141 replies to this topic

[Empiricus]

I don't remember you posting conspiracy theories or quackery, but in general there is a lot of it going on on Longecity, since the beginning of the pandemic. 

 

Mainstream medical COVID advice and treatments for COVID are heavily criticised, while speculative COVID treatments with a poor evidence base are promoted without questioning.  

 

I do like examining alternative treatment ideas, so I see no problem with posting treatments like hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoxamine, vitamin D, nasal irrigation, etc; but I don't really understand the heavy criticism of mainstream treatments and preventions like vaccines and masks. 

 

First do no harm. It's proper and fitting that the bulk of criticism here focuses on treatments or interventions that impose high costs and/or carry risk to the public.  To start with, all the mainstream approaches are extremely expensive relative to the alternative treatments. Lockdowns, social distancing, and mass vaccination are expensive.  

 

Hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and vitamin D, are relatively safe. They all have long safety track records. The same can't be said of Remdesivir or the mRNA shots.  

 

As for masks, they are environmentally and socially costly. Also, breathing through plastic fibers 12 hours a day for 24+ months may prove to be costly to peoples' health. The developmental and educational costs of face masks on children had never been studied. 

 

None of the popular alternative treatments/interventions bring costs and risks as substantial as the mainstream ones.  Because this forum is not dysfunctional like all mainstream public forums, here the risky and costly stuff gets the most criticism.  

Edited by Empiricus, 24 December 2022 - 03:44 PM.

[Hip]

First do no harm.

 
Indeed, first do no harm. The organised antivax groups have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone. That is one hell of a lot of harm they have caused.

 

Irrespective of any occasional side effects of the vaccines, those who make money out of anti-vaccine books and propaganda have sacrificed the lives of countless people just for their own ends and purposes. They need to read that statement "first do no harm" over and over again until it sinks into their minds the terrible thing they have done.
 
 
 

None of the popular alternative treatments/interventions bring costs and risks as substantial as the mainstream ones.

That's not true. Because of the way that potentially useful alternative therapies were promoted — as alternatives to the vaccines, not an augmentation of the vaccine protection — the promotion of these alternative treatments has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

 

Had these alternative treatments been presented as something you might like to take in addition to standard treatments, then there would have been no problem. But the unethical antivaxers weaponised these alternative treatments, and suggested you should ditch the vaccine and go for the unproven alternatives.  

 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 28 December 2022 - 05:09 AM.

[Hip]

With respect to the vaccines - the public were generally aware that this (mRNA vaccines) was new and that the normal testing and evaluation protocols had been significantly truncated or done away with entirely. People had a sense that they were being made into guinea pigs. 

 

And I personally have an issue with how the approval of these vaccines played out. It seems obvious that a couple of major players (Pfizer and Moderna) realized that this was an opportunity for them to move mRNA vaccines which were originally developed to fight cancer and had been languishing unapproved for about two decades in the lab into general use as the normal rules for vaccine approval would not apply in this pandemic.

 

But that's exactly backwards to how the regulators should have viewed things - if you are going to have an significantly abbreviated approval process and a lot of the normal procedures are going to go out the window, that is exactly when you don't want to be using brand new untested technology. They should have insisted that existing vaccine technology be used as indeed it was for the J&J and for Russia's Sputnik V vaccines.  For all they knew mRNA vaccines could have have serious complication that would only show up on wide scale deployment. And since you were going to go from essentially zero to billions of doses in the space of a year - you might find a hell of a surprise if you were unlucky. 

 

I remember reading about DNA and RNA vaccines over two decades ago, and was excited then about their advanced possibilities. These vaccines have been used as cancer treatments for the last decade, but that was not their intended purpose, they were intended to be the future of vaccination against infectious pathogens. 

 

I kept wondering why DNA and RNA vaccines had not appeared, and why drug companies were taking so long to bring them to market. I don't know the back story to this slowness, but I am pleased they are finally here.

 

Not wanting to rest on its laurels of saving humanity during the COVID pandemic, Moderna are now moving forward with new mRNA vaccines, one for EBV. 

 

This is extraordinary. EBV is a very problematic virus. It's almost certainly the cause of that most horrible disease, multiple sclerosis. And it may also be a driving factor behind many autoimmune diseases. It's going to be wonderful that with this new EBV vaccine, we may once and for all eliminate multiple sclerosis. 

