Covidiots and the flaw of "Natural Immunity"

I'm "enjoying" watching the anti-vax; Covid-19 is a hoax or 'mild cold' crowd rejoice at the apparent retreat by the 'liberals', as countries begin to open up again. The pandemic is beginning to run its course, and Omicron has been demonstrated to be less dangerous (something that was not known for certain early in its spread - though some of course, claim to have known that all along). Vaccination rates and the efficacy of the vaccines has been demonstrated, and there is a dramatic slowing of the number of serious cases as a percentage of total new cases.

“Natural Immunity” is their catchphrase. Let’s be clear. The pandemic has lasted this long because some are perfectly willing to see their loved ones sicken and die, apathetic to seeing their communities ravaged, and are perfectly happy to see long-term illness and the impact of “long-covid”. As long as it isn’t them, then they will whine for the care and the drugs that would not have been required if they hadn’t been so selfish.

So the natural evolution of the pandemic, and the subsequent beginnings of openings is being heralded as proving that they were right all along, and there should not have been any lockdowns in the first place. Add to this a study (I forget where, but actually very reputable - quite surprised me) saying that lockdowns contributed only very, very minimally to reduced deaths. Personally, I do not think they could be more wrong. Here in Greece, the early lockdowns stopped the spread in its tracks, and saved many lives. New Zealand (and Australia) stopped their initial spread through border closures and lockdowns to isolate cases. 

Half-measure lockdowns failed. When Greece moved to partial opening with masks and low enforcement, cases gained a foothold in communities and began to spread fairly quickly. I've written my observations and thoughts on that before. The "official" lockdowns were almost ignored, with crowds gathering to enjoy evenings in the open. And while people were outside, they were much closer than the 2 metres recommendations. 

Now the push is to tout "natural immunity". I love this one. Natural Immunity is the immunity the body builds through the production of antibodies. How do you build the antibodies? By exposure to the virus. Vaccinations are not quite as effective as natural immunity in stopping severe cases of Covid-19 (or most illnesses). But I'd rather have a very mild dose of Covid-19 (or cholera for that matter) after vaccination than have a potentially nasty case of either because I was not vaccinated. Sure, in future, my natural immunity antibodies will protect me from a nasty case of either, but the possible price is undoubtedly higher without vaccinations than with it.

So their fundamental argument remains that it would have been better to allow everyone to catch Covid-19 to become immune in future than to have vaccinated people to reduce the number of severe cases.

I've commented on a ZeroHedge article (https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/cdcs-study-natural-immunity-explained). 

Cool. So natural immunity protects from "severe outcomes from reinfection." REINFECTION. It does NOTHING to protect from a severe initial infection. NOTHING. 

So to get the benefit of natural immunity, I have to be subjected to the risk of a severe infection, potential hospitalisation (and potential death - 900,000+ in the US alone so far) in order to get slightly better protection for a potentially severe REINFECTION.

Meanwhile, with vaccination I can skip (or greatly reduce the risk of a) severe case. Wow.

The article has a video that is actually reasonably informative and reasonably balanced. Of course, it is used by the Zero-morons as proof that Vax is Bad, it is all a conspiracy, and as one person wrote, people who vaccinate children are worse than child rapists. There is a complete, deeply crazy ecosystem out there, and the comments section of ZeroHedge is one place to observe it up close.

But I really like the article and the chart (from the CDC) that accompanied it. It is clear even though the anti-vaxxers will use it as some form of proof of their demented argument against vaccination. 

That chart is just fantastic, if you remember that all of the lines at the bottom have been exposed to Covid-19 or have been vaccinated. Only the upper line shows people who have not been ‘vaccinated’ in one way or another – by actual vaccination or by the natural vaccination of the virus itself. 

What is important is that while there are three lines at the bottom, two of those had to pass along the dark line before they could start their journey along the bottom. Being vaccinated effectively allows the body to bypass the dark line on its way to becoming one of the lower three lines – those that have little risk of an adverse Covid-19 experience. 

Meanwhile, the anti-vaxxers talk about (unproven and unobserved) long-term effects of vaccination, all the while ignoring that there are very real Long-Covid effects, and that possibly 20% or more of those who did not have asymptomatic Covid-19 are experiencing. With billions of people having been vaccinated, some for over a year now, it is not unreasonable to expect that any long-term impacts of the vaccine would be manifested by now.

