“Well, you know what you can do with that pipe dream now, don't you?”
The Iceman Cometh; Eugene O'Neill (1939)
The data concerning SARS-CoV-2 genetic vaccine safety and effectiveness are coming in fast and furious. Time for a news roundup.
Hope is a marketing slogan, not a basis for mandating Federal public health policy compliance.
Starting at the top, many have long been troubled by the “what in heavens name were they thinking?” question regarding the White House Coronavirus Task Force circa 2020. Just to recap, the chairperson for the task force was U.S. vice president Mike Pence, and Dr. Deborah Birx (a former Fauci post-doctoral trainee) was named the response coordinator. Dr. Birx, who has retired from her decades as a public servant, was brought to testify on the hill on June 23 of 2022 before the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, which is led by Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C). It appears that the intention had been to provide Dr. Birx an opportunity to refute the allegations of Dr. Scott Atlas, MD in his new book “A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America”.
Here is an excerpt from the book synopsis provided by the publisher:
“When Dr. Scott W. Atlas was tapped by Donald Trump to join his COVID Task Force, he was immediately thrust into a maelstrom of scientific disputes, policy debates, raging egos, politically motivated lies, and cynical media manipulation. Numerous myths and distortions surround the Trump Administration’s handling of the crisis, and many pressing questions remain unanswered. Did the Trump team really bungle the response to the pandemic? Were the right decisions made about travel restrictions, lockdowns, and mask mandates? Are Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx competent medical experts or timeserving bureaucrats? Did half a million people really die unnecessarily because of Trump’s incompetence?
In this unfiltered insider account, Dr. Scott Atlas brings us directly into the White House, describes the key players in the crisis, and assigns credit and blame where it is deserved.
The book includes shocking evaluations of the Task Force members’ limited knowledge and grasp of the science of COVID and details heated discussions with Task Force members, including all of the most controversial episodes that dominated headlines for weeks. Dr. Atlas tells the truth about the science and documents the media’s relentless campaign to suffocate it, which included canceled interviews, journalists’ off-camera hostility in White House briefings, and intentional distortion of facts. He also provides an inside account of the delays and timelines involving vaccines and other treatments, evaluates the impact of the lockdowns on American public health, and indicts the relentless war on truth waged by Big Business and Big Tech.”
Before Dr. Birx had a chance to speak, Representative Jim Jordan (R, OH) asked,
“Dr. Birx, why should Americans believe anything the government says about COVID? I mean, last summer, President Biden said this quote, ‘You’re not going to get COVID. If you have these vaccinations. If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the ICU.
Doctor Birx, can vaccinated people get COVID? Have vaccinated people been hospitalized with COVID?”
Birx answered yes to both questions. Vaccinated people can get COVID, and vaccinated people have been hospitalized with COVID. As I covered recently in another article, the data are irrefutable, and furthermore in most countries with intact reporting systems, the majority of people hospitalized and dying with COVID are vaccinated. The genetic vaccines do not stop infection, replication, or spread of the Omicron variants. They are not fulfilling their intended purpose.
Representative Jordan then proceeded:
“According to your testimony, it wasn’t just President Biden who said things that were not accurate or not true. Your testimony, that you provided the committee, you said beginning in 2021, the beginning in the Biden administration, again, these are your words, ‘agencies provided muddled and contradicting information or partial information that implied we knew something we didn’t, which they later had to correct, which accelerated the loss of respect and trust in the federal government.’
So I’ll come back to my original question, why should we believe anything the government tells us about COVID?”
I really do not enjoy saying “I told you so”, but there it is. Reality bites.
Here is Dr. Birx’ answer to that key question:
“I knew that people who were naturally infected were getting reinfected. And that was quite evident from South Africa. And I’ve included it in my slides. But I think the reason I knew that is, South Africa did a remarkably good job in measuring baseline antibody with their first cert. And so they knew 50, 60, 70% of some of their population had been reinfected.”
