Opening the mRNA vaccine failure black box: Antigenic sin and Omicron , connecting the dots.
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There has been a number of journals attributing the ineffectiveness of the mRNA vaccines on Omicron Sars-cov-2 variant to the phenomenon of Original Antigenic Sin (OAS), which is a situation where the induced memory antibodies of the adaptive immune system are unable to recognize the antigen of a variant of a virus due to acquired mutations that makes the ancestral antibodies ineffective hence making it unable to neutralize the variant antigens due to the mismatch of the recalled memory antibodies and the variants epitopes.
It is most unlikely original antigenic sin have any role to play in the durability of the mRNA vaccines against Omicron variant since the vaccines do not induce long term protection against the ancestral strains on exposure to the virus, a hallmark of the adaptive immune system (15).
Instead regular booster shots are required to maintain any protection when the vaccine induced effectors wane.
However if the mRNA vaccines did induce long term protection on the ancestral strain via the adaptive immune response then it will be possible to attribute the non effectiveness or less potency of the vaccine on Omicron to original antigenic sin.
It has been shown that the viral load between the vaccinated and unvaccinated are more or less the same (2, 24 ), which implies the vaccine induced antibodies are non effective on the virus since it's not reducing or stopping replication as would be expected if it did neutralize the virus.
One then wonders if the vaccine generated spike protein is compatible with the viral spike protein because if they are not of the same form and composition then it is highly unlikely that the vaccine generated spike protein will induce antibodies capable of neutralizing the spike antigen of the virus.
I am yet to see any literature that has confirmed that the two spike proteins are of the same composition, form and structure. It is highly unlikely this is the case because the viral genome and human genome are different hence the mRNA vaccine human generated spike is likely to be different from the spike protein of the virus except if it has a human origin which will be possible if the virus is lab engineered making it possible to fuse the spike derived from human genome to the virus necleocapsid.
In an article by Igor Shepherd “mRNA Vaccines: The Silent Weapon” (16 ) he indicated that the mRNA technology was secretly being utilized by the Soviets as bio-weapons several decades ago before it became public knowledge and could dangerously alter the human DNA. And that Soviet scientists decided to rival God, by plugging genes and combining segments of DNA from one type of organism with the gene of another organism, thereby creating more deadly, contagious, environmentally stable and pathogenic novel strains of various microorganisms such as multi-drug-resistant anthrax, genetically modified super plague, chimeric variations of smallpox, and German measles.
The following excerpts in his article is worthy of note:
“They also found the way to effectively hijack the body’s natural immune processes by producing overstimulation of the immune system through the “reprogramming” of the human immune system responses to those manmade-modified external pathogens. The over stimulation of the body’s immune system was purposed to cause serious immunological reactions and remove the body’s responsibility to release antibodies when the body decided to do so.”(16)
“Once the immune system was continuously in overdrive and self-exhausted (similar example of self-exhaust would be like a cancer patient whose immune system gets depleted from chemo-therapy), the body weakened and became susceptible to mild infections, like a cold, and could no longer fight off infections. For the Soviets, this breakthrough became important “silent warfare” for mass destruction.”(16)
“Does this “reprogramming” of the immune system sound familiar? It should. The Covid-19 vaccines utilize the same mRNA technology of reprogramming the body’s immune system as Russia used in producing bioweapons for silent warfare against civilians.”(16)
“The immune system then detects these viral proteins and starts to produce a defensive response to them. The final result, though, has altered the body’s natural responses, and dangerous pathological immune reactions are induced, including systemic inflammation and stimulation of auto-reactive antibodies, resulting in a cytokine storm or death. Worse, these harmful outcomes might not show up for months or years”(16)
“The creators of the Covid-19 vaccines expect numerous injuries and fatalities ahead. You cannot mess with this type of bio-technology and be “clueless” regarding end results. This is why the pharmaceutical giants made sure they would be free of legal ramifications for harmful effects and deaths.”(16)
We can conclude that despite the vaccine induced antibodies generating neutralizing antibodies against the vaccine human mRNA spike proteins antigen this does not necessarily mean that the same antibody will neutralize the viral spike antigen because the are not of the same make and form and hence not of compatible type.
The omicron variant thankfully is not of major concern because it does less harm to us due to being less virulent but more transmissible and react on our body like an attenuated Sars-cov-2 vaccine promising us long-lived immunity against Sars-cov-2 and future natural occurring variants.
The high transmissibility and extensive mutations in Omicron is largely responsible for categorizing it as a variant of concern (VOC) because experience of viral evolution indicates that such mutation is likely going to change the characteristics of the virus in terms of infectivity and transmissibility and may likely change the trajectory of the Pandemic and public health mitigation measures since the current vaccines may prove ineffective or useless in controlling the spread which has proven to be the case.
