Peter Lederman in Second Bout With COVID-19

I have tried my best to stay out of this fray, but after reading several of the recent posts from the past 48 hours, I feel obligated to clarify several pieces of “information” that have been posted as factual before they get deleted like the infamous “no excess deaths” post. Though the risks of death to individuals under the age of 40 is very low, the risk of hospitalization and the associated costs remain quite significant. If you can remember back in about February, the vaccine was first offered or “pushed” if you prefer, to those who were the most at risk, including the aged, health care workers, and those with underlying conditions. Only now that most from the first groups are vaccinated, it is being “pushed” to the less susceptible younger age groups because they are more reluctant to get vaccinated. Though they might get a milder case of Covid19, they will be spreading it to older and more susceptible individuals while they are infected.

The vaccines work remarkably well. The idea that the vaccine is causing increased cases of Covid19 is drivel. By all accounts, Wikipedia, Oxford, Merriam-Webster, an mRNA vaccine is a vaccine – a biological preparation used to elicit an immune response, and is listed as such. To claim otherwise is nonsense. As long as I can remember, following a vaccination of any type, I have been asked to wait for a period of time for observation purposes. It said so on all the vaccine info sheets. The problems of developing a vaccine for HIV have been addressed in an earlier post with a very appropriate link. The rapidity with which the Covid19 vaccines were developed is more a testament to the advancement in medical scientific research and the promise of mRNA vaccine technology, than a commentary on economic drive.

The amino acid sequence CGG-CGG is not an amino acid sequence at all, and would not be identified as such by anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of cell biology. C and G are nucleotide bases, and when arranged as these two triplets, code for a repeat of the amino acid arginine. The nucleotide sequence CGGCGG in fact does occur in nature and is a part of the nucleic acid sequence of fragile X syndrome (FMR1) gene of human origin. In January 2021, a publication found over 6101 unique CGG polymorphic repeats in a study of 544 human whole genomes analyzed. But, I digress. I suspect that the claim mentioned was misconstrued somewhere along the line by someone not understanding the details of a recent article (June 8th) in the WSJ or one of the many other rehash articles, which state that CGGCGG is not found in any other naturally occurring Coronavirus.

A researcher would be hard pressed to publish a gene function paper in any peer reviewed journal in the fields of cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, etc. without doing appropriate gain-of-function and corresponding loss-of function studies. They are conducted in all major public and private institutions that have labs that compete for government funding and publications. There is nothing sinister about modifying, inhibiting, or adding a gene to a virus, an organism or a cell line to see if it responds as predicted to advance worthwhile understanding. In the case of a virus capable of infecting humans, these studies can demonstrate how the virus binds to human cells, what receptors or cell surface markers, or conversely what viral spike proteins might be involved and how the process might be inhibited.

The linked article about the CDC getting caught red handed changing the thresholds of positivity as though it is something nefarious, even states that the changes were described on the CDC website. If one were to just check, the rational for doing so is clear and is described in a pertinent post above. In short, many of the posts above are not close to being factual, or at best, represent one-off anecdotal occurrences. Many come from right wing conspiracy theory and outrageous claim clickbait sites. I expect better.