Study In Nature Journal: ‘You’ll Probably Make Antibodies for a Lifetime’ Against COVID19
As Fauci fails to give a “firm answer” to query on natural immunity, experts are now questioning if “herd immunity” is a reasonably achievable goal.
I recently reviewed a recent study from Israel indicating that naturally acquired immunity from having COVID-19 was 10-13 times more protective against the Delta variant than having the vaccine.
Continuing with this exploration of the strength of natural immunity, Nature published results from a study that shows people who recover from mild COVID-19 have bone-marrow cells that can produce antibodies for decades.
“A plasma cell is our life history, in terms of the pathogens we’ve been exposed to,” says Ali Ellebedy, a B-cell immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who led the study, published in Nature on 24 May.
…Ellebedy’s team tracked antibody production in 77 people who had recovered from mostly mild cases of COVID-19. As expected, SARS-CoV-2 antibodies plummeted in the four months after infection. But this decline slowed, and up to 11 months after infection, the researchers could still detect antibodies that recognized the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
To identify the source of the antibodies, Ellebedy’s team collected memory B cells and bone marrow from a subset of participants. Seven months after developing symptoms, most of these participants still had memory B cells that recognized SARS-CoV-2. In 15 of the 18 bone-marrow samples, the scientists found ultra-low but detectable populations of BMPCs [Bone Aarrow Plasma Cells] whose formation had been triggered by the individuals’ coronavirus infections 7–8 months before. Levels of these cells were stable in all five people who gave another bone-marrow sample several months later.
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci was finally asked to comment on the Israeli study and the possibility that natural immunity potentially conferred better protection against COVID-19 than the vaccine.
His answer was a master class in political speak.
The question to Fauci, asked by CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Anderson Cooper 360, was “So, as we talk about vaccine mandates, I get calls all the time, people say, I’ve already had COVID, I’m protected. And now the study says maybe even more protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine? How do you make the case to them?”
…”You know, that’s a really good point, Sanjay. I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that,” Fauci replied.
At that moment, it became clear that the Biden administration was not “following the science” in demanding that people with natural immunity must still get vaccines in order to be able to work and fly on planes and go to restaurants and stores, and do all of the same things as vaccinated people can do.
“That’s something that we’re going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response,” he continued. “The one thing that paper from Israel didn’t tell you is whether or not — as high as the protection is with natural infection — what’s the durability compared to the durability of a vaccine?
“I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that” – Dr Fauci, our country’s top COVID expert hearing about something called natural immunity for the first time
— Kevin Dalton (@NextLAMayor) September 10, 2021
As I have noted before, based on previous experience with the global coronavirus pandemic of 1889 and paired with the fact that SARC-CoV was engineered to adhere readily to human respiratory systems, the rules of epidemiology currently followed by the Biden administration may not be applicable.
Some of the more serious scientists are questioning COVID-theology and reassessing whether “herd immunity” is a reasonable goal.
Herd immunity is a real thing, protecting much of the world against viral threats from the measles to polio. Scientists credit it for helping eradicate smallpox. Having herd immunity as a goal likely helped the world embrace measures like wearing masks and social distancing. But it also created a false narrative.
“The focus on ‘herd immunity’ has, in my view, been quite damaging,” said William Hanage, an epidemiologist and expert in communicable disease dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It presents people with an unrealistic vision of how the pandemic comes to a close and doesn’t account for the evolution of either the virus or the nature of disease in reinfections.”
One last point in today’s review to mull over: Countries like Israel and the United Kingdom accept proof of previous COVID infection instead of proof of vaccination.
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I saw a similar study yesterday that said they could prove at least 17 years.
A great read for today’s world is “The Undoing Project.” It’s from the Moneyball and Big Short Author. You’ll recognize the work (both psychology/stats).
Their ability to cut through bullshit is epic.
Note – the body uses vitamin D to transform the T-Cell memory into active anti-bodies.
This is the reason that such a high percentage of people who have died from Covid19 are vitamin D deficient. Their bodies probably had a pathway to fight the disease but could not ramp up the anti-bodies.
Excellent observation.
