Covid: What’s the best way to top up our immunity?

Top Up Your Immune System 

 

 

 

James Gallagher

 

• There are marked differences in your immune system after a natural infection with coronavirus and after vaccination.

  Which is better?

  Even asking the question bordered on heresy a year ago, when catching Covid for the first time could be deadly, especially for the elderly or people already in poor health.

  Now, we're no longer starting with zero immunity as the overwhelming majority of people have either been vaccinated or have already caught the virus.

  It is now a serious question that has implications for whether children should ever be vaccinated. And whether we use the virus or booster shots to top up immunity in adults. Both have become contentious issues.

  "We could be digging ourselves into a hole, for a very long time, where we think we can only keep Covid away by boosting every year," Prof Eleanor Riley, an immunologist from the University of Edinburgh, told me.

  Prof Adam Finn, a government vaccine adviser, said over-vaccinating people, when other parts of the world had none, was "a bit insane, it's not just inequitable, it's stupid".

  The anatomy of immunity

  We need to understand a little bit about the key building blocks of both our immune system and the virus it is attacking.

  The power-couple of the immune system that clears the body of infection are antibodies and T-cells. Antibodies stick to the surface of the virus and mark it for destruction. T-cells can spot which of our own cells have been hijacked by the virus and destroy them.

  For all the trouble the virus has caused, it is spectacularly simple. It has the famous spike protein, which is the key it uses to unlock the doorway into our body's cells. And 28 other proteins that it needs to hijack our cells and make thousands of copies of itself. (For comparison it takes about 20,000 proteins to run the human body).

  There are four key areas to compare vaccine and natural infection with the virus.

  Breadth

  How much of the virus the immune system learns to attack

  You get a broader immune response after being infected with the virus than vaccination.

  Whether you've had Moderna or Pfizer or Oxford-AstraZeneca, your body is learning to spot just one thing - the spike protein.

  This is the critical part of the virus to make antibodies to, and the results - by keeping most out of hospital - have been spectacular.

  But having the other 28 proteins to target too, would give T-cells far more to go at.

  "That means if you had a real humdinger of an infection, you may have better immunity to any new variants that pop up as you have immunity to more than just spike," said Prof Riley.

  Strength

  How well it stops infection or prevents severe disease

  We know there have been cases of people catching the virus twice (re-infection) and of being vaccinated and catching Covid (known as breakthrough infection).

  "Neither gives you complete protection versus infection, but the immunity you get from either seems to protect you pretty well from serious illness," said Prof Finn, from the University of Bristol.

  Antibody levels are, on average, higher about a month after vaccination than infection. However, there is a huge gulf in antibodies between those who are asymptomatic (who don't make very much) and those who get a severe bout of Covid.

  The biggest immune response comes from people who caught Covid and were then vaccinated. We're still waiting for data on what happens the other way round.

  Duration

  How long does protection last?

  Antibody levels have been shown to decline over time, although this may not be important for preventing severe disease.

  The immune system remembers viruses and vaccines so it can respond rapidly when an infection is encountered.

  There are "memory T-cells" that linger in the body, and B-cells remain primed to produce a new flood of antibodies on demand. There is evidence of immune responses more than a year after infection and vaccine trials have also showed lasting benefit.

  "In terms of durability, we're still waiting to see," said Prof Peter Openshaw, from Imperial College London.

  Location

  Where in the body is the immunity?

  This matters. There is a whole different suite of antibodies (known as immunoglobulin As) in the nose and lungs, compared with those (immunoglobulin Gs) that we measure in the blood.

  The former is more important as a barrier to infection. Natural infection, because it is in the nose rather than a jab in the arm, may be a better route to those antibodies, and nasal vaccines are being investigated too.

  Prof Paul Klenerman, who researches T-cells at the University of Oxford, said: "The location of an infection makes a difference even if it's the same virus, so we would expect important differences between natural infection and vaccines."

  image sourceGetty Images

  image captionVaccines have transformed Covid by dramatically reducing the chances of becoming severely ill.

  Where does this leave the balance between more vaccine and virus?

