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Asymptomatic virus sufferers lose antibodies sooner: study

#1

Alternative headline - Don’t mention the v-word in any negative antibody news.
And what are the implications for herd immunity?
But in the vaccine-friendly reporting world, antibodies seem to exist in two parallel universes - depending on whether the news headline is good or bad for vaccine promotion.

Oxford coronavirus vaccine shows ‘strong immune response’ in the elderly
(Link https://metro.co.uk/2020/10/27/oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-shows-strong-immune-response-in-the-elderly-13485292/?ito=cbshare)

This story goes one better, by not mentioning antibodies - the only thing the ‘strong response’ is based on!

Covid: Antibodies ‘fall rapidly after infection’

The researchers say their findings do not scupper hopes of a vaccine, which may prove more effective than a real infection.

Apparently the two possible outcomes on show in a news story that affects vaccines are ‘good news for vaccines’ (good news), or just no mention of vaccines when it’s ‘bad news’. There can be mention in the story. In the BBC story it’s mentioned with a tone of reassurance:

“The researchers say their findings do not scupper hopes of a vaccine, which may prove more effective than a real infection”.

“Do not scupper…”. “May prove”…never “may not prove…”.
Surely this is a major worry for vaccine effectiveness?

"One of the researchers, Prof Graham Cooke, said: "The big picture is after the first wave, the great majority of the country didn’t have evidence of protective immunity.

“The need for a vaccine is still very large, the data doesn’t change that.”

Whose need would that be? Surely it’s less ‘large’ if a big doubt emerges.

Professor Paul Elliott, director of the REACT-2 study, said it would be wrong to draw firm conclusions from the study about the impact of a vaccine.

He said: “The vaccine response may behave differently to the response to natural infection.”

[“may behave differently…” yes, may be worse - still keeping a brave face on the news not being what the doctor ordered.]

But he said it was possible that some people might need follow-up booster doses of any vaccine that became available to top up fading immunity over time."

Negative story=greater need for the product. There’s no doubt this is negative news for vaccine purposes. Just to borrow a summary:

Imperial College London’s Covid-19 prevalence study is relatively bad news:
Antibody response present in 6% of the English adult population from June 20-July 13
Fell to 4.8% by July 31-Aug 13
Fell to 4.4% by Sept 15-28
(Mike Bird on Twitter)

Better discussion here

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#2

As Peter Hitchens points out: lots of “weak verbs”: ‘could’, ‘might’, etc. Always lost in the mediawhores’ presentation of the news, of course; dutifully slipped in here and there, but never part of the ‘panic, panic, panic!’ main thrust of their reports.

#3

Good coinage - weak verbs. Nudgy prompts suggestive of the plus side downplaying the minus, and getting in the way of rational thinking.

Dr H says herd immunity “blown out of the water” by this study. But that’s only natural immunity. Vaccine immunity is a different story, he says - although we don’t know any more about that! It will be different - you’ll see! Just roll your sleeve up…

If vaccine ‘immunity’ is the same we might never even find out, because the public will be pushed into booster doses.

#4

Nice post ED.

Apparently falling antibody numbers is a common thing with viral infections, I seem to remember reading. Then, of course theres the T-Cell immunity thing, which I am very confused about, and which never ever gets mentioned in any of these articles.

The herd immunity game does seem like a hiding to nothing in my opinion. As far as I’m aware, humanity has never reached herd immunity simply by exposure to a disease - at least that’s something I read recently. If that’s true, then acheiving population herd immunity by letting the virus sweep through is a political smokescreen to preserve our neoliberal way of life, and nothing to do with science.

Also, of course, no mention that vitamin d3 is at least as effective as a vaccine in preventing the virus from developing into disease, and then reducing the symptoms if it does…

Cheers

#5

Not so PP - herd immunity is always reached so that epidemics cease to exist - just ask the specialist Didier Raoult - who has expounded on it at length and comparing this with previous epidemics, from which it has barely deviated. It has only been made to seem different by intensive focus on deaths with COVID and exaggeration of rare symptoms by pathological media.

#6

I’m not sure which was more timely - this B/S study from Imperial or my article on Vaccines:


which I titled “Vaccines - who needs them” following interesting observations by my fellow "barbe’ " Prof Raoult, that made me realise that in fact not many people actually really would need a vaccine that would be useful to them. Imperial or whoever saying that their vaccine produces a good response in old people is another way of saying that its better than no response at all ! And the idea that immunity drops off in asymptomatic people faster sounds like statistical nonsense. Did they really test so many people for antibodies, and then test the same people again four months later? Or did they test a different group of people and find a smaller proportion of reactors in this group, for one of a hundred different possible readings? I give Imperial zero chance of being credible, as there is one reason and one reason only that this report is being publicised now, on the Guardian and on the BBC and on our SBS, and that is because people are at last talking about the possibility and likelihood of herd immunity. If you follow the argument in my article, you will see that in fact natural immunity development is the only way to go, and the only choice is whether to drag it out by trying to stop the spread, or letting it progress faster while offering suitable health treatments and protecting the old and sick.

As I finally also point out, conducting a mass vaccination when less than 20% of the population might benefit means endangering 60% with a vaccine’s side effects more than viral infection would threaten them, not to mention the vast expense… AND PROFITS! DYOC.

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#7

Another great piece of good sense for AHT, David. Keep sluggin’!

#8

Interesting article David. I do have some questions though.

1 I’m still curious about herd immunity. From your research do you have some good examples of diseases that have been effectively eradicated or otherwise controlled by herd immunity without vaccines? That is, we let the virus burn through a pop and eventually become immune to it to the extent that future outbreaks are not likely?

