logicp_writings/covidism/covid_vaccine_hesitancy.md

Covidiocy Revealed

"I'm off to get microchipped, wish me luck, I'm going to be a Pfizer girl, part of GenXZeneca or a ModernaBoy"

Yes, it's such a clever and witty line, can you really blame everyone giving into uttering it? I doubt it actually feels as fulfilling as one might expect, but nevertheless, have at it.

Then there's that demographic who both don't want to be injected with a delivery vehicle for payloads providing an encoding of the Spike (S) protein, yet who also, remarkably, don't believe that the injection contains a 5G capable "microchip".

You're an idiot, get the vaccine

We need to define terms. If they wish to insist that this is a vaccine, I'm curious to know what their definition of a vaccine is.

Define vaccine

How do you define "vaccine"?

A vaccine is something you inject to prompt an antibody response.

The components being injected do not themselves prompt an antibody response. Injecting these components leads to your cells producing other components to which an antibody response is prompted

How do you define a vaccine? An substance bearing antigenic traits administered to prompt an adaptive immunological response

How does that differ? You are injecting something which prompts an adaptive immunological response `It must be stated that not all vaccines are administered through injection. There are nasal vaccines, for example, and these lead to their intended outcome of prompting an antibody response.

In the case of the Covid19 vaccines, it's important to highlight the intermediary step between administration of the engineered substance, a delivery vehicle for payloads containing a code, in which the substance evokes a biological behaviour which is not an immunological response. The substance causes your own cells to synthesize the Spike (S) protein. It is this Spike protein which bears antigenic traits, and to which the immunological response occurs.`

That's not important. What's important is that you performed an action or participated in a process which lead to an immunological response.

That may be true, but under the right interpretation we could extend that argument to say that life itself is a vaccine, as being alive is a necessary requirement for one to produce an adaptive immunlogical response. With this line of reasoning, we can make absurd claims that all sorts of actions are themselves vaccines, but this is a flawed manner of reasoning. Furthermore, I think it's important to make the distinction that you are expected to be producing the antigenic component. This is important because we already have discussions about autoimmunity, and an expectation that this is something we do not wish to always confer. If we are expanding the means by which we produce components to which immunological reactions are elicited, then it stands to reason that it's worth making it a part of the conversation, in the greatest interest of public health.

Let's agree to disagree That's fine - there are a number of other far more important concerns to discuss

Getting vaccinated against Covid19 is the smart thing to do

You hear time and time again the somewhat frivolous and arbitrary statement "everyone's body is different and responds {such and such condition} differently". This is one of those unremarkable statements which, on its own, is perfectly acceptable to say but doesn't really communicate anything of particular importance. Nevertheless, it's a bit comical to observe that many of those who would utter this mundane statement are also those who would blindly use this pharmaceutical agent while condeming anyone who would think that it needs to be evaluated on a personal basis.

The truth of the matter is that, concerning SARS-CoV2, its corresponding disease, Covid-19, does not manifest identical pathology in each person affected. There are a range of observable outcomes which have ascribed by probability to different demographics, expressing variance along dimensions of age and comorbodities, with the most pronounced comorbidity being obesity. If there are different outcomes for the various, it stands to reason that there are different outcomes for its prevention and treatment. Why do I say this? Well it's because of the nature of the disease:

The most ill-fated effects of the Covid-19 illness, as has been understood, are those whereby the infected suffers a fatal acute lung injury. The circumstances surrounding this outcome are not such that the virus itself is destroying the lung, but that the rate of infection and prevalence of infected cells is such that innate immune response has been insufficient in consolidating the pathogen, and thus the adaptive immune system is mounting an aggressive attack on cells that have been infected by the virus. That is to say, your lymphocytes are attacking cells which are synthesizing outputs whose encoding has been specified by the virus. One can think of this as an all-or-nothing effort, a hail-mary, so to speak, where your immune system is desperately trying to rid the body of expressions associated with the virus, and doing so by performing operations to which collateral damage occurs in the form of the destruction of your bronchial cells. As your body is not able to replace these cells at a rate sufficient to maintain respiratory function, your ability to respire declines until such time that you are suffocated. These circumstances also comprise other subsets fo behaviours which are well known to be associated with the Covid-19 illness, including blood clots, and co-infection with other pathogens such as bacteria, mycobacteria, fungi and other viruses. The circumstances and pathologies which lead to these vary considerably, and there is no expectation that each person undergoes infection by all the same agents or presents all the same symptoms and degrees of illness based on any particular metric, such as duration of illness, circumstances of exposure, progression of disease, and so forth.

