Unvaccinated people are much more likely to develop broad antibody immunity after Covid infections than people who have received mRNA shots, a new study shows.
Researchers already knew that many vaccinated people do not gain antibodies to the entire coronavirus after they are infected with Covid.
Unvaccinated people nearly always gain antibodies to the nucleocapsid protein, which covers the virus’s core of RNA, as well as its spike protein, which allows the virus to attack our cells. Vaccinated people often lack those anti-nucleocapsid antibodies and only have spike protein antibodies.
The researchers examined the development of anti-nucleocapsid antibodies in people who had been part of Moderna’s clinical trial and were infected with Covid. As they expected, the scientists found that the vaccinated people were far less likely to develop the anti-nucleocapsid antibodies. Only 40 percent of people who received the shots had antibodies, compared to 93 percent of those who did not.
But they then went a step further. Because the infected people had been in the trial, their viral loads had been precisely measured when they were found to have Covid. So the researchers were able to compare vaccinated and unvaccinated people who had the same amounts of virus in their blood.
Once again, they found that unvaccinated people were far more likely to develop anti-nucleocapsid antibodies than the jabbed. An unvaccinated person with a mild infection had a 71 percent chance of mounting an immune response that included those antibodies. A vaccinated person had about a 15 percent chance.
The chart that should worry the vaccinated: the yellow line shows the odds that an unvaccinated person will develop anti-nucleocapsid antibodies to Sars-Cov-2, stratified by viral load. The blue line shows the same odds for a person who received an mRNA shot.
An unvaccinated person has an almost 60 percent chance of developing antibodies even with an extremely mild infection; a vaccinated person needs almost 100,000 times as much virus in his blood to have the same chance.
Anyone familiar with the scientific literature knows that that most published research findings are false (and here). So when the media push a claim to scientific fact bearing on a highly contentious political issue, consider the evidence before accepting the claim.
In relation to the Toronto Globe and Mail's headline of April 24 claiming that the Unvaccinated increase risk of infection for others: study skepticism is certainly warranted because, so far as it relates to Covid-19, the claim is untrue.
The article begins:
People who have not been vaccinated against Covid-19 contribute disproportionately to the risk of infection among those who have been vaccinated, according to a new study ...
Impact of population mixing between vaccinated and unvaccinated subpopulations on infectious disease dynamics: implications for SARS-CoV-2 transmission
Trouble is, the paper reports what is a purely mathematical exercise, based on no real world data whatsoever. That this is a problem becomes evident if one considers the real world data that would be needed to confirm the authors' conclusions.
In particular, data would be necessary to show at least one of the following things:
(1) That unvaccinated persons have a higher Covid-19 infection rate than the vaccinated;
(2) That unvaccinated persons infected with Covid-19 are more infectious that the vaccinated; or
(3) In their interaction with others, unvaccinated persons are in some way more social, promiscuous or more careless of the risk of infection than the vaccinated.
Proposition (1) we know to be false. The weekly Covid Surveillance Reports compiled by the UK Health Security Agency have shown consistently over many months that overall, and except in the youngest age classes, the vaccinated have a Covid-19 case rate several times that of the unvaccinated (see Table 13 on Page 44).
...Delta infection resulted in similarly high SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated people. High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus. ...
Which is to say, vaccinated persons can pass Covid-19 just as readily as the unvaccinated.
Proposition (3) is obviously false. It is the vaccinated who, believing, correctly or otherwise, that they are immune from serious harm from Covid-19, are most likely to eat out, attend a party at No. 10 Downing St. during a national lockdown, or whatever, whereas the unvaccinated, knowing themselves to be among the most vulnerable to severe Covid-19 illness, act with greater circumspection.
So, yes, Fishman et al., from their base at Canada's top research university, have published a nonsense paper that has made a nonsense of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, while showing the Toronto Gobe and Mail to be the publication of elite correct thought that we have always supposed it to be.
But why this particular lie?
Let the reader decide. But one thing's for sure, that headline in the Globule sure helps cover wannabe dictator, Justin Trudeau's arse over his irrational and tyrannical vaccine mandates and his Hitlerian diatribe of hate directed at Freedom Rally supporters.
