There have been some interesting developments in the official history of the Pandemic this week, which I will review after the usual tracking of the numbers. Let’s ignore new positive tests, which at this point are telling us very little about the actual magnitude of disease. New daily hospitalizations remain plateaued at 4300, and the continued slow burn of growing total hospital patients, now stands at 25,000 nationwide. As mentioned in a previous post, this is disproportionately affecting the over 65 yo group. The UK is in the midst of yet another burst of COVID, driven by the combination of variants: BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5. Except for the peak of the Omicron wave, UK cases are higher now than at any other time in the pandemic. It is truly extraordinary that 2 1/2 years into this mess, Scotland is reporting 1 in 20 Scots currently infected this week. We are constantly receiving reassurances from the our government that deaths in the US remain low, unfortunately they will go up with 25,000 people in the hospital.
When China introduced their homegrown inactivated Sinopharm vaccine, I facetiously dubbed it Sinoharm (like the old jingle, leave out the P for Protection). It’s living up to that moniker as a new article in the Lancet by Chinese investigators shows that this vaccine produces negligible levels of neutralizing antibodies against all current BA Sons of Omicron.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00410
The implications for a population of 1.4 billion, all vaccinated with this, and another Chinese vaccine, are tremendous. The consequences for the world economy are equally dismal since the Chinese government remains wedded to it’s zero COVID lockdown policy in order to avoid a massive death event, which they fear could destabilize the regime. An article in the June 22nd Economist highlights the tremendous cost in deteriorating mental health of the Chinese population as a result of these lockdowns and constant surveillance. Suicides in Wuhan increased 79% during the 2020 lockdown, and a recent study in Shanghai showed that after a prolonged months long lockdown, over 40% of the population were at high risk for depression. Couple that with a youth unemployment rate that has skyrocketed to 19% and it looks like a prescription for disaster. Someone should send Xi a memo that you can’t out wait this virus.
While I am on the subject of vaccines, I’d like to refer you to the following article from Weil-Cornell Medical College-Doha Qatar, published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine. This is a large scale real world epidemiology study, not laboratory levels of neutralizing antibodies.
Effects of previous infection and vaccination on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 omicron BA.1 and BA.2 subvariants infections The study showed no significant difference in protection from infection by Omicron BA.1 or BA.2 between natural prior infection and 3 doses of RNA vaccine. The average time between the episode of natural infection and Omicron occurrence was over 300 days, ]]and the average time from the 3rd dose of RNA vaccine was 42 days. So that should answer some questions about durability of natural immunity. They also found that 2 doses of RNA vaccine provided no protection from Omicron infection, and that hybrid immunity of 2 vaccine doses followed by an episode of infection offered the highest level of protection. It is extremely important to recognize that protection from infection by new variants is completely distinct from protection from severe disease or death. This study confirmed that both vaccination and prior infection were HIGHLY protective against these severe outcomes. Equally important to keep in mind is that millions of people have died in the futile process of getting their natural immunity, and vaccination would have been much simpler. For a more in depth look at the magnitude of the COVID vaccine’s impact, I’ll refer you to an article in this week’s Lancet Infectious Diseases by Oliver Watson, et al. looking at the the number of lives saved by this tour de force of modern medical technology.
Vaccines prevented 19.8 million out of a potential 31.4 million deaths during the first year after vaccines were first introduced in December 2020 to December 2021, according to the study, which reviewed Covid death records and excess death data from 185 countries and territories.
Vaccines saved the most lives in high and upper-middle income countries, where researchers estimated increased access to vaccines prevented 12.1 million deaths.
Last month the WHO issued the first clear statement that further investigation of the possibility that a Wuhan lab leak started the Pandemic is definitely needed, and called on China to be more cooperative . This week UK newspapers are reporting that WHO Director General Ghebreyesus privately expressed to “high ranking British officials” his personal view that the lab leak theory is correct. Now ordinarily I would put as much stock in this as, “devastating new information revealed by unidentified White House leaker”; however, there’s another fly bobbing around in the wonton soup. This week, Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Lancet Commission on the origin of the COVID-19 Pandemic, made the astonishing assertion during a scientific gathering, that he now personally believes the most likely origin of the Pandemic was a leak of genetically manipulated Corona virus from the Wuhan lab. He even included a barbed reference to it being created with American derived technology. His comments are available on You Tube for all the diligent fact checkers. For some perspective on this, let’s remember that Sachs was one of the leading figures early on in not only insisting the lab leak origin could not be true, but also in enlisting as many scientists, epidemiologists and social justice warriors as possible to discredit anyone suggesting it was a possible explanation, and labeling it a conspiracy theory. My first reaction is that I hope both these gentlemen have hired more bodyguards, because Beijing won’t be pleased; and then to wonder what new information they might be in possession of, and are trying to get ahead of, in order to look less foolish. We will see how much coverage this gets on the cable news channels, since they found the denunciation of the racist, conspiracy theorists positively titillating. In retrospect, one of the arguments that was repeatedly trotted out to, “virtually prove“, the animal to human argument was, “look how similar these various bat viruses are to SARS2, why they are 96% homologous”. Well we have seen in exquisite detail how changing one or two nucleotide sites in this virus allows it to escape a huge degree of prior immunity. I wonder what percent of one of those bat viruses you would need to have your grad student change in the lab to allow its bat specific spike to start grabbing the human ACE2 receptor, 1%, .05% or less?
Next is a quick detour to the London sewer system. If your double decker bus excursion ticket didn’t include this stop immediately after the British Museum—well the consolation is the fine refreshment stand available on the lower level. The UK public health authority has disclosed that they have been detecting polio virus in the London sewage system for several months now on an ongoing basis. Tiny traces of polio RNA are occasionally detected transiently in the waste water there, but what is unusual is the continuous detection over time that is being observed now. Wild type polio has been eradicated for years in the UK, and this current isolate is determined to be live attenuated vaccine strain virus. The presumption is that a person, vaccinated elsewhere in the world with the live polio vaccine, traveled to the UK and has been excreting the virus. It’s quite possible that it has transmitted to a limited number of other susceptible persons since London lags behind the UK in full vaccination coverage at 86%. There have not been any clinical cases of polio noted, but even with wild type, fully pathogenic virus, many cases are asymptomatic or involve just fever, with only one out of many hundreds developing neurological disease. Most cases of polio occurring in the world today are due to the live vaccine virus, which can mutate while replicating in the gut of the vaccine recipient (called genetic reversion), and be shed into the environment as an infectious virion with the potential to cause paralytic disease. The WHO reports that during the period from January 2020-June 2021, 44 outbreaks of circulating vaccine derived polio were being tracked, with 1,335 cases of paralytic disease noted. Obviously outbreaks of any magnitude can only happen in populations with low levels of vaccination and immunity. This cannot happen with the inactivated injectable vaccine, but for reasons of ease of administration and other logistical considerations the live vaccine remains common in much of the third world.
Since I already covered the Pet Peeves above under “WHO done it”, the final stretch today will fall under the category of, “You might try this at home, but it’s never going to be popular”. The CDC have shot themselves in the foot repeatedly during the Pandemic because of a lack of clear communication. With this in mind no doubt, they have provided us with updated recommendations on how to avoid Monkey Pox and supplemented that with the following marvelous graphic. I have a suspicion this may be the subject of enough mirthful ridicule that it could just disappear quickly—so you might want to get that screenshot for future reference.
You can indicate your preference for each of the illustrated methods above by forwarding to friends, hitting the like button and subscribe. Personally I’ll be covering the rash.
Great article 👏