because I thought I was immune to some degree but I guess I hadn’t formulated enough immunity at that point? My entire immediate family is unvaxxed and plan to stay that way. I’m sure that we have all been exposed to shedding with all of the vax believers around us in our daily lives, which I don’t think can be avoided. So did I have same or different variants? Will I keep getting it seasonally? Or will I be immune to future variants? I take all the suggested vitamins and have for 2 years now. I hope it’s helping! Ugh, so many questions with this thing!
This discussion above focuses on the mRNA jabs but you do mention something about the situation in the UK where the majority had the AZ jab. Do you feel the outcome may be better in those individuals? Speaking personally I had one dose of AZ and would have actually refused a Pfizer jab. I’m wondering what my long term prospects may be in comparison to double/triple jabbed Pfizer recipients.
Excellent intelligent discussion by the way
I took my booster recently, 6 days later big upper leg muscles no strength could not do usual walk…tight band feeling around back and chest two weeks later symptoms not so bad except for the finally emerging and persistent ear ringing and deafness … lots of ACE2 receptors in ears by the way…jab was Modern a big problem is side effects can you explain