Let’s get one thing clear, right from the front. I’m not the big expert. That’s because there’s waaaay too much information for any one person to understand. I’m just the “splainer,” since I’m the nut who has taken waaaay too much time away from his golf game to study the experts and learn what’s actually going on so I can ‘splain it for you.
Don’t try this at home. I am a professional. I spent 36 years practicing medicine, with a huge chunk of that time wearing masks, both in the operating room and the expensive – oops – Intensive Care Unit. My job is to translate “doctor” into English.
First things have to come first, and like a lot of other times, I have to start with one of those bits where I hit my forehead with my palm and cry out “Duh!” Like every other doctor, there was something I missed that should have been totally obvious.
These Vaccines don’t keep you from getting infected by a virus.
You read that right. These Vaccines don’t keep anyone from getting infected. Their job is to keep you from getting sick. In fact, every good vaccine prepares your immune system to shut down an infection after it has gotten started. That’s because antibodies and T-cells live in your bloodstream. They can’t do a damn thing about a virus that hasn’t infected you enough to get into your blood. But once it gets there they can go to work, keeping the bug from hurting you. At least, that’s the theory. And that’s where we find the first problem.
Airborne diseases like COVID-19 don’t go straight into your blood. Instead, after you breathe enough virus-laden aerosols in, the air sacs in your lungs get a pretty good covering of virus. This doesn’t make you sick. But the virus latches onto the pneumocytes (the cells on the inside of the air sacs) and start making more virus. This means you can share with your neighbor. In fact, many vaccinated people actually breathe out as much virus as someone who is sick with COVID-19.
But you aren’t defenseless. Your air sacs have “alveolar macrophages,” specialized cells that use “Pattern Recognition Receptors” to identify the Wuhan Flu. Over time, they will clean out the air sacs. And vaccinated people seem to be infectious for a shorter period than unvaccinated.
The viruses that got into the pneumocytes will create more viruses, and some of those will find their way across the basement membrane (the barrier between blood and air in your lungs) into your bloodstream. Once there, if your immunity is good, your T-cells and antibodies will get to work. You may never even know you were infected. Of course, since the vaccine is only about 85% effective, you might get sick.
Suppose you are one of those vaccinated people who gets infected. You could even have gotten it from your vaccinated friend who got it… somewhere. The bug is “in the wild.” That means it is everywhere. You can’t avoid it unless you stay outdoors 24/7/365. Out there any virus is diluted so much that you won’t catch it, and in the daytime the sun will destroy it with UV light. That’s why the number of people who have caught the Wuhan Flu outdoors is indistinguishable from zero.
Indoors, with recirculated air conditioning, the virus concentrates. It stays in the air for hours or days. So when you go into a space where someone has been shedding virus for a while (vaccinated?), you will get exposed.
And don’t give me that mask wearing nonsense. The other guy wasn’t wearing a mask that cut down the amount of virus he left behind by any meaningful amount. He’s breathing out as many as 100,000 virus particles a minute. You only need 100-1000 in your lungs to get you infected. You aren’t wearing a properly fitted fresh N-95. That means the virus gets to you easily.
Both masks were nothing but virtue signaling. Their only real possible value is as bling. Neither mask provided any material protection. There was no source control on the other guy, and no exposure control for you.
This brings us to the 600 pound gorilla in the room. You are more likely to get infected today than months ago because of the vaccine. This is the “Superbug Problem.”
A few years ago we were all worried about bacteria that couldn’t be killed with antibiotics. They were so deadly that anyone who “caught” MRSA or C-Diff was doomed. But you don’t “catch” those bacteria. They are common. In ordinary circumstances they compete with so many other bacteria that they are a non-event. If you kill off all the other bacteria with antibiotics, MRSA and C-Diff are what’s left. Now you have a problem. You didn’t create the bugs. You created the situation where they could take over and kill your patient.
We fixed this problem by severely restricting antibiotics. I got three days of an old drug after my shoulder replacement. That’s it. I wasn’t on cefazolin any longer than absolutely necessary, and it didn’t have time to wipe out a lot of bacteria in my body. MRSA and C-Diff never got a toehold.
Vaccines are doing exactly the same thing, just with COVD variants. The Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines provide immunity to the alpha variant spike protein. Because viruses are constantly mutating, there are dozens of variants. We hear about the Delta, but Lambda and Mu are already in the wild. Each one of these has a slightly different spike protein, making your immunity not so good.
But if you recover from COVID, you also have immunity to other parts of the virus, such as the nucleocapsid and envelope. The Fauci ouchy doesn’t help with them. That’s why your immunity after recovery is much longer lasting and robust than after the shot. It also explains why Gibraltar, with a 99% vaccination rate, is having huge problems with COVID variants. It’s also why getting a booster coding for just the alpha spike is stupid. You need immunity to the whole virus.
But how do you get over a case of Wuhan Fu? Space doesn’t allow a full discussion, but the CDC and FDA are totally invested in expensive vaccines that cause myocarditis, strokes, miscarriages, and other major complications. They have not only refused to endorse any prehospital treatment whatever, they are actively discouraging effective protocols, such as the $8 per person treatment that stopped the Delta variant in India. One has to wonder if it’s because it uses Ivermectin, an incredibly inexpensive drug with very little toxicity.
We will never eliminate COVID because it has animal reservoirs that will pass the virus back and forth from animals to humans. If we follow Sweden’s example, where natural immunity has basically eliminated the Delta epidemic, we can go completely back to normal, as long as we treat the bug in the early stages. If we continue to vax, mask, and lock down, expecting a different result…
You can’t fix stupid.
Ted Noel MD is a retired Anesthesiologist and Intensivist who posts on social media as DoctorTed and @vidzette.