 

 

 

As it turned out, the slightly more conventional viral vector vaccine tech such as the J&J, Sputnik V and the British Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines had to be stopped because of the rare but sometimes fatal blood clots they were causing. 

 

This is shame, because AstraZeneca were actually making no profit from their vaccine, charging just $2 a shot, which is cost price.

 

But luckily the mRNA vaccines were able to step in, and take the place of these discontinued viral vector vaccines. 

 

Incidentally, the blood clots were nothing to do with the viral vector vaccine tech, but are related to the spike protein itself. 

[Empiricus]

 
Indeed, first do no harm. The organised antivax groups have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone. That is one hell of a lot of harm they have caused.

 

Irrespective of any occasional side effects of the vaccines, those who make money out of anti-vaccine books and propaganda have sacrificed the lives of countless people just for their own ends and purposes. They need to read that statement "first do no harm" over and over again until it sinks into their minds the terrible thing they have done.
 

That's not true. Because of the way that potentially useful alternative therapies were promoted — as alternatives to the vaccines, not an augmentation of the vaccine protection — the promotion of these alternative treatments has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

 

Had these alternative treatments been presented as something you might like to take in addition to standard treatments, then there would have been no problem. But the unethical antivaxers weaponised these alternative treatments, and suggested you should ditch the vaccine and go for the unproven alternatives.  

 

Hip, what rate of serious side-effects and deaths from a Covid vaccine would you consider too high and want to see the vaccinations halted?  How would you measure the amount of serious harm a vaccine was causing?    

[Daniel Cooper]

I remember reading about DNA and RNA vaccines over two decades ago, and was excited then about their advanced possibilities. These vaccines have been used as cancer treatments for the last decade, but that was not their intended purpose, they were intended to be the future of vaccination against infectious pathogens. 
 
I kept wondering why DNA and RNA vaccines had not appeared, and why drug companies were taking so long to bring them to market. I don't know the back story to this slowness, but I am pleased they are finally here.
 
Not wanting to rest on its laurels of saving humanity during the COVID pandemic, Moderna are now moving forward with new mRNA vaccines, one for EBV. 
 
This is extraordinary. EBV is a very problematic virus. It's almost certainly the cause of that most horrible disease, multiple sclerosis. And it may also be a driving factor behind many autoimmune diseases. It's going to be wonderful that with this new EBV vaccine, we may once and for all eliminate multiple sclerosis.

 
On the bolded part you're just plain wrong. Prior to the covid pandemic and the EUA and subsequent approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, no mRNA vaccine had ever achieved FDA approval. Indeed you do remember reading about them 20 years ago, they were supposed to be all the rage in oncology, but they had issues and were never granted approval. They had languished in development hell for two decades. And to be clear, we are talking about mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccines. mRNAs are normally generated by the cell when it needs to make a specific protein. They are transcribed from a section of nuclear DNA, they run off a few hundred copies of the protein they code for, then they degrade and go away. There really has been no RNA or DNA vaccine that I am aware of.
 
In the case of these covid vaccines exogenous mRNA segments are used to make spike proteins that the immune system hopefully recognize as foreign and generate an immune response to.
 

As it turned out, the slightly more conventional viral vector vaccine tech such as the J&J, Sputnik V and the British Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines had to be stopped because of the rare but sometimes fatal blood clots they were causing. 
 
This is shame, because AstraZeneca were actually making no profit from their vaccine, charging just $2 a shot, which is cost price.
 
But luckily the mRNA vaccines were able to step in, and take the place of these discontinued viral vector vaccines. 
 
Incidentally, the blood clots were nothing to do with the viral vector vaccine tech, but are related to the spike protein itself.

 

The J&J, AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines used a non-reproducing adenovirus onto which segments of the covid-19 virus had been spliced. These were also somewhat novel vaccines (though significantly less so than the mRNA vaccines) and were also not the only approaches to making a vaccine. They indeed had the side effect of occasionally producing clots, as all vaccines have some undesirable side effects.Were the blood clots worse than the myocarditis side effects of Pfizer/Moderna? Nobody knows since it seems that the regulatory authorities were being somewhat careful not to look too hard for side effects of the two mRNA vaccines.

 

In any case, more traditional approaches were also viable. Currently there are killed virus and live attenuated virus vaccines currently under study, some of which seem promising. These types of vaccines have the upside of generally providing a much more broad based immunity since they present either the entire viral envelope or a significant fraction of it to the immune system, whereas the mRNA vaccines will only present one aspect - in the case of Pfizer/Moderna the spike protein.