Note the deflection? She did not actually address the question.
Rep. Jordan replied:
“Wow. When the government told us that the vaccinated couldn’t be transmitted, was that a lie? Or was that a guess? Or is it the same answer?”
To which Dr. Birx responded:
“I think they were hoping, but you should know in those original phase three trials that were done in this country, that we only measured for symptomatic disease. So we weren’t proactively testing everybody in those trials to see if they got infected with mild or asymptomatic disease. And so people had to present within the clinical trial. We never had the data that it was going to protect against asymptomatic diseases.”
Again, more deflection wrapped in an excuse.
OK, just to put a fork in it and call it done, this means that the fact that the vaccines were not effective at preventing infection, replication, and transmission of the virus were known to the Response Coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force during the Trump administration, and furthermore, Dr. Birx explicitly acknowledged that the clinical trials were not designed to assess whether the genetic vaccines could enable herd immunity (to achieve which requires a product that can block or seriously reduce transmissibility of the pathogen). Therefore, these facts were known by Dr. Birx well before the time when the Washington Post was accusing me of being a liar for stating precisely this truth on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Of course Youtube has deleted videos of that speech, but it can still be found on Rumble, and the prepared text is still available here.
Suffice to say, Hope concerning effectiveness of a vaccine using previously untested genetic modification technology is not sufficient justification for federal action to block early treatment options, mandate administration of unlicensed Emergency Use authorized vaccine product candidate to all members of the US Military, mandate administration of said product to airline personnel, mandate administration to federal employees and contractors, mandate administration to hospital employees, and attempting to mandate administration to private sector employees. There is no clause concerning Hope as an indicator of efficacy or effectiveness in the Emergency Use Authorization statute 21 U.S. Code § 360bbb–3.
Just to reinforce the point, the US Constitution does not mention regulation of public health or medical practice as a Federal Government role or responsibility, and therefore the right to manage public health and medical practice practices vests with the States, not with unelected federal bureaucrats such as Dr. Birx and her mentor Dr. Fauci.
There must be accountability and restitution for the damages incurred to those who were mandated by the US Federal Government to receive the unlicensed, Emergency Use Authorized products.
Moving on to other news…
Nature magazine, arguably one of the three most prestigious scientific journals in the world, has come out with three important new additions which advance understanding of the current state of the COVIDcrisis.
First, the recent review written with informed laypersons and non-specialist scientists and in mind:
What Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 variants mean for the pandemic
The lineages’ rise seems to stem from their ability to infect people who were immune to earlier forms of Omicron and other variants.
23 June 2022 by Ewen Callaway
Mere weeks after the variant’s BA.2 lineage caused surges globally, two more Omicron spin-offs are on the rise worldwide. First spotted by scientists in South Africa in April and linked to a subsequent rise in cases there, BA.4 and BA.5 are the newest members of Omicron’s growing family of coronavirus subvariants. They have been detected in dozens of countries worldwide.
The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants are spiking globally because they can spread faster than other circulating variants — mostly BA.2, which caused a surge in cases at the beginning of the year. But so far, the latest Omicron variants seem to be causing fewer deaths and hospitalizations than their older cousins — a sign that growing population immunity is tempering the immediate consequences of COVID-19 surges.
In answer to the question “why are these variants spreading globally”;
“the rise of BA.4 and BA.5 seems to stem…, from their capacity to infect people who were immune to earlier forms of Omicron and other variants, says Christian Althaus, a computational epidemiologist at the University of Bern. With most of the world outside Asia doing little to control SARS-CoV-2, the rise — and inevitable fall — of BA.4 and BA.5 will be driven almost entirely by population immunity, Althaus adds, with cases increasing when protection lulls and falling only when enough people have been infected.
On the basis of the rise of BA.5 in Switzerland — where BA.4 prevalence is low — Althaus estimates that about 15% of people there will get infected. But countries are now likely to have distinct immune profiles because their histories of COVID-19 waves and vaccination rates differ, Althaus adds. As a result, the sizes of BA.4 and BA.5 waves will vary from place to place. “It might be 5% in some countries and 30% in others. It all depends on their immunity profile,” he says.”
