Posted on 12/28/2021 10:05:12 PM PST by nickcarraway
A virus cannot target a specific person regardless of vaccination status. "Immune evasion," along with increased transmissibility, are reasons why omicron spreads.
After the omicron COVID-19 variant was first reported to the World Health Organization by South Africa on Nov. 24, the variant was quickly discovered around the world, including in the United States.
Since the emergence of the COVID-19 variant, there has been speculation that vaccinated individuals are more susceptible to catching omicron than unvaccinated individuals.
According to Google Trends data, “omicron in vaccinated” saw a spike in searches beginning on Dec. 5. There are hundreds of tweets that claim the variant “targets” the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated (see examples here, here, here, here and here).
THE QUESTION
Can the omicron variant specifically target a vaccinated person?
THE SOURCES
Dr. Paul Bienasz, a virologist with Rockefeller University Dr. Saralyn Mark, former senior medical advisor at the White House and current lead COVID-19 spokesperson for the American Medical Women’s Association Centers for Disease Control and Prevention World Health Organization
THE ANSWER
This is false.
No, COVID-19 variants - including omicron - cannot target vaccinated people.
The CDC and WHO say being vaccinated provides greater protection against severe illness and hospitalization and helps reduce the likelihood of someone spreading COVID-19, but it does not eliminate the risk entirely.
WHAT WE FOUND
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Nov. 26 designated omicron a variant of concern because preliminary evidence suggests it may reinfect people more easily than other variants.
Since then, health professionals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the WHO have recommended individuals should get an additional booster shot to help stave off the variant.
A variant can’t specifically target a vaccinated person over an unvaccinated person because that’s just not how viruses work.
Dr. Paul Bienasz told VERIFY omicron is a “product of viral evolution.”
“So this virus has been passing from human-to-human to more humans, and in some individuals persisting in those individuals for a significant amount of time. And over time, what happens is that viruses mutate, they diversify, they do so in a random way,” he said.
Bienasz explained the mutations become smarter at evading antibodies, and the antibodies provided by the vaccine “are the very same antibodies that omicron would have previously encountered and evolved to resist.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) refers to this as “immune evasion,” and this, combined with increased transmissibility, are the reasons why omicron is spreading so rapidly.
Further, there is not enough evidence from the CDC or WHO to support claims vaccinated individuals are more likely to become infected with the omicron variant. The CDC says they are still collecting data on how well vaccines and medications are working against omicron.
WHO told VERIFY in an email: “There are still limited data on the clinical severity of omicron. More data are needed to understand the severity profile and how severity is impacted by vaccination and pre-existing immunity.”
According to the CDC, people who were unvaccinated have a greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 and a greater risk of dying from COVID-19 than people who were fully vaccinated.
Studies have already shown that boosters are effective. When a person gets a booster shot, it essentially provides them an additional safety net against COVID-19 variants, Bienasz told VERIFY.
“People who have had two mRNA vaccine doses, and then later had a booster dose or third dose, their levels of immunity begin to approach those very high levels of immunity that we've seen in people who have been both infected, and vaccinated,” he said, of being more immune to omicron. “Again, their antibodies seem to be much better able to deal with variants such as omicron. And I think this is a very, very powerful argument in favor of everybody getting a booster at this time.”
Dr. Saralyn Mark told VERIFY the reason people might think omicron targets the vaccinated is directly related to vaccine hesitancy or resistance, and individuals really need to think about the big picture - the purpose of a vaccine.
“We have vaccines to decrease your chances for hospitalization and death. And we know that that has been quite effective. But we have seen in our hospitals that over 80% of those who are in hospitals are generally those who have not been vaccinated. With the omicron variant, this is a variant that has well over 50 different mutations and may evade parts of our immune system,” Mark said. “But what we have seen is that those who've been vaccinated tend to have mild, more mild cases. It is extremely important that we use our other public health measures as well, such as masking social distancing, hand washing and ventilation.”
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The cynical dance that has ensued around the antibody dependent enhancement problem is one of the more psychologically disturbing things you’ll ever experience.
Yes they did in fact damage natural immune function for whoever took the potion of death. Now those people are going to have enhanced vulnerability to this kind of virus forever. Some even consigned their children to this fate.
N=1 is meaningless.
Just another bald faced lie told by the medical establishment.
Vaxx me harder, daddy! It’s sad to see Quislings like you on FR. Although, there’ll be fewer once the gene therapy related illnesses kick in.
A virus cannot target a specific person regardless of vaccination status.
Who ever thought it could?
—
China’s CCP is spending US$9.4 billion on Precision Medicine to do exactly that. By individual, by race, by gender.
what you said same here!
Why do the vaxnazis keep pushing the crackpot theory that the Frankenshots are effective? The only thing the Frankenshots do is reduce the chances that you'll get hit by a meteorite. The data shows that nobody who was injected got hit by a meteorite in 2021 - therefore the shots prevent meteors.
With any msm headline that sound like this, the opposite is true and they're just creating a narrative. We live in the age of propaganda.
How pathetic - of course a virus can’t “target” anyone - jabbed or un-jabbed.
That doesn’t mean one set isn’t more susceptible to the bug.
Weak attempt to try to ignore the jabbed seem to be having more bug issues.
No virus “TARGETS” anyone, its a virus, it doesn’t have a consciousness for crying out loud.
However, some people can be more susceptible to catching it than others, and there is little doubt in the numbers... Fully vaccinated people are getting it at higher rates per 100k than unvaccinated people...
“What does that even mean?”
It means they are scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with strawmen to pretend to knock down.
Although Pelham appears to be well read and I do not doubt his intelligence, he like many of us, has a very serious issue with confirmation bias. If he glances at the excellent article that you have linked to at all, or the paper associated, it will be a quick skim to look only for issues that contradict the official narrative so that it can be quickly disregarded. Over the past months he has morphed into a little worker bee for the Biden administration and the leftist mainstream media.
There are numerous reports that Omicron is not a direct descendant of the original Fauci/CCP hybrid strain of Covid, and that it is a distant cousin that is more closely related to the common cold. There are also numerous reports that it stimulates antibodies that are more effective at preventing Delta than any of the current vaccines. In that way it is the modern equivalent of cowpox that our forefathers used to combat smallpox, the precursor to all modern vaccines.
Pelham says that this observation which came from people far more knowledgeable and more intelligent than me is a “crackpot theory” that is “scaring people”. I would really like to know which people he is speaking of. Am I scaring people who are investors in Pfizer and Moderna, or people like him who are so emotionally invested in the official narrative that any information that contradicts it causes them to become highly agitated? Which is it Pelham?
I certainly do not fear a helpful version of the common cold whose only disadvantage is that it has caused misused PCR tests to become completely irrelevant. Omicron seems likely one of God’s or fate’s answer to all of this constantly expanding nonsense. Once again the smartest people in the world have been outsmarted by a tiny brainless collection of genetic code that needs a host cell to continue existing. Incredible!
But we have been lead to believe that it can target those that don’t do exactly as the tyrants say.
Why would you think I would want to say anything against your natural immunity?
Pelham knows basic cell biology and the difference between DNA and RNA. A failure to understand that difference appears constantly in mRNA fear posts. It’s why you all come to conclusions that can’t occur in nature.
I am certainly in awe of your awesome intellectual prowess. There is a chance that the following link could be more helpful to you than a refresher in basic biology.
How clever. Never seen that retort before. And did it teach you the functional difference between RNA and DNA?
LOL, just pulling your chain. Here is a link regarding the subject that you feel is so relevant to the experimental “vaccines”
https://www.thoughtco.com/dna-versus-rna-608191
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