Mainstream asks are vaccines fueling new variants ?

The answer is yes.

I hope all my subscribers had a very nice and peaceful, good vibes, and chill January 1st. Let us start the year with a duh you don’t say article, shall we ? The Wall Street Journal recently put the following article online.

Are Vaccines Fueling New Covid Variants?

Public-health experts are sounding the alarm about a new Omicron variant dubbed XBB that is rapidly spreading across the Northeast U.S. Some studies suggest it is as different from the original Covid strain from Wuhan as the 2003 SARS virus. Should Americans be worried?

It isn’t clear that XBB is any more lethal than other variants, but its mutations enable it to evade antibodies from prior infection and vaccines as well as existing monoclonal antibody treatments. Growing evidence also suggests that repeated vaccinations may make people more susceptible to XBB and could be fueling the virus’s rapid evolution.

The same study posits that immune imprinting may be contributing to the viral evolution. Vaccines do a good job of training the immune system to remember and knock out the original Wuhan variant. But when new and markedly different strains come along, the immune system responds less effectively.

Bivalent vaccines that target the Wuhan and BA.5 variants (or breakthrough infections with the latter) prompt the immune system to produce antibodies that target viral regions the two strains have in common. In Darwinian terms, mutations that allow the virus to evade common antibodies win out—they make it “fitter.”

XBB has evolved to elude antibodies induced by the vaccines and breakthrough infections. Hence, the Nature study suggests, “current herd immunity and BA.5 vaccine boosters may not efficiently prevent the infection of Omicron convergent variants.”

A New England Journal of Medicine study published last month provides more evidence of the vulnerability caused by immune imprinting. Neutralizing antibodies of people who had received the bivalent were 26 times as high against the original Wuhan variant as they were against XBB and four times as high as they were against Omicron and the BA.5 variant.

Similarly, a study this month in the journal Cell found that antibody levels of people who had received four shots were 145 times as high against the original Wuhan strain as the XBB variant. A bivalent booster only slightly increased antibodies against XBB. Experts nevertheless claim that boosters improve protection against XBB. That’s disinformation, to use their favored term.

“This is not the only study to find a possible association with more prior vaccine doses and higher risk of COVID-19,” the authors noted. “We still have a lot to learn about protection from COVID-19 vaccination, and in addition to a vaccine’s effectiveness it is important to examine whether multiple vaccine doses given over time may not be having the beneficial effect that is generally assumed.”

Two years ago, vaccines were helpful in reducing severe illness, particularly among the elderly and those with health risks like diabetes and obesity. But experts refuse to concede that boosters have yielded diminishing benefits and may even have made individuals and the population as a whole more vulnerable to new variants like XBB.

It might not be a coincidence that XBB surged this fall in Singapore, which has among the highest vaccination and booster rates in the world. Over the past several weeks a XBB strain has become predominant in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, making up about three-quarters of virus samples that have been genetically sequenced. The variant has been slower to take off in other regions, making up only 6% of the Midwest and about 20% in the South. The Northeast is also the most vaccinated and boosted region in the country.

Hospitalizations in the Northeast have risen too, but primarily among those over 70. One reason may be that the T-Cell response—the cavalry riding behind the front-line antibodies—is weaker in older people. The virus can’t evade T-Cells elicited by vaccines and infections as easily as it can antibodies. Because of T-Cells, younger people are still well-protected against new variants.

As most of you will be aware, a lot has happened at a personal life level in the last 6 weeks, which partially explains some of the changes here and on Twitter, another part that I didn’t divulge previously was that I didn’t want to indulge in “variant chasing” and the rather tedious trend of writing about variants and endlessly and needlessly feeding people’s anxiety.
In a way, it is a growth strategy for many, which I refuse to partake in unless necessary information presents itself.

XBB is a rather “new” type of variant, one which I and many others alluded it would inevitably come sooner or later, a literal recombinant variant, between Omicron and Delta. Most of what I wrote as a comparison between SARS-CoV-2 previous variants and Omicron, applies to XBB, it is very antigenically different from Omicron, therefore very distinct from any variant below Delta.

In May 2022 I wrote about what the future might hold for (at the moment) a new BA.4, BA.5 variants and that immune imprinting was occurring with all vaccines the only real argument would be “at what level”. As early as February 2022 we had papers already pointing out the same, and of course, anyone who spent any meaningful amount of hours in 2020 reading on prior coronavirus vaccine development attempts knew this would come.

Later in the same year, in November, I wrote about Immune Imprinting and excess deaths. XBB and the variant it will spew forth will come to dominate the planet, which is indisputable. The fact that vaccines are fueling the spew of variants isn’t exactly new, it was the basis of many of my early observations and what I named “Reverse Marek’s Disease” in which vaccinated spread the disease and get sicker (the opposite of Marek’s Disease, where any chicken not vaccinated is dead from the virus the leaky Marek’s vaccine transmits).

There isn’t anything really new for anyone who reads my Substack or many other authors, yet seeing this reaching the mainstream media so openly made me write this earlier today.

Yesteryear conspiracy theory, today's hypothesis, tomorrow's science. This has been a scientific fact for most of 2021 onwards. And I will just say it. The mRNA spike has been fueling the evolution of other shit too. Highway to evolutionary hell.

One has to wonder, really long and hard, how the fuck they will push mRNA on 20+ diseases after this. And they are hellbent on that as much as on the green energy stuff, they will not give up.

The greatest trick the devil played was fooling the entire planet that the problem was always the Spike, just the Spike, spike spike spike spike. In parts it was, but whoever meddled with this thing was a singular genius. More on this later this month.

I stick by all my assertions here, and we finally have some evidence on how other pathogens can help shape the SARS-CoV-2 evolutionary route, which of course in turn effectively works the other way. While it might take a long while for research or for me to find a proper mechanism, I will stick to it until my last breath.

SARS-CoV-2 and its immunological changes at a global level accelerated the evolution of many pathogens, and partially explain the sudden increase in plagues around the world.

For the bolded part in the WSJ article, I tried very hard to find the source of the following quote, but can’t.

But I remember, clear as day, Kariko, loudly regarded as the “mRNA inventor” together with a male colleague stating in no other words “I don’t think T-Cells are important.” (In regards to vaccine-elicited immunity). And I have set as my goal to remind people every so often of such a quote. Because while the problem is complex in nature, with a lot of non-linear dynamics as any biological system is, the entire cascade starts from this rationale.

From my perspective, we are starting the year on a rather positive note, since even the mainstream media now is asking the question many of us did in 2021, and 2022. I do wonder how they will push all the other 2 dozen mRNA vaccines they have in mind to the global population…

Many mysteries lie ahead.

PS: While I will try not to, some of the next days might be double e-mail/posting days, which I hate but, a lot to get out there.

As always, really appreciate the subscribers who choose to support this Substack here or using Kofi, and the ones who share. Without all of you, this wouldn’t be possible.