Natural immunity is best
From the outset of the pandemic the usefulness of natural immunity was pooh-poohed by all those in power. One would normally assume that once you had a viral illness, that would protect you from catching it again. For some reason --presumably political -- Covid was said to be an exception to that.
Naturally-acquired immunity was said not to matter. You still had to get vaccinated to be protected from the illness. That was always rubbish and a very comprehensive study just out in The Lancet really knocks the nonsense on the head. After examining all the research now available in the medical literature, they conclude:
"Furthermore, although protection from past infection wanes over time, the level of protection against re-infection, symptomatic disease, and severe disease appears to be at least as durable, if not more so, than that provided by two-dose vaccination with the mRNA vaccines for ancestral, alpha, delta, and omicron BA.1 variants"
So if you had already had the disease you didn't need vaccination. We were all lied to by those in power. Some of them may have meant well but all should have been aware that what they were saying was unlikely to be true.
Journal summary below:
Summary
Background
Understanding the level and characteristics of protection from past SARS-CoV-2 infection against subsequent re-infection, symptomatic COVID-19 disease, and severe disease is essential for predicting future potential disease burden, for designing policies that restrict travel or access to venues where there is a high risk of transmission, and for informing choices about when to receive vaccine doses. We aimed to systematically synthesise studies to estimate protection from past infection by variant, and where data allow, by time since infection.
Methods
In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we identified, reviewed, and extracted from the scientific literature retrospective and prospective cohort studies and test-negative case-control studies published from inception up to Sept 31, 2022, that estimated the reduction in risk of COVID-19 among individuals with a past SARS-CoV-2 infection in comparison to those without a previous infection. We meta-analysed the effectiveness of past infection by outcome (infection, symptomatic disease, and severe disease), variant, and time since infection. We ran a Bayesian meta-regression to estimate the pooled estimates of protection. Risk-of-bias assessment was evaluated using the National Institutes of Health quality-assessment tools. The systematic review was PRISMA compliant and was registered with PROSPERO (number CRD42022303850).
Findings
We identified a total of 65 studies from 19 different countries. Our meta-analyses showed that protection from past infection and any symptomatic disease was high for ancestral, alpha, beta, and delta variants, but was substantially lower for the omicron BA.1 variant. Pooled effectiveness against re-infection by the omicron BA.1 variant was 45·3% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 17·3–76·1) and 44·0% (26·5–65·0) against omicron BA.1 symptomatic disease. Mean pooled effectiveness was greater than 78% against severe disease (hospitalisation and death) for all variants, including omicron BA.1. Protection from re-infection from ancestral, alpha, and delta variants declined over time but remained at 78·6% (49·8–93·6) at 40 weeks. Protection against re-infection by the omicron BA.1 variant declined more rapidly and was estimated at 36·1% (24·4–51·3) at 40 weeks. On the other hand, protection against severe disease remained high for all variants, with 90·2% (69·7–97·5) for ancestral, alpha, and delta variants, and 88·9% (84·7–90·9) for omicron BA.1 at 40 weeks.
Interpretation
Protection from past infection against re-infection from pre-omicron variants was very high and remained high even after 40 weeks. Protection was substantially lower for the omicron BA.1 variant and declined more rapidly over time than protection against previous variants. Protection from severe disease was high for all variants. The immunity conferred by past infection should be weighed alongside protection from vaccination when assessing future disease burden from COVID-19, providing guidance on when individuals should be vaccinated, and designing policies that mandate vaccination for workers or restrict access, on the basis of immune status, to settings where the risk of transmission is high, such as travel and high-occupancy indoor settings.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)02465-5/fulltext
******************************************************Breaking the silence: do vested interests stifle medical discussions?
Julie Sladden
Previously we examined the story behind UK Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra’s call to ‘stop the shots’.
In this follow up piece we explore potential factors stifling open discussion by medical professionals around this important issue. There are two broad categories: blind spots and roadblocks.
Blind spots
All vaccines are safe, therefore these vaccines are safe. This is something we have all heard before.
One of the biggest blind spots is the foundation of apparent ‘universal vaccine safety’ upon which this new technology rests. Dr Aseem Malhotra admits that even he ‘could not have expected or conceived of the possibility that these vaccines, these new vaccines, could cause harm’.
Assumptions were made. Malhotra explains:
‘Vaccines… have got this special place in medicine, they’re untouchable. (They’re) “only good”, so don’t even go there. Combine that with the fact the regulator approved it, and the fact (these vaccines were) originally invented… by smaller groups of scientists. (Pfizer and Moderna) just scaled it up. So, there was the benefit of the doubt here.’
However, no drug, medication or intervention is completely safe. Not even vaccines – why else would vaccine injury compensation schemes exist around the world?
In addition, these mRNA products are not like every other vaccine that we’ve seen. Just ask world-renowned virologist, immunologist, and mRNA technology developer, Robert Malone.
