Lying, or just plain stupid?
- Thread starter mohoosier
- Start date
It's the virus, stupid.
Eric Topol
22 hr ago
When the vaccines were first introduced in December 2020, the virus they were designed against was altogether different from what it is today. SARS-CoV-2 had little substantive functional evolution from late 2019 until we saw the Alpha variant in the first months of 2021. It was, in retrospect, an easy target with a fraction of the immune escape and transmissibility that we are dealing with now. Had the virus not subsequently evolved so profoundly, its containment would have been straightforward and we wouldn’t be talking about a pandemic right now in the present tense. Breakthrough and reinfections wouldn’t be commonplace. Population-level (“herd”) immunity would have been possible. The 95% efficacy of the mRNA vaccines against symptomatic infections, hospitalizations and deaths, exhibited waning in latter half of 2021, during the Delta wave, but was fully restored with a 3rd shot. Reinfections were less than 1%. We were prevailing over the virus.
Indeed, in 2021 more than 20 million deaths were prevented by vaccines as shown below and vaccines are substantially adding to that life-saving capacity in 2022.
But let me emphasize: the culprit in all of this isn’t our vaccines, which are now providing little to no protection against infections and transmission. They are damn leaky, which only arose from the emergence of Omicron and has gotten progressively worse as we moved to BA.5 . It’s the virus. That’s why we’ve started to see a crack in protection vs. severe disease from vaccines with boosters, as I previously reviewed (boiling frog metaphor). It’s that we have not gotten ahead of the immune escape properties of virus with a bolstered mucosal immunity strategy—local IgA, neutralizing antibodies in the upper airway—via nasal or oral vaccines to solidify our 2nd layer of defense. Or inhaled interferons to jack up our first line of defense. Or developing a variant-proof vaccine.
As anyone who follows me on twitter knows I have been very critical of the CDC, White House, and FDA for their management of the pandemic. But to pin the deaths on the current administration, such as below, solely on the basis of poor management, is off-base. It’s primarily that the virus had been morphing to far more challenging versions. Poor management and full reliance on the original vaccine success (“vaccine only strategy”) are certainly contributing factors.
for the full article speaking the truth, see:
Eric Topol
22 hr ago
When the vaccines were first introduced in December 2020, the virus they were designed against was altogether different from what it is today. SARS-CoV-2 had little substantive functional evolution from late 2019 until we saw the Alpha variant in the first months of 2021. It was, in retrospect, an easy target with a fraction of the immune escape and transmissibility that we are dealing with now. Had the virus not subsequently evolved so profoundly, its containment would have been straightforward and we wouldn’t be talking about a pandemic right now in the present tense. Breakthrough and reinfections wouldn’t be commonplace. Population-level (“herd”) immunity would have been possible. The 95% efficacy of the mRNA vaccines against symptomatic infections, hospitalizations and deaths, exhibited waning in latter half of 2021, during the Delta wave, but was fully restored with a 3rd shot. Reinfections were less than 1%. We were prevailing over the virus.
Indeed, in 2021 more than 20 million deaths were prevented by vaccines as shown below and vaccines are substantially adding to that life-saving capacity in 2022.
But let me emphasize: the culprit in all of this isn’t our vaccines, which are now providing little to no protection against infections and transmission. They are damn leaky, which only arose from the emergence of Omicron and has gotten progressively worse as we moved to BA.5 . It’s the virus. That’s why we’ve started to see a crack in protection vs. severe disease from vaccines with boosters, as I previously reviewed (boiling frog metaphor). It’s that we have not gotten ahead of the immune escape properties of virus with a bolstered mucosal immunity strategy—local IgA, neutralizing antibodies in the upper airway—via nasal or oral vaccines to solidify our 2nd layer of defense. Or inhaled interferons to jack up our first line of defense. Or developing a variant-proof vaccine.
As anyone who follows me on twitter knows I have been very critical of the CDC, White House, and FDA for their management of the pandemic. But to pin the deaths on the current administration, such as below, solely on the basis of poor management, is off-base. It’s primarily that the virus had been morphing to far more challenging versions. Poor management and full reliance on the original vaccine success (“vaccine only strategy”) are certainly contributing factors.
for the full article speaking the truth, see:
Scientists are routinely asked to extrapolate from incomplete data and make a recommendation. That is fraught with errors and assumptions. You also don't know how the pathogen will mutate, since it is a 100% random process.
If SARS-COV2 had not been able to make so many spike protein mutations and remain infective, the original jabs (which only target the original spike protein sequence) would have prevented all future symptomatic illness in the vaccinated population. But the virus broke through. Moreover, vaccination rates were so low that it broke through faster and more repeatedly than if vaccine compliance had been higher. The "wait and see" attitude was COSTLY.
It's neither lying nor stupidity, it was a reasonable recommendation paired with some bad luck and poor compliance of the patient population.
If SARS-COV2 had not been able to make so many spike protein mutations and remain infective, the original jabs (which only target the original spike protein sequence) would have prevented all future symptomatic illness in the vaccinated population. But the virus broke through. Moreover, vaccination rates were so low that it broke through faster and more repeatedly than if vaccine compliance had been higher. The "wait and see" attitude was COSTLY.
It's neither lying nor stupidity, it was a reasonable recommendation paired with some bad luck and poor compliance of the patient population.
Dr. Deborah Birx as of yesterday:
"I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection and I think we overplayed the vaccines."
"Let's be very clear, 50% of the people who died from the omicron surge were older, vaccinated."
"I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection and I think we overplayed the vaccines."
"Let's be very clear, 50% of the people who died from the omicron surge were older, vaccinated."
A new modeling study published in Lancet from the Imperial College of London estimates that COVID-19 vaccines saved nearly 20 million lives around the world in their first year of availability.
Using data from 185 countries, researchers estimated that vaccines saved 4.2 million lives in India, 1.9 million in the U.S., 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom. The findings were published last Thursday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The results “quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines,” said study leader Oliver Watson of Imperial College in London
Link: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext#
Using data from 185 countries, researchers estimated that vaccines saved 4.2 million lives in India, 1.9 million in the U.S., 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom. The findings were published last Thursday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.
The results “quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines,” said study leader Oliver Watson of Imperial College in London
Link: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext#
No matter what the vaccine has or has not done those statements by Biden or Fauci were never true. There were vaccinated people getting reinfected from the beginning.
We were wasting vaccine based on the erroneous guidelines. We had a math problem.
Mutation was always more likely than not.
Mutation was ineveitable, but what type of mutation was unpredictable. The spike protein binding to ACE2 was the front door to infection and it seemed unlikely that it would be so easy to mutate around. It was a surprise.
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