What impact will BA.4 and BA.5 have on society?
“In Portugal — where COVID-19 vaccination and boosting rates are very high — the levels of death and hospitalization associated with the latest wave are similar to those in the first Omicron wave (although still nothing like the impact caused by earlier variants).
One explanation for the difference could be Portugal’s demographics, says Althaus. “The more elderly people you have, the more severe disease.” Jassat thinks that the nature of a country’s immunity can also explain varying outcomes. About half of adult South Africans have been vaccinated, and just 5% have taken up a booster. But this, combined with sky-high infection rates from earlier COVID-19 waves, has erected a wall of ‘hybrid immunity’ that offers strong protection against severe disease, particularly in older people, who are the most likely to have been vaccinated, she adds.”
How well do vaccines work against the variants?
“Lab studies consistently suggest that antibodies triggered by vaccination are less effective at blocking BA.4 and BA.5 than they are at blocking earlier Omicron strains, including BA.1 and BA.22–6. This could leave even vaccinated and boosted people vulnerable to multiple Omicron infections, scientists say. Even people with hybrid immunity, stemming from vaccination and previous infection with Omicron BA.1, produce antibodies that struggle to incapacitate BA.4 and BA.5. Research teams have attributed that to the variants’ L452R and F486V spike mutations.
One explanation for this is the observation that BA.1 infection after vaccination seems to trigger infection-blocking ‘neutralizing’ antibodies that recognize the ancestral strain of SARS-CoV-2 (the one that vaccines are based on) better than they recognize Omicron variants2,7. “Infection with BA.1 does induce a neutralizing antibody response, but it appears to be a little bit narrower than one would expect,” leaving people susceptible to immune-escaping variants such BA.4 and BA.5, says Ravindra Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge, UK.”
Based on the published peer-reviewed studies that I have been reading lately, I conclude that the problem is a bit more profound that Dr. Gupta indicates. The viral variants appear to be evolving to exploit aspects of the immunologic phenomenon of “immune imprinting”.
What will come next?
“Increasingly, scientists think that variants including Omicron and Alpha probably originated from months-long chronic SARS-CoV-2 infections, in which sets of immune-evading and transmissibility-boosting mutations can build up. But the longer Omicron and its offshoots continue to dominate, the less likely it is that a totally new variant will emerge from a chronic infection, says Mahan Ghafari, who researches viral evolution at the University of Oxford, UK.”
And those chronic infections seem to be occurring in the immunologically compromised and the fraction (30% to 60%, depending in part on how long since last dose) of vaccinated-then-infected persons that are susceptible (for whatever reason) to frequent re-infection by Omicron variants.
“To succeed, future variants will have to evade immunity. But they could come with other worrying properties. Sato’s team found that BA.4 and BA.5 were deadlier in hamsters than was BA.2, and better able to infect cultured lung cells6. Epidemiology studies, such as the one led by Jassat, suggest that successive COVID-19 waves are getting milder. But this trend should not be taken for granted, Sato cautions. Viruses don’t necessarily evolve to become less deadly.”
As Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, DMV, PhD has been darkly warning for some time now.
"It’s also unclear when the next variant will appear. BA.4 and BA.5 started emerging in South Africa only a few months after BA.1 and BA.2, a pattern now being repeated in places including the United Kingdom and United States. But as global immunity from repeated vaccination and infection builds, Althaus expects the frequency of SARS-CoV-2 waves to slow down.
One possible future for SARS-CoV-2 is that it will become like the other four seasonal coronaviruses, the levels of which ebb and flow with the seasons, usually peaking in winter and typically reinfecting people every three years or so, Althaus says. “The big question is whether symptoms will become milder and milder and whether issues with long COVID will slowly disappear,” he says. “If it stays like it is now, then it will be a serious public-health problem.”