With any new technology caution is paramount and the focus should be on demonstrating that benefits outweigh harms. For this to happen, the ingredients are time (usually around decade for new drug development), and an attitude of ‘prove to me it’s safe’ rather than ‘prove to me it’s unsafe’ – the inverted reality we currently seem to have.
There is also a widely held assumption that pharmaceutical companies have our best interests at heart. They don’t.
A medical colleague recently stated, ‘Oh, I don’t think (insert drug company name here) would do anything like that!’ I was gobsmacked. My colleague was talking about a member of the industry well known for corruption and lawsuits resulting in convictions that run to the billions.
In the case of the Covid mRNA injectables, reports of compromised data integrity, attempts to withhold raw data (for 55 years!), and data reanalyses raising serious safety concerns, have done nothing to convince us otherwise.
Malhotra agrees:
‘I find it difficult to believe that scientists at these companies didn’t know what that data showed… and the harm it would do. But (the companies) are not interested in that because they are legally protected from liability of injury. The legal obligation … of pharma companies is to profit their shareholders. Ethics don’t mean anything to them.
‘Big Pharma and Big Corporations often behave, in the way they conduct their business, like psychopaths: deliberately deceiving others for profit with callous unconcern for the safety of others. This is essentially what we are seeing.‘
Another misunderstanding is the idea that the government provides a current, individualised, and unbiased source of medical information.
Government information is generally slow to appear, impersonal (for the patient in front of you), and driven by fiscal and political motives. Every year doctors are issued with pages of ‘guidelines’ aimed at populations, not individuals, presenting a minefield for the discerning doctor and the patient in front of them.
Some doctors have come to rely heavily on guidelines. In this over-litigious and over-regulated space, guidelines present a safe, and easy, way to practice for time-poor professionals. The by-product of this is there is a less perceived necessity for doctors to seek the evidence for themselves, combined with a mindset that ‘if I stick to the guidelines all will be well’.
Roadblocks
‘In answering why aren’t more doctors speaking out, (partly it) is that most doctors are not aware that the vaccines are causing all these harms,’ says Malhotra.
‘If you are not aware of a possibility of something causing harm or a side effect, then you never diagnose it. You will miss it.
‘The WHO endorsed an official list of potential serious adverse effects when the vaccine was rolled out and the list is huge.
‘Doctors have not been aware of these (potential) side effects and so they are not diagnosing. They are looking around for other causes when people are having heart attacks and (they are) not even thinking of the vaccine.’
The co-director of Coverse, an Australian organisation run by, and for, those who have suffered a significant adverse reaction following their Covid jab, says this is a vicious cycle:
‘If the doctor doesn’t think (something) is caused by the vaccine they may not report it… By not reporting it, the government doesn’t have the full picture so they don’t put out safety notices and then doctors don’t know that they should be looking out for it, so they don’t report it.’
There is also an ongoing information war.
When the pandemic started so did the daily government-endorsed updates into my email and in tray. Added to this, as the vaccines rolled out, was an information stream from professional, regulatory, and ‘pharma-funded’ doctors’ media. It was relentless.
It is hard not to drown in all that info and instead choose to do individual research rather than be spoon-fed. Many doctors are working so hard they simply don’t have the time. Malhotra agrees:
‘The chair of the BMA, when I spent two hours on the phone with him last December said, “Aseem, nobody seems to have critically appraised the evidence … most of my colleagues are getting their information on the vaccines from the BBC.”’
Understanding ‘the science’ is not straightforward.
If a doctor does undertake individual research, it’s important they understand the current landscape of the literature. It’s a long story, probably best summed up by Lancet editor, Richard Horton:
‘The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue… science has taken a turn towards darkness.’
There are many drivers of this problem, but front and centre is (you guessed it), the ‘pharma elephant’ in the room. Pharmaceutical interests are responsible for much of the funding for research grants and academic institutions, and also influence the journals in which such research is published.
A doctor also needs to have the ability to critically appraise the evidence in a way that they can then communicate it to patients. This takes time and expertise. Many end up relying on the regulator (for example the TGA) to give them the information (read: guidelines, see above) in the way that they should communicate it. But even this path is subject to potential pharmaceutical influence, as highlighted recently in the BMJ: ‘Of the six regulators, Australia had the highest proportion of budget from industry fees (96 per cent).’
Finally, if a doctor can critically appraise the data, they may become afraid to go against the establishment or to speak out due to likely censorship and pushback.
Malhotra surmises, ‘As you narrow it down, you end up with only a handful of people that; 1) can critically appraise the evidence; 2) can articulate it, and; 3) have the platform to do it. That then becomes a very small number of people.’
‘We are up against a juggernaut in terms of the capture of the medical establishment and media, repetition of “safe and effective”, and the gaslighting that’s gone on,’ summarises Malhotra.
To break free will not be easy.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH) Also here
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH) Also here
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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