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Fred February 15, 2022 at 12:45
You cite two cases of thrombosis in friends and acquaintances and you ascribe these to vaccines. I cannot challenge your observations but the deductions must be challenged in a scientific way as they may or may not be connected to the vaccines they had.
“A friend and neighbour of mine collapsed last spring shortly after receiving a covid vaccination. He was taken to Edinburgh and then to Liverpool where he was operated on to remove a blood clot from his brain. During the operation the surgeon found it was in fact two blood clots. Last I heard which was a few weeks ago he was in Raigmore Inverness with no signs of improvement.”
This may be a true complication if he had the Astra Zeneca vaccine but unlikely if he had the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, This type of complication which is rare, is due to clotting in some of the drainage veins in the brain and can indeed be catastrophic. The way that these clots are produced is being worked out but it is postulated that it is similar to another well known complication of a drug called Heparin, which is actually used to treat patients who have clotting. The condition which appears paradoxical, that an agent used to reduce blood clotting can itself cause clotting is because certain individuals produce antibodies to heparin and this reacts with platelets which are then activated, their numbers in the circulation is reduced and this process leads to clots in the brain. Although this is a known side effect of heparin, and is much more common than the clotting induced by the AZ vaccine, heparin still continues to be used, it is just that awareness of this is essential so that action id=s taken earlier. I attach this scientific publication, which I do not expect you to read but just as evidence of what I say. The incidence of this complication due to the vaccine is far less common.
As to your second acquaintance
“I know someone else who visits me from England from time to time who had blood clots in his leg after receiving the vaccine, though that has done no lasting harm.”
It sounds as if this person had what is known as a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) which is a much more common complication that occurs and has many triggers including surgery, infection, immobility, diabetes, obesity and many other. There is a much less common association with the covid vaccines with this type of complication.
So really citing anecdotal cases does not mean that the vaccines are not safe, that is why we really on statistics. How many people had the vaccines and how many suffered from the complications. Anecdotal evidence is not useful.
Fred, has a friend of yours suffered blood clots following the hepatitis B vaccine, as you claimed in this comment?
What are you talking about? That’s just a typo and you know it is, “didn’t had” makes no sense and wouldn’t say what you are pretending it said anyway.
We are witnessing a huge transfer of wealth from the many to the few and a huge transfer of power from the many to the few. When Canadian bed wetters were hiding behind the sofa in case the covid monster got them, the Canadian truckers were out keeping the shelves in supermarkets stocked. Now their Tony Blair wanabe Prime Minister is calling them racists, misogynists and terrorists for not wanting to hand over their personal liberties to him. Here in Britain those who stood on their doorsteps clapping the NHS were ready to look the other way while 40,000 NHS workers were fired for having principles.
Doesn’t governments taking control of people’s bank accounts to force them to do as they are told worry you at all?
Clark
February 8, 2022 at 01:44#84923REPLY“Fred, can you assure me that when people have had symptomless infection or have recovered, that they have actually cleared the virus? There’s no one with any left hanging around and multiplying in the kidneys, gut, heart, nervous system, gonads, brain, T-cells etc? ‘Cos I think it’s been found in all those organs, long after infection.”
For the sake of balance I need to challenge your statement or at least ask you to reference or qualify it. There are many ways of how virus infections end:
- The virus causes an acute infection which either kills the host, makes the host ill but is then eliminated once immunity occurs. In some viruses and other organisms the immunity is long lived and no reinfection occurs. Examples include hepatitis A.
- As above but immunity is short lived, and reinfection can occur, especially with a variant.
- The virus causes an acute infection but the host remains as an asymptomatic carrier of the virus, or the virus can cause mild symptoms from time to time. Such viruses included CMV and the glandular fever viruses.
- Viruses that can after the initial acute phase cause a chronic inflammation or infection that has long term problems. Examples are hepatitis B and C and HIV.
- Viruses that have the potential to integrate with the hosts nuclear DNA and can then be associated with tumours. Examples include the Human T-lymphotrophic virus-1.
- Some viruses that are usually eliminated, are not eliminated after the acute phase in those with immune deficiency states, either inborn or acquired. Examples include a virus called parvovirus which causes severe anaemia in those with immune deficiency but not in normal individuals.
As far as I know coronaviruses are not persistent viruses in normal circumstances. There has been a theory that Omicron with its many mutations, has arisen in a patient with HIV as a result of persistence leading to mutations, but I am not aware that the virus has been isolated from various organs after an initial acute infection.