The thing about the science of Covid is that there are two versions of it: One is "The Science" about which we hear much from low-IQ politicians such as Justin Trudeau, the other is a pretty complicated story of which I have only a limited grasp. But whatever may be the facts, I have no objection to people who are properly informed being given an experimental inoculation with something that apparently reduces -- for several months, anyway -- the risk of severe Covid illness (although it does not prevent either infection or transmission). However, I think it crazy, wrong, and possibly a manifestation of some deep corruption to mandate such so-called vaccination in response to a pandemic disease barely more deadly than the seasonal flu. Being experimental, which is to say, without long-term evaluation in either human or animal trials, there is no assurance of the vaccine's safety. Therefore, to force submission to such an experimental medical procedure is contrary to the code of medical ethics established at Nuremberg after World War 2. I think it particularly reprehensible to force this so-called vaccine on children who are extremely unlikely to suffer severe Covid illness — the number of children dying from Covid is far fewer than the number who succumb in most years to influenza.
Although rarely stated explicitly, the justification for compelled vaccination has been to protect others, i.e., to stop the spread. But it is evident from the excellent data gathered by the UK Health Security Agency (This is a link to their latest weekly Covid Surveillance report, see Page 44) that vaccination increases the Covid case rate (it more than doubles it in most age classes), and hence disease trransmission. This effect is presumably because the vaccinated, believing themselves to be protected, tolerate a greater risk of infection — and hence also of passing on the infection — than the unvaccinated.
My own view of the management of Covid in Western countries is that it has been idiotic from start to finish, and generally harmful, lethally so, to some among the most vulnerable people. The objective of government authorities throughout has been to keep people frightened so they would unresistingly do exactly as idiots like Trudeau and his dim-witted advisors and ministers demanded. True, Covid has killed many people (though perhaps far fewer than claimed), but mostly, these were people of our age group who were, with us, fellow travelers nearing the end of our journey to the grave. In particular, they were the most frail among the elderly, especially those in care homes where a lack of daily exercise diminishes cardiovascular and respiratory capacity. For such people, a respiratory disease is inevitably a severe and often overwhelming challenge. But the propaganda never allowed attention to focus on the very high dependence of Covid mortality on age and, among younger people, specific conditions such as asthma, obesity and diabetes that predispose to severe illness.
But since we, and in fact most people of our age group, are still alert of mind and more or less physically active, the risk of Covid is not that great. Moreover, living in our own homes, the risk of infection is much less than that of younger persons commuting to the office five days a week, and caring for children who are the most important vectors of respiratory diseases. What this means is that there was no good reason for lock-downs of entire countries when those most at risk were already in effect locked-down in care homes, which as is now evident, are among the most dangerous places for a vulnerable person to be.
In the climate of propaganda and cultivated fear that governments and the media created, it has been impossible for most people to make a rational decision about the Covid vax. Vaccination will prolong life of care home occupants, which may or may not be what we and the care home occupants themselves want. Furthermore, it will save many old and middle-aged people from the severest though non-fatal consequences of Covid infection. That being the case, S... (our oldest sibling) might be wise to take the shot, although she must be very fit, so her chances of surviving Covid are almost certainly well above 90%. (At our age, to lose a year or two of freedom to lockdowns, thereby to avoid a five or 10% risk if death by Covid seems a poor bargain.
As for what Western governments have imposed on the rest of the population, it would create outrage if people understood the stupidity of it. Excuse me for expressing myself plainly (I suppose there is room for other credible views, but I am not sure what they are). And the vaccine will do almost nothing for children, nearly all of whom experience Covid with few if any symptoms, but acquire from it long-term, possibly life-long, memory-cell immunity from severe illness, if not infection. In this connection, it may be considered that the relatively mild Omicron variant acts as a living vaccine, or would do so, if allowed free circulation.
As for possible adverse long-term consequences of the so-called vaccine, these should be of greatest concern to younger adults and parents of children. Probably, the long-term consequences will be insignificant, but there is presently no certainty of that. One unsettling discovery is that the spike protein mRNA, which is the active component of the vaccine, can be retrotranscribed to DNA and then incorporated into the genome. Then you could have a life-long supply of spike protein. That this is a serious problem seems slight, but about risks that remain to be evaluated by long-term testing, one cannot give confident assurances.
And that's not surprising. Possessed of a greater, though questionable, sense of security, the vaxxed take less care than the unvaxxed to minimize the risk of viral transmission, with the result that they spread the disease more readily.
The vaccine apparently reduces the case rate among children and adults under the age of 30. However, the incidence of serious illness and death in these age classes is so low that vaccination may be deemed detrimental precisely because it restricts viral spread and hence the acquisition of long-term and robust natural immunity.