What is manifesting is the impact of Long-Covid on individuals, their families and communities, on their jobs and companies, and on society as a whole. And yet, there remains a vocal minority who would very happily sacrifice their grandparents, parents, their neighbours, anyone around them (except themselves, of course, as they all accept care as soon as they are ill).

Certainly, it is wonderful news that the pandemic may be winding down, or at least should through the spring. What is sad, however, is that the natural rhythm of the pandemic will be used as evidence by the anti-vaxxers and covidiots that they were right all along. We didn’t need to take the steps that we did, and we didn’t need a vaccine. See, the pandemic is going away regardless of what we did. 

Wrong, the pandemic is going to go away because of what was done to fight it, and at a cost of far too many people dying. And the pandemic only lasted this long because of those who are happy to see those around them sicken, die or be maimed in some way for years to come.

Is NATO expansion the new Versailles?

On 1 September 1939, German military forces crossed the border into Poland. The UK and France, after some days, complied with their treaty obligations to Poland and declared war on Germany. They then basically sat back and did nothing while Poland burned. The invasion of Poland was inevitable, and it is possible to put a date on that inevitability: 28 June 1919.

We’ve seen this cycle before; fight a war, win/lose a war, impose a treaty (or not) and then wait 20 – 40 years for the ‘losing side’ to complete their grievance process and start a war to ‘rectify’ the ‘injustice’ of the previously imposed peace.

As World War II followed as an inevitability from the one-sided Treaty of Versailles, so will the invasion of Ukraine follow the relentless expansion of NATO after the end of the Cold War. While there was no victory parade, no humiliating armistice signing in a rail carriage, and no grand treaty at Versailles, there most certainly was a 'victory', and the victors did impose their will on the defeated.

As Versailles begat WWII, so to the constant eastward expansion of NATO begat the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, and the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. And yet NATO did not learn from either, and continues to state that it is Ukraine's prerogative to choose to join NATO, thus leaving the door open for further eastward expansion.

Giving credit to the concept of NATO, its very existence has ensured peace across its member nations for over seventy years. And it is inconceivable that any nation-state would seriously consider attacking a NATO member. So there are huge incentives to join NATO, not least being the end of historically ever-present external threats and the need for large armies always ready for war.

And there have been incentives for NATO to seek to add new countries to the club, not least ensuring that there are no more wars between member nations, and eliminating the threat of near-peer aggression against any NATO member. For that matter, any country, near-peer or not, has to think twice or even three times before engaging in overt aggression against a NATO member. An attack on a NATO member is a terrible idea.

Should NATO have expanded? Yes. The eastward expansion was appropriate, especially into Poland, the Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. Creating a mutually defending core European entity that (almost) mirrors the EU was the logical progression. There cannot be a European Union without a common European defence sphere. The issue, however, is not the future of the European core, but about the extent to which Europe and the United States are willing to go to impose their will on the rest of Europe and surrounding areas.

In effect, NATO creates a giant overlapping sphere of influence and control, protecting the western core (France, Germany and the Benelux) from aggression from the east, the exact mirror of Moscow's needs. Russia needs its borderlands in the west, namely Belarus and Ukraine. Russia remembers German tanks. And they know perfectly well that those German tanks had to fight through eastern Poland, Belarus and Ukraine to reach Russian soil.

Would this justify an invasion of Ukraine? No. Of course not. Did Versailles justify the invasion of Poland in 1939? Of course not.

Was the Treaty of Versailles unjust, and did it contribute to the rise of militant nationalism in Germany? Sadly yes. Has the west's apparent inability to say "enough is enough" when it comes to the eastward expansion of NATO contributed to Russia's recent wars? Sadly also yes.

Will NATO and the United States now accept that NATO expansion is at an end? No. And they cannot, because to do so 'abandons' Ukraine and other countries, and tells them that they will never have the same security that all NATO members share. But to now make that statement will force Russia's hand.

Brutally honestly, the best we can hope for now is a Cuban Missle Crisis outcome, in which Russia blinks after receiving a secret promise that Ukraine will never be part of NATO. That back door agreement will have to come with a guarantee that there will be, at an 'appropriate time', probably within the next six months, a public statement that NATO agrees that Ukraine will never join.

But that will not happen, and cannot happen.

So probably the realistic best hope is for a fast Russian offensive, the quick collapse of the Ukrainian government and the formation of a new government in Kyiv that publicly renounces any NATO ambitions and pledges closer ties with Russia. The alternative will be the occupation of Ukraine while the west looks on, making as much noise as possible, all the while doing nothing. Just like 1939 and Poland.

