Good point about covid variants Blindfox
These variants are more infectious, as the Japanese are finding out. The Japanese always voluntarily wear a mask to protect others if they think they have the sniffles. Also, non-govt-reporting confidential contact tracing is carried out by a public health service. Between these two normal (pre-covid) customs, Japan has had 20 fold less infection rates over here.
Until now.
According to our friends at the Japanese equivalent of the NIH (“RIKEN”) where my wife works, numerous new variants of covid have popped up, which spread much more quickly. The infection rate in Japan is exploding to unprecedented levels.
We know that when a deadly virus such as the Spanish flu is pandemic, the thing mutates to less virulent form. But the engineered corona is not that kind of deadly virus with very low kill rate. Why wouldnt we expect it to mutate to more virulent (or more transmissible) form? I would if I were the damn thing.
We have heard that prior infection with other corona cold viruses may engender some cross-over immunity. Hopefully those who get infected with an earlier strain (or vaccine) will have some immunity for these later ones. I would like to see a summary of this but reports on the “South African Strain” are not encouraging.
This cross over immunity will become an important factor in the covid saga. If these variants are all in the exposed spike protein and only affect initial binding, I would hope that ivermectin and (the drug that will not be named) would work just as well on them.
Well, no surprise here. A lot for me to “unpack” in this piece but I think it points to “back up the truck” and buy more “stawks”.
source “We need to see what would be the sequence, and for how often we need to do that, that remains to be seen,” he told CNBC’s Bertha Coombs during an event with CVS Health. “A likely scenario is that there will be likely a need for a third dose, somewhere between six and 12 months and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all of that needs to be confirmed. And again, the variants will play a key role.” “It is extremely important to suppress the pool of people that can be susceptible to the virus,” Bourla said. The comment comes after Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky told CNBC in February that people may need to get vaccinated against Covid-19 annually, just like seasonal flu shots. Researchers still don’t know how long protection against the virus lasts once someone has been fully vaccinated.So... more, needs to be confirmed, not sure, don't know, suppress pool of people (that doesn't sound good to me), annually, variants (ooh, scary boys and girls) and forever? Sounds like a plan, Stan. No need to be coy, Roy.
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Jan, my fear in all this is that mad Dr Fauci’s mask zombies who are running out to get the death jab are going to get horribly sick this winter when they get exposed to the live virus. Alot of them will die. Then they’ll claim the deaths are due to a “mutated virus” and the “unvaxxed” “science deniers” will be blamed.
Very few people will question it because, lets face it, if they havent by now they never will. Hope Im wrong about it all."
I wish I had something more hopeful to say but I’ve been running a similar scenario through my head. DaveF has written about how people will react to finding out they are subject to ADE because of a vaccine they were encouraged to take even though they were not in a risk group to begin with.
Maybe. But we must remember back to when SCIENCE! proved that masks don’t work and only lockdowns can save us. I remember thinking people were gonna go apeshit when the same officials told them that now SCIENCE! says if everyone masks up then the lockdowns can end.
Of course by now the story is to lockdown/mask/vaccinate and still there is an almost explicit promise that Covid won’t end anyway. People seem to accept this too so far.
Not much to do but hope things “somehow” get better. We are taught about standing up to tyranny, and there are moments when informal gatherings allow people to realize they aren’t alone in their opposition to something. But as a rule “protest” is futile because things move too slowly for most to notice until its too late.
This depressing book is full of musings on how and why the Germans let it happen to them.
https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
The original Wuhan strain Clade 19a no longer exists ANYWHERE in the world ,or is out competed by variants as to make it immaterial. Look up nextstrain.com .I believe that should read nextstrain.org and not nextstrain.com as shown. No biggie... just want folks to find the right info! ? Thanks for that new source of info!
