Tag Archives: Covid-19 vaccine

Don’t Look For This Information In The Mainstream Media

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The Epoch Times posted an article today with the following headline, “Most Recovered COVID-19 Patients Have Broad, Robust Immunity That Likely Provides Some Protection Against Variants: Study.” Then why are people who have recovered from the virus being encouraged to get the vaccine?

The article reports:

Most people who have recovered from COVID-19, even with mild illness, retain a broad and durable immunity to the disease, including some degree of protection against its variants, according to an Emory University study published in the journal, Cell Reports Medicine.

The longitudinal study, the most comprehensive of its kind to date, involved 254 COVID-19 patients, between the ages of 18 to 82 years, who provided blood samples at various points for a period of over eight months beginning in April 2020. About 71 percent of the patients had mild disease, 24 percent experienced moderate illness, and five percent had severe disease.

The researchers found that most of the patients who recovered mounted a strong and wide-ranging immune response to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus for up to 250 days.

“We saw that antibody responses, especially IgG antibodies, were not only durable in the vast majority of patients but decayed at a slower rate than previously estimated, which suggests that patients are generating longer-lived plasma cells that can neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein,” Rafi Ahmed, director at Emory Vaccine Center and lead author told Emory News Center on July 22.

The article concludes:

The authors also found that COVID-19 recovered patients displayed stable antibody responses to the other human coronaviruses that cause the common cold, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV).

“These data are most consistent with the generation of long-lived plasma cells and refute the current notion that these antibody responses to human coronaviruses are short lived,” the researchers said. “Moreover, the COVID-19 patients mounted increased IgG antibody responses to SARS-CoV-1, a related pathogen that none likely had experienced previous exposure to.”

The researchers will continue to follow the cohort for several years, with the last sample collection of the participants set for February 2023. Doing so allows the researchers to gather more data to “define the progression to long-lived immunity” to the CCP virus after natural infection.

The findings add to the growing body of research that indicates that recovered COVID-19 patients develop long-lasting immunity.

A limitation of the study is that it didn’t include more severe COVID-19 patients and those who are asymptomatic. However, the authors noted that “mild-moderate illness accounts for [more than] 80 percent of COVID-19 cases, highlighting the relevance of our findings over time.”

The authors said that the study’s findings will “also serve as a benchmark for immune memory induced in humans by SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.”

If my having had COVID-19 means that I will be less likely to get a cold this winter, then it was worth it! Seriously, COVID-19 is serious and not to be taken lightly, but anyone who has not yet taken the vaccine needs to weigh very carefully the risk/benefit ratio. Getting COVID-19 was not a pleasant experience, and I am grateful that my case did not include serious complications, but one problem with this virus is that no one can predict how it will impact a particular person. I am in a high-risk group, yet I did not experience severe symptoms. I strongly encourage anyone who has not yet taken the vaccine to do their own research to determine what is best for them as an individual.

This Is Troubling News

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Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about the recent outbreak of Covid-19 in Israel.

The article reports:

About 90 percent of new COVID-19 infections in Israel were caused by the CCP virus’s Delta variant, officials said, while adding that about half of the adults infected in the recent outbreak were fully vaccinated.

Ran Balicer, who leads an expert advisory panel for the Israeli government, in announcing the finding on Friday, said that the country might end up implementing another lockdown after opening up earlier this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The fully vaccinated individuals were inoculated with the Pfizer COVID-19 shot commonly used in Israel.

The article notes:

Earlier this month, for example, nearly 4,000 fully vaccinated people in Massachusetts tested positive for the CCP virus, according to health officials in the state.

“We’re learning that many of the breakthrough infections are asymptomatic or they’re very mild and brief in duration,” said Boston University infectious diseases specialist Davidson Hamer, the Boston Herald reported. “The viral load is not very high.”

“Breakthroughs are expected, and we need to better understand who’s at risk and whether people who have a breakthrough can transmit the virus to others,” Hamer said. “In some cases, they’ll be shedding such low levels of the virus and won’t be transmitting to others.”

And on April 30, the CDC reported that some 10,626 breakthrough cases were reported in 46 states and territories.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says on its website that COVID-19 vaccines should work against the Delta strain as well as other COVID-19 variants.

However, the U.N. agency warned that  “changes or mutations in the virus should not make vaccines completely ineffective,” adding that if the “vaccines prove to be less effective against one or more variants, it will be possible to change the composition of the vaccines to protect against these variants.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Pfizer for comment.

Any medical decision involves a risk/benefit scenario. It seems to me that the vaccines currently on the market do not reach the level of benefit needed to protect the population fully from a virus that is only fatal to a particular segment of the population. I think it’s time to reconsider the push to vaccinate everyone.

Cherry Picking The Facts To Get The Results You Want

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For whatever reason, the government wants everyone to get the Covid-19 vaccine. Despite numbers that show many Americans have natural immunity to the coronavirus because they have already had it (I am one of those Americans. I had the virus in early November. As of two weeks ago, I still had the antibodies. If I test negative for the antibodies in the future, I might consider the vaccine, but for now, I won’t.), the government is pushing the vaccine.

Yesterday Townhall posted an article on some of the twisted logic being used to coerce Americans into getting the vaccine.

