Seriously Incredible Things People Said in 2022: "Don't Count on Your Immune System to Keep You Healthy"

There are some vax-pushing people spreading the idea that our immune systems are not what keeps us healthy. Here's why they are wrong.

It’s gobsmackingly incredulous to argue that the human immune system does not keep us healthy. It’s like saying baseball teams don’t win games.

The combination of state power with the ideology of vaccination as the path toward health has been soundly disproven by COVID-19. At least with these vaccines. Regardless of the bombastic claims by those who touted the presence of neutralizing antibodies to an extinct virus as evidence of immunity against recent variants, the real-world data show that the vaccinated are not at lower risk of infection. When you look at serious COVID-19 rate data and hospitalization data close enough, you not only see that the ever-vaccinated fare worse than the never-vaccinated: you see statistical shamwhizardry pushed into overdrive to manipulate outcomes of vaccine studies to forestall the inevitable conclusion of immunocompromise, disease enhancement, original antigenic sin, and vaccine escape.

How Did They Get There?

But somehow, the idea that our immune systems cannot provide durable and broad immunity took hold, with scant data (if any!) comparing non-spike protein neutralizing antibodies and memory T-cells in the infected to those injected with spike-only vaccines. Studies focused on vaccine efficacy measured spike-protein Abs, which is only part of the myriad types of immunity a SARS-CoV-2 infection will render. The immunovirologists tend to have selective memory on what’s truly important: a panopticon view of the immune response to infection (broad, deep, durable) compared to mRNA injection (narrow, shallow, transient). They will argue to the hills that based any thin thread of evidence of vaccine immunity that the entire world will be saved.

The moving pieces of the puzzle are numerous and complex. This is why I decided to teach immunology in 2022 (Enrollment open now for January 2023!) - in part to refresh my own understanding, and to study again the immune system in light of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. There are a few important pieces of the SARS-CoV-2 virus immunity puzzle worth reviewing.

The immunological puzzle of SARS-CoV-2 immunity centers around the biology of the virus: from the start, given its transmissibility, I predicted (via modeling) that a low “buzz” of endemicity as the best we could hope for, which means re-infections would be commonplace. Another important factor is that, as an mRNA virus, SARS-CoV-2 is one of the most evolutionarily labile types of viruses. Further, variants in co-infected individuals recombine, adding to the generation of novel types. (Layered on top of this of course are the full suite of technological snafus, from the use of high Ct thresholds and denial of false positives in PCR tests to the very, very bad decisions on vaccine design, including keeping unsafe epitopes, targeting spike-only, you’ve read it and heard it all here before).

So, in case anyone is listening to immune system denialists, let’s recap why it’s stupid to pretend like our immune systems do not keep us healthy:

1. Most of us have intact innate immune systems, especially children. By ‘intact’, I mean optimally ready. Some of us do not. Among the innate immune responses are Natural Killer cells (NK cells). A variety of NK cells exist, and, importantly, it seems that individuals whose NK cells are loaded with host-cell destroying proteins like perforin are more prone to severe COVID-19. These are called “activated” (or, more recently, ‘adaptive’) NK-cells.

2. Activated NK cells become activated via the NALP3 inflammasome via IL-18 and IL-10 signaling. What activates the NALP3 inflammasome? Well, among other factors, aluminum hydroxide, of course (Eisenbarth et al. 2008, Nature (453) Crucial role for the Nalp3 inflammasome in the immunostimulatory properties of aluminium adjuvants):

   “Here we show that aluminium adjuvants activate an intracellular innate immune response system called the Nalp3 (also known as cryopyrin, CIAS1 or NLRP3) inflammasome. Production of the pro-inflammatory cytokines interleukin-1β and interleukin-18 by macrophages in response to alum in vitro required intact inflammasome signalling. Furthermore, in vivo, mice deficient in Nalp3, ASC (apoptosis-associated speck-like protein containing a caspase recruitment domain) or caspase-1 failed to mount a significant antibody response to an antigen administered with aluminium adjuvants, whereas the response to complete Freund’s adjuvant remained intact. We identify the Nalp3 inflammasome as a crucial element in the adjuvant effect of aluminium adjuvants; in addition, we show that the innate inflammasome pathway can direct a humoral adaptive immune response.”

3. To understand infection vs. injection immunity, memory immunity is far more relevant and important than the transient neutralizing antibody production - or even the longer-lasting but still transient B-cell production.

