Covid Vaccinations and Evolution By Brian Simpson
A recently published scientific paper has raised further problems for those who believe that vaccination is the complete answer to Covid. Selective pressure, the evolutionary forces that make organisms evolve, will operate. By having everyone vaccinated, vaccine-resistant mutations, which will occur, gain selective advantage, so vaccines may actually be aiding in producing Covid variants which are more dangerous.
“According to research published last week in Scientific Reports, vaccinated people may play a key role in helping SARS-CoV-2 variants evolve into those that evade existing COVID vaccines.
The researchers concluded three specific risk factors that favor the emergence and establishment of a vaccine-resistant strain. They are: a high probability of initial emergence of the resistant strain; high number of infected individuals; and low rate of vaccination.
However, the analysis also showed the highest risk for establishing a resistant strain occurs when a large fraction of the population has already been vaccinated but the transmission is not controlled.
Virologists have a name for variations of a virus that slip past vaccine- or illness-induced immune defenses — they’re called “escape mutants.”
“When most people are vaccinated, the vaccine-resistant strain has an advantage over the original strain,” Simon Rella of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, told CNN.
“This means the vaccine-resistant strain spreads through the population faster at a time when most people are vaccinated,” said Rella, who worked on the study.
The data is consistent with a study released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which showed vaccinated people may transmit the Delta variant — now responsible for 80% of COVID cases in the U.S. — just as easily as the unvaccinated.
The team of scientists who published the data in Scientific Reports said their findings follow what’s known as selective pressure — the force that drives any organism to evolve.
“Generally, the more people are infected, the more the chances for vaccine resistance to emerge,” said Fyodor Kondrashov of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria.
“So the more Delta is infectious, the more reason for concern,” Kondrashov said. “By having a situation where you vaccinate everybody, a vaccine-resistant mutant actually gains a selective advantage.”
Experts warned for months vaccines could cause more dangerous COVID variants.
Based on the scientific evidence, the narrative that unvaccinated people are viral factories for more dangerous variants is false, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola.
Mercola, a physician and best-selling author, said just as antibiotics breed resistance in bacteria, vaccines put evolutionary pressure on viruses to speed up mutations and create more virulent and dangerous variants.
Mercola explained:
“Viruses mutate all the time, and if you have a vaccine that doesn’t block infection completely, then the virus will mutate to evade the immune response within that person. That is one of the distinct features of the COVID shots — they’re not designed to block infection. They allow infection to occur and at best lessen the symptoms of that infection.”
“In an unvaccinated person, the virus does not encounter the same evolutionary pressure to mutate into something stronger,” Mercola added.
“So, if SARS-CoV-2 does end up mutating into more lethal strains, then mass vaccination is the most likely driver,” he said.
According to Rob Verkerk Ph.D., founder, scientific and executive director of Alliance for Natural Health International, variants can become more virulent and transmissible, while also including immune (or vaccine) escape mutations if we continue on the vaccine treadmill — trying to develop new vaccines that outsmart the virus.
Verkerk said, “if we put all our eggs” in the basket of vaccines that target the very part of the virus that is most subject to mutation, we place a selection pressure on the virus that favors the development of immune escape variants.
Scientists and vaccine developers are trying to work their way around these viral variants, but there’s no guarantee of the outcomes. It’s an experiment in which vast numbers of citizens have become unwitting participants, Verkerk explained.
In March, Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a vaccinologist who worked with GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay Biologicals, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery team in Seattle and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization in Geneva, put out a call to the World Health Organization — supported by a 12-page document describing the “uncontrollable monster” that global mass vaccination will create.
Vanden Bossche said:
“There can be no doubt that continued mass vaccination campaigns will enable new, more infectious viral variants to become increasingly dominant and ultimately result in a dramatic incline in new cases despite enhanced vaccine coverage rates. There can be no doubt either that this situation will soon lead to complete resistance of circulating variants to the current vaccines.”
The Defender reported March 26 that a combination of lockdowns and extreme selection pressure on the virus induced by the intense global mass vaccination program might diminish the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the short-term, but ultimately, would induce the creation of more mutants of concern.
This is the result of what Vanden Bossche calls “immune escape” (i.e. incomplete sterilization of the virus by the human immune system, even following vaccine administration).
This will trigger vaccine companies to further refine vaccines that will add to — not reduce — the selection pressure, producing ever more transmissible and potentially deadly variants.
The selection pressure will cause greater convergence in mutations that affect the critical spike protein of the virus that is responsible for breaking through the mucosal surfaces of our airways, the route used by the virus to enter the human body, Vanden Bossche argued.