The article notes:

There are no more experts. They know nothing. So, don’t listen to them. Okay, maybe that’s not actually fair—but the real experts are being ignored by the liberal media for a simple reason: they want the COVID panic to continue. They want more deaths to occur. They want a spike. They want to keep the nation locked down. It’s partially out of spite. Blue states are still under Nazi-esque lockdown rules—and their cases are still bad. Not like last year, but Michigan is seeing a massive spike, whereas Texas who nixed their mask mandate over five weeks ago and reopened fully has seen no spikes—none. Florida has also been a state that has managed its COVID crisis better than the media gave it credit for, painting Gov. Ron DeSantis as the grim reaper. It turns out the entire media establishment ate it on that one—no shock. The good news is that even though Democratic states cannot manage COVID, there is no fourth wave. A spike in one state—Michigan, does not make a wave no matter what the CDC says. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci has said he doesn’t think there’s going to be a fourth wave. And alas, here is the circus. The CDC saying there’s “impending doom,” which was voiced around spring break to Fauci saying, ‘nah, that ain’t happening.’  The messaging on COVID protocols has been a mess; the ones with vaccines has been even worse. An MIT study pretty much gutted or cast immense doubt on the effectiveness and purpose of air filtration systems, indoor capacity caps, and even mask wearing. Folks think they’re protected wearing a mask. Nope. It’s an airborne virus. If you’re inside with someone exposed, that mask isn’t doing much, whether it be six or sixty feet apart. It’s all a mess, and now we have this garbage about not reaching herd immunity (via NYT):

The New York Times reported:

Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.

Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.

Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.

How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.

Again, there is no allowance for natural immunity in this conclusion. It is estimated that at least one-third of Americans have had the coronavirus and are immune to it. When you add that to the forty-five percent who have been vaccinated you get approximately seventy-eight percent. That is herd immunity. Just a note, herd immunity does not mean that we eliminate the virus completely–it simply means that we eliminate the epidemic. That is a distinction that I don’t think is being currently made. We could lock ourselves in our houses forever, and there might still be a virus bug waiting for us somewhere when we ventured outside. Living in a bubble is not practical. We need to follow the example of Florida–protect the vulnerable, vaccinate the vulnerable who choose to be vaccinated, and let those less vulnerable go on with their lives. Unfortunately (as we are currently seeing), government does not like to give up control under any circumstances.

The Vaccine Is Not One Hundred Percent Effective Against Covid-19

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Yesterday The Epoch Times reported that the Hawaii Department of Health has reported that three people who were fully vaccinated against Covid-19 have come down with the virus.

The article reports:

All three patients had received both doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, reported KITV4. They all experienced mild symptoms and did not appear to spread the disease to others, the DOH told the news station.

COVID-19 vaccines don’t prevent infection, however they mitigate severe symptoms and lower the risk of hospitalization, health experts say.

One of the patients, an Oahu-based health care worker, received the second and final dose of the vaccine in January. The worker traveled to several U.S. cities about a month later, and tested positive following routine testing upon returning to Hawaii as per travel protocol.

Contact tracing hasn’t identified any additional infections among close contacts of the health care worker.

It isn’t clear which vaccines each of the three patients received.

The article notes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that even people who have had the virus get the vaccine because they are not sure how long the immunity lasts. It sounds as if they really don’t know a whole lot about how the entire disease works.

The article also notes the following:

Lt. Gov. of Hawaii, Josh Green, urged people not to be discouraged by the news, as the vaccines work “in a huge percentage of people.”

“Remember, 95 percent of people get immunity from the vaccines and five percent don’t from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine,” Green told news station KHON2.

As someone who has had the coronavirus and recovered from it, I think I will take my chances with my own antibodies.

How Politics Can Negatively Impact The Health Of Americans

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The Federalist is reporting today that Amazon has offered the Biden administration Covid vaccine distribution assistance. That’s very nice, but notice that the offer was not made to the Trump administration. That is disgraceful. That is putting politics above the health of Americans. Whether you are planning to get the vaccine or not, the availability of the vaccine is critical.

The article reports:

Amazon offered the Biden administration vaccine distribution assistance with its vast trove of nationwide resources moments after President Joe Biden was sworn into office on Wednesday. Amazon, the company said, was “ready to assist” with the new president’s goal to vaccinate 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of the new administration.

“We are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccination efforts,” Amazon’s CEO for worldwide consumer business Dave Clark wrote. “Our scale allows us to make a meaningful impact immediately in the fight against COVID-19.”

The article notes the difference the timing of the offer makes:

The five-to-six-week delay in offering resources when such assistance was available, as vaccination implementation struggled at the state level, likely came at a cost of thousands of lives as viral cases reached new heights in the new year, all while lockdowns enriched the coffers of the corporate tech giants profiting handsomely from the pandemic. The optics of the delay, without any substantive explanation for it, make it appear guided by animus toward Trump and is reminiscent of the Pfizer announcement of its vaccine efficacy days after the November election. Biden was informed of the vaccine’s effectiveness before officials in the Trump administration, who learned of it through the media.

The Trump administration devoted its resources primarily to vaccine development through Operation Warp Speed, successfully landing two reliable vaccines by the year’s end. Vaccination, however, has been left up to the states, a decision that now-President Biden has declared a mistake. He is moving to federalize vaccination efforts, aiming to give 100 million Americans immunity by the end of his first 100 days in office, which comes at the end of April.

Finally, the article notes:

Amazon’s decision to provide access to its vast nationwide resources, however, provides a point of optimism that Biden’s aspirational goals might be possible with the private-sector help not afforded from the same company to his Republican predecessor.

I don’t even have the words to say how angry this makes me. We are watching an all out war on anything President Trump accomplished, the demonetization of conservative thought (and conservatives), and a political party that defines unity as the crushing of any opposing ideas. This is not healthy for our country.