 

 

[Hip]

On the bolded part you're just plain wrong.

 
I stand corrected: according to this paper from 1999, DNA and RNA vaccines were intended for both immunisation against infectious pathogens, as well as cancer treatments. 
 


 

And to be clear, we are talking about mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccines. mRNAs are normally generated by the cell when it needs to make a specific protein. They are transcribed from a section of nuclear DNA, they run off a few hundred copies of the protein they code for, then they degrade and go away. There really has been no RNA or DNA vaccine that I am aware of.

 
RNA vaccines I believe are just another name for mRNA vaccines. DNA vaccines are different to RNA vaccines, but use the same principle of injecting a genetic code in order to get the body to create the required antigen protein.

 

My understanding is that RNA vaccines are considered safer than DNA vaccines. 

 

Further reading: What's the Difference Between a DNA and RNA Vaccine?

 

 

 

The J&J, AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines used a non-reproducing adenovirus onto which segments of the covid-19 virus had been spliced. These were also somewhat novel vaccines (though significantly less so than the mRNA vaccines) and were also not the only approaches to making a vaccine. They indeed had the side effect of occasionally producing clots, as all vaccines have some undesirable side effects.Were the blood clots worse than the myocarditis side effects of Pfizer/Moderna? Nobody knows since it seems that the regulatory authorities were being somewhat careful not to look too hard for side effects of the two mRNA vaccines.

 

From the public perspective, if a vaccine very occasionally makes someone drop dead from a blood clot, it does not look good, even if it is only 1 in a million, and even if the vaccine saved far more lives than it killed. 

 

It made sense to continue with these adenovirus vaccines when vaccines in general were in short supply, because at that early point in the pandemic, the adenovirus vaccines were saving far more lives than it killed. But once COVID vaccines became abundant, it then made sense to switch to mRNA vaccines, which appear to be safer.

 

We are lucky we have this alternative, and we are lucky that countless pharma scientists around the world worked night and day, and pulled out all the stops to create vaccines in record time. 

 

Rather than celebrating this amazing achievement, many want to portray these scientists as demonic. That's gratitude for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Hip, 29 December 2022 - 12:15 AM.

[Hip]

Hip, what rate of serious side-effects and deaths from a Covid vaccine would you consider too high and want to see the vaccinations halted?  How would you measure the amount of serious harm a vaccine was causing?    

 

 

It's the regulator's job to decide this, and it is a complex picture. The adenovirus COVID vaccines were killing about 1 in a million from blood clots, and the various regulatory authorities around the world decided to halt the use of these vaccines on that basis. 

 

Fortunately we had a safer alternative to use instead, the mRNA vaccines. Had these mRNA vaccines not been available, we may have had to keep using the adenovirus COVID vaccines, because far more lives would be lost to COVID if we used no vaccine at all.

 

The right approach is always to try to minimise harm and death, and that's the regulator's job to decide on a strategy to minimise harm and mortalities. 

[Daniel Cooper]

 
I stand corrected: according to this paper from 1999, DNA and RNA vaccines were intended for both immunisation against infectious pathogens, as well as cancer treatments. 
 

 

And no mRNA had ever been approved by the FDA prior to the Pfizer/Moderna covid vaccines.

[Empiricus]

The right approach is always to try to minimise harm and death, and that's the regulator's job to decide on a strategy to minimise harm and mortalities. 

 

Regulators haven't been doing their jobs.  I'd like to see all the regulators fired.  

 

Replace bureaucracies such as FDA with improved liability laws and more accessible law courts. Make it easy for patients to sue manufacturers of drugs and vaccines when the products are defective or not as advertised.  

 

Real minimization of harm can only come at the patient level.  It's impossible for a government agency to constructively define what constitutes minimum harm for all people.  It's not the FDA, but patients and their doctors that have the best chance of minimizing risk to the patient. 

Edited by Empiricus, 29 December 2022 - 06:07 PM.

[Hip]

Regulators haven't been doing their jobs.  I'd like to see all the regulators fired.

 
Where is the evidence for that? Repeating the hearsay of the chatting classes is not proof of anything. Why do you say the regulators haven't been doing their jobs? 
 
In any case, which regulators are you talking about? Every country has its own regulator. Are you saying that the regulators in all countries are not doing their jobs? There are 195 countries in the world, did they all stop doing their jobs simultaneously during the pandemic? That's some coincidence.

