I realize that I may be guilty of taking this thread in a technical, medical science direction, and if that offends anyone, particularly if it offends Peter, I apologize. Having recognized that I broached these subjects and maybe took us in the wrong direction, I had decided to refrain from further comments of that ilk. But I must correct some of the ideas planted, for sure with good intentions, by Mijostyn and Viber.
First, Mijo said, "The drive to get as many people vaccinated as possible is highly
suspect. Trusting the pharmaceutical industry for advice in this regard
is quite frankly, dangerous." And now Viber quoted Mijo, in agreement. But the statement is false. And I believe it is potentially damaging to the public health, if such sentiments convince unvaccinated persons to remain so. The pharmaceutical industry for sure is power and money hungry, but the drive to get as many people vaccinated as possible emanates from public health authorities who represent both the government and private research institutions. These are by and large really smart people who are not doing what they do primarily to make millions. Their zeal is justified by the results of the phase 3 trials of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. Those trials showed not only a ~95% efficacy of both vaccines in preventing ANY clinical disease over the first 3 months after dose 2, but also that NONE of the participants developed severe enough disease to merit hospitalization. Nor did any persons vaccinated with either of the RNA vaccines in the course of the two phase 3 trials of those vaccines die of COVID. In the control group for Moderna (or Pfizer), there were 11 deaths, for comparison. We don't yet know the long term duration of such complete protection afforded by both of those RNA vaccines, but we also don't know the duration of protection afforded by naturally acquired infection. On that latter subject, however, we do know that there are rare second episodes COVID that were documented before we entered the COVID vaccine era, suggesting that protection afforded by natural infection is not all that durable. Further, there is some scanty evidence that infection with seasonal coronaviruses that cause the common cold syndrome is also not permanently protective against that group of Coronaviruses. Second illnesses with those viruses do occur, probably years after the primary exposure. This is circumstantial evidence that the same may apply to COVID. Both Mijo and Viber talk about what they perceive based on patients in their respective private practices, that patients who are vaccinated after having recovered from mild disease have the "worst" reactions to vaccine. Ask yourselves just how severe are these reactions? Are you seeing something worse than the rare severe reactions we know about (which for the RNA vaccines is the very rare immediate hypersensitivity reaction or the common shoulder pain or malaise or fever on days 1-5)? Are you having these exceptionally severe reactions documented? Do you have a control group? Are these post-vaccinal symptoms really worse than the disease itself? (I very strongly doubt that.) All the evidence we have in peer-reviewed journals regarding vaccine adverse events and the disease COVID itself suggest that one should get vaccinated (so far preferably with one of the two RNA vaccines, in my opinion), regardless of prior disease history.
Second, Viber brought up the issue of Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE). The term arises from studies of the epidemiology of dengue fever. It is probably a real phenomenon for dengue, because there are actually four antigenically distinct viruses that cause dengue fever, and ADE can occur after sequential infections with any two of those four, because the infections elicit a plethora of cross-reactive, non-neutralizing antibodies that bind the second infecting virus but don't neutralize it. Antibody-bound virus can then enter certain cell types that express certain antibody receptors on their surface. But classical ADE has never convincingly been shown to occur for any other virus, and the fact of those early monkey studies on COVID really is not convincing. The experiments were artificial. For one thing, there is only one serotype of SARS-CoV2. For another thing, SARS-CoV2 apparently does not replicate well in those cell types that do promote ADE in dengue. I doubt that ADE had anything to do with Peter's unusual illness. I'll stop there.
