Are we all holding out for a vaccine?

All I wanted to do was to figure out how likely we are to have a vaccine for COVID-19 given that many of the long-term strategies for dealing with the pandemic appear to consider this as the end game.  Well I stumbled across a YouTube interview with Dr Judy Anne Mikovits (https://youtu.be/GJb-g8ZB4xo), and I entered what feels like a parallel universe of anti-pharma and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.  Judy Mikovits is a virologists although her Wikipedia page reads more like that of a notorious criminal with employment terminations, criminal charges and arrests.  For those not wanting to go down this particular rabbit hole, she is contending that:
  • There will not be a vaccine for COVID-19 (if after 17 years we have yet to make a successful vaccine for the SARS virus)
  • Even if there is a vaccine, we should not be taking it (she certainly would not)
  • It is the vaccines themselves that introduce the risk of viral pandemics (and she is convinced that this is how the COVID-19 virus got into humans)
  • Vaccines can cause viral interference where they help with how our bodies respond to other viruses for which they were not intended, but that this can also go the other way where the vaccine causes an overreaction of our immune system to other viruses
  • The severity of COVID-19 is caused by such an overreaction of our immune system
I need to point out that I am prone to giving these fringe commentators more air time than I perhaps should. I do however wish that the medical establishment were more open with us non-clinical folk especially where it comes to the risks posed by things like the flu vaccine! 

Staying with an anti-establishment theme and COVID-19, I was sent a radio interview with one of our home-grown anti-establishment campaigners, Professor Tim Noakes.  You can listen to it from the CCFM site at https://ccfm.org.za/podcasts/. Tim Noakes is not commenting on the vaccines but on the treatment regime for COVID-19.  He is contending that:
  • The virus attacks a person's red blood cells and their ability to carry oxygen
  • The virus also causes the iron in the red blood cells to be released (iron is toxic and causes damage to the lungs and liver in the final stages of the disease)
  • Ventilating a patient in the final stages of the disease because the oxygen levels in the blood are low is of no use (as it is the iron that is the real problem)
  • Malaria attacks the red blood cells in a very similar manner (causing the release of iron)
  • A cheap anti-malaria drug called Hydroxychloroquine has been effective in treating patients in WuHan
  • For some (conspiratorial) reason the medical establishment has dismissed this but may be changing tack
So in conclusion, lets hope that the promise of a cheap treatment can be found for COVID-19 so we don't need to wait for a vaccine....

11 April 2020

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 12, 2020 at 7:22 AM

    To refute Dr Mikovits claims as summarised by you:

    1) The SARS vaccine experience cannot be extrapolated to COVID-19. There are vaccines for plenty of other Corona viruses. So, we simply don't know.
    2) If a vaccine is developed we should all get it, I will be lining up for mine.
    3) Vaccines introduce the risk of viral pandemics? How does she propose that? This is quite simply a logical fallacy and can't be sustained.
    4) A vaccine mimics the infection against which it builds immunity. The immune systems response is no different from having the actual infection. If it did differ the vaccine would not work.
    5) It is because our immune systems are completely naive to this virus (not because we have been vaccinated against other viruses) that there is a massive cytokine response in some people which is correlated with the severity of their symptoms. She would have to explain why the overwhelming majority of people who have been vaccinated against other viruses do not respond in this way when infected with SARS-COv-19. 49% of people infected develop no symptoms at all, let alone go on to develop COVID-19.

    Are you positing a massive long-term global conspiracy of silence around the risks of the flu vaccine?

    ReplyDelete

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