  There is clear evidence that adults who have not had any vaccine dose will have stronger immune defences if they do get vaccinated, even if they have caught Covid before.

  But there are two big questions:

  • do vaccinated adults need to be boosted, or is exposure to the virus enough?
  • do children need vaccinating at all, or does a lifetime of encountering build a good immune defence?

  The idea of regularly topping up immunity throughout life is not radical in other infections, such as RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) or the four other coronaviruses that infect people and cause common cold symptoms.

  Each time you're exposed, the immune system gets a little bit stronger, and this continues until old age, when the immune system starts to fail and the infections become a problem again.

  "This isn't proven, but it could be a lot cheaper and simpler to let that happen than spend the whole time immunising people," said Prof Finn, who warns we could end up "locked into a cycle of boosting" without seeing if it was necessary.

  However, he said the argument in children had "already been won" as "40-50% have already been infected and most weren't ill or particularly ill".

  There are counter-arguments. Prof Riley points to long-Covid in children, and Prof Openshaw to nervousness around the long-term effects of a virus that can affect many of the body's organs.

  But Prof Riley said there was potential in using vaccines to "take the edge off" Covid, followed by infection, to broaden the immune response.

  She said: "We really need to consider, are we just frightening people rather than giving them the confidence to get on with their lives? We're close to just worrying people now."

  Of course, with cases continuing to rumble on, there may not be much choice.

  "I'm wondering whether it's inevitable," said Prof Klenerman, as if the virus continues to spread then "there will be this ongoing boosting effect".

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5 Things You Must Do While You Wait for the COVID-19 Vaccine

5 Things You Must Do While You Wait for the COVID-19 Vaccine:

 

 

 Photo by:  Hakan Nural

Newswise — Even as vaccinations against COVID-19 begin, the virus continues to kill thousands of Americans every day, making it more important than ever to stay safe and be ready in case it strikes you or your family.

“We can’t let our guard down while we wait our turn for the vaccine,” says rehabilitation psychologist Abigail Hardin, PhD. This is especially important given that the vaccines don’t take full effect (around 95% immunity) until days or weeks a number of days after the second dose. Continuing to take protective measures like social distancing and masking will help protect you, your loved ones and the community while you wait for your first dose and for the vaccine to take full effect.

Hardin counsels critically ill COVID patients at Rush University Medical Center when they move from intensive care to the rehabilitation unit and as they to recover at home. Seeing firsthand the toll the disease takes on families inspired her to write A Guide to COVID-19 to help people manage and overcome the illness through knowledge and preparation.

She recommends taking a few key steps now to reduce some of the challenges and anxieties that come with a serious illness.

1. Pretend you know you’re going to get sick.

Ideally, you won’t actually get sick, but you will have far less to worry about if your house is in order and you have a plan for what you’ll do if you or a family member tests positive for COVID-19. A good way to start is by answering these questions:

• Where will you quarantine?
• If you are a caregiver, who will take care of your children or elderly relatives?
• Where is your insurance card?
• What in-network hospital would you choose
• Who needs to know you’re ill — and whom might you have exposed to the virus  

2. Pack a COVID-19 kit.

Having a COVID-19 kit for yourself and your family members will put your mind at ease. This can be especially helpful for an elderly parent or grown child who’s away at college, just as you might want them to have an emergency kit in their car or a supply of food and necessities on hand before a blizzard.

“Our brains don’t work as well when we’re under stress,” says Hardin. “It’s much easier to handle a tough situation when you have what you need ready.”

If you don’t end up using your kit, at least you’ll have copies of your insurance card, driver’s license and prescriptions; a pen and notebook; an extra set of comfy clothes; and a phone charger ready should you need them.

3. Assess and address your health.

You want to be at your strongest in case you become ill and be at your best to help care for family members if they need you.

• While anyone can suffer a serious case of COVID-19, certain underlying conditions, such as obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes, are associated with severe illness or long-term effects. If you get your blood pressure or blood sugar levels under control now, you reduce your risks of complications later.
• Adding a few simple habits to your daily routine, such as getting more sunshine and creating a sleep schedule to make sure you’re getting optimal rest, can improve your health and boost your immunity.
• Finally, if you smoke, quit, and if you drink alcohol, do so in moderation (one drink a day for women and two for men.) 