I got COVID-19 from my wife in October 2020. Hers waa very serious and she was in the hospital for 19 days and in ICU for about 10 days. I was out of work for about a month. I say this because we both still have antibodies and will not take any vaccine simply because well, it is not needed. Plus if you get chicken pox, you don’t need a vaccine because you already have antibodies that last a lifetime. Here is another study concerning the 1918 flu. https://www.nature.com/articles/news.2008.1045
In essence, the hysteria and fear has to stop and time to act like adults. The COVID genie cannot go back into the bottle and those of us who have antibodies from the real thing (not from a lab) will know that our antibodies will be sufficient.
Two more things, Fauci lied and Fuck Joe Biden.
Wait, chicken pox gives you immunity to Wuhan Disease?! How does that work?
Or did you mean that once you’ve had chicken pox you don’t need the chicken pox shot? I was advised to get it in order to prevent the virus re-presenting itself as shingles. Is that not correct?
And I was advised to get it because there have been instances of people having such a mild case of Chicken Pox they don’t realize they had it, Then, they are subject to shingles.
Good thing I have a tile roof…
Now I have an image of someone being brained by falling roofing material, and a doctor saying “He died of shingles”.
I needed that! Decades ago, I was reading one of the Max Schulman paperbacks, and someone made the remark that [something] was “as welcome as a case of shingles”. I didn’t know about the disease, only the roofing material, and wondered why that comparison was used!
You don’t often use your sense of humor, but you do have one and I appreciate it. I always read your comments to see what you have to say, My main man Milhouse, he’s a bulldog.
Milhouse often makes great points, but you don’t see a lot of who he really is (as we do behind the scenes) because we remove his totally repulsive and repellent comments to our regular readers (and whomever happens to ruffle his feathers). He’s a bulldog, alright, but I wouldn’t bet that he’s not posted comments that you are stupid and should kill yourself. He does that a lot. It’s really sick, but we remove that stuff because it’s so awful. Maybe we shouldn’t so people can see who they are actually dealing with? Something to ponder.
@Fuzzy
Ugh!! Gross!!
To Miss Fuzzy: sure. Go ahead.
To Mr. Grizz, whatever. And yawn.
For anyone that tells me to kill myself I will just live forever to spite them!
I never initiate personal attacks, but when I am attacked I have the right to respond in kind. Being stupid is not a crime, but lying is and if you lie about me I will respond as you deserve.
There are some truly evil people who comment here, who really should drop dead, because they do nothing but tell vicious lies and slanders, and simply don’t care about the truth at all.
I’ve seen commenters here giving Milhouse crap for years. I have never seen him start up with anybody. It bugs me that commenters are allowed to personally attack the guy and you mods just allow it. But you seem to get pissy if he tells a liar they are lying.
Maybe I read Ms. Slippers’ wrongly. It looks a lot like somebody complemented Milhouse and you had to tell us how horrible and repugnant he is so we would “really know” who he is.
Something is wrong with that. If I am reading the comment incorrectly then please forgive me.
My wife, who has been in medicine has said in her 35 years that she has rarely advised a patient who had chicken pox to get a vaccine. It is not common. Yes, you can still get chicken pox again, but the point I am making is once you get Chicken pox (a virus) do you have antibodies? The same is showing now for those who had covid and the 2008 Vanderbilt Study of those survivors of the 1918 flu 90 years later still had antibodies.
All the advice I have ever received is that shingles is some sort of variant of the chicken pox virus that isn’t affected by the natural antibodies of people who have had chicken pox. It’s “chicken pox coming back,” to be sure, but a different expression of it, and the vaccine is advisable for seniors. I have been interested in getting that vaccine but have not made the opportunity.
My understanding is that the shingles vaccine is DIFFERENT from the chicken pox vaccine – and that the chicken pox vaccine does absolutely nothing to guard from shingles.
Yes, sorry if anything I wrote gives you a different impression. My only point was that the same virus you caught as a kid has two expressions at two stages of your life.