I wish I had something more hopeful to say but I've been running a similar scenario through my head. DaveF has written about how people will react to finding out they are subject to ADE because of a vaccine they were encouraged to take even though they were not in a risk group to begin with.People I know are actually doing the happy dance and are giddy with joy after they get the jab ? They have no inkling of what they have just done.... I can only try to imagine what it will be like when they become aware somewhere down the road. My fear is that I could lose virtually all of my family if the ADE thing happens the way we anticipate. The vast majority have gotten or are getting the jab. It will be like being orphaned. Jeez. What a crummy thought ?
Jan, my father in law lost 85% of his relatives in Germany. If we are targeted by those who are lead by psychopaths, yeah, I guess it could happen.
Hi Brushhog,
Most people in Argentina don’t generate much wealth to store, but if they do its in purchasing land and building a modest house. Often a young couple will live at one of their parents home and save to buy a small lot and slowly build a brick house one room at a time. My siblings buy US dollars sometimes Euros… but mostly people are barely getting by.
If the US dollar becomes worthless the few that had them will spend them if they get a chance but for the most part it won’t matter unless you are owed payment in them, then it’s tough luck.
I’ve often thought of how westerners would deal with a currency collapse, what I come back to is that it depends on how quick and aggressive the debasement is and what measures the government takes (debt forgiveness, UBI etc). Argentina’s case has always surprised me in its longevity, 90 years ago they where the 7th largest/debt free economy and considered developed. Things went sideways for about 40 years until the 1970 junta saddled the country with a large IMF foreign debt then neoliberalism, socialism and low taxes sealed the deal.
As far as the west goes we haven’t seen hard times since the Great Depression so how will we adapt to a long emergency and de-growth situation? Very poorly to say the least.
As per your post, I was trying to recall times I have witnessed or felt the euphoria you described of the people who got the jab. Combination of FOMO and release from fear. I had similar feelings at the party the night before graduation of a grueling three year course.
Champagne friends bragged of big party on the float,
You envied all the luggage they did tote,
You rushed in a panic
Snagged the last ticket on the Titanic,
Some days you should just miss the boat.
The economy is kind of a joke.
Soon it will go up in smoke.
So build up your homestead.
And grow the wheat for your bread.
And laugh while the grifters go broke.
I hope this one comes true!
Nicely done, Kunga!
Steve - sorry about your father-in-law’s family - simply tragic!
Sebastian: the Liberal Party of Canada just approved UBI at their policy convention this past weekend. It will be a slow decent to hell (until its not). And ya, we in the western developed nations have no idea what real hardship is…for many hardship is having to put their cell phone down for 5 minutes and actually conduct a conversation without glancing at the phone… talk about mission impossible.
I do not know real hardship either, having led a classic middle class life. Am preparing for the worst, but unlikely to be able to fully fathom the significant breakdowns we are likely to experience in the not too distant future, if things play out with the vaccines and Great Reset in the manner anticipated by many here. I am typing the words but increasingly at a loss as to what to say… it is surreal, yet real…
I guess on some level we just have to accept that we have no real control over things.
My fears of ADE are not “well informed”. Just Chris mentioning it is a theoretical problem that was also a real problem with the early attempts at mRNA vaccines created for the original SARS. It sounded like those tests went really badly actually.
So it worries me that the subject is not broached at all now in the “respectable press”. It guess there is an outside chance that the researchers cracked that nut and they have just decided the public is too stupid to understand the issue anyway. Ive seen this many times where authority refuses to condescend to talk to mortals which leads to all kinds of speculation.
But deep down, after everything Ive seen since Covid started, I think they are throwing these vaccines out and praying. They didn’t secure that immunity from lawsuits for no reason.
All we can do is hope that serious ADE is limited to a small percentage of people I guess. I’m barely old enough to remember the cold war but I remember a lot of people saying “Maybe the Nukes will fly and maybe they won’t”. Not only was that good enough for people. It had to be good enough.
FWIW:
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/91648
Scientists say that ADE is pretty much a non-issue with COVID-19 vaccines, but what are they basing this on?