4. Tackle the tough questions now.

“Thinking about death can be overwhelming,” Hardin says. “But preparing a will and talking through what care you would want if you were very ill now can save your loved one from the pain of trying to decide for you without knowing what you would want.”

Every adult needs a will and an advance directive. There are several types of advance directives: a living will, medical power of attorney/durable power of attorney for health care, do not resuscitate (DNR) order and practitioner order for life-sustaining treatment (POLST). Choose someone you trust to have “power of attorney” and make health care decisions on your behalf in case you cannot communicate for yourself.

Once you’ve tackled the tough decisions, the paperwork is simple. Your family lawyer can create these documents for you, but there are other ways that cost little or no money. The state of Illinois provides forms online, as do groups such as AARP. You can also download advance directive forms via the Rush Center for Excellence in Aging website or the Rush Copley Medical Center Advance Directives page.

The spiritual care teams at some hospitals, including the Rush hospitals, offer support for talking through these topics.

5. Stay strong mentally and emotionally.

The pandemic has disrupted our lives for close to a year, separating us from family and friends, canceling events and celebrations, closing businesses, putting millions out of work and costing 300,000+ lives in the U.S. alone. Add in the social stressors, from racism to political strife, and 2020 has been an extraordinarily challenging year.

"While you can’t self-care your way out of major life stressors, there are things you can do to reduce the impact of external events on your emotions," Hardin says.

Schedule times to regularly connect with family and friends remotely. Call a friend when you’re lonely, or find a therapist if you need to talk. Importantly, if you or a family member is struggling to cope, feeling helpless or hopeless, reach out for professional help. Your mental and emotional health will help you through whatever comes next.

“I’ve been with patients as they’ve fought and survived COVID-19,” Hardin says. “Knowing what to expect and being prepared can only help you to survive and thrive.”

 

 

Using A Public Restroom? Mask Up!

Using A Public Restroom? Mask Up!:

 Think you don’t need to worry about COVID-19 while using a public restroom? Researchers from Yangzhou University in China recently reported that flushing publ

Newswise — WASHINGTON, August 18, 2020 -- Think you don’t need to worry about COVID-19 while using a public restroom? A group of researchers from Yangzhou University in China recently reported that flushing public restroom toilets can release clouds of virus-laden aerosols for you to potentially inhale.

If that’s not cringeworthy enough, after running additional computer simulations, they’ve concluded that flushing urinals does likewise. In Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing, the group shares its work simulating and tracking virus-laden particle movements when urinals are flushed.

The researchers’ work clearly shows public restrooms can be dangerous places for potentially becoming infected from a virus, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other work has shown that both feces- and urine-based virus transmission is possible.

“To do this, we used a method of computational fluid dynamics to model the particle movement that occurs with the act of flushing,” said Xiangdong Liu. “The specific models are the volume of fluids model and discrete phase model.”

Flushing a urinal, much like flushing a toilet, involves an interaction between gas and liquid interfaces. The result of the flushing causes a large spread of aerosol particles to be released from the urinal, which the researchers simulated and tracked.

What the simulations revealed is disturbing. The trajectory of the tiny particles ejected by flushing a urinal “manifests an external spread type, with more than 57% of the particles traveling away from the urinal,” said Liu.

But that’s not all. When men use urinals within a public restroom, these tiny particles can reach their thigh within 5.5 seconds when compared to the toilet flush, which takes 35 seconds to reach slightly higher. Particles from urinals, however, “show a more violent climbing tendency,” Liu said. “The climbing speed is much faster than toilet flushing.”

Urinals are used more frequently within densely populated areas, and the researchers point out that particles will travel faster and farther, which poses a serious public health challenge.
This work underscores how important it is to wear a mask within public places but especially restrooms.

