The mentally infirm covid addicts are back at it again.
There is, apparently, some new variant or other about that, this time, really is, definitely, most assuredly, absolutely, 100%, without any shadow of doubt, going to be super-duper-diddly-doo deadly and dangerous.
They might be right. Sort of. Except for the really deadly and dangerous part. But more on this later.
But whaddya know? The mutual maskerbators are back. The great circle jerk of the last 3 years, promoted by the usual jerks, is being shoved in our faces again. For example - by these jerks
Mask, vaccine, boost, distance, isolate, sanitize. Shuffle, rinse, repeat. Forever.
They’re trying their best - but the good news is that, at least on Twitter, the majority are sticking their middle-fingered spike protein up to it all. There’s still a few who insist that masks are sacred - almost as sacred as the Holy Jeebus-Juice itself - and can do no wrong. In my view, they’re the greatest invention since inventions were invented, and rank alongside such classics as the chocolate teapot or the knitted condom.
Close to three years of this absolute shite, this surreal and absurd pantomime (perhaps we should call it a pantodemic, or a pandomime) - I’m not sure I have enough reserves of snark to cope with it all over again.
We didn’t ‘save’ any lives - we just made things worse, at unimaginable cost, in all sorts of ways - including health. If anything, the various interventions, including the Goo of Deliverance (GOD), have caused more death than had we simply done nothing and carried on with ‘business as usual’.
But we humans do like to play God, particularly when it comes to things like GOD.
There’s very little doubt, unless you’re one of those people who prostrate themselves before The Science™, that GOD has created a whole plethora of new variants. The ‘pandemic’ (such as it was and is) isn’t over because GOD got its gloopy and spikey fingers stuck in, and GOD was pretty piss-poor at its job. These new GOD-escape variants are running rings round GOD.
Who would have predicted that, eh?
I mean, c’mon man, it’s not like we had any previous warnings about this kind of thing is it? The Science™ has known that antibiotic-resistant bacteria only evolve because of those despicable anti-antibiotickers who don’t take antibiotics, just like anti-vaxxers don’t take vaccines. The rest of us on Planet Sane well understand why antibiotic resistant bacteria have become such a problem1.
Evolution, and the march of deep time, has gifted us with an incredible, and adaptive, immune system that can fight off a veritable legion of biological and chemical micro-demons. It’s not always successful, to be sure, and I don’t want to suggest that antibiotics and vaccines have no role to play in helping the body fight off the invaders. But we need to work in tandem with our bodies, and evolution, when we do this.
Evolution has given us defence in depth against these various invaders. We’re not just one-trick ponies - even if we sometimes use pony-paste against all ‘official’ advice. I used to play tower defence games when I needed a bit of a break. The idea here is that you’re getting attacked by a variety of things and you build various towers with various weapons which, you hope, have been strategically chosen to provide an optimal all-round defence.
What you don’t do is to spend all your money on air defence - because the mobile ground cannons, against which you are now defenceless, will wipe you out.
The immune system seems to me to operate in a similar fashion. There are different mechanisms (different weapons) and different layers (inner and outer defence towers) - which, it is hoped, are enough to eventually see off an invader.
Having your immune system ‘trained’ by a vaccine that evokes a response to a small part of the invading force (just the spike protein) is akin to spending all your money on air defences in a tower defence game.
If you’re lucky, it might be enough. It might be enough to kill off the invader and to stop it replicating. But if it isn’t, you are, to adopt technical language, a bit fucked.
If it’s not enough, then all you’re doing is to ‘train’ the next generations of the virus how to evade your primary defence.
If you also, in the process, ensure that in the next attack wave the body will do the same thing (produce the same antibodies, for example) with immune imprinting or OAS, then you have a big problem.
Part of the defence in depth strategy of the body is to have this variety of mechanisms say A, B and C. If a viral mutation occurs that evades A - no worries, because B and C will nip it in the bud. A viral mutation that evades A, B and C is going to be necessary for immune escape - and that’s a much lower probability.
This is why focusing on just one part of an invader, in this case the spike protein, is a risky strategy. It’s why the body itself has not evolved to do this.
There’s likely an ordering effect here too. If you got covid and then subsequently the Goo, your immune response will be different to a new covid attack, than if you had the Goo first followed by a covid attack.
I’ve remarked before on how our body’s immune system seems able to recognise the difference between an actual infection and an inactivated vaccine. It’s why live, attenuated vaccines, in which there is viral replication but mild disease, perform, in general, better than vaccines based on inactivated (unable to reproduce) viruses. These, in turn, perform better than vaccines based on viral ‘parts’.
There are what seem to me to be good evolutionary reasons why the body opts for some degree of immune ‘imprinting’. If a new variant attacks, you want to be able to mount an effective defence. If it’s sufficiently similar to something you’ve ‘seen’ before, then there’s a good chance your old defences will work very well. The last thing you want to do is to waste time treating this slightly different attack as completely new and learning how to best defend against it all over again. By the time you’ve figured out the best weaponry to employ and to develop new ones, you might very well be dead.
So crack on with the Kraken and crack open those vitamin D capsules - it’s probably nothing to worry about. It still seems fairly mild. But as Geert Vanden Bossche keeps warning us, if we keep on with this brain-dead GOD boost strategy, it’s entirely possible we’ll generate just the right conditions for an immune-escaping really virulent new variant.
Whatever happens, incessant maskerbation is not good for you. Just stop it.
Hint : it’s not because of the people who don’t take antibiotics.
Your point (well, every sane persons point) about the equivalence between antibiotic resistant disease and vaccine resistant covid seems blindingly obvious to everybody except Those Who are in Charge of Things. Thinking of this drives me to teeth powdering fits of frustrated anger.
It would be utterly heartbreaking if Those Who are in Charge of Things actually are as mind bogglingy stupid as they appear to be. It would alnost restore my faith in humanity if all this (covid, wokeness, trans bullshit, fat positivity etc) was revealed to be the work of an evil cabal intent on societal destruction, because the alternative would appear to be that the whole world is run by a group of people with a collective IQ equivalent to a few of my arse hairs. A depressing thought.
I've been calling the Fake Plague a Phantomime.
Rebranded seasonal flu;
Now a common cold.
Smoke and mirrors.
A much ado over nothing.