Vaccines: We risk waiting too long for the declared disaster | Verified | News | the sun

facts

This is an open letter released by Mr Vanden Bossche, a veterinary virologist, earlier in March. It’s been (unfortunately) a worldwide hit on social media, and other readers have sent it to me besides Mr. Espada so it’s worth the wait.

The text itself is a bit confused and difficult to follow: Even Sherbrooke University immunology researcher Nancy Dumis, who agreed to examine it, found that “it is not easy to read, there are possibilities and endings there, and a lot of confusion about the terminology.”

But hey, what Mr. Vanden Bossi says about it in general is that, according to him, the fact of vaccination creates selective pressure on the virus, which in a certain way “encourages” it to mutate in order to escape the antibodies that the vaccine makes us produce. And since vaccination is taking place in the midst of a pandemic, this means that there is a large group of people infected, and therefore a large group of viruses can mutations. However, we all have a form of antibody that Mr. Vanden Busch describes as “innate” (which is not true, notes M.^{I am} Dumais) whose younger name is IgM. This is an “indeterminate” form of antibody (so it has some effect on many viruses, but is not really as effective as “specialized” antibodies) that the body produces in the first few hours of the day. Infection. It’s part of our first lines of defense, so to speak, and IgMs are used to slow the infection, while the immune system is discovering how to make more effective antibodies.

In his letter, Mr. Vanden Bosch is concerned that the concentration of this immunoglobulin in the blood decreases some time after infection, when “specialized” antibodies take over. He believes that if the virus mutates to escape these specialized antibodies, it will leave entire sections of the population unprotected (neither innate nor acquired, neither general nor specialized) because these people will temporarily stop producing excess IgM. Here then, for the most part, is the “catastrophe” that Vanden Bush took urgent to warn humanity about.

Now, does that “hold up”, to use Mr. Espada’s formula? “It has no tail or head,” M. comments^{I am} Dumais in general. A colleague from the University of Montreal, Andres Finzi, who also conducts research in immunology, described this thesis as “appalling,” as he wrote to me in a brief exchange of emails.

We will not be able to cover all the details of Mr. Vanden Bossi’s remarks here. But overall, here are the main issues in his letter:

A large part of the disaster declared by the Belgian scientist is due to the idea that after infection, the innate immune system will become somewhat “negative”. However, if it is true that IgMs decrease when other antibodies take over, “his text acts as if entire sections of the innate immune response are absent!^{I am} corn. She adds that the innate immune system has many other weapons at its disposal, such as macrophages (which “eat up” cell remnants and microbes), cytotoxic T cells (which detect virus-infected cells and “eat” before they can produce other viruses) and cytokines. Proteins that act as a warning signal and attract immune cells. These are very important aspects of the response to a viral infection, the researcher says, but that Vanden Bush’s text does not mention them anywhere.

Even if there were only IgMs in the general immune system, Mr Vanden Bossche’s hypothesis would not hold up. M says: “The decline in IgM after injury isn’t really that severe”^{I am} corn. And IgM, we have all the time in the blood and we can always quickly produce it, if needed. So, except for those with very specific conditions, it doesn’t really go out. ”

– With regard to the “acquired immunity” part of this whole story (and thus the “specialized” antibodies that one acquires during infection), “the fact that viruses mutate to escape the immune system, they are present, is indisputable, but the same applies to any infection.” Others, M.^{I am} corn. All viruses do this [sans provoquer de catastrophe comme celle que craint M. Vanden Bossche]And when some variables change enough to override our defenses, it only means that we can catch disease again (as we do with influenza, for example), not that we will be defenseless.

Finally, let’s add that plus M.^{I am} Dumais and M. Finzi, No.Other doctors And the Immunologists Around the world I vehemently denounced the open letter from Mr Vanden Bosch as full of “nonsense” and grave errors about the functioning of the immune system.

Judgment

Totally wrong. Sometimes it happens that dreadful predictions have at least for them the existence of purely theoretical mechanisms that can hypothetically lead to their fulfillment. But in this case, even the theoretical part on immunology is very weak for that.