“From our work, it can be inferred that urinal flushing indeed promotes the spread of bacteria and viruses,” says Liu. “Wearing a mask should be mandatory within public restrooms during the pandemic, and anti-diffusion improvements are urgently needed to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
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The 3 Words You Shouldn’t Say Right Now

Mental Health During Lock-Down

How to avoid a slippery mental slope in quarantine

Brian Pennie

Apr 15 · 3 min read

hat’s the point in showering or getting dressed? Why should I bother shaving or putting on makeup? Does it even matter whether or not I eat well, or exercise, or stick to a sleeping schedule?”

This type of inner dialogue is common right now, and I understand the sentiment. But if it sounds familiar to you, be careful.

Why? Because these foundational actions prime you for the day ahead: for how you feel, how you think, and all of your further actions. And when you let your foundation slide, it’s easy to drag your whole self down with it.

‘I’m happy because I’m singing’

Do our actions determine how we feel? Or do our feelings determine how we act?

I used to believe it was the latter. But during my doctoral studies in neuroscience, I came across something that changed my mind: a psychological theory of emotion.

William James, one of the greatest psychologists of our time, proposed that emotions are caused by our reactions to external events. The best way I’ve seen this theory depicted is in a cartoon showing a little bird singing in a tree. A man standing underneath the tree looks up at the bird and says, “You must be singing because you’re happy.” The little bird looks down with a smile and says, “Not at all. I’m happy because I’m singing.”

Stop asking ‘What’s the point?’

If you felt good before the pandemic, you probably don’t realize it, but your foundational behaviors played a pivotal role in making that possible. When you lose those behaviors, you lose the processes that primed you into action and determined your state of being.

Consider your commute home from work. This event can act as a trigger, priming your brain to switch from work mode to home mode. Working remotely in quarantine means you no longer have that trigger. If you’ve been feeling distracted in the evenings, you can blame the global pandemic, yes, but it’s also worth acknowledging that you’ve lost a foundational behavior.

To feel as good as you can under the circumstances, try to make your days look as they did before the quarantine. This will require some extra willpower and creativity. For example, even if you’re working from home, follow your morning routine as if you were going into the office. That means getting up when your alarm goes off, showering, and getting dressed. It might also mean stepping out of the house, taking a walk around the block, and then reentering your home so your brain knows it’s work time.

After your workday, have a ritual that helps you transition into your personal time. You might go for a run, meditate, or change into comfier clothes. If you’re self-isolating with a partner, continue to have date night.

This advice might sound overly simplistic, but with so much uncertainty surrounding us, it’s harder than it looks. Last week, I was speaking to a client about not letting his routines slide. The very next day, I caught myself wondering, “What’s the point in taking a shower today?”

Thankfully, I caught this thought before it went anywhere. I took a shower, felt great, and had a positive day. If I had let that one thing slide, who knows what else I might have dragged along for the ride?

Forge

Beat yesterday.

Thanks to Jordan Gross and Michael Thompson. 

• Life
• Life Lessons
• Personal Development
• Self
• Inspiration

Written by

Brian Pennie

Why Everything You Learned About Viruses Is WRONG

Why Everything You Learned About Viruses Is WRONG:

The Flu Season is upon us in the Northern Hemisphere.  Any information on this subject must be treated seriously!

 Groundbreaking research indicates that most of what we believed about the purportedly deadly properties of flu virus is based on nothing more than institutionalized superstition and myth.

Posted on:

Sunday, October 28th 2018 at 6:30 pm

Written By:

Sayer Ji, Founder

This article is copyrighted by GreenMedInfo LLC, 2018
Visit our Re-post guidelines