2 Now that even Raoult had been stopped from using HCQ (what a travesty…) I again have to wonder why on earth did he never produce a single RCT given his power and autonomy as head of an institute? What a shame that was. I just saw a study of ivermectin (which looks excellent by the way) where they had control groups for mild and moderate cases, but out of ethical concern no control group for severe cases. Why on earth did he not do something similar? So frustrating. Pretty much all studies of HCQ that I’ve seen have been universally terrible. It’s like scientists have forgotten how to do a medical study when the subject is HCQ.

3 The problem, in my mind, with the great Barrington Reef is that it’s a completely unworkable fiction as it ignores the lived reality of the situation of many (mainly poor) people. And it assumes a level of achievable immunity that is currently unproven. How do we protect the significant proportion of young people with co-morbidities? How do we deal with multi-generational households? How to deal with households that have at least one vulnerable person? How to deal with staff who work in places with lots of vulnerable people? Do they isolate from their own families? How do we hermetically seal care homes and other such institutions? Has this been done successfully by any country so far?

The real question with the Barrington biz is why focus on clearly unworkable hypothetical plans when we have actually working plans already tried and tested in loads of countries that have successfully contained this virus at minimal cost to their communities? What makes the neoliberal Barrington plan better than social healthcare plans like those used Cuba, Vietnam or Thailand etc? I know where I would put my focus.

But again, to finish, I’m curious about the documented history of using “natural” herd immunity to combat a disease. What diseases have we successfully defeated in this way?

Cheers

#9

Thanks PP, and a number of points… I’m not an expert on herd immunity or otherwise, but as usual take my advice from Raoult, who said early on that there was no sign that the behaviour of this virus would be any different from others, and with 30 odd years of those diseases I would accept his word on it - even though he was quick to admit he couldn’t predict this one’s behaviour. But that maybe isn’t quite the point, which is simply this - that the vast majority of the population have little to fear from this virus, and no more than from flu, and if they had access to HCQ and other vitamin treatments recommended then the only people who would get serious illness and possibly die would be those for whom CV19 was merely the last straw. Just bear in mind Raoult’s results - of only 32 deaths out of some 9000 cases attending his hospital. He repeatedly emphasises that those dying are very ill with other life-threatening conditions, and almost all over 80. The BBC can beat up the “young and healthy” people struck down by the deadly disease as much as they like, but until they start admitting that HCQ is an effective treatment that could have saved thousands of lives they have zero credibility.
The point to make on HI however is that the percentage of the population necessary to slow down the spread of the virus may be only 30 or 40%, and I believe that those levels of resistance if not immunity may already be occurring in some areas of the UK.

The second point is about Raoult and the lack of an RCT, on which I’ve been arguing his case since March, when he released his first and most indicative trial. His success with the treatment on this small group of people, intensively monitored to see the progress of infection, was indisputable simply by comparison with the thousands of other “controls” not getting the treatment around France and getting sick. Having his own “gold standard double blind RCT was a complete furphy. One could compare it with a proposal I have now, that to demonstrate that a vaccine is effective and useful, there needs to be a control group of 'volunteers” who are exposed to the virus without a vaccine. Clearly they would need to be young and healthy, and they might simply need to be people who had been taken from a random sample of people infected with the virus 'naturally". I would wager that most vaccines would not demonstrate any useful effect, and likely result in more side effects and even deaths than the natural immunity acquired from natural infection.

I’m just starting another article on the great public health scandal of the century - the intentional sidelining of an effective treatment in the interests of pharmaceutical companies because of corrupt collaboration between GILEAD, Fauci and government health ministers and services. This interview from RT France today is about a case being brought against the French health body by a lawyer for victims of COVID 19, on behalf of Raoult:


I’m going to try to get RT English to report on this so that people can realise what is going on…
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#10

Colds and flu, for example have been well under control by natural immunity for many years, P, even for generations. Meaning that they keep coming around, but for a long time they’ve been nothing but a minor nuisance even for the minority who get noticeably hit, and they only lead to “the old man’s friend” for the small percentage of elders for whom it’s time to go anyway. In the natural - and enduring - world of constant evolutionary interactions between members of an ecosystem, that’s as good a control of disease as we’re likely to get; and - I submit - it’s good enough.

I watched exactly the same process happen amongst rabbits with myxomatosis. When novel, it was ferocious - like the Black Death. Now, resistant populations of rabbits have become re-established. They have ‘controlled’ myxie without even realising what they were doing. It’s the ancient dance of evolution, from which we can only check out by the buddhist exit of getting off the wheel of re-birth permanently. That kind of philosophical stance - plus pain relief! - is probably the more serene way to cope with the ills “that flesh is heir to”. We’re never going to be immortal, remaining indefinitely in just the one undying preferred personality/body set. Nor are we ever going to be life-long strangers to pain and - occasional - sickness. Almost-uninterrupted robust good health, underpinned by sound public-service policies in life-style education and universal health-maintenance provision, is probably the wisest goal to hope for. (Plus a permanent, draconian control on gangster capitalism, of course, to stop the ‘enterprising’ from flooding our societies with any and every toxic shite that can turn a cash profit. :slight_smile: )

Our - humankind’s - problem is our hopeless war against death: The futile notion that all suffering and death can be banished by ‘superior’ technology (whilst making buckets of money for its patentees, natch!). Well, suffering can certainly be alleviated by modern palliative and pain-relief methods not formerly available, and that can only be a plus. But death remains a hundred percent inevitable, and needs to be seen with a deeply changed attitude from what prevails in the modern West today. Right now I’m on an active quest for just that deeply-changed attitude. Since I notice that NDE survivors, and DMT users - amongst other significant selections of people - often report a completely transfigured attitude to dying, as a result of their amazing experiences, that’s exactly the sort of non-ordinary episode which I’m aiming to induce in myself; for the attainment of that better attitude to death of which I speak here. :slight_smile:

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