What does this mean? Well this means that, for some, given our understanding of comorbidities and demographically inferable probabilities, and our understanding of the nuanced differences of each potential outcome, we should logically choose an approach to mitigating the threat of illness which best suits one's particular circumstance.

If an individual's circumstance is such that there is a high probability of the worst outcome, then it is likely because there is no expectation that they are able to mount a sufficient defense through their innate immune system, and that, furthermore, their adaptive immune system is not sufficiently robust to deal with as well - that is to say, stop the viral replication from occurring before the symptoms consequent to the response of the adaptive immune system have resulted in fatal acute lung injury. In such persons, it makes sense that one would wish to take additional measures which ensure that there is the greatest chance of dealing with the virus. Given that the outcome is probably one wherein the adaptive system has been prompted to engage in the greatest proportion of immune function, the vaccine would, idealy, allow for that adaptive system to perform its job as quickly and efficiently as possible, with the lowest degree of collateral damage to lung tissue. If we are to assume that the proposed Covid-19 preventative therapy does, indeed, lead to an adaptive response which is comparatively more efficient with less collateral damage, then it stands to reason that, for person fitting this demographic, they will benefit from its use. Though it's beyond the scope of this essay to critique and assess the validity of that assumption, it should be noted that the trials performed thus far only measure relative risk, not absolute risk, and that none of these trials have been completed, thus it cannot be conclusively stated that the assumption has been proven to be correct.

For an individual fitting a demographic whereby the risk of fatal acute lung injury is very low, we must recognize that the reason they are unlikely to find themselves in a situation characerized by a probably threat to their survival is because other components of their comprehensive immunological capacity have been sufficient to neutralize the pathogen before infection has proliferated to the degree necessary to impose such a challenge.

What does this mean in terms of how they should be planning to mitigate the threat of disease?

Given the disparity in the types of immunity conferred by each approach, vaccination and natural immunity, it makes sense to evaluate the pros and cons of each type of immunity and match each strategy to one's circumstance accordingly. In the case of someone who is not likely to suffer severe symptoms of illness, this logically means choosing the strategy which imposes the least detriment to one's innate immune system, prioritizes CD4 T-Helper cell production vs CD8 T-Killer cell production, and doesn't prioritize production of antigen-specific antibodies prior to being faced with the pathogen, as viral pathogens in particular are prone to change over time, through antigen shift and antigen drift.

We know through years of research on vaccine-mediated immunization that vaccine-derived immunity prioritizes production of antigen-specific antibodies and development of CD8 killer lymphocytes, and that the behaviour of those killer lymphocytes involves the greatest potential to induce damage to the organism's desired cells. In fact, this is precisely how our leukocytes mitigate a viral threat - they identify the organism's cells which are expressing foreign signatures, and destroy them.

Why should we expect this to be a problem with vaccine-mediated immunity against SARS-CoV2? It's because we already have performed research on other coronaviruses, produced therapies which successfully elicit the production of antigen-specific antibodies, and observed what happens upon challenge with the real virus. In all of the relevant research, the outcome was catastrophic, causing worsened pulmonary immunopathology when compared to the control group. This means that, though some metrics suggested successful immunization with the vaccine candidate being researched, the overall outcome was a failure.

Given that we haven't yet had performed the research which demonstrates improved outcomes for a vaccinated organism upon challenge with live virus, we cannot say with any certainty that we can expect the same thing to occur, but we should be even less accepting of declarations that the therapy is effective and improves outcomes. If anything, evidence suggests that we don't know the outcome, and logic suggests that we should expect that, as was the case with previously studied therapies, the outcome will be worse.