From the early stages of COVID-19 vaccine development, scientists sought to target a SARS-CoV-2 protein that was least likely to cause ADE. For example, when they found out that targeting the nucleoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 might cause ADE, they quickly abandoned that approach. The safest route seemed to be targeting the S2 subunit of the spike protein, and they ran with that, wrote Derek Lowe, PhD, in his Science Translational Medicine blog “In the Pipeline.”
Scientists designed animal studies to look for ADE. They looked for it in human trials, and they’ve been looking for it in the real-world data for COVID-19 vaccines with emergency use authorization. So far, they haven’t seen signs of it. In fact, the opposite is happening, Lowe noted.
“[W]hat seems to be beyond doubt is that the vaccinated subjects, over and over, show up with no severe coronavirus cases and no hospitalizations. That is the opposite of what you would expect if ADE were happening,” he wrote.
Furthermore, ADE is an acute problem, and it can be very dramatic. If it was an issue with these vaccines, we would have spotted it by now, said Brian Lichty, PhD, an associate professor in pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster University in Toronto.
“It’ll kill you quickly. In all the places I’m aware of ADE happening, it is an acute, mostly cytokine-driven event,” he told MedPage Today.
The one exception may be an inactivated whole-cell, or “killed,” vaccine developed by China. That vaccine uses alum, the same adjuvant that was used in the measles and RSV vaccines that caused ADE in the 1960s. The Chinese inactivated whole-cell vaccine could “conceivably” generate ADE like those older vaccines, according to Bloom.
“I don’t think that vaccine is ever going to see the light of day in the U.S., and it may not even be worth mentioning. There have been no actual cases of ADE with the Chinese whole-cell killed vaccine, or if so, it hasn’t been reported,” he said.
What About Variants?
Current COVID-19 vaccines were developed to protect against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 that became dominant worldwide. As more variants arise, scientists have raised questions about whether one of these could become different enough to cause ADE. So far, that concern seems to be hypothetical, according to Lichty.
“To date, there’s really no evidence of ADE with the COVID-19 vaccines. It’s all theoretical,” he said. “I think all the evidence so far is that ADE is not turning out to be a problem with any existing vaccines or viral variants.”
One reason could be that SARS-CoV-2 just may not affect macrophages in a way that can produce ADE, although scientists are still working out the details. ADE has been reported after natural infection with other viruses, such as HIV, Ebola, and coxsackievirus, as well as other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS.
Throughout the pandemic, scientists have been looking for ADE associated with SARS-CoV-2, but so far they haven’t found any cases of it, noted Lichty.
“This coronavirus may already be sufficiently adapted to humans, so that if it does get into macrophages via a non-neutralizing antibody interaction, it may not allow the macrophage to produce enough cytokine to cause an obvious pathology,” he said.
Newer Vaccines Are Safer
Despite hesitancy about the relative newness of mRNA and adenoviral vector vaccines, these vaccines, in fact, have better safety profiles in terms of ADE than older types of vaccines, according to Bloom.
“The bottom line is that not only is the new technology faster to respond to a new viral pandemic, but so much safer and much more clearly scientifically designed,” he said. “The S protein vaccines are so much cleaner, so much more carefully defined, and so much lower risk. All you’re seeing is one protein from that virus. So the chances for ADE are much slimmer than with any of the older ways for making virus vaccines.”
Adam just had an interview with Ed B. the creator of the Chapwood Index. However, the website for the index is no more. What’s up?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/infected-after-covid-vaccination-cdc-numbers-breakthrough-infections-2021-4%3Famp
Where the 74 deaths previously part of the number of hospitalizations? Are the hospitalizations and deaths from the vaccine, is it ADE, or is it covid? If the vaccine doesn’t prevent covid, how do we know which one it is, the tests will be positive. I have a feeling they will keep saying the deaths are from covid, to not admit possible ADE or vaccine death. If the numbers keep increasing, I think it’s something to watch. Other countries as well.
Is there another way to look for ADE other than in breakthrough cases?
You will not find it at www.chapwoodindex.com, but you will find it at www.chapwoodindex.org. The site seems to be up and running as usual.
Scary times!