4. The “neutralizing” part of the antibodies must be relevant to the currently circulating strain/type/variant. If not, the entrainment of our cellular immune response to the wrong antigen can make this worse.

5. Upon re-infection when still-living B-cells trained to produce antibodies against the antigen, the B-cell-derived plasma cells pump out more antibodies that (hopefully) still match the antigen source. Why this fails in “rebound COVID” under Paxlovid is unknown to me (post a source if you know!)

6. Upon re-infection after memory B-cells wane, memory T-cells persist the longest, ready to help generate a new generation of memory B-cells to produce new plasma cells to produce more antibodies anew upon signaling that reflects the antigen that matches the epitope(s) memorized by memory T-cells. People immune to SARS-CoV from infection in 2003 showed protection against SARS-CoV-2. That’s essentially lifetime immunity.

7. While the memory T-cell memory response is gearing up, Natural Killer (NK) cells, the lymphocytes that provide innate immunity, and that help control of viral infections in the absence of a prior antigen sensitization, are still available keeping new SARS-CoV-2 cellular infection rates low. If NK cells are activated, the likelihood of severe COVID-19 is increased (see #1).

   From immunologic first principles, the cards are stacked against vaccination compared to infection.

Nevertheless, there are a few immunovirologists who have contributed to confusion over these issues, and to the inevitability of of vaccine escape as well. Make no mistake - it’s not a question of whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus will or has escaped the vaccine program: the data are in - the SARS-CoV-2 virus has escaped the COVID-19 vaccination program. But some would have you believe that the vaccine (the agent of selection) had nothing to do with the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants.

You’ve heard a lot about leaky vaccines from many people - how they necessarily lead to vaccine escape (which is sometimes mistakenly referred to as “immune escape”). The SARS-CoV-2 vaccination program led to the proliferation of variants, and yet some people try to say that vaccination during the height of a pandemic does not lead to new variants because even partial vaccination reduces infection (see, e.g., this article that also tries - and fails - to make the case that measles virus vaccination has not led to the virgin soil population of at-risk individuals, in spite of the decades of peer-reviewed studies that provide evidence that yes, the MMR vaccine is a failed vaccine - just watch measles cases in adults vaccinated as children continue to rise).

The Next Battle Will Be Over Measles Vaccine Failure. Here is Our Preemptive Strike of Facts, Rationality, and Kindness.

The flawed logic used by immunovirologists pushing vaccines goes something like this: because (some) individuals in a population have milder disease symptoms following vaccination, fixed-antigen vaccines do not cause vaccine escape and ultimately their own failure. The logic is is transparently flawed (non-sequitur).

In reality, the shift of a population from one that has, for the most part, resilient natural immunity to one that is dependent on a vaccine for immunity is a major shift in the co-evolutionary story between man and microbes - and a massively profitable one, at that.

The “milder disease” argument is based on the hope that you won’t notice that people without symptoms or with mild symptoms still transmit the virus. Meaning, of course, that the vaccine will inevitably fail as billions of infections provide the breeding ground needed on the adaptive landscape of the humanity for variants that find the vaccine-induced Abs irrelevant.

Which is precisely what has happened.

The correct focus required to address the issue of vaccine escape is

Effective Vaccination Ineffective Vaccination

or Infection

Widespread, durable immunity Limited, transient immunity

Multi-epitope targets Single antigen target (spike)

Transient Abs Transient Abs

Relevant NAbs Irrelevant NAbs

Relevant memory B-cells Irrelevant memory B-cells

Relevant memory T-cells Irrelevant memory T-cells

Cross-reactive Neutralizing Abs Disease enhancement

Partial, narrow and transient immunity due to an ineffective vaccination program is a march to endemicity. That’s a fancy way of saying that the vaccination program prevented the burn-out of SARS-CoV-2. Specifically, the “flattening the curve” did this - giving the virus time to evolve, in vivo, in humans. This seriously problematic for the vaccination paradigm overall.

Brownstone Institute’s tracking of studies on natural immunity is worth recalling (last count, 160 studies). Those studies are a big part of the story as they provide the scientific evidence that backs up this overall analysis.

IPAK-EDU’s Information Sheet service provides sheets you can hand out as well, including one on why the focus on antibodies alone and not Memory T-cells was a sham. Complete with references.

And of course, to sign up for an INTENSE experience learning immunology w/weekly live lectures from yours truly - hit the image below. I’ll see you in class!