Groundbreaking research indicates that most of what we believed about the purportedly deadly properties of viruses like influenza is based on nothing more than institutionalized superstition and myth
Germ theory is an immensely powerful force on this planet, affecting everyday interactions from a handshake, all the way up the ladder to national vaccination agendas and global eradication campaigns.
But what if fundamental research on what exactly these ‘pathogens' are, how they infect us, has not yet even been performed? What if much of what is assumed and believed about the danger of microbes, particularly viruses, has completely been undermined in light of radical new discoveries in microbiology?  
Some of our readers already know that in my previous writings I discuss why the "germs as our enemies" concept has been decimated by the relatively recent discovery of the microbiome. For in depth background on this topic, read my previous article, "How The Microbiome Destroyed the Ego, Vaccine Policy, and Patriarchy." You can also read Profound Implications of the Virome for Human Health and Autoimmunity, to get a better understanding of how viruses are actually benefificial to health. 
In this article I will take a less philosophical approach, and focus on influenza as a more concrete example of the Copernican-level paradigm shift in biomedicine and life sciences we are all presently fully immersed within, even if the medical establishment hs yast to acknowledge it.   
Deadly Flu Viruses: Vaccinate or Die? 
The hyperbolic manner in which health policymakers and the mainstream media talk about it today, flu virus is a deadly force, against which all citizens, of all ages 6 months or older, need to take an annual influenza vaccine to protect themselves against, lest they face deadly consequences. Worse, those who hold religious or philosophical objections, or who otherwise conscientiously object to vaccinating, are being characterized as doing harm to others by denying them herd immunity (a concept that has been completely debunked by a careful study of the evidence, or lack thereof). For instance, in the interview below Bill Gates tells Sanjay Gupta that he thinks non-vaccinators "kill children":

But what if I told you that there isn’t even such a thing as “flu virus,” in the sense of a monolithic, disease vector existing outside of us, conceived as it is as the relationship of predator to prey?
First, consider that the highly authorative Cochrane collaboration acknowledges there are many different flu viruses that are not, in fact, influenza A — against which flu vaccines are targeted — but which nonetheless can contribute to symptoms identical to those attributed to influenza A:

Over 200 viruses cause influenza and influenza-like illness which produce the same symptoms (fever, headache, aches and pains, cough and runny noses). Without laboratory tests, doctors cannot tell the two illnesses apart. Both last for days and rarely lead to death or serious illness. At best, vaccines might be effective against only Influenza A and B, which represent about 10% of all circulating viruses." (Source: Cochrane Summaries)." [emphasis added]

This makes for a picture of complexity that powerfully undermines health policies that presuppose vaccination equates to bona fide immunity, and by implication, necessitates the herd collectively participate in the ritual of mass vaccination campaigns as a matter of social responsibility and necessity. 
Even the use of the word “immunization” to describe vaccination is highly misleading. The moment the word is used, it already presupposes efficacy, and makes it appear as if non-vaccinators are anti-immunity, instead of what they actually are: pro-immunity (via clean air, food, water, and sunlight), but unwilling to subject themselves or their healthy children to "unavoidably unsafe" medical procedures with only theoretical benefits. 
Why Flu Virus Doesn't Exist (The Way We Were Told)
But the topic gets even more interesting when we consider the findings of a 2015 study entitled “Conserved and host-specific features of influenza virion architecture.” This was the first study ever to plumb the molecular depths of what influenza virus is actually composed of. Amazingly, given the long history of vaccine use and promotion, the full characterization of what proteins it contains, and where they are derived from, was never previously performed. How we invest billions of dollars annually into flu vaccines, and have created a global campaign to countermand a viral enemy, whose basic building blocks we don't even know, is hard to understand. But it is true nonetheless. 
The study abstract opens with this highly provocative line: 

Viruses use virions to spread between hosts, and virion composition is therefore the primary determinant of viral transmissibility and immunogenicity.” [emphasis added]

Virion are also known as “viral particles,” and they are the means by which viral nucleic acids are able to move and 'infect' living organisms. Without the viral particle (taxi) to carry around the virus DNA (passenger), it would be harmless; in fact, viruses are often described as existing somewhere between living and inanimate objects for this reason: they do not produce their own energy, nor are transmissable without a living host. And so, in this first line, the authors are making it clear that virion composition is also the primary determinant in how or whether a virus is infectious (transmits) and what effects it will have in the immune system of the infected host. 