This is an interesting resume of persistent viruses, if you would like to know more.Fred:
– “Now to get back to the subject of authoritarian governments…”
Yes, many governments all over the world are becoming more authoritarian, but what do you suppose we should do about it?
Elsewhere you have condemned both Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter, and dismissed an Insulate Britain direct activist as “a knuckle-dragging eco-terrorist”. You have also dismissed the Suffragettes and Ghandi’s movement as delaying women’s suffrage and Indian independence. However, you show much support for the confused coalition of anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, and assorted grades of covid-denialists, anti-5G and Agenda 21 UN depopulation conspiracy theorists, whom the legitimate anti-vaccine-mandate protesters unfortunately have to protest alongside.
Your argument against the former groups has always been that they provoke governments to become more authoritarian, yet you have expressed no such concern about the latter groups – which again strikes me as hypocritical. Either authoritarianism is caused by protest or it isn’t; you can’t pick and choose based merely upon your own apparently right-wing prejudices.
Should everyone go home and meekly wait for governments to do the right thing? Are rights gifted to us by the powerful out of the goodness of their hearts?
SA:
– “I am not aware that the virus has been isolated from various organs after an initial acute infection.”
Please search for relevant papers; signs of persistence of SARS-CoV-2 were noted from the first two months of the pandemic onward. Documentation of Long covid is accumulating. I am short of time right now, but here are some links to get you started:
https://twitter.com/hjelle_brian/status/1491905761076649986
Many more on that Twitter account, with links to papers.
SARS-CoV-2 infection and persistence throughout the human body and brain:
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1139035/v1
Infection Control Today:
Clark
Thanks for the response.
This reference is a preprint awaiting review. It shows high level of viral RNA in patients who subsequently died of covid in a range of tissues. The highest levels seem to occur in patients who died early in infection but with lesser levels and less widespread viral distribution in various tissues. There is no direct proof that this is associated with destruction of these tissues or of viable virus in these tissues as far as I can tell, although I haven’t read the paper in detail. This therefore does not prove chronic carriage of viable virus and certainly not beyond 230 days or so.As to references to long covid, I don’t think anyone knows whether it is related directly to damage by the virus or to various other processes such as autoimmunity or sequelae of the infection such as lung damage and so on and this does not require the presence of the virus.
SA, another for you, in Nature, no less:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01113-x
Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection
– In summary, our data indicate an ongoing, sustained inflammatory response following even mild-to-moderate acute COVID-19, which is not found following prevalent coronavirus infection. The drivers of this activation require further investigation, but possibilities include persistence of antigen, autoimmunity driven by antigenic cross-reactivity or a reflection of damage repair. These observations describe an abnormal immune profile in patients with COVID-19 at extended time points after infection and provide clear support for the existence of a syndrome of LC (Long Covid). Our observations provide an important foundation for understanding the pathophysiology of this syndrome and potential therapeutic avenues for intervention.
This is why I have obtained some FFP3 masks. I wish to avoid this virus if I possibly can, or at least be infected with it as few times as possible:
I couldn’t put it any better than this:
https://twitter.com/hjelle_brian/status/1491920577275174913
https://twitter.com/hjelle_brian/status/1491928781539348481
And fred, NO, this does not mean I approve of vaccine mandates or authoritarian government. It means that I think people will exercise care so long as they’re properly alerted to danger, and if they don’t it’s their own business so long as they take care not to raise the risk to others.
SA, my point really is that with most viral infections we have decades of experience and accumulated research. With SARS-CoV-2 we have only two years, a bit less than that in most parts of the world, with research performed under emergency conditions. Data shows that people who have had covid are subsequently more likely to die from just about any cause.
From the Researchsquare.com (Nature portfolio) preprint (ie. not yet peer reviewed):
– We performed complete autopsies on 44 patients with COVID-19 to map and quantify SARS-CoV-2 distribution, replication, and cell-type specificity across the human body, including brain, from acute infection through over seven months following symptom onset. We show that SARS-CoV-2 is widely distributed, even among patients who died with asymptomatic to mild COVID-19, and that virus replication is present in multiple extrapulmonary tissues early in infection. Further, we detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA in multiple anatomic sites, including regions throughout the brain, for up to 230 days following symptom onset. Despite extensive distribution of SARS-CoV-2 in the body, we observed a paucity of inflammation or direct viral cytopathology outside of the lungs. Our data prove that SARS-CoV-2 causes systemic infection and can persist in the body for months.