Can a wrong treaty be undone? Can NATO admit that it has reached its limits? I think we are about to find out.

 

So goes the Covid in Greece; 2 Feb 2022

There is definitely a weariness that permeates everything. Sure, we all wear the mask most of the time, except that it is more common to see groups of people without masks, certainly indoors. And even we will not wear a mask indoors when dining. Being triple vaxxed, we feel a sense of, not immunity but, less concern about catching Covid-19 and the potential impact on us. We have an expectation that it will be mild and will pass over us.

Still, there remains the concern that we, either of us, could be one of the few that has a bad case, or has a “long Covid” case with problems lingering for some time. So we remain cautious, but in all honesty not as cautious as we should be. 

This is especially the case with the high numbers now. We are immured to the numbers, which when they were a thousand a day, we panicked, but at 19,000 a day we now think that is, if not a good day, then at least a standard day in a stream of days in which the numbers are slowly coming down. But of course, they are not coming down yet, and deaths are now back up to a seven-day moving average that is as high as it has ever been. 

Last week, Francoise went to her regular yoga on Wednesday. She goes to a studio that currently has only three people at a time, with plenty of space between them. The window is open the entire time, even in winter. So that would make this “cold yoga” and not “hot yoga” (bad joke). 

On Saturday, her yoga instructor sent her a message saying that she tested on Wednesday and was positive for Covid-19, probably caught from her child’s school. 

So it was a self-test for Francoise, which thankfully came up negative. That is one is a string of near misses we’ve had. I’m not terribly impressed that the yoga teacher took until the weekend to tell Francoise, with there then being a few days in which Francoise would have been building up a good case, and potentially being contagious herself. 

Total cases in Greece from the beginning of the pandemic is now ar around 1.9 million, or around 18% of the population. One in five people has had Covid-19, officially. Yet there have been so many cases that were asymptomatic and therefore never identified, and probably many cases spotted in self-tests that were not reported. If that is the case, then my personal estimate is that the number of confirmed cases is 50%, at best of the total number of cases. That makes the total percentage of cases closer to 40% or more of the population. And we have no idea how many of the children have had Covid-19 and just brushed it off as nothing. 

 So if 40% have been infected and therefore have a significantly lower chance of catching it again soon, and 45% (as of yesterday's numbers) have been vaxxed and boosted, then that accounts for 85% of the population, leaving a scant 15% left who are fully exposed. I’m not suggesting that the 85% cannot be infected, but I would expect that the potential infection rate for that part of the community is much less than for the remaining unvaccinated who have yet to be infected.

So with those kinds of numbers, that leaves around another 1.5 million exposed. At 20,000 per day, and with an expectation that of the remaining 15%, only 7.5% of them will actually contract Covid-19, we should start seeing a dropping off of new cases this month, hopefully tapering off the very few ongoing new infections by the end of March.

Is that good news? I think it is. Certainly, there will be more variants, and there will be additional waves as new variants sneak past vaccination protection. But unless those new variants are really scary, I’m hopeful that we will be “back” to a “new normal” is mask-less walks and an awakening city and country just in time for spring.

For us, being dosed is helpful, but there remain too many unvaccinated. The Greek government is now fining the elderly who are not vaccinated, and there is a recommendation that the fines be deducted directly from their pension payments. Unfortunately, I think that seems reasonable, except. 

Anne Marie in Costa Rica remains unvaccinated and is worried that being alone, the side effects from being vaccinated could be too much for her. With a reverse-placebo effect, I’m afraid that she is right, and the side effects will be too much. Not because there would have been any, but because she has now convinced herself that there will be, and therefore there will be. Reverse-placebo. I think even we were subject to a bit of that, with both of us experiencing lethargy and aches over a couple of days. Francoise on the day of the vaccination and me starting the following day for 24 hours.. 

If we experienced that, with our comfort at being vaccinated, there is absolutely no doubt that Anne Marie will have serious side effects. 

And that brings me back to the elderly Greeks who are not vaccinated and now face fines. I lack sympathy, or I did. Now I'm beginning to think that these elderly will have a disproportionate rate of serious side effects, due not to actual causes but simply due to their deeply held expectation of negative side effects. I don't know what the right trade-off is, but certainly, there will be a need for greater monitoring of the elderly when they do get their vaccinations.

(All images from Google search phrase "Covid Greece" on 2 Feb 2022)