Other recent “Nature” branded papers which merit reading and consideration include:
Clinical outcomes associated with SARS-CoV-2 Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant and BA.1/BA.1.1 or BA.2 subvariant infection in southern California
“Epidemiologic surveillance has revealed decoupling of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths from case counts following emergence of the Omicron (B.1.1.529) SARS-CoV-2 variant globally.”
Basically, that means that Omicron appears to be less severe compared to prior. But is this true for one of the newer Omicron variants (BA.2), or is that one worse?
“Infections with the Omicron BA.2 subvariant were not associated with differential risk of severe outcomes in comparison to BA.1/BA.1.1 subvariant infections.”
So there is the answer to that question. So what?
“Lower risk of severe clinical outcomes among cases with Omicron variant infection should inform public health response amid establishment of the Omicron variant as the dominant SARS-CoV-2 lineage globally.”
In other words, it is time to change public health policies to reflect the new reality.
What about the newer Omicron variants?
BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 escape antibodies elicited by Omicron infection
“SARS-CoV-2 Omicron sublineages BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 exhibit higher transmissibility over BA.21. The new variants’ receptor binding and immune evasion capability require immediate investigation. Here, coupled with Spike structural comparisons, we show that BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/BA.5 exhibit comparable ACE2-binding affinities to BA.2.”
“Our results indicate that Omicron may evolve mutations to evade the humoral immunity elicited by BA.1 infection, suggesting that BA.1-derived vaccine boosters may not achieve broad-spectrum protection against new Omicron variants.”
To be blunt, now may be the time to relax restrictions, and we definitely need to stop administering leaky vaccines to everyone that can be compelled or enticed to accept same, but absolutely not the time to celebrate victory and spike the ball. Vigilance is going to be required for the foreseeable future.
Then, from Childrens Health Defense, we have this article revealing why the CDC has missed the largest vaccine safety signal in history. Basically, by not looking for it in their own database.
CDC Admits It Never Monitored VAERS for COVID Vaccine Safety Signals
In response to a Freedom of Information Request submitted by Children’s Health Defense, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week admitted it never analyzed the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System for safety signals for COVID-19 vaccines.
June 21, 2022 by Josh Guetzkow, Ph.D.
“In a stunning development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week admitted — despite assurances to the contrary — the agency never analyzed the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) for safety signals for COVID-19 vaccines.
The admission was revealed in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by Children’s Health Defense (CHD).”
This one, based on preliminary scientific reports, may reflect “The Guardian” fearporn, but it bears close monitoring for additional developments:
New omicron variants target lungs and escape antibodies
Preliminary research from the University of Tokyo has sparked a debate about whether the newest omicron variants are of great concern or not
June 22, 2022 By Gitanjali Poonia
“The risk that strains BA.4 and BA.5 pose “to global health is potentially greater than that of original BA.2,” said Dr. Kei Sato, the study’s lead author, per The Guardian.
“It looks as though these things are switching back to the more dangerous form of infection, so going lower down in the lung,” said Dr. Stephen Griffin, a virologist at the University of Leeds, per the report.”
Here is the source pre-print article:
Virological characteristics of the novel SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variants including BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5
“After the global spread of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.2 lineage, some BA.2-related variants that acquire mutations in the L452 residue of spike protein, such as BA.2.9.1 and BA.2.13 (L452M), BA.2.12.1 (L452Q), and BA.2.11, BA.4 and BA.5 (L452R), emerged in multiple countries. Our statistical analysis showed that the effective reproduction numbers of these L452R/M/Q-bearing BA.2-related Omicron variants are greater than that of the original BA.2. Neutralization experiments revealed that the immunity induced by BA.1 and BA.2 infections is less effective against BA.4/5. Cell culture experiments showed that BA.2.12.1 and BA.4/5 replicate more efficiently in human alveolar epithelial cells than BA.2, and particularly, BA.4/5 is more fusogenic than BA.2. Furthermore, infection experiments using hamsters indicated that BA.4/5 is more pathogenic than BA.2. Altogether, our multiscale investigations suggest that the risk of L452R/M/Q-bearing BA.2-related Omicron variants, particularly BA.4 and BA.5, to global health is potentially greater than that of original BA.2.”
