Covid19mathblog.com

Big news supreme court strikes down Biden vaccine mandates for businesses over 100 employees – https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-vaccine-mandate-eb5899ae1fe5b62b6f4d51f54a3cd375?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter&s=09

Many will think this is a vaccine case – but it’s not – it is once again an argument for the balance of power. Congress CAN pass this requirement and it would be law. The President is an executive branch – he cannot make laws. The supreme court does not think OSHA was created with this overwhelming power. If you think about what they can do now in terms of mandating fire extinguishers, safety hats, etc… all those things can be left at the workplace at the end of the day. You cant leave your vaccine at the office. And not all people have the same health/lifestyle – some could be more suspect to adverse effects (Zoster, Heart issues, etc…)

Back in December given the vaccines inability to reduce transmission became very obvious the thought that the vaccine was acting more as a primer to the immune system – I hypothesized given the common cold is also a coronavirus that the common cold virus could also act as an immune system primer – I proposed a 4 method trial in Dec https://covid19mathblog.com/2021/12/covid-12-27-21/ to understand how effective the vaccine really is a booster to the immune system. “Need a study of four categories – Vaccine, Cold Virus, Therapeutics for Immune System (Vitamin D, C etc…), Placebo (Saline/Water)”

Now there is a small study to support my hypothesis – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27674-x

“Despite mass deployment of effective vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, correlates of protection against infection remain unknown. Exposure to SARS-CoV-2 does not universally result in infection and pre-existing T cells, primed by endemic human coronaviruses (huCoVs), might mediate protection in SARS-CoV-2-naive persons. Studies to date have described the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive T cells in naive healthy controls1,2,3,4 and in hospitalised COVID-19 patients5,6. However, no study yet describes an association of cross-reactive T cells with outcome after SARS-CoV-2 exposure.”

Translate: how does SARS respond to those that have been exposed to the common cold virus (huCoVs)

“we surmise, as have others19 that huCoV-antibodies are a marker of prior huCoV exposure while the cross-reactive memory T cells mediate protection; however, it is also possible that the antibodies contribute to or mediate protection themselves.”

“Wyllie20 et al. have demonstrated that IFN-γ -secreting T cells specific for SARS-CoV-2-exclusive epitopes induced by prior symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection are associated with protection from reinfection in a prospective study of healthcare workers with low anti-S antibodies. This complements our novel finding that IL-2-secreting T cells responding to exclusively cross-reactive epitopes, indicative of memory T cells from previous huCoV infection, may protect against infection in SARS-CoV-2-naive seronegative individuals.”

“The emergence of novel variants with potential to escape naturally acquired or vaccine-induced humoral immunity, along with the recent elucidation of immune-mediated antigenic drift in huCoVs31 brings the long-term utility of spike-only based vaccines into question. We demonstrate the importance of non-spike targets, in particular ORF1 and nucleocapsid, for T cell-mediated protection in the absence of neutralising antibodies, consistent with the wide spectrum of antigen-specific T cells induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection5,13,24,32 and cross-reactive T cells in pre-pandemic cohorts4. In light of this, inclusion of these targets alongside the major antibody target of S-protein could be critical in maintaining the benefit of vaccination in the case of vaccine-strain mismatch, as could occur with the emergence of novel variants33. Our study complements the small but growing body of evidence that T cells may protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection and supports the potential utility of second-generation vaccines targeting core proteins”

Translate: a spike only vaccine is limiting – cold virus covers beyond spike and could offer a better setup and the future vaccine should consider the design of a cold virus – me: why not just try the cold virus straight up we know the side effects very well?

A bigger impact for this can explain somewhat why many have no impact with Covid and how some people don’t get infected even with Omicron – because they probably had exposure to common cold virus more than others. Living in an ultraclean bubble was not a good thing for society in terms of long-term health and immune system strength.

Endemic discussions are growing – a more interesting point in the article is the booster discussion – https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/01/12/should-we-treat-covid-like-the-flu-europe-is-starting-to-think-so.html

“There are growing calls in Europe for Covid-19 to be treated as an endemic illness like the flu despite strong warnings from global health officials that the pandemic is far from over.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, is the latest European leader to stick his head above the parapet by suggesting it’s time to reevaluate Covid. He called on the EU to debate the possibility of treating the virus as an endemic illness.”

