Lots of misinformation out there still.
On Vaccinations
We know that vaccinations help reduce severity of Covid to keep people out of the hospital, and we know their effectiveness wanes after a few months so boosters are needed at least every six months. In Ontario, they've decided the next shot will be for over 65 and immunocompromised only, but the CBC spun it like this:
"Too many people need serious medical care for flu, Covid when we can prevent it, WHO says. The National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) released guidance on offering an additional dose of Covid-19 vaccines in the spring for people at high risk of severe illness from the pandemic virus."
See what they did there? They made it seem like the next booster of XBB coming in six month will be given in addition to the one people are getting right now for certain people, as an extra, as if those in the know haven't been scrambling to get vaccinated every six months already. An alternative media explanation could look like this:
"Don't expect to get another vaccination despite how well they can help keep you out of the hospital! The NACI has decided to restrict the spring booster to only about 20% of the population despite vaccine protection waning within months. It's unclear if the vaccines on offer right now will be the last that are accessible by the general public."
On All That Coughing:
The CBC also posted a video about the onslaught of nuisance coughing that lasts for months or over a year. Matthew Kupfer nterviewed Dr. Alykhan Abdulla, who explained the ongoing coughing and sore throat:
"These are all different manifestations of the virus affecting and damaging tissue in our nose in our sinuses in our throat in bronchial tubes. Normally a respiratory virus will cause an infection in your airways. Your immune system responds with the symptoms. . . . But some symptoms linger as your body tries to clean up after the virus has been flushed out."
Except Covid isn't a respiratory virus. It's vascular, travelling through the bloodstream, which is why it affects so many organs besides the lungs.
Then they talked to Earl Brown, who said,
"Some people, especially kids, have been left with what's called immunity debt. . . . Covid measures like masking, distancing, and staying home meant people didn't get sick as often and their immune systems are out of practice. We're going to have more infections among the population this year partly because our immune systems haven't been stimulated by this group of infectious agents going over the last 3-4 years. It's a bad time for our immune systems to be out of practice."
What. The actual. Fuck.
Haven't we done this one already?? People pulled this line of reasoning that we need to get sick more in order to stop getting sick so much, and it felt like the immune-system-as-a-muscle bullshit was suitably destroyed with piles and piles of evidence until we didn't here about it as much. Now it's back.
I was hoping xkcd would date their work - they don't - but this is at least a couple years old:
Here's some immunity debt debunking here, and I compiled a long list of explanations here, mainly from June to December 2022.
The CBC video also proposes honey and turmeric for the cough, but no mention is made of maybe preventing the virus by wearing a mask or cleaning the air.
On Compromised Medical Professionals
It's fascinating to find medical professionals on both side of this. It seems that at least some have been compromised, like the infamous Dr. Tedros walking back his open admission that the virus is airborne, which could have saved many lives. That was the first obvious case of undue influence affecting the truth on offer to the public. Several others seem to have a different understanding of how it all works, despite research to the contrary.
Dr. Ashish Jha, former White House Covid-19 response coordinator, recently said,
"There's a lot of bad information out there about how covid damages the immune system. It really doesn't. But you know what does? Measles. And thanks to the antivaxers, we are seeing measles outbreaks again. Encourage people to get their kids vaccinated. It's really important. . . . Transient lymphocytopenia after infection isn't immune damage. Folks with Long Covid can have immune dysregulation. Not same as being immunocompromised. Covid still serious for vulnerable folks, especially those not up to date on vaccines. For most, not immune damaging disease."
Innovation has always relied on mavericks willing to buck the trend, and I'd love for them to be right, but the evidence that Covid harms the immune system is really piling up.
It's true that measles may wipe out immune protection for other diseases, and, just for some context, the increase in measles started in 2019, before specific Covid-19 anti-vax campaigns got going. Studies have found that,
"For individuals who survive an initial measles attack, the virus increases their vulnerability to all kinds of other infections for months--possibly even years--after they recover."
And maybe it's just a matter of semantics. The effect in measles appears to be as transient as in Covid, both lasting months or years. When Dr. Jha says Covid doesn't damage the immune system, but does lead to dysregulation it seems to imply that a dysregulated immune system isn't damaged. So, is it the case that a dysregulated immune system works just as well as one unaffected by Covid??
Scott Gottlieb, MD, said,
"Important new study, published today in journal Nature, shows that in people who suffer persistent symptoms of Covid, it may be driven by immune dysregulation where a large disconnect between B and T cell function results in a persistent inflammatory state."
A prior study published in the journal Cell and discussed in a Time article found,
"Innate immune cells remain altered for at least a year after infection. . . . The innate immune system is the body's first line of defense, made up of general pathogen-fighting cells that are designed to recognize and fight off all kids of pathogens."Finally, Pedros Lérias takes the term "dysregulates" to task as a way to minimize the disease:
"If an immune cell isn't responding properly because of an attack, it isn't dysfunctional, it's outright damaged. SARS2 persistence keeps the immune system under attack, damaging it and preventing it from working properly. . . . Saying 'immune dysregulation' or 'dysfuntion' is, to me, a form of minimisation of SARS2 chronic damage as it leaves out the clarification that they do not refer to primary intrinsic mechanisms."
And the big question is, who benefits from reducing access to vaccines and minimizing the effects of Covid? At best, it's a frugal government worried about spending and misinformed about the damage that can be caused when Covid hits the brain. But at worst...?
***
Well-fitting N95s reduce transmission by about 95% - even higher if everyone wears them; cleaning the air helps by about 30%, and vaccines reduces hospitalization by 60%. Put together, we could ALL be 99.999% protected from this mess and more! We don't have to get sick every winter; it's a choice.
2 comments:
That Earl Brown quote is quite something. Apart from everything else, protective measures ended 2 years ago! Two years! If there was such a thing as immunity debt, we'd have paid it by now.
On vaccines: NACI said the exact same thing last year, and Ontario emphasized the same (that those at high risk should get it), but if you read the fine print (literally; it was buried in a PDF), it was actually available to anyone who wanted it (six months after previous vaccine). Hopefully that's the case this year too.
I'm hoping the vaccine restriction has some small print for those of us trying to get them every six months!
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