One of the issues with immunity is simply that there is long “long-term” immunity because people are living longer. Shingles wasn’t so much an issue when people died at 65. But now that they are closer to 80, they experience both a decease in their zoster antibodoes and in their overall immune response. A better term to use is “resistance” because it is a gray term vs immunity which is black/white. I am a complete oddity because my lovely child gave me the pox at 46 (adults die from this and I believe them) and then 10 years later I had a several month run of shigles because I was under a period of high stress and thus immuno-compromised. It is all relative
Our bodies are in a constant war with most pathogens. Whether we get sick is based on a balance between the antigen load and the capacity of our immune system to deal with it through any number of mechanisms. Sadly most of the general public are complete idiots and react to this as if it is a pure black/white phenomenon. They have no concept of the hemisphere rule, where a purely statistical distribution of free virus particle is a 2/3 cube function. They think in terms of 6+ ft safe, less than 6, you gonna die. Similarly the influence of water droplets is totally foreign to them, There are none in the summer; that is why it is NOT the cold and flu season. Ditto with a UV index of 8-10 in the summer, where those viri are being chewed up by the sun. Right now pretty much all of us have some wuflu in our bodies. If the number is low, our bodies can deal with it. If the numbers are high, then there is a possibility that our defenses can be overwhelmed. It is that mathematical relationship which determines who gets sick or not, and what actions they wish to take to determine the odds. Between training at Hopkins and dozens of international science meetings I am certain that my body has been exposed to pretty much everything, or as Carlin put it, “I swam in raw sewage.” Some can walk it off better than others. The concensus around here is that if you want to kill me, you are going to need some Kryptonite.
Wuflu is just an opportunistic feeder that seeks out the old and the sickly to do its thang. But .gov has decided that it is an equal opportunity pathogen and that is why we have ever changing messed up and completely unjustified policies. I had no issues with the re-opening, because I never shut down in the first place. What we are witnessing is a whole population who are still functioning at the level of the Salem witch trials.
“ Right now pretty much all of us have some wuflu in our bodies.”
Wouldn’t that mean that virtually everyone would be positive for a pcr test (when run to a ct of 40)?
When run a 40, a rutabaga would be positive.
There is something to the notion that most all of us have been exposed, but not caught it.
Why? Same reason that when I was a competitive runner @ 70-100 miles/week with much of it under 5 min pace, I was ALWAYS getting sick. My system was so trashed from training, anything could and did give me cold yet no one else would get sick.
It’s called an immune system. When it works, it works.
The Bee ran a headline that the immune system is “anti science.” They nailed it as usual.
While they are related, the shingles and the chicken pox vaccines are NOT the same. From the Mayo clinic site (bolding mine):
It’s a different vaccine. The shingles vaccine is a recombinant zoster vaccine. You should get this if you have been infected with chickenpox in the past and are 50 years or older to prevent shingles.
If you received a chicken pox vaccine and never had chicken pox, there is no need to get a shingles vaccine.
Adults who have not had chicken pox or previously vaccinated for chicken pox should probably not take either vaccine, unless they do research with such viruses or are a healthcare worker.
Take the shingles vaccine only if you were previously infected with chicken pox.
But please consult you doctor.
Also, for anyone that can’t detect sarcasm, the chickenpox and shingles vaccines are separate things.
Chickenpox (Varicella): Assessing Immunity to Varicella
from https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/varicella/basic-immunity.htm
You do not need the chickenpox vaccine if you meet any of these criteria for evidence of immunity:
Documentation of age-appropriate chickenpox vaccination;
Preschool-age children (12 months of age through 3 years old): 1 dose
School-age children, adolescents, adults: 2 doses
Laboratory evidence of immunity or laboratory confirmation of disease
Birth in the United States before 1980. (Note: This is not adequate evidence of immunity for healthcare workers, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems. Such people need to meet one of the other criteria for evidence of immunity.)
Diagnosis or verification of a history of chickenpox or shingles by a healthcare provider.
The antibodies don’t last, but immune memory does subject to a healthy body and immune system.
Shingles
Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus — the same virus that causes chickenpox. After you’ve had chickenpox, the virus lies inactive in nerve tissue near your spinal cord and brain. Years later, the virus may reactivate as shingles.
…
The reason for shingles is unclear. But it may be due to lowered immunity to infections as you grow older. Shingles is more common in older adults and in people who have weakened immune systems.
Mechanisms of viral mutation
Rates of spontaneous mutation vary amply among viruses. RNA viruses mutate faster than DNA viruses,
It’s dormant state increases its already stable character. The shingles virus and disease is opportunistic.
The SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus. Natural immunity (e.g. cross-reactive, acquired) seems to be keyed off of the capsid protein, rather than the spike protein.
Meanwhile Israel’s Health Minister was caught on mic admitting to the Interior Minister that there was no epidemiological reason to require vaccine passports at outdoor restaurants or swimming pools, but that they were being required only in order to put pressure on the unvaccinated.
I’m glad you said something about that. I saw the video but I don’t speak the language and the source where I saw it often has fake news and requires discernment. There is no room for misinterpretation there?