Influenza viral particles

This distinction is important because we often think of viruses as simply pathogenic strings of DNA or RNA. The irony, of course, is that the very things we attribute so much lethality to — viral nucleic acids — are not even alive, and can not infect an organism without all the other components (proteins, lipids, extra-viral nucleic acids) which are, technically, not viral in origin, participating in the process. And so, if the components that are non-viral are essential for the virus to cause harm, how can we continue to maintain that we are up against a monolithic disease entity “out there” who "infects" us, a passive victim?  It's fundamentally non-sensical, given these findings. It also clearly undermines the incessant, fear-based rhetoric those beholden to the pro-vaccine stance to coerce the masses into undergoing the largely faith-based rite of vaccination. 
Let's dive deeper into the study's findings...
The next line of the abstract addresses the fact we opened this article with: namely, that there is great complexity involved at the level of the profound variability in virion composition:

However, the virions of many viruses are complex and pleomorphic, making them difficult to analyze in detail” 

But this problem of the great variability in the virion composition of influenza is exactly why the study was conducted. They explain: 

Here we address this by identifying and quantifying viral proteins with mass spectrometry, producing a complete and quantifiable model of the hundreds of viral and host-encoded proteins that make up the pleomorphic virions of influenza virus.  We show that a conserved influenza virion architecture, which includes substantial quantities of host proteins as well as the viral protein NSI, is elaborated with abundant host-dependent features. As a result, influenza virions produced by mammalian and avian hosts have distinct protein compositions.” 

In other words, they found that the flu virus is as much comprised of biological material from the host the virus 'infects,' as the viral genetic material of the virus per se.
How then, do we differentiate influenza virus as fully “other”? Given that it would not exist without “self” proteins, or those of other host animals like birds (avian) or insects, this would be impossible to do with any intellectual honesty intact.  
There's also the significant problem presented by flu vaccine production. Presently, human flu vaccine antigen is produced via insects and chicken eggs. This means that the virus particles extracted from these hosts would contain foreign proteins, and would therefore produce different and/or unpredictable immunological responses in humans than would be expected from human influenza viral particles. One possibility is that the dozens of foreign proteins found within avian influenza could theoretically produce antigens in humans that cross-react with self-structures resulting in autoimmunity. Safety testing, presently, does not test for these cross reactions. Clearly, this discovery opens up a pandora's box of potential problems that have never sufficiently been analyzed, since it was never understood until now that "influenza" is so thoroughly dependent upon a host for its transmissability and immunogenecity. 
Are Flu Viruses Really "Hijacked" Exosomes?
Lastly, the study identified something even more amazing:

Finally, we note that influenza virions share an underlying protein composition with exosomes, suggesting that influenza virions form by subverting micro vesicle” production.

What these researchers are talking about is the discovery that virion particles share stunning similarities to naturally occurring virus-like particles produced by all living cells called exosomes. Exosomes, like many viruses (i.e. enveloped viruses) are enclosed in a membrane, and are within the 50-100 nanometer size range that viruses are (20-400 nm). They also contain biologically active molecules, such as proteins and lipids, as well as information-containing ones like RNAs -- exactly, or very similar, to the types of contents you find in viral particles.
Watch this basic video on exosomes to get a primer:

Simple And Natural Home Remedies For Bronchitis

Home Remedies For Bronchitis

Winter is a few months away for us in the Northern Hemisphere and with it often flu and colds which can develop into Bronchitis or even Pneumonia.  Here are a few remedies to ease these ailments.  Bronchitis triggered my Asthma all those years ago so I know how important it is to take care and treat the symptoms shown below.


Bronchitis is actually an inflammation that happens in the bronchial tubes located between the nose and the lungs.  The virus, bacteria, or colds can cause bronchitis, with symptoms including coughing with mucus, chest pain, fatigue, muscle aches, nasal congestion, difficulty breathing, and fever.

Bronchitis happens mostly after the flu or a cold, when your immune system and resistance are low, resulting in a lung irritation. So, what can you do? In most cases, people reach for over-the-counter medicines, but that doesn’t mean that home remedies for bronchitis cannot help. In fact, some of the “medicines” on the list are even more potent and powerful than traditional medicine. It is just a matter of belief.