Categorizing Omicron as a VOC does not necessarily mean it will be more deadly, however some of the attribute it possessed showed it can tip the balance and become dominant and hence it was important to study the metamorphosis as it evolved in order to understand how the manifestation will affect the population and what mitigation strategies needs to be put in place to control and possibly eliminate any threat it will pose to public health
The current mRNA vaccines are ineffective on Omicron. However I do not suppose this is as a result of the phenomenon of antigenic sin or any factor relating to the vaccine but due to the inherent characteristic of Omicron being so much disabled by the mutations that it can only cause slight allergic reactions to the external walls of the nasal and olfactory canal which was not sufficient to penetrate the reach of vaccine induced protection in the systemic terrain.
This lack of depth of infection accounts for the low virulence of Omicron hence the immune system did not see it much of a threat to warrant the engagement of the services of the second or third layer of our immune defense mechanism since this was well within the capability of the physical and chemical barriers such as mucosal secretions.
The disablement of the Omicron variant restricted its activities to the respiratory and olfactory canals and spared the vascular system which when infected causes most of the severity and fatalities that results from the infection.
Thus we can say the induction of the mucosal local immune compartment rather than systemic immune system was sufficient to ward off the attack by the Omicron virus.
This local immune mechanism of action is corroborated in the following journal article excerpts.
“The discovery of IgA and the realization that it dominates humoral mucosal immunity, in contrast to the IgG dominance of the systemic immune system, was early evidence for the distinct nature of mucosal immunology. “ (17)
“immunization or infection at mucous membranes resulted in high titer of protective antibodies at the mucosal site with absent or low titers in serum, whereas the reverse occurred with parenteral immunization.” (17)
“a distinct Ig isotype that dominated mucosal antibodies constituted strong evidence for a local immune system structurally and functionally distinct from the systemic compartment. The general principle is that IgA appears to function across a spectrum of near innate immune responses, as described in the section IgA induction by commensal intestinal microbes, and highly adaptive responses as evidenced by the functional neutralization of pathogenic molecules and microbes. Mucosal immune responses in the respiratory tract play a key role in the early restriction of viral replication and the clearance of SARS-CoV-2.” (17)
Sterilizing immunity requires neutralizing antibodies at the site of infection, which for respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 implies the occurrence of neutralizing IgA in mucosal secretions. Systemic vaccination by intramuscular delivery induces no or low-titer neutralizing IgA against vaccine antigens which makes it ineffective.
I do not see omicron as representing any threat to the healthy population but may be to the weak and infirmed whose immune system are already compromised and may suffer from further breathing impairment due to the irritation of the external walls of the olfactory and sinus.
In an article written by Jeremy Hammond (7), he stated the following:
"As a stark indication of the true nature of the crisis, something extraordinary happened a week ago: the New York Times finally acknowledged the possibility that COVID-19 vaccines might be associated with an immunological phenomenon known as “original antigenic sin”. “
The current mRNA vaccines do not confer any form of immunity and hence there is no possibility they will be affected by the vagaries of original antigenic sin. Vaccines that do suffer from Original Antigenic Sin confer some form of immunity on the ancestral strains which is long and enduring. The current mRNA vaccines do not have such property and only propose to offer some protection against hospitalization and severe disease which is not actually a function of induced antibodies but that of T cells (8) or innate natural killer cells (NK) that are responsible for disease attenuation and elimination through mopping up of diseased cells preventing the disease from spreading to other cells.
The concept of antigenic sin is not applicable to the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines ( theuraptics) because they are not traditional forms of vaccines and do not induce the adaptive immune system.
The classification as vaccines is for convenience to enable their mandate which wouldn’t have been possible if they were classed as therapeutics’.
Even where there is an exhibition of antigenic sin this is almost rare, otherwise it will be a misnomer to call the immune memory side activation as adaptive. Antigenic sin is exhibited more where there is antigenic shift rather than drift. In that situation there might be an extensive change in the virus structure which can occur due to combination of different variant strains that causes extensive structural change in the variant that effects it's form and function.
The Omicron variant can be characterized to have undergone antigenic shift although it is still a mystery how this occurred as there is no traceability of how this evolution occurred in the progeny which points to the fact that there might have been some lab engineering at some point in the evolutionary process.
This antigenic shift may be the reason why some literatures characterized the infectiveness of the mRNA vaccines against Omicron as being due to original antigenic sin. But if analyzed logically this really is not the case because the mRNA vaccines in the current form do not induce the adaptive immune system.
The waning of the mRNA vaccines effectiveness within 4 months will be expected as it works off the non-specific innate immune system in which the protection it confers is always short-lived. They are activated through heightened defenses against any pathogen by pumping immune complexes into the blood stream that encapsulates and lyse these foreign invaders.