I do speak the language, and Horowitz (the Health minister) certainly seems to be saying what he’s being reported as saying. Of course he’s not saying that the passports are never needed, just that they’re being required even where they aren’t needed, in order to make life more difficult for those who haven’t got one and persuade them to get one.
Saw that.
Sometimes the peasants must be fed lies to get them to obey and do as they’re told.
And Fauci is fully on board with that way of thinking.
That’s because he’s better than you. After all, he IS a doctor!
/sarc tag for the sarcasm-impaired.
Fauci did such a great job on AIDS…
The glaring void of attention paid to natural immunity by the US public health community has entered the absurd. Multiple studies from around the world have shown that natural immunity in the context of Rona not only exists but is longer lasting and more effective than the vaccines.
If I were a an employee impacted by the WH decree for vax mandate I would be pushing natural immunity as a disability worthy of reasonable accommodation. An invasive and punitive testing regime deployed v those with natural immunity isn’t acceptable. Immunity is immunity. If we test 100% of the workforce fine. However when we, incorrectly and unscientificly group those with natural immunity together with those who are simply not vax then that’s not, IMO legally sustainable.
Robert Barnes says that being susceptible to becoming infected and sickened by SARS-CoV-2 (i.e., unvaccinated) is a disability under the ADA. The potential for being infected with a virus was specifically made an ADA-recognized disability during the AIDS epidemic to protect gay men from being fired because because of fear they were, or may become, infected with HIV. The unvaccinated face a similar threat in many places today (as do I, as an employee of WA state).
It’s true that if you’ve had COVID you’re likely immune. But the COVID crazies are going to refer to you as “unvaccinated”, and they can’t very well fire you because of the threat you might catch SARS-CoV-2 and recognize that you’re immune. If they recognize you’re immune, they admit you don’t need to be vaccinated. So you can ride the “unvaccinated” ADA train to the EEOC when you’ve been fired even if you’ve had COVID. (I’m in this group too, having had COVID.)
Since healthy children and younger adults are at almost no risk for this virus, I have been advocating for quite some time they be allowed to be exposed. They will likely develop superior and longer-term antibodies, provide a herd immunity function the “vaccines” apparently do not provide, and push the virus into a more stable and less lethal state over time.
The “vaccines” should be reserved for people at high risk from the virus, both because it is experimental, and the current path is unwise public health policy as it forces the virus to mutate and prolongs the pandemic while increasing risk.
My understanding is that after the anti-bodies lose their effectiveness, it’s the T cells take over and those can last for a very long time. Is that different from the B-cells? And is there or is there not a reliable test for Covid-related anti-bodies?
Yes, they are different and the response to your hypothetical about T cells “taking over” is, in a general sense, “sometimes yes and sometimes no”, “it’s complicated”, and “it doesn’t work that way for everyone”
Damn that individuality!
There are reliable tests for COVID-19 antibodies. The question is whether or not you can obtain a sample from the right place containing the antibodies. You’ll notice in the research above that they had to go to bone marrow to find memory cells capable of producing those antibodies after a long time. That’s not easy to obtain.
This is essentially the same problem as the COVID 19 test (albeit the other place is the lungs, not the bone marrow). It’s extremely accurate at detecting COVID-19 viral particles (and does not cross-react with the flu…that was a myth). However, your test is only as good as your sample and since the virus doesn’t always stay in the back of the nose, a nasal swab may not provide the best sample.
There’s a new test called T-Detect that’s supposed to be more sensitive (and possibly looks for antibodies other than those to the spike protein).
The bitter resistance to the very idea of the human immune system working naturally is suspicious, to say the least. It’s almost as if some people are thinking “we got a good thing going here, it mustn’t end”.
Bingo. It’s a scamdemic in more ways than one.
And in that vein, the human immune system is a handy political proxy for “people deciding how to live their own lives and make their own choices.” Bitter resistance to that, also.
And what about people who seem to have some sort of pre-existing immunity to the bug? I’ve met folks who nursed family members who had confirmed cases (with the taste/smell loss), who never took any real precautions, and never got it.
Remember that the cruise ships were closed environments, thousands of people living in each other’s laps, and yet 80% of the passengers didn’t get it. There must be a lot of natural immunity around.
The Party has deemed that to have never happened.
“There must be a lot of natural immunity around.”
Or it’s just not as contagious as commonly portrayed.