 

 

 

 

Real minimization of harm can only come at the patient level.  It's impossible for a government agency to constructively define what constitutes minimum harm for all people.  It's not the FDA, but patients and their doctors that have the best chance of minimizing risk to the patient.

 
Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives to COVID because of their irrational fears of the COVID vaccine. It's quite clear patients are not very good at minimising their risks of harm.

 

Sometimes you have to coerce people to do what's in their best interest. Decades ago, when it was proven that seatbelts save live, and seatbelts were then placed in all cars, nobody used them. It then required the government to make a law to force people to wear seatbelts. Think about that.

 

Similarly many people smoke, vape, drink too much alcohol, take illicit recreational drugs which are not tested for purity, have unprotected sex with people they barely know, and so forth. A lot of bad judgement out there.

 

 

Edited by Hip, 29 December 2022 - 09:30 PM.

[Empiricus]

 
Where is the evidence for that? Repeating the hearsay of the chatting classes is not proof of anything. Why do you say the regulators haven't been doing their jobs? 
 
In any case, which regulators are you talking about? Every country has its own regulator. Are you saying that the regulators in all countries are not doing their jobs? There are 195 countries in the world, did they all stop doing their jobs simultaneously during the pandemic? That's some coincidence.

 

There's a lot of evidence, but you'd have to crawl out from under your rock to be able to see it. John Campbell, once a proponent of vaccination like yourself, yesterday called for them to be stopped: https://stevekirsch....m-john-campbell

 

Chinese and Russian regulators never approved Covid mRNA vaccines, so only those countries regulators actually did their jobs. Since no other countries have banned mRNA, it looks as if the other 193 countries' regulators simply rubber-stamped the decisions of the corrupt FDA.  Talk about useless. I suppose we should give regulators in countries like Denmark, Norway, and the UK some credit for advising young people not to get the boosters. Of course that's too little, too late. 

Edited by Empiricus, 30 December 2022 - 07:19 AM.

[joesixpack]

 
Where is the evidence for that? Repeating the hearsay of the chatting classes is not proof of anything. Why do you say the regulators haven't been doing their jobs? 
 
In any case, which regulators are you talking about? Every country has its own regulator. Are you saying that the regulators in all countries are not doing their jobs? There are 195 countries in the world, did they all stop doing their jobs simultaneously during the pandemic? That's some coincidence.

 

 

 

 

 
Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives to COVID because of their irrational fears of the COVID vaccine. It's quite clear patients are not very good at minimising their risks of harm.

 

Sometimes you have to coerce people to do what's in their best interest. Decades ago, when it was proven that seatbelts save live, and seatbelts were then placed in all cars, nobody used them. It then required the government to make a law to force people to wear seatbelts. Think about that.

 

Similarly many people smoke, vape, drink too much alcohol, take illicit recreational drugs which are not tested for purity, have unprotected sex with people they barely know, and so forth. A lot of bad judgement out there.

I told myself I would not reply to any of your posts, but you are just so confrontational, I have to say something.

 

The evidence is not hearsay. It is there if you want to read it. Multiple vaccinations are bad. After the first two, no good antigens are produced. In fact, 50% of bad Antigens are produced that lead to tolerance of bad  viral bodies, which lead to more infections. Look it up.

 

The more vaccines, the less protection. The study was released 12/22.

 

Please take more boosters and relieve us of your blathering.

[Hip]

There's a lot of evidence, but you'd have to crawl out from under your rock to be able to see it. 

 

When I asked for evidence, I mean I would like links to analyses by industry experts who know their subject. Books, articles, studies, etc.

 

Such as for example the book "Bad Pharma" by arch alternative medicine skeptic Dr Ben Goldacre. Dr Goldacre points to the fact that pharma companies have been burying studies which show poor performance. This means the regulators do not get the data they need to assess the drug. 

 

Goldacre knows what he is talking about, so I trust is book. 

 

Whereas I don't trust the hearsay of the chatting classes.

[Hip]

The evidence is not hearsay. It is there if you want to read it. Multiple vaccinations are bad. After the first two, no good antigens are produced. In fact, 50% of bad Antigens are produced that lead to tolerance of bad  viral bodies, which lead to more infections. Look it up.

 

Where are you getting this information?

 

Please note that you cannot just read the results of one study, and then immediately jump to conclusions. 