However these immune complexes do not remain permanent in the blood stream but decay within 4 to 5 months duration corresponding to the period when our blood system is rejuvenated thus accounting for the waning effect due to decay and declining immune effectors.
The UK Surveillance data presents this waning effectiveness in a more vivid form indicating that it enters negative effectiveness 3 months after completion of 2 dose regimen
In Jeremy Hammond's article (7) he draws conclusion on this trend with the statement:
“To be clear, negative effectiveness means that people who were fully vaccinated, according to the current CDC definition of having received two doses of an mRNA vaccine and being two weeks or more out since the administration of the second dose, were more likely to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 than people who were unvaccinated."
I will rather put this trend as a manifestation of the immune system impairment due to contamination and overstimulation by the mRNA vaccine putting the recipient in a worst situation after the initial positive effect of the vaccine wanes if any. This notion has been corroborated in a number of published literatures (16,19,20,21,23), including a hypothesis I proposed showing the correlation of this event to reactivation of dormant chicken pox (Herpes Zoster) virus ( 23).
In actual fact, the UK surveillance data may be meaningless in terms of the calculation of vaccine effectiveness based on vaccine antibody titters. This is due to the fact the vaccine does not induce sterilizing immunity or generate effective neutralizing antibody against the spikes protein of Sars-cov-2 since it does not stop replication of the virus and hence has no effect on viral load as well as the course of infection.
In an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM.org) as at Sep 29 2020 by the mRNA-1273 Study Group titled
“Safety and Immunogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA-1273 Vaccine in Older Adults” () it was stated as regards to the neutralizing antibodies found that:
“ no correlate of protection for SARS-CoV-2 has been established. However, neutralizing-antibody levels have been shown to correlate with protection against many viruses in humans and have correlated with protection against SARS-CoV-2 in animal challenges.”
Despite eliciting some antibodies which appears to have provided some short-lived innate protection this does not produce effective adaptive antibodies required to confer long term protection expected of a vaccine (15).
Some school of thoughts are of the opinion that with Omicron we are transitioning to endemicity and Sars-cov-2 will remain with us for the foreseeable future.
I will say this will be dependent on a number of factors. These factors include the following:
1. Does the virus have the capability to remain in our system, that is in a dormant state and to be reactivated later due to immune decline or immune system compromise.
2. Does the virus have other non-pathogenic animal reservoirs that host the virus that will keep re-infecting human species to keep it in circulation.
3. Did the virus naturally evolve or was it engineered to gain or reduce functionality.
The answer to these questions will be paramount in influencing the further evolution or extinction of the virus. But my instinct tells me it will eventually become extinct just as SARS and MERS have become extinct except if some specimens are released from the laboratory to start a new round of infections.
Antigenic- type vaccines are not able to induce long term immunity or protection (9,10,11,12,13). We need to explore doing this with traditional vaccine method of using an attenuated form of the virus that will be safe and effective and produce effects similar to the Omicron variant.
Successful vaccines that have conferred lasting immunity as well as protection have used this method.
No antigenic vaccine have been able to provide this type of protection and the reason is not far fetched;
A pathogen consists of numerous antigens and we cannot hope to stimulate the same kind of immune response to this pathogen using only one of it's constituent antigens. That is unlikely to happen.
Our immune system will require the full complements of the pathogen antigens to generate various antibodies that will disable the constituent antigens of the pathogen to be able to prevent it from causing symptomatic infection before the infected cells can be killed by the T cells.(8)
This is a critical difference between covid-19 mRNA vaccine induced antibodies and infection induced antibodies that produce antibodies against viral nucleo-capsid protein which is lacking in the former.
The mRNA vaccines induce both Antibodies and T cells. The Antibodies induced seems to be ineffective against the viral spike antigen due to incompatibility between the vaccine spike protein and viral spike protein.
However the T cells induced by the vaccines seems to be very active in eliminating diseased cells caused by the vaccine and not by the virus (8).
This elimination also ends up damaging our organs depending on which organ cells are contaminated by the vaccines and to what extent, which does have the potential to induce chronic disease in the infected organs that will eventually shorten the life span of the vaccinee.
The attenuation of the viral symptoms on a vaccinated seems to be as a result of the heightened state of alert of the innate immune system and the deployment of natural killers cells to mop up infected cells. Natural Killer cells act in a similar way to T-cells but the actions are of shorter duration and non-specific hence acts on all types of pathogen.
For an infected vaccinee the immune system will be under undue stress as a result of the concurrent independent actions taking place in the immune system due to the action of the induced vaccine antibodies and T cells as well as the action of the innate immune system in fending off the attack of the virus.
The effect of the vaccine which is redundant would have weakened or over stressed the innate immune system making the resistance less optimal and hence leading to a worst outcome of the infection depending on the extent of the immune system impairment.