The virus will effectively outsmart the highly specific antigen-based vaccines that are being used and tweaked, dependent on the circulating variants.
This could lead to a hockey stick-like increase in serious and potentially lethal cases — in effect, an out-of-control pandemic.
“We are going to pay a huge price for this. And I’m becoming emotional because I’m thinking of my children, of the younger generation. I mean, it’s just impossible what we are doing. We don’t understand the pandemic,” Vanden Bossche said.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/30/health/vaccination-alone-variants-study/index.html
“Vaccination alone won't stop the rise of new variants and in fact could push the evolution of strains that evade their protection, researchers warned Friday.
They said people need to wear masks and take other steps to prevent spread until almost everyone in a population has been vaccinated.
Their findings, published in Nature Scientific Reports, support an unpopular decision by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to advise even fully vaccinated people to start wearing masks again in areas of sustained or high transmission.
"We found that a fast rate of vaccination decreases the probability of emergence of a resistant strain," the team wrote.
"Counterintuitively, when a relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions happened at a time when most individuals of the population have already been vaccinated, the probability of emergence of a resistant strain was greatly increased," they added.
"Our results suggest that policymakers and individuals should consider maintaining non-pharmaceutical interventions and transmission-reducing behaviors throughout the entire vaccination period."
"When most people are vaccinated, the vaccine-resistant strain has an advantage over the original strain," Simon Rella of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, who worked on the study, told reporters.
"This means the vaccine resistant strain spreads through the population faster at a time when most people are vaccinated."
But if so-called non pharmaceutical interventions are maintained -- such as mask use and social distancing -- the virus is less likely to spread and change. "There is a chance to remove the vaccine resistant mutations from the population," Rella said.
The team used a mathematical model to predict these changes, but their findings follow what is known about the epidemiology of viruses and what's known as selective pressure -- the force that drives any organism to evolve.
Unvaccinated people are 'variant factories,' infectious diseases expert says
Now, it says even fully vaccinated people can sometimes catch the virus and if they catch the Delta variant, they are just as likely to infect someone else as an unvaccinated person would be. It advised everyone in areas of high or sustained virus transmission to wear masks when around others.
Many GOP politicians have derided the new advice. On Thursday, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves called it "foolish."
While the CDC was not thinking about the evolution of variants, Kondrashov said people skeptical of maintaining vigilance should be.
"The individual who already vaccinated and putting on a mask should not think this is pointless but should think that there is a vaccine resistant strain running around," he said.
"By preventing spread of vaccine resistant strains, you are preventing evolution of this virus," he added.
"We have two tools in our toolbox to do this. One is non pharmaceutical interventions such as mask wearing and the whole shebang, and the second is vaccines. From an evolutionary perspective, what is necessary to reduce this (spread) is to vaccinate as many people as possible as fast as possible and across the globe."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95025-3
Abstract
“Vaccines are thought to be the best available solution for controlling the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. However, the emergence of vaccine-resistant strains may come too rapidly for current vaccine developments to alleviate the health, economic and social consequences of the pandemic. To quantify and characterize the risk of such a scenario, we created a SIR-derived model with initial stochastic dynamics of the vaccine-resistant strain to study the probability of its emergence and establishment. Using parameters realistically resembling SARS-CoV-2 transmission, we model a wave-like pattern of the pandemic and consider the impact of the rate of vaccination and the strength of non-pharmaceutical intervention measures on the probability of emergence of a resistant strain. As expected, we found that a fast rate of vaccination decreases the probability of emergence of a resistant strain. Counterintuitively, when a relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions happened at a time when most individuals of the population have already been vaccinated the probability of emergence of a resistant strain was greatly increased. Consequently, we show that a period of transmission reduction close to the end of the vaccination campaign can substantially reduce the probability of resistant strain establishment. Our results suggest that policymakers and individuals should consider maintaining non-pharmaceutical interventions and transmission-reducing behaviours throughout the entire vaccination period.”
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/brian-hooker-covid-delta-variant-vaccine-less-effective/?utm_source=salsa&eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=44b8347a-f675-40cd-9689-5743565c89a7
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on July 27, issued an update on breakthrough infections, stating they “happen in only a small proportion of people who are fully vaccinated, even with the Delta variant.”
The CDC’s statement, however, stands in contrast to what the director of Israel’s Public Health Services told viewers of the CBS program “Face the Nation” on Sunday — that 50% of new infections reported in Israel are from fully vaccinated people.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical advisor to President Biden, and Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, director of Israel’s Public Health Services, were interviewed during the program.
Israel and the U.S. began administering COVID vaccines in December 2020.