 

If you are saying multiple vaccinations are bad, please provide the evidence from secondary review papers, or from multiple primary studies, so that we have some consensus of opinion and corroborating evidence. 

 

It's well known in medical science that different studies tend to get contradictory results. So you cannot just take one study and say: "there, I told you so". You have to take a broader picture. 

 

 

 

I know that on Longecity, any single study that shows negative effects from the vaccines is assumed true, and any study showing positive effects is assumed false. So there is an inherent bias here anyway. 

 

Similarly, any ivermectin study which shows good results is assume true, and studies showing negative results are "designed to fail". That's another inherent bias.

Edited by Hip, 30 December 2022 - 09:17 PM.

[joesixpack]

Class switch towards non-inflammatory, spike-specific IgG4 antibodies after repeated SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination

 

https://www.science....immunol.ade2798

 

 

Quote from research paper published 12-22-2022

 

 

"Shortly after the initial two mRNA vaccine doses, the IgG response mainly consists of the pro-inflammatory subclasses IgG1 and IgG3. Here, we report that several months after the second vaccination, SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies were increasingly composed of non-inflammatory IgG4, which were further boosted by a third mRNA vaccination and/or SARS-CoV-2 variant breakthrough infections."

 

 

The bottom line appears to be, the pro-inflammatory anti-bodies that are necessary for the immunity bestowed by the mRNA vaccine start to dwindle after the second mRNA shot, while the non-inflammatory antibodies (which cause the immune system to tolerate the presence of the spike protein) increase with each booster and/or breakthrough infection.

 

Therefore boosters and/or breakthrough infections will lead to more infections and less immunity.

[Hip]

Class switch towards non-inflammatory, spike-specific IgG4 antibodies after repeated SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination
 
https://www.science....immunol.ade2798
 
Therefore boosters and/or breakthrough infections will lead to more infections and less immunity.

 
Certainly an interesting paper.
 
But this is your own interpretation of the paper (or perhaps the interpretation you found on antivax websites). 
 
It is not the interpretation that the study authors have. One of the study authors tweeted:

What does this mean for mRNA vaccination schemes? Our preprint had "gone viral" among some anti-vax circles, because it would supposedly show that mRNA vaccines are inducing "tolerance". This view is certainly too simplistic. mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives.
 
Given the enormous potential of mRNA vaccines for the fields of infectious diseases, autoimmunity and cancer, the induction of IgG4 antibodies clearly requires further investigation. Deciphering the precise immunological mechanism underlying this class switch will be fun!

 
 
 
And a knowledgable researcher on Reddit named Jkei says: 

Hence, the IgG4 versions of SARS2 spike-binding IgGs are less potent at triggering antibody-dependent cellular phagocytosis (functioning as "eat me" tags) and complement deposition (attracting complement molecules that further assist in marking viral particles and attracting immune cells to deal with them).
 
What this really means in practice, though, is hard to say. I believe it's not quite completely understood what IgG4 signalling does.

Edited by Hip, 31 December 2022 - 09:39 PM.

[joesixpack]

 
Certainly an interesting paper.
 
But this is your own interpretation of the paper (or perhaps the interpretation you found on antivax websites). 
 
It is not the interpretation that the study authors have. One of the study authors tweeted:

 
 
 
And a knowledgable researcher on Reddit named Jkei says: 

 

Nice, you trash other sources that are stating facts that can be verified, but rely on some anonymous guy on Reddit, who opines that it is hard to say what the anti-inflammatory antibodies will do.

 

Then you disparage my conclusion as "only" my opinion.

 

This despite the fact that the study, if you read the study, and the quote from the results of the study clearly concludes that more vaccines and/or breakthrough infections will result in fewer antibodies necessary for immunity, and more of the antibodies that do not confer immunity.

 

Try doing some real research.

[Hip]

Nice, you trash other sources that are stating facts that can be verified

 

Please read my post carefully: I cited the author of the study you posted. The author of that study. 

 

He did not have the same opinion as you, regarding his own work and his own study.

 

So what you have to now explain is why you took that author's work, and manipulated and distorted his message to say something which he does not agree with. 

[joesixpack]

Please read my post carefully: I cited the author of the study you posted. The author of that study. 

 

He did not have the same opinion as you, regarding his own work and his own study.

 

So what you have to now explain is why you took that author's work, and manipulated and distorted his message to say something which he does not agree with. 

 

While we are on the subject, here is another study that you can spring a leak about.