One must keep in mind the difference between becoming infected with the virus SARS-CoV-2 and becoming ill from it (COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus). Someone can become infected and not become ill, either because they have some immunity from exposure to a similar virus, or possibly even from having a had a tetanus shot (as a recent study has shown a correlation between more recent tetanus shots and mild to asymptomatic COVID), or because their immune systems are healthy and respond vigorously before symptoms can develop.
But anyone who has become infected should test positive for antibodies for months after contracting the virus. If by “80% of the passengers didn’t get it” it’s meant they tested negative, this tells us more about its transmissibility than about the people’s immune systems.
Probably, but not actually, and dysfunctional antibodies at that, thus second and boosters, with high antibody titers, suppressed symptoms, and shedding. The vaccines offer limited value for personal protection and community spread. Assess the risk, beware the myths, and proceed accordingly.
The ‘Citizens Rights Act’
Unmasking cargo cults, aborting viable legal indemnity, and curbing shared responsibility.
I am wondering if other readers have observed a disappearance of J&J vaccine in the past few weeks. Washington/Idaho/northern Oregon does not have any to be had. Is it because Pfizer is now fully approved and so no emergency authorization vaccines can be sold?
I suspect it may have something to do with state employee vaccination mandates. Withdrawing the only “one-shot” vaccine put pressure on employees to get the first jab of either of the other two vaccines on Monday (yesterday). State employees who didn’t get the jab yesterday (like me) can now no longer meet the Oct 18 deadline to be “fully vaccinated.” Some have asked, “What does that mean?” in light of pending requirements for a booster (third shot), which can’t be completed before the deadline now!
This coupled with the outing of email correspondence between Jay Inslee’s office and the WA AG’s office to make the religious exemption “as restrictive” as possible, and the fact that I cannot find a doctor to support my claim for a medical exemption, lead me to think there is a vast conspiracy going on to deprive state employees of their rights (to medical and religious exemptions) under state and federal law. Note that my healthcare provider, Kaiser Permanente, stonewalled me three times when all I asked for was an antibody test. (I had been told they wouldn’t help me). WA requires the documenting physician to be state-licensed. So the state provides healthcare through KP and then KP won’t help with a medical exemption claim? That doesn’t pass the smell test. (I have been looking for a private doctor too, and can’t find one. One doctor told me they are in fear of their licenses and will not help.)
Apparently, those doctors are being threatened:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/09/13/american-medical-bureaucracy-including-ama-increase-threats-against-doctors-who-do-not-comply-with-forced-vaccination-position/
You may want to check out Shawn Baker, MD on youtube re exemptions.
Have you checked these:
https://americasfrontlinedoctors.org
https://myfreedoctor.com
Fauci is a.money-grubbing, weak-ego’d clown of a doctor. That’s all he is. But he could get even worse.
He does look like a clown in the photo. Plus he’s funny as hell. You laugh so much your sides will ache, your heart will go pitter pat, watching fauci the wonderful clown.
Who else here is old enough to remember Topo Gigio?
“Ohhhh, Joeeeee-eeeeeey!”
The Italian Mouse. on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Anything coming out of Fauci’s mouth is at a minimum covered in a layer of BS. Much of it is a mix of BS and lies all the way through.
Fauci’s enormous ego is enjoying and wallowing in his notoriety and fame. He can’t get enough attention and praise from the Dem-media propaganda complex.
At the same time he’s in major league CYA mode because he is in part responsible for the deaths of 4 million around the world, if the death counts are taken at face value. And he knows it.
Nobel prize winner Kary Mullis pegged Fauci for what he is a long time ago. An overrated egocentric bureaucrat and liar who is frequently wrong and cannot be trusted.
Oh, and #FJB.
Given the Chinese virus us probably the most studied thing on the planet today I highly doubt The Man ™ doesn’t know anything about herd immunity.
I suspect the main reason scientists are quiet about herd immunity is because all their decisions were made against her immunity being a thing and each I those decisions just compounded how much they have fucked this whole virus up.
So instead of admitting they made mistakes they just continue to double down, this compounding each of their wrong decisions.
Basically we’re fucked.
No doubt. Aside from the globalists, many pols are just in CYA mode and are unable to admit that nothing they did stopped the virus, that they caused tremendous damage to business, society, and untold numbers of families and individuals. They were hoping the virus would go away on its own, so they could take credit (or they were stupid enough to think they could stop a virus with cloth masks), “My actions saved millions of lives.” But it didn’t turn out that way because other people had other ideas – like, “Let’s keep this power trip going. Never let a crisis go to waste!”
