Posted on 09/11/2021 3:35:21 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
Freeper 21Twelve informed me about an interesting post from way back that featured Mother Abigail.
I am sure a number of you remember her. I was only very intermittently lurking back then. I wish I had been more of a regular. My mother died from flu the year of the Obama flu that not was not admitted to.
I may have learned about things to help her.
Below is a transcript of a discussion on ADE with Mother Abigail.
MA: So we have seen that some viral infections are fought rather succesfully using vaccines and some are not.
Do you know of any other problems with vaccines?
Q: I remember the dust-up about there being mercury in some vaccines.
MA: Yes some vaccines do contain Thimerasol, a mercury-containing preservative. However, there is no hard evidence that this product causes autism - and that is what has been claimed. But I do believe that children under 5 or 6 are often given Thimerasol free vaccines if possible, but my information might be a bit dated.
It is another aspect of vaccines that I would like to make you aware of and especially with the coming flu season.
Q: And what is that?
MA: It is a phenomena called antibody-dependent enhancement.
As we discussed this winter the majority of viral infections of animals and man are not fatal, but are followed by recovery and the development of a state of relative or absolute resistance against re-infection with the same virus.
Much of this resistance can be attributed to specific antiviral antibodies, although cellular immune mechanisms also contribute to the protection of the host.
However not all antiviral antibodies are necessarily virus neutralizing antibodies - in addition to these virus neutralizing antibodies or non-neutralizing antibodies a further group of antibodies exist: antibodies which enhance the infectivity of the virus.
This phenomenon is known as antibody-dependent-enhancement (ADE) of viral infectivity and has been observed with various macrophage-infecting viruses.
The common features of viruses exhibiting ADE are:
1. preferential replication in macrophages 2. ability to establish persistence 3. and antigenic diversity
Q: That's odd. How does it work?
MA: ADE occurs when the host is more efficiently infected by a combination of virus plus antibody than by the virus alone.
Can you see that?
Q: Yea, I guess. But it seems strange that an antibody would aid the virus in infection.
MA: Child, nothing in the world of Virology is strange.
Hat Tip.
The Role of Macrophages in the Pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2-Associated Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.682871/full
I wonder what happened to Mother Abigail? Hope she is ok (assuming her gender)
Who is Mother Abigail? How do we check out her identity?
“Administration of methylprednisolone to mice has been shown to direct AM polarization towards M2 phenotype which helps to preserve oxygenation function of the lungs in ARDS”
that more clearly explains the roll of Dexamethasone in hospitalized patients
Mother Abigal may have been a scientist with the CDC and first started posting about Ebola in 2003 and then other pandemics. She had real-time information on virus outbreaks and is believed to be the first person to post about them on a “regular” website (Freerepublic). She may have retired around 2019 (from the interview iirc).
She used FreeRepublic because her simple home computer with poor internet connection was easy to use on FR and she ran into issues trying to post on the various medical blogs with advertisements, etc.
The following link has all of her posts on FR.
https://freerepublic.com/tag/by:motherabigail/index?brevity=brief
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The following is a good James Oscars post (the interviewing in the title link) about MA:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1788553/posts
Excerpt:
THE TRANSFORMATION
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang, but a whimper T. S. Eliot
It was the Ides of March, late in the night - on the hottest conservative forum on the Internet - that she appeared.
In an obscure section of that web site she posted a cryptically titled thread, made a comment about Ebola, a comment about God and then posted an advisory about a “worldwide health threat.”...
19. WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF SARS? ONE VIRUS, TWO VIRUSES WORKING IN CONCERT, OR A DETERMINANT UNKNOWN...
20. Killer-flu a ‘white terror’: Expert, “It is the worst medical disaster I have ever seen....
- and over the next eleven days guided both lay and professionals, transformed the web site, crushed the paradigm and changed the way we interface with breaking news forever....
It became apparent quite early that this was not to be the normal flu talk. This is an early post:
“Doug had an interesting observation in picking a Morbillivirus as a likely agent.
Hendra and Nipah are both zoonotic and it might well be a mutant of the Paramyxoviridae family. Symptoms are right....
52 posted on 03/17/2003 10:49:23 PM PST by Mother Abigail”
And so it began.
Why was this different? Because local MD’s discovered ProMed, because an army of netizens began searching every corner of our world for information, because citizens of other countries began translating information that would normally be missed - because the whole was larger than the sum of the parts.
One poster who tried to write about Mother Abigail soon after the incident, and was quickly banned, called it SARS Central.
Sounds right to me.
She hijacked a web site, created a forum for the “in depth” discussion of Virology, Taxonomy and Microbiology. But interactive.
And it is that interactivity that opened the flood gates. Now it was possible to monitor breaking news in a far off land, have experts opine on that news, react to their opinions and post information of your own.
NBC Nightly News was never going to be the same.
The “Flu Blog” was born.
DENOUEMENT
Eleven days. From March the 15th to March the 26 she posted, wrote and guided. Then with the same grace and dignity that marked every word she ever wrote - she said goodby.
“It appears I have worked myself out of a job.”
Many of you are now posting threads on SARS, and the information seems to be flowing in an accurate and timely manner.
So I will take this opportunity to thank all the posters for their hard work and diligence.
NOTE: I have tried to answer all the e-mails, except of course, the many that asked for personal information. Hope I was of some help
Stay Strong, Come and see me and - bring all your nice friends.......
20 posted on 03/26/2003 8:12:57 PM PST by Mother Abigail”
Some help indeed....
Mother Abigail had become, in the wink of an eye, the focal point for much praise and some derision. Then she was gone.
A year or so later she began posting, from time to time, on various web sites - always modest - never speaking of those days again.
*******************
She continued posting off and on at FR with regards to viruses, etc. Her last posts on FR were in 2012 regarding Ebola.
Fascinating. Great info. Thanks for sharing.
Oh wow- I remember her. She was brilliant.
Thanks for posting this!
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