That the vax promotes the spread is a good thing
By spreading the virus in those over the age of 30 while limiting disease severity, the vax pushes the population toward herd immunity: that is, toward the widespread acquisition of natural immunity from infection that does limit transmission.
Such immunity is what will slow the endless circulation of the virus throughout the population.
As for the use of "vaccine resistant," in that scare headline, what does it mean?
We've known for months, thanks to a statement by the Director of the US Center for Disease Control, Rochelle Walensky, that the vaccinated can carry as high a viral load as the unvaccinated. So vaccine resistant must refer to something other than infection resistance. Presumably, therefore, it means that the new variant causes illness that is not limited in severity by the vaccine.
But where's the evidence?
None is available, so the "vaccine-resistant label probably means nothing at all.
The so-called vaccines for Covid produce nothing like the full-spectrum immunity induced by infection. Thus, if the vaccines are useful, it is by virtue of the fact that they:
(a) reduce disease severity, and
(b) promote viral spread and hence the acquisition of natural immunity from infection.
The downside to the use of the currently available Covid vaccines is that they promote viral differentiation by providing a competitive advantage to mutants resistant to the vaccine induced antibodies.
It is possible that some such vaccine-induced variant will prove more virulent than existing strains, in which case we could be in for a global die off — some people would view that as a positive: Prince Charles and his Davos friends, perhaps, as in "Setting ourselves on a new and more sustainable course," etc.
However, none of the presently propagating strains are injurious to more than a very small proportion of children and young adults. Thus, injecting young people with the toxic spike protein, aka vaccine, a substance known in some cases to cause serious harm or even death, is unjustified.
In fact, with half or more of the population in many countries having, as in the UK, Covid recovered status, it can be assumed that the vast majority of children and young adults already have durable and robust Covid immunity from infection.
Thus, to force injection of the toxic spike protein into young people in the name of public health is an outrage and a travesty of science, though testimony, surely, to the power of pharmaceutical company lobbying.
Quebec Gov't Caves in Face of Revolt by 12,000 Healthcare Workers: The rebels do essential work in a high risk environment. Hospitals are rife with Covid so most healthcare workers have already had Covid, which means they have full-spectrum natural immunity far superior to the short-lived antibody response to an injection of toxic spike protein.
This Covid variant has multiple mutations in the spike protein against which the current generation of vaccines induce inactivating antibodies. As a result the protection from severe disease provided by the current generation of spike-protein-generating vaccines will be lessened if not altogether eliminated.
However, such adaptation of the virus will not greatly reduce naturally-acquired immunity, which depends on multiple mechanisms unaffected by changes in the spike protein.
It may thus be that the vaccine increases the ultimate toll in Covid disease and death by preventing widespread infection with the original Wuhan viral strain, which would have provided immunity to subsequently emerging strains.
"The science" that allegedly dictates this action is bullshit for the simple reason that science never dictates, it only records what can be observed and leaves it open to potentially endless debate what the implications of those observations may be.
And when it comes to Covid, what can be observed is not only that the vax can have adverse effects including death, but that it is rather ineffective in preventing Covid infection and transmission.
And the vax is truly feeble compared with immunity from prior infection.
Conclusive evidence that the hundreds of millions if not several billion worldwide who have already had Covid have vastly superior immunity against future infection than the merely vaxed is now available from Israel, the most highly vaxed country in the world.
Thus, according to Israel's Ministry of health:
More than 7,700 new cases of the virus have been detected during the most recent wave starting in May, but just 72 of the confirmed cases were reported in people who were known to have been infected previously – that is, less than 1% of the new cases. Source
Furthermore:
With a total of 835,792 Israelis known to have recovered from the virus, the 72 instances of reinfection amount to 0.0086% of people who were already infected with COVID.
By contrast, Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection, with over 3,000 of the 5,193,499, or 0.0578%, of Israelis who were vaccinated getting infected in the latest wave.
Canada, with a population more than six times Israel's is reported to have had 1.46 million Covid cass. With 26,787 reported Covid deaths in Canada, that implies a Covid infection fatality rate of 1.8%. But that is almost certainly at least ten times the actual fatality rate, and in which case, Canada most likely has at least 15 million Covid recovereds — most of them asymptomatic while infected and unaware that they have not only successfully fought off the virus, but gained robust and durable immunity against future infection.
