Summary: The new generation of mRNA vaccines had many risks because they used a new technology, hastily tested. In addition, the choice of the spike protein as target turned out to be disastrous for side effects and adverse events, because, as was discovered later, the spike protein itself was toxic. Predictably, the virus quickly mutated its spike protein to avoid the narrowly-targeted antibodies of a vaccinated population. This is the new Omicron strain, against which the original vaccinations are almost completely ineffective. But this sad tale of errors may yet have a happy ending. The same spike protein mutations that allowed the virus to escape antibodies induced by vaccination has disarmed the virus to a large extent. The Omicron variant seems to have a mortality rate only 1/10 as high as the original Wuhan strain.
The adaptive immune system is robustly diverse. It includes elements of randomness, so that even identical twins confronting the same pathogen will repel it in different ways. This is a communal adaptation, a wasteful extravagance for any individual, but a boon to the community. This is our principal defense against epidemics.
A virus in the body can generate millions of copies of itself per hour, each slightly mutated. If one mutant gains an advantage over my immune system, I may become sick; I may sneeze and cough and spread the virus to you. But your immune system will respond to the same virus in a different way. This mutation that evaded my immune response is unlikely to have the same success in your body.
Diverse immune response is a defense against epidemics
A virus typically has dozens of proteins, and the body develops immune responses to any or all of them. The memorized immune response is robust, and will defeat a future version of the virus, even if it has mutated substantially. Within a population, each individual’s response is different from every other, so the virus cannot easily find a mutant that infects everyone. This is why epidemics are rare.
(This is an important adaptation. Every species is adapted to tolerate individual deaths from parasites or predators; but extinction is what the species is adapted to avoid at all costs. This is the value of a diverse population.)
What vaccines used to be
Classical vaccines were made from a dead or weakened virus. Introducing a whole virus into the body stimulates the full, robust immune response to all parts of the virus. They were almost as good for permanent immunity as recovery from the full disease [Video of Christine Stabell Benn].
But classical vaccines required years to develop and to test. And manufacturing a live virus vaccine demands precise control of a culture environment and strict measures to prevent escape of the virus. Small errors in the procedures can produce disastrous consequences, as when manufacturing flaws in the live-virus Sabin vaccine led to thousands of cases of polio.
Single-protein vaccines
So pharmaceutical companies have sought a safer and surer path to vaccines. Using just one protein from a virus is a shortcut that completely eliminates the possibility of a live virus mutating and spreading the illness that the vaccine was designed to avoid. Furthermore, the protein can be manufactured chemically, with no need for incubating tissue cultures in which the virus can grow. This has been a manufacturing strategy for decades. The vaccine is cheaper and safer in this one respect. But vaccines made from a single protein (“epitope”) can distort the immune response and have detrimental effects on resistance to other diseases, unrelated to the target disease [again, listen to Dr Stabell Benn]. Sometimes, prospects for overall long-term health can be worse, even if protection against one disease is better.
mRNA vaccines
The mRNA vaccines were a further step toward ease of development and economy of manufacture. Rather than a manufactured protein (derived from a virus), the vaccines contain only a stretch of genetic material, messenger RNA, from whichribosomes in the vaccinated person’s body manufacture the protein (that was originally derived from the virus). Chemical techniques for replicating DNA or RNA are a mature technology, completely automated and very inexpensive.
mRNA vaccines inherit the same problems that plague single-protein vaccines. The body develops a narrowly-targeted immune response that can be evaded over time. And the hyperfocus of the immune system can have detrimental effects on response to other diseases down the road. (This process of cross-immunity interference is well-documented but not well-understood.) [a great general reference, technical]
Dosage from mRNA vaccines cannot be controlled
In addition, mRNA vaccines have another problem: lack of epigenetic control. Genetics is the process by which DNA (or RNA) encodes proteins and it is well understood and readily brought under artificial control. Epigenetics is the process by which genes are turned on and off, active or silent, creating proteins or not. Epigenetics is complex and not at all well understood. When an mRNA vaccine is introduced into the body, the fate of the RNA is not well-determined. Sometimes it stays localized in the arm, generates some of the target protein, and disappears. Sometimes it is carried in the bloodstream far from the injection site. Sometimes the genes are expressed for a short time, and sometimes the RNA is copied into the body’s own DNA (reverse transcription), after which the target protein can be produced forever, possibly even in offspring. Science doesn’t yet know how to control the processes of turning genes on and off, and this accounts for some of the great variation in individual responses to the mRNA vaccines.
Hastily-developed vaccines come back to bite us
According to the flawed reporting system called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is the best public information that we have, twice as many people have died after the 2021 mRNA vaccines than have died following all the previous vaccines in the 30-year history of VAERS. Long-term effects of the mRNA vaccination ar still being discovered. No one can say for sure if the COVID vaccines are saving more lives than they are costing.
The virus has mutated to evade the vaccine
On a population level, communities that have high vaccination rates have created an ideal environment for the Corona virus virus to mutate. All parts of the virus are mutating all the time, but not all help the virus to be successful. If the spike protein mutates, this can throw the vaccinated immune system off the scent, because vaccination produces a highly focused immune response to the (original) spike protein. Dr Geert vanden Bossche prominently predicted that this would happen early in the distribution of the COVID vaccines.
The Omicron variant demonstrates that vanden Bossche got this exactly right. It includes 37 mutations, all in the area of the spike protein, and Omicron has completely evaded the vaccines. Vaccinated people are just as likely to get Omicron as unvaccinated.
Vanden Bossche anticipated tragic consequences for all of humanity, but this does not seem to be what is happening. Rather, this cloud has a silver lining. As mentioned above, the spike protein is the toxic payload of the COVID virus, responsible for most of the damage that the virus does to blood vessels and neurons. (It appears that the spike protein was engineered for this purpose in a gain-of-function experiment.) As the spike protein has mutated, it has become less toxic. As a result, the Omicron variant is far milder than original Wuhan COVID. The Omicron mortality rate, according to UK figures, is only 1/10 as high1.
The end of COVID?
Viruses always evolve toward higher transmission rates and lower fatality rates. The Omicron variant seems to be an unusually large step in both directions. This should mean that Omicron sweeps through the population, and many, many people will recover after a mild and abbreviated illness. We can hope that they then have permanent immunity to all forms of COVID — but only time will tell.
The UK has had 10,800 Omicron cases and 14 deaths for a mortality rate of 0.0013. For comparison, the 2-year total of COVID deaths and cases in the UK was 148,000/11,800,000 = 0.013, almost exactly ten times higher.
mRNA vaccines: Has Nature Rescued Us from a Disastrous Experiment?
Another question. On NPR they said that the "vaccinated" are having mild cases of Omicron, and the "unvaccinated" will have more severe cases. I assume this is propaganda. Also at the CDC ACIP meeting yesterday they said hospitals are full of children, unvax, with Omicron which is why they recommend children 12 - 15 "SHOULD" not "MAY" get boosters. Someone I spoke to on the phone said he was double vaxxed and boosted which is why his Omicron was so mild. People believe it. What do you know?
Thanks for that clear explanation. It seems also that Omicron bypasses natural immunity, for the first time, which is a caveat to my claim in https://coronawise.substack.com/p/natural-immunity-denial-disorder Peter McCullough got Omicron after having the alpha variant, and my youngest, also just got Omicron after having natural immunity but also a J&J shot, due to social pressures.
2 questions for you - can you comment on why Omicron is the first to bypass natural immunity and could that be because it was engineered? Some say it is discontinuous with the natural progression of variants and closest to the strain from April 2020. and If someone has natural immunity and gets the Covid shots, does that impair their natural immunity?