“Marco Cavaleri, head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy at the European Medicines Agency, the EU’s drug regulator, said Tuesday that "nobody knows when exactly we’ll be at the end of the tunnel" in terms of the pandemic becoming endemic, but added that progress is being made.”

“The EMA’s Cavaleri said Tuesday that "repeated vaccinations within short intervals will not represent a sustainable long-term strategy."

"If we have a strategy in which we give boosters every four months, we will end up potentially having problems with immune response … so we should be careful with not overloading the immune system with repeated immunization," he said.

"And secondly of course there is the risk of fatigue in the population with continuous administration of boosters." Ideally, Cavaleri said, "if you want to move towards a scenario of endemicity, then such boosters should be synchronized with the arrival of the cold season" and be timed to be given with flu vaccines.”

Is he noting that booster strategy could be akin to overuse of antibiotics?

Perhaps time to go long cannabis? Note not for smoking https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35007072/

“Cannabinoid acids from hemp (Cannabis sativa) were found to be allosteric as well as orthosteric ligands with micromolar affinity for the spike protein. In follow-up virus neutralization assays, cannabigerolic acid and cannabidiolic acid prevented infection of human epithelial cells by a pseudovirus expressing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and prevented entry of live SARS-CoV-2 into cells. Importantly, cannabigerolic acid and cannabidiolic acid were equally effective against the SARS-CoV-2 alpha variant B.1.1.7 and the beta variant B.1.351. Orally bioavailable and with a long history of safe human use, these cannabinoids, isolated or in hemp extracts, have the potential to prevent as well as treat infection by SARS-CoV-2.”

Lab leak theory re-emergence but the Project Veritas announcement seems more like a regurgitation of the documented released last September – https://drasticresearch.org/2021/09/20/1583/?s=09

Good news and bad news…good news excess deaths better than last year. Bad news still quite a bit of excess death comparing to the avg of 2014-2019 in the US.

Omicron is being pushed as the reason vax did not prevent transmission – this is false the failure to reduce transmission was identified before Omicron – Omicron did make it more visible.

As always pointed out IF vaccination status would improve transmission you would see counties with higher vaccination rate have a lower transmission rate (confirmation/per capita) – visualizing within a state normalizes somewhat for temperature and state issues assuming state is not so large geographically

In the summer time the vaccination status (X axis) for 18+ and 65+ you can see both have extremely low R^2 <.03 – surprisingly even in the death category

The winter actually improved the R^2 leading to better differentiation from low vax and high vax – still under 0.2

Ohio during summer R^2<0.06

Ohio Winter time the relationship actually flipped higher vaccinated counties MORE transmission with r^2<0.27!

NJ summer r^2<.01

NJ in winter also showing higher transmission the higher vaccinated counties still R2 low < 0.05

Alabama in the summer R2 <0.06

Alabama in the winter r^2 = 0

Colorado in the summer low vaccination levels but some counties had some decent summer vaccination levels – 65+ very low! – r2<0.03. Also one of the few states that deaths are on a upward trend.

Big vaccination push in CO by winter time – however the greater the vax status the trend greater transmission – but still poor relationship r2 <0.31 (still one of the best relationship – this is for the 18+) Good thing the death curve is pointing in the right direction.

Arizona summer time r2<0.11

Once again flipped but still poor relationship r2<0.02

State after state we see a very poor relationship with transmission rate and vaccination rate with many showing the counterintuitive view – higher vaccination higher transmission. Don’t let them blame it on Omicron – the vax never worked as initially sold to the public in terms of reducing transmission. Graphs on this blog has been consistently showing this ever since the vaccinations were released. Personally I did want the vaccines to reduce transmission but the fact my personal desires or pharma trial results are irrelevant as the outcome is what it is.

US continues to lead deaths and confirmation. France now at 20% capita confirmed.

Yikes France confirmation way out there in terms of confirmation. Nearly 80% vaccinated. Unfortunately deaths are similar to last year even with NO vaccines.

Germany confirmation sky high but at least deaths are lower.

In Japan confirmation still below previous peak and deaths are way lower than last year.

In the US NY leads the death and CA leads confirmation…..where is the discussion about politics and unvax driving these issues? Perhaps that had nothing to do with it and it was weather play and human behavior?

Very high vaccinated counties leading the past 7 day transmission rate