But to Canada's dictator-loving Trudeau, damn natural immunity, everyone gotta be vaxed or we'll treat 'em like lepers.
This is insane. The Government of Canada should be working to provide every Canadian the opportunity to be tested for Covid immunity, for example by means of a T-Cell antibody test) before deciding whether they agree to be vaccinated.
But don't hold your breath waiting for relief from the relentless bullying to achieve universal vaccination. Opposition parties in Parliament have neither the brains nor the balls to resist Trudeau's imbecilic drive to stick a needle in everyone.
Unherd, October 17, 2020: Yesterday in parliament, Matt Hancock explained to the house why, “on the substance”, the central claim of the Great Barrington Declaration was “emphatically not true”.
“Many diseases never reach herd immunity – including measles, malaria, AIDS and flu…” he said. “Herd immunity is a flawed goal – even if we could get to it, which we can’t.”
Let’s have a look at the diseases he mentions. Measles, if it arrives on ‘virgin soil’, can devastate a population. In Tahiti and Moorea and the South-east and North-west Marquesas, between 20% and 70% of the population was lost to the first epidemic. Natural infection with measles provides lifelong immunity, and we now have a vaccine which provides similar solid, durable protection. We have not been able to eliminate the disease, but those who rather selfishly choose not to vaccinate their children are only able make that choice because the risks of infection are kept low by those who are immune — currently, a combination of those, like me, who caught it and recovered and many others for whom it is vaccine induced. The vaccine does not work in babies, which is why you have to wait till they are a year old before they get it. We can do this because herd immunity keeps the risk of infection down, so they are are unlikely to be infected in their first year of life. Without this herd protection, many under ones would die (as they regularly do in sub-Saharan Africa) despite a vaccine being available.
An article in the British Medical Journal entitled Covid-19: Do many people have pre-existing immunity? by Peter Doshi, an associate editor of the Journal, presents evidence of the existence of widespread pre-existent immunity to Covid-19.
In particular, the evidence suggests that something like 60% of the population in many countries have Covid-19 reactive T-cells that facilitate an effective antibody response to the Corona virus. Thus, whereas only a small proportion of the population in most countries test positive for Covid-19 antibodies, a majority may have a T-cell dependent capacity to develop an effective antibody response to Covid-19 such that they remain either asymptomatic after infection or suffer only a mild illness.
If that is correct, it means that Covid-19 is not a mortal threat to the majority of the population, and therefore, the correct response to the virus would have been to protect only those with a pre-existent condition, particularly old age, obesity, or heart or respiratory disease that makes them vulnerable to serious illness or death due to Covid-19. The rest of the population, which is to say the vast majority, should have been left free to go about their business. Further, it indicates that Sweden's courageous refusal to be bullied the the World Health Organization into shuttering its economy was the correct response and nearly every other Western country got it wrong.
I posted the above comment at the Unz Review, at the end of a long thread responding to an article by Ron Unz in which he accuses the New York Times and The Atlantic of failing to provide coverage of investigative journalism relating to Covid-19. However, my comment failed to pass the Unz Review censor, indicating that Unz cannot tolerate even mainstream medical journal commentary relating to Covid-19 where it deviates from his conviction that the virus represents an existential risk to all and sundry.
Quote: Because of the high false positive rate (of the RT PCR test) and the low prevalence (of the Covid-19 virus), almost every positive test, a so-called case, identified by Pillar 2 since May of this year has been a FALSE POSITIVE.
And because the rate of testing has increased the number of reported "cases" has increased. But as most "cases" are in fact false positives, the "second wave" is most likely entirely an artifact due to a combination of increased testing and a high false positive rate, as the figure below illustrates. The upper histogram indicates the real frequency distribution of "cases" in Britain, the lower histogram records the the misleading data published by the UK Government.
So what the above figure indicates is that the lockdown in the UK was the result not of a pandemic or even a plandemic but of a flamdemic as in flim-flam: i.e., a phony claim about the threat posed by Covid-19 the phoniness of which the British Government can deny only by claiming stupendous idiocy in the face of clear warnings from scientifically competent people who were in communication with the Government at the time the Government was terrorizing the population with vastly inflated Covid case numbers.
And just in case folks aren't sufficiently intimidated, it has been announced that the UK will deploy the army to aid police in enforcing all flamdemic-justified restrictions of freedom of movement and assembly.