Herd immunity isn’t achievable because the “vaccine” is non sterilizing.
Also, herd immunity isn’t achievable because animals can get the disease and spread it to humans.
Instead, vaccinated people are going to get the disease, carry huge viral loads, behave like symptom free individuals while being super spreaders and eventually until the virus mutates into something worse that their vaccine can’t protect against.
It is no coincidence that infections and deaths are up since after the mass vaccination campaigns.
“I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that,” Fauci replied.”
No. He reserves his firm answers for whether you should wear a mask, shouldn’t wear a mask, should wear two masks.
And that means he knows goddamn well what the actual answer is but refuses to say it.
https://twitter.com/YossiGestetner/status/1437565148173160448
Yossi Gestetner
@YossiGestetner
· 21h
Twitter suspended an account with a video of Fauci saying in May 2019 (!) that masks and distancing from coughing people are “paranoid” stuff.
Yossi Gestetner
@YossiGestetner
“A, good diet. B, you don’t smoke… I know you don’t drink; at least not very much… Get some exercise… Get good sleep. I think the normal, low tech healthy things are the best things you can do… to stay healthy.” – Fauci, May 2019. Masks/distancing are “paranoid,” he said. VIDEO
“what’s the durability compared to the durability of a vaccine?”
The doublespeak is strong. He attempts to imply the vaccines have better durability, all the while we keep getting report after report saying that the mRNA and viral vector vaccines have very poor durability (not to mention their side effects).
I’d take a dead-virus vaccine, if there was one, but despite claims the covid-19 virus has been isolated neither a live-attenuated nor a dead virus covid-19 vaccine is available in the US.
On 2021-09-14, UK Professor of Medicine Paul Hunter wrote https://theconversation.com/how-will-the-covid-pandemic-end-167244 “While vaccines do reduce transmission, they don’t block infection to a high enough degree to eradicate the virus.” and “And as more people’s [vaccine-acquired] immunity is boosted over time by natural reinfections or booster immunisations, we can expect an increasing proportion of new infections to be asymptomatic or at worst cause mild illness. The virus will remain with us, but the disease will become part of our history.”
On 2021-08-10 Prof. Andrew Pollard (Chief of the Oxford Vaccine Group, which co-developed the AstraZeneca adenovirus vector COVID-19 vaccine) gave evidence to the UK Parliament All-Party Group on Coronavirus. A transcript is at:
https://nutritionmatters.substack.com/p/vitamin-d-and-early-treatment-vs . He too suggested that vaccination is a relatively safe pathway to acquiring the more robust and long-lasting immunity attained through natural infection: “So as long as you are vaccinated and are fortunate to get mild infection, then you are protected.”
Some politicians are operating on the basis that vaccine mandates / passports are justified because vaccination strongly reduces transmission, but this is not the case. President Biden went so far to state that his mandates were to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.
Professors Pollard and Huner acknowledge the limitations of vaccines but still advocate their universal adoption – because it seems the only responses they know to COVID-19 are vaccination, lockdowns etc. and hospital treatment.
Like most MDs, immunologists, virologists and epidemiologists, it seems that they are unaware of the immune system’s need for at least 50ng/ml (125nmol/L = 1 part in 20,000,000 by mass) circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) for proper immune system function.
Since 2008 MDs and researchers have called for 40 to 60ng/ml to be recognised as the proper 25OHD level, while many MDs consider 20 or 30ng/ml to be sufficient: https://www.grassrootshealth.net/project/our-scientists/ . Their advice was justified in 2014 by Quraishi et al. who found that in a large population of hospital patients undergoing the same operation (gastric bypass for morbidly obese patients): https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/1782085, 25OHD levels above 50ng/ml lead to the risk of surgical site infections was 2.5%, with the same risk for hospital acquired infections. At 30ng/ml both risks rose to 12% and at 20ng/ml were 24%. This dysfunction of innate and adaptive responses to bacterial pathogens is due to immune cells’ need for 50ng/ml 25OHD levels in order that their autocrine (inside each cell) and paracrine (to nearby cells) signaling systems and function fully and rapidly. Each cell relies on these systems to respond to its changing individual circumstances.
