The mystery that could explain why COVID vaccines work so well
There’s something a bit odd about COVID-19 vaccines. Good, but odd.
In clinical trials, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson’s jabs all offer almost exactly the same level of protection against serious illness and death: between 95 and 100 per cent.
Now consider the huge range of different efficacy levels the vaccines have for preventing illness: from 61 to 95 per cent.
Different vaccines. Different efficacy levels. But the same protection against serious illness and death. What’s going on?
The answer might be found in a powerful part of your immune system that rarely gets much press coverage: the T cell.
Professor David Tscharke is a T cell researcher based at the Australian National University. He also has multiple sclerosis; his particular treatment means his body does not make many new antibodies, even when vaccinated.
He’s just received his first dose of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. “It all depends on T cells for me,” he says.
Antibodies hog the anti-virus limelight. That’s partially because they are much easier to measure and study than the other components of the immune system. Scientists are starting to get a pretty good idea of how many you need to be immune.
For T cells, “we’re still trying to understand what’s happening at the viral infection stage”, says Professor Stephanie Gras, a T cell researcher at La Trobe University. “I’m not even talking about what happens when we get vaccinated.”
That means if they are important, we may have missed it.
Let’s go back to the vaccines. They stop people getting seriously ill. But some people still get mildly unwell. Why?
Vaccine-induced antibodies offer instant defence against the virus the moment it enters your body. They sit in your throat and float through your blood. If they come across the virus, they stick to it, gumming up the machinery it uses to infect cells.
T cells are your immune system’s cavalry. They wait in your lymph nodes (under your arm, at the base of your neck). Vaccine arms these troops, but when they spot an invader, they still take a few days to grow into a huge army before launching their attack.
That delay is our clue.
It may be that, in some cases, the virus gets through antibody defences and we get sick. And then, bang, in comes the T cell-cavalry, wiping out the virus before it can make us seriously ill – or kill us.
That’s one theory, but it’s hard to prove.
Conversely, it may be the antibodies are preventing serious infection and death themselves.
It could even be that COVID-19 vaccines, which are designed to stimulate antibodies, aren’t doing a very good job at all of firing up our T cells, says Professor Gras.
“You have to imagine an immune system like a classical orchestra,” she says. “If you are missing one thing, you won’t hear it – but it won’t be as good.”
If T cells are playing a big role in vaccines, that’s exciting, because they offer us a very powerful defence against the new variants COVID-19 increasingly throws up.
Antibodies generally work by gumming up the spike SARS-CoV-2 uses to infect cells. To do that, the antibody has to be exactly the right shape to fit onto the spike. If the spike changes shape, even slightly, the antibodies cannot stick.
That’s what the South African and Brazilian variants appear to have done. Very preliminary – but troubling – evidence suggests the South African variant seems to have changed shape in such a way that AstraZeneca’s vaccine is not effective against it at all.
If T cells play a key role in the vaccine’s success, says Professor Tscharke, it’s likely they don’t give much of a stuff about the variants.
When a virus infects a human cell, it captures the cell’s factories and turns them to churning out copies of itself.
But the cell is secretly fighting back. A special mechanism kicks into action, taking lots of random pieces of the virus and sticking them outside the cell, waving them around like a flag. That’s what the T cells spot.
Those flags can be just about any part of the virus, including vital parts the virus cannot easily mutate.
(Quick sidenote: about 4 per cent of people express a gene which means that, when infected with one of the seasonal coronaviruses that cause the common cold, their cells flag up a piece of cold virus that is similar to a piece of SARS-CoV-2. In a small study published last week, Professor Gras’ team showed 90 per cent of these people had T cells that could spot and attack CoV-2, despite never having seen the virus before!)
That potentially explains why T cells generated by patients who have been vaccinated are capable of recognising the British variant, the South African variant, the Brazilian variant and the Californian variant.
Plus, the virus is under less evolutionary pressure to mutate to avoid T cells. It wants to avoid antibodies, get inside cells, replicate and spread, especially inside the nose and throat. T cells probably won’t stop that – but they may stop you getting seriously ill or dying.
Remember the study that found AstraZeneca’s vaccine was ineffective against the South African strain? The participants got sick – but none of them fell seriously ill or died. The study wasn’t big enough to prove AstraZeneca’s vaccine prevented serious illness or death, but it remains a tantalising hint that vaccines might protect us better than we think.
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Russia demands 1 Million Illegal Migrants Leave the Country
A good example?
Russia has told migrants from post-Soviet states living there illegally to leave the country by June 15, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported Friday.
This announcement came at a meeting of the Interparliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth by the deputy head of the department, Alexander Gorovoy. “These people will be punished by expulsion and closure of borders” if they don’t leave by the June 15 deadline, stated Deputy Interior Gorovoy.
According to Interior Ministry data, more than 332,000 illegal migrants from Uzbekistan currently reside in Russia, along with 247,000 from Tajikistan, 152,000 from Ukraine, 120,000 from Azerbaijan, 115,000 from Kyrgyzstan, 61,000 from Armenia, 56,000 from Moldova, and 49,000 from Kazakhstan.
In mid-December, Vladimir Putin, by decree, extended the temporary residence of migrants in Russia in connection with the coronavirus until June 15, 2021.
https://rairfoundation.com/russia-demands-1-million-illegal-migrants-leave-the-country/
*************************************Study Results: Facemasks are Ineffective to Block Transmission of COVID-19 and Actually Can Cause Health Deterioration and Premature Death
A recent study reported by the NCBI, which is under the National Institutes of Health, showed that masks do absolutely nothing to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and their use is even harmful.
NOQ Report uncovered the study:
…a DuckDuckGo search reveals it [the study] was picked up by ZERO mainstream media outlets and Big Tech tyrants will suspend people who post it, as political strategist Steve Cortes learned the hard way when he posted a Tweet that went against the face mask narrative. The Tweet itself featured a quote and a link that prompted Twitter to suspend his account, potentially indefinitely.
The NCBI study begins with the following abstract:
Many countries across the globe utilized medical and non-medical facemasks as non-pharmaceutical intervention for reducing the transmission and infectivity of [the] coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). Although, scientific evidence supporting facemasks’ efficacy is lacking, adverse physiological, psychological and health effects are established. It has been hypothesized that facemasks have compromised safety and efficacy profile and should be avoided from use. The current article comprehensively summarizes scientific evidence[s] with respect to wearing facemasks in the COVID-19 era, providing proper information for public health and decision making.
The study concludes:
The existing scientific evidence[s] challenge the safety and efficacy of wearing facemask as preventive intervention for COVID-19. The data suggest that both medical and non-medical facemasks are ineffective to block human-to-human transmission of viral and infectious disease such SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, supporting against the usage of facemasks. Wearing facemasks has been demonstrated to have substantial adverse physiological and psychological effects. These include hypoxia, hypercapnia, shortness of breath, increased acidity and toxicity, activation of fear and stress response, rise in stress hormones, immunosuppression, fatigue, headaches, decline in cognitive performance, predisposition for viral and infectious illnesses, chronic stress, anxiety and depression. Long-term consequences of wearing facemask can cause health deterioration, developing and progression of chronic diseases and premature death. Governments, policy makers and health organizations should utilize [a] proper and scientific evidence-based approach with respect to wearing facemasks, when the latter is considered as preventive intervention for public health.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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