Forget Vaccines, Catch a Cold
Instead
By Jon N. Hall
The Wuhan pandemic has been
compared to the devastating Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, but the two differ in
their victims. The Spanish flu hit young adults aged 20-40, a group that the Wuhan virus
mostly doesn’t prey on. The Spanish flu also hit children, which our virus virtually
ignores. I’m not an epidemiologist, but when compared to the Spanish flu,
COVID-19 seems almost “benign.”
The Spanish flu had a
fatality rate of 2.5 percent,
while the seasonal flu usually has a fatality rate of just 0.1 percent. Some research suggests that the fatality rate for Covid will
ultimately turn out to be more in line with the seasonal flu than with the
Spanish flu. And note that there’s a vaccine for the seasonal flu while
scientists have yet to develop one for Covid.
So if the latest fatality
numbers hold, then Covid will turn out to be much less lethal than the Spanish
flu. But calculating the fatality rate is difficult, and can involve a lot of guesswork. To
get a taste for the problem of putting a number on the fatality rate, read “Covid-19 Is Not the Spanish Flu” at Wired.
In his novel The Andromeda Strain (1969), Michael
Crichton dreams up a pathogen which, in the small town it invades, spares no
one except for two individuals. Perhaps the Wuhan virus, the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)
that has been flown around the globe on commercial airliners to infect the entire planet, might be thought of as a “reverse Andromeda strain,” in that it
spares just about everyone except for old folks. If that sounds wacky to you,
then you haven’t kept abreast of recent research which suggests that Covid has already
infected far more of the population than had been thought.
In Crichton’s fiction, the
two survivors of his Andromeda bug aren’t saved by having superior immune
systems, but rather by another biologic factor (which I’ll leave for those who
haven’t read the novel to discover on their own). Because the Wuhan virus is
new, one might think that Covid’s survivors are protected by the immune systems
they were born with, i.e. their innate immune systems.
The exquisite defense system
that we were born with is a general system. But when that general system of
innate immunity neutralizes a pathogen, it creates a second line of defense, an
antibody that targets that specific pathogen. Antibodies are part of the adaptive immune system, which is acquired. I know of a hair stylist who
swears that the reason she never gets sick is because her clients continually
cough and sneeze all over her. The gal may have developed adaptive immunity.
It’d be interesting to see
what kinds of antibodies are present in people who work in close proximity to
others, like our hair stylist. I’m not an immunologist, but because the Wuhan
virus is new, what could account for the ease with which some throw it off,
often not even knowing they’ve contracted anything? Is it innate immunity or
something else?
On May 14, the website for
the journal Science ran “T cells found in COVID-19 patients ‘bode well’ for
long-term immunity” by Mitch Leslie.
The article cites research suggesting that T cells which fight Covid could have
been developed in response to other
coronaviruses, like the common cold:
T
cells, in contrast, thwart infections in two different ways. Helper T cells
spur B cells and other immune defenders into action, whereas killer T cells
target and destroy infected cells. The severity of disease can depend on the
strength of these T cell responses. …
The
researchers think these cells were likely triggered by past infection with one
of the four human coronaviruses that cause colds; proteins in these viruses
resemble those of SARS-CoV-2. …
Before
these studies, researchers didn’t know whether T cells played a role in
eliminating SARS-CoV-2, or even whether they could provoke a dangerous immune system overreaction. [Link added.]
On May 21, The Federalist ran “Stop Fear-Mongering: Kids Are Safer From Covid-19 Than
Everyone Else” by Phil Kerpen, who
wrote that “recent papers suggest they [i.e. children] may either have innate
immunity or effective partial immunity from recent exposure to common cold
coronaviruses,” and he cites much foreign research to support that. But nowhere
in his lengthy article does Mr. Kerpin mention T cells. However, on June 2 Kerpen tweeted
“A lot of people beat SARS-CoV2 with just T cells.”
On June 3 at Business
Insider, science reporter Aylin
Woodward wrote:
Some
people's immune systems may have a head start in fighting the coronavirus,
recent research suggested.
A study
published last month in the journal Cell
showed that some people who have never been exposed to the coronavirus have
helper T cells that are capable of recognizing and responding to it.
The
likeliest explanation for the surprising finding, according to the researchers,
is a phenomenon called cross-reactivity: when helper T cells developed in
response to another virus react to a similar but previously unknown pathogen.
In
this case, those T cells may be left over from people's previous exposure to a
different coronavirus --- likely one of the four that cause common colds.
The Wuhan virus affects
different groups in markedly different ways. Responses range from the
asymptomatic to death. If you’re weathering the “cytokine storm” and a hospital
puts you on a ventilator, you’d best have your “affairs in order.” To more
completely understand this virus, we might study those in each group who
respond differently than the group as a whole; that is, study the anomalies.
Are there any commonalities
held by the anomalies in each group? The main group that Covid attacks is the
elderly, but it also has a taste for males, the obese, and those with
underlying conditions (comorbidities), such as diabetes. So, if Covid were to
sweep through a nursing home and kill off every last patient except for an obese 70-year-old man with
diabetes, we’d have ourselves an excellent anomaly to study, (which might even put
one in mind of Crichton’s Andromeda strain.) Likewise, a grade schooler who succumbs
to Covid while his classmates don’t even know they’ve contracted it, or a fit
pro football player who is laid low by the virus, such as Mark Campbell,
would also be an anomaly to investigate.
The “experts” tell us that we
can’t get back to normal until we get a vaccine. But often the yearly flu shot
is ineffective more than half the time. And there’s no guarantee that science
will be able to come up with a vaccine. The experts weren’t able to develop
vaccines for other coronaviruses, such as those responsible for SARS and MERS
and the common cold.
Americans are being asked to
wait for a vaccine which the vast majority of them don’t need due to their innate
immunity, their antibodies from growing herd immunity due to having already
contracted the virus, and their T cells. Also, this hoped-for vaccine might
quickly become useless if the virus mutates, as viruses are wont to do. Are we
just supposed to remain in lockdown while we wait until the so-called experts
say it’s safe to go outside?
Think of how devastating the
Wuhan virus would have been if it had hit the younger still-productive part of
the population. Think of the heartache were it to have preyed on kids, wiping
out classrooms in the way it wiped out nursing homes. If I were a virus, or a
cannibal, I think I’d be more attracted to the young and succulent rather than to
the old and stringy. So, as far as viruses go we’ve been lucky with Wuhan, given
its choice of victims. Be that as it may, to boost your killer T cells: man up,
leave your bunker, and go out and catch a cold.
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