The mRNA vaccine does not elicite immune responses to the viral antigen which means it is non effective. Even the symptoms reductions as claimed by the manufacturers is only in effect for the duration of 2 weeks after vaccination when the non action specific innate natural killer (NK) cells are active.
Equally the T cells induced by the vaccine spike does not seem to respond to diseased cells caused by the virus since they are tailored specifically to respond to vaccine spike protein.
The mRNA vaccine boosters appear to work and bring down infectious pressure as demonstrated during the third wave in Israel through symptom reduction that also reduces infection duration due to the short burst of innate Natural Killer(NK) cells activation that has a duration of 14 days.
It then brings into question if there is really anything like a breakthrough infection, because every infection of a vaccinee is a breakthrough infection since the mRNA vaccine do not stop any Infection. The difference is the symptoms variation which can be mild, moderate or severe.
There cannot be breakthrough Infection when the mRNA vaccine despite being immunogenic and generating neutralizing antibodies and T cells against vaccine spike protein antigen fails to neutralizing viral antigen by stopping or reducing viral replication. This is nothing short of vaccine failure.
In the Science-Based Medicine article written by Steven Novella, an excerpt states the following:
"The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines produce the full-length spike protein. Pfizer studied several formulations initially, but found that the full length protein vaccine had fewer side effects and was better tolerated than other vaccine candidates, so that is the one they went with. It is also likely that the full protein contains more epitopes (sites for immune activity) and therefore produces more thorough and longer lasting immunity. The proteins, however, are in a fixed state, they are unable to change their confirmation, which is necessary to bind to cells. So they function differently than spike proteins on infecting virus"(1)
This statement highlights the fact that the Sars-cov-2 spike and vaccine generated spike, function differently and a key function required to bind to cells (confirmation state) is absent in the vaccine spike.
This also implies that the antibodies they induce will as well function differently and will be incompatible. Hence it will not be possible for the vaccine induced antibodies to neutralize the viral spike protein antigen.
The absence of a confirmation state in the vaccine spike protein may account for the non binding of the vaccine antibodies to the viral spike antigen which then produces the non sterilizing effects of the mRNA vaccine.This is a critical flaw of the mRNA vaccines.
In an ideal situation the vaccine antibodies circulating should be able to bind and neutralize the viral antigen before the induced memory B cells of the adaptive immune system produce more viral antigen-specific antibodies, but this appears not to be the case making viral replication to progress with symptoms similar to a primary infection of a non-vaccinated.
It is also of note, Pfizer did not consent to demonstrate the safety and immunogenicity of the mRNA vaccine in a local clinical trial as demanded by the Indian health authority as a result for which they could not win emergency use authorization for their mRNA vaccine in India.( 6)
There seems to be an orchestrated conspiracy of deceit surrounding the introduction and dispensation of mRNA vaccines with demonstrated safety concerns and a number of tragic events to it's credit, yet it is still allowed in the market and not withdrawn despite glaring evidence of it's failure and obsolescence. This then questions the true motive of it’s introduction.
If the mRNA vaccines did work , there would have been no need of applying strong arm tactics, coercion and inducement to compel the public to get vaccinated because it’s effectiveness and safety profile will speak for itself.
For instance Dr Robert Malone, in a Joe Regan episode highlighted the fact that hospitals we're encouraged to record deaths as Covid-19 even though the death may not be covid-19 related and we're rewarded as much as $3000 as death benefit per case claimed. This policy potentially jeopardizes public health in a corrupt environment where such inducement may lead to wrong diagnosis and falsification of records.
Though there are signs a number of countries are coming to terms with the reality and the fact that the mRNA vaccines are not working and hence abrogating all vaccine mandates which will be meaningless and unjustified in this situation considering that the vaccine do not do what it was initially proposed to do as it neither prevents infection nor the transmission.
Even CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky's in an about face admitted recently in remarks made at the Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, that the CDC exercised "too little caution and too much optimism" about the effectiveness of the vaccines;
But the various governments have to go a step further by prohibiting all mRNA vaccines and withdraw the ones in circulation because the vaccine antibodies are ineffective against Sars-cov-2 despite exhibiting neutralizing capacity in vitro.
We need to institute continuous monitoring of the effects of these mRNA vaccines on the population with remedial measures to ameliorate any adverse effects they may present in future.
The mRNA vaccines have failed and this needs to be acknowledged by the various health authorities. We now know the potential they offer but they are still in embryonic stage and currently not fit for human consumption and remains a bio-weapon without proper refinement. Let’s go back and do the right thing by trialing and perfecting this technology using animals and not humans. Human life is sacrosanct and should not be reduced to that of a common commodity.
Let’s respect and preserve the value and sanctity of life. Let’s stop playing God as that will lead to the destruction of humanity.
Please do like or comment on the article if you found it insightful.
References
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