And from the New England Journal of Medicine, we have this little gem, with a conclusion written to be as supportive of the approved narrative as possible, but the data are the data..
Effects of Previous Infection and Vaccination on Symptomatic Omicron
Infections
“RESULTS
The effectiveness of previous infection alone against symptomatic BA.2 infection was 46.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 39.5 to 51.9). The effectiveness of vaccination with two doses of BNT162b2 and no previous infection was negligible (−1.1%; 95% CI, −7.1 to 4.6), but nearly all persons had received their second dose more than 6 months earlier. The effectiveness of three doses of BNT162b2 and no previous infection was 52.2% (95% CI, 48.1 to 55.9). The effectiveness of previous infection and two doses of BNT162b2 was 55.1% (95% CI, 50.9 to 58.9), and the effectiveness of previous infection and three doses of BNT162b2 was 77.3% (95% CI, 72.4 to 81.4). Previous infection alone, BNT162b2 vaccination alone, and hybrid immunity all showed strong effectiveness (>70%) against severe, critical, or fatal Covid-19 due to BA.2 infection. Similar results were observed in analyses of effectiveness against BA.1 infection and of vaccination with mRNA-1273.
CONCLUSIONS
No discernible differences in protection against symptomatic BA.1 and BA.2 infection were seen with previous infection, vaccination, and hybrid immunity. Vaccination enhanced protection among persons who had had a previous infection. Hybrid immunity resulting from previous infection and recent booster vaccination conferred the strongest protection.”
“This study was huge in scale, sifting through data collected from over 100,000 people infected by the Omicron variant. It lends credibility to the statistical significance of the findings, which are absolutely startling. Here are the key points:
Those who have been "fully vaccinated" with two shots from Moderna or Pfizer are more likely to contract Covid-19 than those who have not been vaccinated at all
Booster shots offer protection approximately equal to natural immunity, but the benefits wane after 2-5 months
Natural immunity lasts for at least 300-days, which is the length of the study; it likely lasts much longer”
“The authors of the study found that those who had a prior infection but no vaccination had a 46.1 and 50 percent immunity against the two subvariants of the Omicron variant, even at an interval of more than 300 days since the previous infection.
However, individuals who received two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine but had no previous infection, were found with negative immunity against both BA.1 and BA.2 Omicron subvariants, indicating an increased risk of contracting COVID-19 than an average person.
Over six months after getting two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, immunity against any Omicron infection dropped to -3.4 percent. But for two doses of the Moderna vaccine, immunity against any Omicron infection dropped to -10.3 percent after more than six months since the last injection.
Though the authors reported that three doses of the Pfizer vaccine increased immunity to over 50 percent, this was measured just over 40 days after the third vaccination, which is a very short interval. In comparison, natural immunity persisted at around 50 percent when measured over 300 days after the previous infection, while immunity levels fell to negative figures 270 days after the second dose of vaccine.
These figures indicate a risk of waning immunity for the third vaccine dose as time progresses.
The findings are supported by another recent study from Israel that also found natural immunity waned significantly more slowly compared to artificial, or vaccinated, immunity. The study found that both natural and artificial immunity waned over time.
Individuals that were previously infected but not vaccinated had half the risks of reinfection as compared to those that were vaccinated with two doses but not infected.
“Natural immunity wins again,” Dr. Martin Adel Makary, a public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Twitter, referring to the Israeli study.
“Among persons who had been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, protection against reinfection decreased as the time increased,” the authors concluded, “however, this protection was higher” than protection conferred in the same time interval through two doses of the vaccine.”
The truth will out. We just need to set it free, and it will defend itself. The lion abides.
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