Clark
I do not for a moment doubt that SarsCov-2 is a nasty virus that has effects on many tissues in ‘some people’ although in a majority the infection is minor or asymptomatic. I do not deny that long covid exists and so on. What I am saying is that I have not seen evidence yet of a chronic carrier state of the virus and that many of the clinical effects are explained by immune hypereactions , cytokine storm, hypercoagulability snd probably immune sequelae and autoantibody formation“Further, we detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA in multiple anatomic sites, including regions throughout the brain, for up to 230 days following symptom onset. Despite extensive distribution of SARS-CoV-2 in the body, we observed a paucity of inflammation or direct viral cytopathology outside of the lungs. “
No doubt this is going to have to be reworded once reviewed. They have detected viral RNA but no cytopathic effect in various tissues which suggests that this is not viable virus just persistent RNA post infection, it seems to me that they are equating finding viral RNA with finding whole replicating living virus. As I said there may be more details in the paper why they have reached this conclusion but let us wait until after it is reviewed.
SA, the full text is here:
https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-1139035/v1_covered.pdf?c=1640020576
In lines 109 to 112 (on page 8):
– “In all samples where SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected by ddPCR, we performed qRT-PCR to detect subgenomic (sg)RNA, an assay suggestive of recent virus replication. We confirmed the presence of replication-competent SARS-CoV-2 in extrapulmonary tissues by virus isolation in cell culture.”
Lines 267 to 271 (page 15):
– “We show SARS-CoV-2 disseminates across the human body and brain early in infection at high levels, and provide evidence of virus replication at multiple extrapulmonary sites during the first week following symptom onset. We detected sgRNA in at least one tissue in over half of cases (14/27) beyond D14, suggesting that prolonged viral replication may occur in extra-pulmonary tissues as late as D99.”
I assume that D14 and D99 refer to day 14 and day 99.
Lines 338 to 343 (pages 18 and 19):
– “We detected sgRNA in tissue of over 60% of the cohort. While less definitive than viral culture, multiple studies have shown that sgRNA levels correlate with acute infection and can be detected in respiratory samples of immunocompromised patients experiencing prolonged infection. These data coupled with ISH suggest that SARS-CoV-2 can replicate within tissue for over 3 months after infection in some individuals, with RNA failing to clear from multiple compartments for up to D230.”
SA, you wrote:
– “…let us wait until after it is reviewed.”
Indeed. In the mean time, I suggest erring on the side of caution.
Fred, I hadn’t seen your February 16, 10:58 comment until after I’d posted mine at 21:22; probably it was in the moderation queue. Thank you for confirming it was just a typo but really, you shouldn’t need to be asked over and over again like that, not if you’re here to discuss, rather than propagandise. I have no idea what you think I was pretending; I wasn’t pretending anything.
I’ll gloss over the hyperbole in your intervening paragraph of absurd ranting; you do seem very agitated and I suggest you should find a way to calm down; no one can think clearly in that state. The substantive points you made seem to be:
– “We are witnessing a huge transfer of wealth from the many to the few and a huge transfer of power from the many to the few”, and: “Doesn’t governments taking control of people’s bank accounts to force them to do as they are told worry you at all?”
Yes of course these worry me; what makes you think otherwise? And what do you suggest be done about it? Cheer for a load of very right-wing Tories plus Jeremy Corbyn? When I joined the Labour party to support Corbyn you accused me of subverting democracy or something! And you don’t like direct action protesting; you have said that it just provokes further authoritarianism. As best I can tell, you seem to think that encouraging people to catch covid is the most effective course, though how that is supposed to help completely escapes me; do please explain.
Erring on the side of caution is exactly what I am doing. Replicating virus found without signs of inflammation does not sound right to me when this virus causes hyper-reactive immune responses. Caution here means avoid over-sensationalisation.
SA, the Nature article describes signs of inflammation:
– “In summary, our data indicate an ongoing, sustained inflammatory response following even mild-to-moderate acute COVID-19…”
Context is also relevant. The UK government policy, from the start, was to expose the entire “non vulnerable” population to this virus as quickly as possible – though it is beyond me how anyone is supposed to determine who is vulnerable or not based on only two months data. The government have returned to that policy repeatedly, though not explicitly; social containment measures were consistently late and inadequate, Johnson did not anticipate his “let the bodies pile high” remark being made public, he sought advice from the fringe of scientists who declared further waves impossible, there was the “Eat Out to Help Out” subsidies that neglected take-aways and outdoor seating, ventilation was completely neglected for over a year and has never been mandated, and the schools policy seems designed to enforce distribution of the virus throughout the population. Erring on the side of caution involves compensating for the government’s neglect of it.