Breaking down the New York City report, Cuomo noted thatthe Bronx had the highest infection rate of the five boroughs, with a staggering 27.1% of respondents having COVID-19 antibodies. ...
“That number remains obnoxiously and terrifyingly high,” Cuomo said. “It’s not where we want it to be.” Source
There is a pernicious idea that the media, politicians and public health officials in the US, Canada and elsewhere seek to encourage, namely, that the spread of Covid19 is a bad thing. Actually, it's a good thing: here's why.
Epidemics don't end with everyone in quarantine, because life cannot be sustained by a population in perpetual quarantine. Eventually, a quarantined population must get back to work. then people will have to come face to face once again, and the disease will resume it's spread.
So how do epidemics end? They end when the number of people with immunity to the disease rises to the point that the number of people each infected person infects falls below one. At that point, disease spread slows and dies.*
And what determines who has immunity? There are two key factors. One is the acquisition of immunity among those who have been infected and survived the disease. The other is the process of natural selection. Those who lack the necessary immune system genes to fend off the disease die, so that a higher proportion of the residual population has the genes that provide either immunity to infection, or the capacity for recovery from infection.
The seasonal flu is an example of a non-lethal disease that induces immunity in those infected. The plague, or black death, is a an example of a more or less lethal disease that kills many but not all that it infects, leaving a more resistant population more or less immune to the disease.
And, in the worst case, are diseases against which an entire population is vulnerable, and in that case the entire population dies, as was the fate of many Amerindian communities afflicted by diseases brought by explorers and colonists from Europe to the New World.
Covid-19, fortunately, is a relatively mild disease for most who are infected by it, leaving them with protective antibodies that reduce susceptibility to future infection. The Covid epidemics working theirs way through the nations of the world seem to be killing no more than 30 to 40 people per thousand of those infected (at least in the developed world), these being mainly the elderly with existing heart or respiratory diseases**.
The end to the Covid-19 pandemic will thus occur when the virus has gone through every population causing an increased level of immunity that halts the disease's spread.
What proportion of the population must have immunity before the rate of recovery from the disease exceeds the rate of infection is not something that can be exactly predicted, since it depends on the way people in each community interact. In a nation of hermits, the disease would never spread and there could be no epidemic. Otherwise, the particular features of specific communities, in particular the way in which people interact with one another, but also many other factors such as age distribution, air quality, nutrition, etc., determine the infection rate that must be attained before an epidemic dies.
What that means is that although lock-downs, quarantines, social distancing and face masks can slow the spread of disease, they have no effect on the incidence of the disease at which disease spread slows and ultimately stops.
So well done The Bronx. With 27% of the population reported to have antibodies for Covid19, they may not be there quite yet, but they are well on the way to the condition of so-called herd immunity, when immunity to the pathogen is sufficiently widespread to cause its spread to slow and die even after a return to normal life.
Despite what crackpots such as Ron Unz of the Unz Review, New York State Governor Cuomo and the political class generally, plus most public health officials tell you, the spread of Covid19 and hence of immunity to Covid19 is good news that heralds the return to normality. But don't expect to hear that from the gerontological medical experts, the politicians and the vendors of patent medicines and vaccines now in the limelight and positioned to profit by the present panic.
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* In New York City, the hardest hit place in North America if not the world, the number of new infections reported daily is down to about one third of the peak rate, indicating that, under present conditions of restricted social mobility, herd immunity has been achieved and the epidemic is dying. An end to the lock-downs in NY City may increase the infection rate if the percentage of the population with immunity is insufficiently high for herd immunity under the changed social dynamics. Certainly, an end to the lock-downs will cause a temporary increase in the infection rate, but a new downward trend leading to extinction of the virus will resume within a reasonably short time.
What percentage of the population must have immunity to achieve herd immunity is impossible to model accurately since people do not interact randomly, but in many distinctive ways according to factors such as age, profession, the need to commute, etc. Certainly, the percentage of infected people needed for herd immunity will be less than the theoretical 67% (assuming an R nought of 3.0), and quite possibly less than half that number.
** In the Bronx, with 27% having Covid-19 antibodies, the number infected is around 382,000 people, of whom 1,700 have died for an infection-specific mortality rate of 0.44%. Of those who have died, 545 were resident of nursing homes or adult care facilities, and most had other serious medical conditions. For the remainder of the population the infection-specific mortality rate has been 0.3%. (Source: Riverdale Press).