 

https://pubmed.ncbi....h.gov/36436002/

 

Since you don't like my explanation about what a study says, I will just leave the link and a quote from the conclusions here. Even you can figure this one out. (Emphasis Added)

 

 

"We describe the autopsy findings and common characteristics of myocarditis in untreated persons who received anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. Standardized autopsies were performed on 25 persons who had died unexpectedly and within 20 days after anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. In four patients who received a mRNA vaccination, we identified acute (epi-)myocarditis without detection of another significant disease or health constellation that may have caused an unexpected death. Histology showed patchy interstitial myocardial T-lymphocytic infiltration, predominantly of the CD4 positive subset, associated with mild myocyte damage. Overall, autopsy findings indicated death due to acute arrhythmogenic cardiac failure. Thus, myocarditis can be a potentially lethal complication following mRNA-based anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination."

[joesixpack]

Please read my post carefully: I cited the author of the study you posted. The author of that study. 

 

He did not have the same opinion as you, regarding his own work and his own study.

 

So what you have to now explain is why you took that author's work, and manipulated and distorted his message to say something which he does not agree with. 

 

By the way, there were over 20 authors to that study, I see nothing from the others indicating "nothing to see here".

 

I did not misrepresent what the study said. I provided a quote and simplified it. I did not state any anti-vax conclusion. I did state the logical conclusion that if some immunity granting antibodies are not proliferating, and non-immunity granting antibodies are increasing, you can expect more infections. Maybe that is correct, maybe it is not, that is what discussion and study is for. I think it needs to be looked at and studied, not glossed over. Do not misrepresent my statements.

Edited by joesixpack, 01 January 2023 - 05:22 AM.

[Hip]

I did state the logical conclusion that if some immunity granting antibodies are not proliferating, and non-immunity granting antibodies are increasing, you can expect more infections. Maybe that is correct, maybe it is not, that is what discussion and study is for. I think it needs to be looked at and studied, not glossed over. 

 

Seems that nobody yet understands the significance of these findings, so concluding that the switch to IgG subclass 4 will weaken immunity would be jumping the gun. Possibly it might weaken immunity, but it's also possible the IgG4 switch might have benefits for COVID patients, for all we know.

 

I don't have much understanding in this area, but I read that IgG4 antibodies when they attach the virus do not recruit the immune response that other IgG classes will trigger. Nevertheless, IgG4 antibodies are still neutralising antibodies, meaning that when they bind to the virus, they neutralise that viral particle, by rendering it unable to infect cells. 

 

So IgG4 will neutralise the virus, but just does so without the inflammatory response that gets triggered when an antibody binds to its viral target.

 

Now given that death by COVID is due to a cytokine storm, ie, an uncontrolled inflammatory response in the lungs, perhaps this shift to these IgG4 antibodies which neutralise the virus without causing inflammation could be highly beneficial, and could help prevent COVID deaths by the inflammatory cytokine storm in the lungs.

 

That's just pure speculation, of course. But I mention it to show that perhaps this IgG subclass 4 switching might turn out to be a good thing. 

Edited by Hip, 01 January 2023 - 05:46 AM.

[joesixpack]

Seems that nobody yet understands the significance of these findings, so concluding that the switch to IgG subclass 4 will weaken immunity would be jumping the gun. Possibly it might weaken immunity, but it's also possible the IgG4 switch might have benefits for COVID patients, for all we know.

 

I don't have much understanding in this area, but I read that IgG4 antibodies when they attach the virus do not recruit the immune response that other IgG classes will trigger. Nevertheless, IgG4 antibodies are still neutralising antibodies, meaning that when they bind to the virus, they neutralise that viral particle, by rendering it unable to infect cells. 

 

So IgG4 will neutralise the virus, but just does so without the inflammatory response that gets triggered when an antibody binds to its viral target.

 

Now given that death by COVID is due to a cytokine storm, ie, an uncontrolled inflammatory response in the lungs, perhaps this shift to these IgG4 antibodies which neutralise the virus without causing inflammation could be highly beneficial, and could help prevent COVID deaths by the inflammatory cytokine storm in the lungs.

 

That's just pure speculation, of course. But I mention it to show that perhaps this IgG subclass 4 switching might turn out to be a good thing. 

 

You have much to learn Grasshopper, but stay tuned, I am sure there will be be many insights delivered by people smarter than you and I. We are not fighting here, just discussing, and hoping someone that knows more than we do, will chime in.