“Further, we detected persistent SARS-CoV-2
78 RNA in multiple anatomic sites, including regions throughout the brain, for up to 230 days
79 following symptom onset. Despite extensive distribution of SARS-CoV-2 in the body, we
80 observed a paucity of inflammation or direct viral cytopathology outside of the lungs. Our
81 data prove that SARS-CoV-2 causes systemic infection and can persist in the body for
82 months.”This statement will require clarification no doubt from the reviewers as it is somewhat contradictory. They say the virus is present outside the lung but say there is a paucity of inflammation outside the lung. The so called persistence is that of RNA not proven live virus outside the lung.
I think we are in agreement about government action or inaction and about erring on the safe side of protecting ourselves and others from the virus, but what I am debating here is the fact as to whether the virus is ‘persistent’ and whether this paper proves this point. The virus may well prove to be persistent in those with heavy infections and may be so in ‘sanctuary sites’ and may therefore be non-transmissible but this is a scientific debate that has not ended with this paper which remains to be reviewed.
SA, I wouldn’t take any single paper as conclusive in such a complex matter. I don’t regard persistence of the virus as certain. However, we do have strongly suggestive evidence, even from the earliest days of the pandemic when people who had apparently cleared the acute infection started testing positive again some days later.
My feeling is that long term effects, and people complaining of long term symptoms, have been sidelined in the rush to understand and treat the massive influx of acute cases. It is understandable; the pressures upon both healthcare and medical science have been enormous, but this omission may prove very costly over years to come, in terms of illness as well as money.
– – – – – –It is also notable that the Chinese authorities continue going to unprecedented lengths to suppress transmission of SARS-CoV-2. This may be merely ego among the leadership, an unwillingness to change policy. On the other hand, if this virus did indeed escape from Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese authorities likely have lab records, researcher testimony and staff medical histories unavailable to anyone else. Early in the pandemic the Chinese government announced that although the virus was not a bioweapon-level threat, they were going to treat it as if it was. They did so and continue to do so, even with Omicron, as other governments relax their guard.
Clark
The Chinese authorities are practicing the traditional method of dealing with pandemics. Western democracies will not do this for ideological reasons but also because it costs too much to do properly with proper isolation. The excuses they give include personal freedom and democracy where public health matters are decided by MP votes and not by experts.SA:
– “The Chinese authorities are practicing the traditional method of dealing with pandemics.”
True. But they are still doing it with Omicron which, word has it, is so “mild” that we should all go out and catch it, to, er, protect ourselves from the even “milder” variant that will inevitably replace it :/
If enough people uphill decide to try the rolling strategy, they can make the decision for you.
But nobody knows for sure what omicron may evolve into. I know what you are insinuating but the Chinese have from the start decided on a zero covid policy. Incidentally it is very telling how Britain at 75% vaccination rate, once touted to be a leader in vaccination rates, has now lagged behind Italy and Portugal and France and way behind China at 85%.
“Every body is an epidemiologist” and a virologist, vaccinologist, and so on. We now don’t need scientists as everyone is qualified to interpret the science and do their own ‘research’ to make up their own mind as to what is best for them and others.
I didn’t mean to insinuate. I’m stating that the Chinese government possibly has better understanding of this virus than anyone else, and that might be the reason that they are sticking to their policy of suppression.
– “We now don’t need scientists…”
It’s the scientific community and the structure of scientific debate and consensus formation through the journals and institutions that is being disregarded. Individual scientists are still useful to those who wish to promote their own opinions, by cherry picking certain scientists or selectively quoting others out of context, to impart an illusion of technical authority to false arguments.
The corporate media, especially the tabloids, have been the exemplars of this activity for decades; just look at the furore of literally thousands of articles they kicked up from Wakefield’s case series of just twelve children. I wish the covid deniers and conspiracy theorists would realise whose example they’re following but no, they think they’ve “seen through the lies of the MSM”.
85% vaccination in China is impressive; it’s a vast country with a vast population, many in far-flung, inaccessible areas.
A friend of mine started getting covid symptoms about three weeks ago. She had it bad only for a couple of days, but she isn’t looking well, and she’s still getting headaches and aches and pains in her body. She’s in her early sixties, she was fit and healthy, no other health conditions that I’m aware of.
She was also two-dose vaxxed, and later boosted with an mRNA vax. Which initial vax I don’t know.
