The one article on COVID everyone should read

cience is slowly accumulating evidence that explains why COVID-19 has such a harmful effect on the brain. A great summary titled COVID Vaccines: Biomechanics and Efficacy by Robert L. Clancy, an Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the University of Newcastle Medical School in Australia, explains in easily understandable terms what's happening. Dr Clancy is an expert on immunopathology and the author of 292 peer-reviewed articles on pulmonary diseases. Anyone at risk of getting COVID or contemplating a vaccine booster needs to consider his points.

Put in the simplest terms, the challenge in vaccinating against COVID is that SARS-CoV-2 preferentially infects cells of the lining of the respiratory tract, known as mucosal space. This means that the immune system must handle the infection quite differently than the viruses we're used to. Clancy points out that while COVID vaccination stimulates a vigorous IgG antibody response from the adaptive immune system, it also induces an immunosuppressant response. Repeated vaccination, he says, can backfire due to the risk of immune suppression overpowering the desired effect:

While vaccination against COVID confers obvious and substantial benefits in preventing serious illness, booster shots have a complex immunology that means they come with a risk and must be considered with great care.

The immunology of COVID and vaccination against it is quite different to that which applies to [measles and poliomyelitis]. Guided—or perhaps misguided is the better word—by experience with polio and measles, where vaccination rates between 85 per cent and 95 per cent led to herd immunity, COVID-related models were developed that suggested vaccination rates could also be calculated to achieve herd immunity. But these models were in error.

After about six months, infections in vaccinated subjects were reported more commonly and protection against more severe disease began falling. This was contrary to classic vaccinology, where protection lasted years due to the capacity of systemically primed (vaccinated) subjects to respond rapidly and vigorously to infection. . . . Over time it became clear that specific protection was not just lost in those with repeated vaccinations but became negative. This meant vaccinated subjects were more prone to infection than were unvaccinated subjects.

In the longer term, and as antigen-induced tolerance can last years following desensitisation in allergic subjects, repeated poorly spaced boosters threatens the value of seasonal corona virus vaccination post-pandemic.

Clancy also warns that we still do not understand the neurological effects of mRNA-based COVID vaccines.

Given the neurological adverse events reported following genetic vaccines, and the recent MRI evidence of reduced brain volume following Covid infection, similar studies are needed to exclude brain damage following the administering of mRNA vaccines.

Two important things need to be remembered: first, the primary goal has always been to reduce deaths by reducing the severity of the disease. This is the goal of modern medicine: to save a life, even if it means a reduction in quality of life. And secondly, the disease itself has potentially serious long-term effects on the central nervous system, what people are now calling COVID brain.

One article in the Journal of Neurology ^[1] found that MMSE scores of patients measured after recovery had dropped from 29.4 to 27.7. MMSE is a simple cognitive test used on Alzheimer patients. The highest score is 30. A score of 19–23 (sometimes 24) indicates mild cognitive impairment. Scores of 10–18 are called moderate, and below 9 is called severe cognitive impairment. It's not particularly sensitive but it's easy to administer. The authors stated:

53% of patients had disturbances in at least one cognitive domain 2 months after COVID-19 resolution. At follow-up, a significant amelioration of memory and executive performances was observed in the whole group; despite this, cognitive deficits were still evident in 36% of patients. Moreover, about 30% of participants reported depressive and/or PTSD symptoms at baseline, still persisting at follow-up.

We were indeed surprised to observe that, in our cohort, executive dysfunctions and psychopathological disturbances were present in most of patients under 50 years of age.

The cognitive dysfunction is borderline and appears to be transient in most patients. The reason for the cognitive impairment and the psychopathological disturbances, which mainly include depression and PTSD, is not yet clear. Cognitive function can be impaired by any number of factors, including anxiety, cytokines, and the stress of medical treatment, especially artificial ventilation and anesthesia. However, there is now strong evidence that the spike protein is toxic over and above the effects of the virus.

This is perhaps the most important lesson we have learned: using a full-length spike protein in the vaccine is not necessary and can produce toxic side-effects. Certain regions in the spike protein, which could easily be engineered out of the mRNA, are responsible for toxicity. The solution, then, is not to abandon vaccines or boosters altogether, but to re-engineer them. As Clancy puts it:

Replacing spike protein, or eliminating pathogenic sequences within it, is a challenge for those designing next-generation vaccines.

There is no evidence so far of a big conspiracy, only of panic and an ill-considered rush for a magic bullet. The solution now is to understand how the spike protein toxicity comes about and how the vaccine sequence can be modified to avoid it. Only by understanding how the virus and the immune system work and communicating these facts honestly can we avoid panic and make rational decisions next time around.

mar 21 2022, 6:20 am