McGregor et al. 2020 (An autocrine Vitamin D-driven Th1 shutdown program can be exploited for COVID-19 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.18.210161v1) showed that Th1 regulatory lymphocytes from the lungs of hospitalised COVID-19 patients remain stuck in their pro-inflammatory startup program, never transitioning to their anti-inflammatory shutdown program. The cells detect the external condition to do so (a high level of a complement protein) and this activates the cell’s vitamin D based autocrine signaling system: both the vitamin D receptor (VDR) and the 1-hydroxylase enzyme are produced. In cells from healthy controls, the autocrine signaling system functions properly: 25OHD is hydroxylated to 1,25 dihydroxyvitamin D which binds with the VDR and the bound complex changes the cell’s behaviour by upregulating and downregulating the transcription of dozens of genes. However, this system does not work in the Th1 lymphocytes from the lungs of hospitalised COVID-19 patients for the sole reason that they do not have enough 25OHD. A summary of this dense article is at: https://aminotheory.com/cv19/icu/#2020-McGregor .
The MDs, immunologists etc. who are directing the global response to COVID-19 are flying blind because they have no idea that most people (without proper vitamin D supplementation) have only ½ to 1/10 of the circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D they need for strong innate and adaptive immune responses, and to reduce the risk of the excessively inflammatory, self-destructive, cytokine storm responses which cause severe COVID-19 symptoms, sepsis, Kawasaki disease and Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome.
This is an egregious professional failing, as is their lack of interest in using bolus D3 (or better still calcifediol, which is 25-hydroxyvitamin D), ivermectin, melatonin, vitamin C, zinc, magnesium and other early treatments. Governments should support MDs who research and promote these treatments rather than suppressing any such discussion on the grounds that vaccination is the only effective response.
Please also see the Castillo et al. 2020 (Cordoba, Spain) RCT in which hospitalised COVID-19 patients were given a single oral dose of 0.532mg calcifediol (25-hydroxyvitamin D). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764 This patent https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2016124724A1/ shows the exact same dose raising 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels from 18ng/ml average safely over 50ng/ml in 4 hours. This is faster than even bolus D3 (such as 10mg 400,000IU) could attain these healthy levels, since D3 needs to be hydroxylated into 25-hydroxyvitamin D in the liver over a period of days.
ICU admissions were reduced from 50% to 2% and deaths from 8% to zero. A statistical analysis: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.08.20222638v2 found that the significance of the death results was low, with a p value of 0.11, but that the significance of the ICU admission rate reduction was very high : p = 0.000000077.
Few MDs understand vitamin D autocrine/paracrine signaling and how this is unrelated to the one hormonal function of the vitamin D compounds: a very low level of circulating 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D to regulate calcium-bone metabolism. This is not surprising since there are no peer reviewed articles which clearly explain vitamin D autocrine/paracrine signaling. (See my attempt at a tutorial: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/02-autocrine/ ). Two recent immunology textbooks (Janeway’s 9th and Abbas 10th ed.) cover vast complexities in their 1500 pages. However, there is no mention of vitamin D in their indexes.
The profitability of vitamin D is minuscule compared to that of the patented drugs favoured by multinational pharmaceutical corporations. For 70kg bodyweight, 0.125mg 5000IU D3 a day is required, on average, to attain 50ng/ml 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels, in the long term. This is a gram every 22 years and D3 costs USD$2.50 a gram ex-factory in 1kg lots.
Observational studies and intervention trials reported at https://vdmeta.com overwhelmingly show the importance of good 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels for reducing the risk of severe COVID-19. While some MDs have been trying to raise awareness of the importance of vitamin D for decades, the majority of MDs remain largely oblivious to the need for levels significantly above the 20ng/ml or so which is sufficient for the kidneys to maintain the very low level of hormonal 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D required for bone health.
The public depends entirely on the majority of MDs etc. to be properly informed and to recommend the best preventives and early treatments, no matter how unglamorous and inexpensive they are. The medical profession’s failure to do this constitutes a single-point of failure for all humanity. The only solution is for MDs, immunologists etc. to read the pertinent research, such as the articles just mentioned which are cited and discussed, with others, at:
What every MD should know about vitamin D and the immune system
https://vitamindstopscovid.info/05-mds/
Vaccines are the 3rd most effective response to the pandemic, after vitamin D repletion and early treatment:
Vitamin D and early treatment vs. the COVID Vaccine Juggernaut
https://nutritionmatters.substack.com/p/vitamin-d-and-early-treatment-vs