During the interview, Fauci adhered to the CDC’s position — that breakthrough infections are happening only in a small proportion of fully vaccinated people — while Alroy-Preis said Israel is seeing breakthrough infections occurring in 50% of those who test positive for COVID.
Despite mounting evidence COVID vaccine protection is waning over time, Fauci told “Face the Nation”:
“…the predominant message is that if you are vaccinated and you get a breakthrough infection … you’re much, much more protected against getting infected than an unvaccinated [person] who is completely vulnerable.”
A breakthrough case refers to a person who is diagnosed with COVID after being fully vaccinated. A person is considered fully vaccinated 14 days after receiving the second dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna COVID vaccine, or two weeks after receiving the single-dose Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine.
The CDC’s latest breakthrough numbers, as of July 25, show 6,587 fully vaccinated people with COVID breakthrough cases. Of those, 6,239 people were hospitalized and 1,263 people died.
In May, the CDC revised its guidance for reporting breakthrough cases, stating it would count only those cases that result in hospitalization or death. Previously, the agency had included in its breakthrough count anyone who tested positive for COVID.
According to the CDC, the surveillance system for breakthrough cases is passive and relies on voluntary reporting from state health departments, which may not be complete.
In addition, some breakthrough cases will not be identified due to lack of testing. This is particularly true in instances of asymptomatic or mild illness, the CDC said.
NBC News investigated breakthrough cases not reported by CDC
NBC News contacted health agencies in 50 states and the District of Columbia to collect information on breakthrough cases, citing a lack of comprehensive data available from the CDC.
Data collected from 38 states showed more than 125,000 fully vaccinated Americans tested positive for COVID, and 1,400 died.
This conflicts with the CDC’s data published July 26. Research by NBC News indicates the number who have been hospitalized or died passed 7,300 in just 30 states providing data.
The total number of breakthrough cases is likely higher than 125,683, as nine states, including Pennsylvania and Missouri, did not provide information, while 11 states did not provide death and hospitalization totals. Four states gave death and hospitalization numbers, but not total cases.
In addition, vaccinated adults who had breakthrough cases but showed no symptoms could be missing from the data altogether, officials told NBC.
For states like Utah, where full data was published, breakthrough cases accelerated in the past two months. As of June 2, just 27 (8%) of 312 new cases in the state were breakthrough cases. As of July 26, there were 519 new cases and almost 94 cases (20%) were breakthroughs, according to state data.
In Virginia, total breakthrough cases resulting in death from COVID increased from 17 in mid-July to 42 on July 30.
In Oklahoma, breakthrough cases are up by 67%, with incidents of breakthrough greater with J&J’s vaccine than with Moderna.
Delta variant more transmissible, but not more pathogenic than original strain
World Health Organization (WHO) officials said they are still trying to understand why the Delta variant is more transmissible than the original COVID virus strain.
“There are certain mutations in the Delta variant that, for example, allow the virus to adhere to a cell more easily,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’S technical lead on COVID, at a press briefing July 30. “There are some laboratory studies that suggest that there’s increased replication in some of the modeled human airway systems.”
The CDC warned lawmakers July 29 of new research indicating the Delta strain is more contagious than chickenpox. It also appears to have a longer transmission window than the original COVID strain, and may make older people sicker, even if they’ve been fully vaccinated, CNBC reported.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., Children’s Health Defense chief scientific officer and professor of biology at Simpson University, said while the Delta variant is likely more transmissible, it’s also likely less pathogenic. “What we’re seeing is virus evolution 101,” Hooker said.
Hooker explained:
“Viruses like to survive, so killing the host (i.e. the human who is infected) defeats the purpose because killing the host kills the virus, too.
“For this reason, new variants of viruses that circulate widely through the population tend to become more transmissive but less pathogenic. In other words, they will spread more easily from person to person, but they will cause less damage to the host.”
Hooker said the more the variant deviates from the original sequence used for the vaccine, the less effective the vaccine will be on that variant, which could explain why fully vaccinated people are getting infected with the Delta variant. But this isn’t the case for natural immunity, he explained.
Hooker said:
“The vaccine focuses on the spike protein, whereas natural immunity focuses on the entire virus. Natural immunity — with a more diverse array of antibodies and T-cell receptors — will provide better protection overall as it has more targets in which to attack the virus, whereas vaccine-derived immunity only focuses on one portion of the virus, in this case, the spike protein. Once that portion of the virus has mutated sufficiently, the vaccine no longer is effective.”
As The Defender reported Monday, vaccinated people may play a key role in aiding the evolution of COVID variants.”
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