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"The Lies Behind the ‘Pandemic of Unvaxxed’”Unvaxxed’”
"real-world data show it (delta variant] is actually weaker and far less dangerous, even though it does spread more easily" and vaccinations will leave us to "end up on a never-ending booster treadmill."
| Fig 1 | Fig 2 |
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Fig 1
- Indicates the confirmed COVID-19 daily cases noticeably started to increase around the 3rd week in June 2021.
- At this time the delta variant was about 50%
- By August 17, 2021, the leading states in terms of daily cases were Louisianna, Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas, Alabama, and South Carolina
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Dr Joseph Mercola says: "real-world data show it [the Delta variant] is actually weaker and far less dangerous, even though it does spread more easily". However, the CDC is less sure about this and says "Some data suggest the Delta variant might cause more severe illness than previous strains in unvaccinated persons. In two different studies from Canada and Scotland, patients infected with the Delta variant were more likely to be hospitalized than patients infected with Alpha or the original virus strains" (see https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-variant.html). In this case (see above Fig 2) I tend to lean slightly towards Dr Mercola's view, but it does not appear to be much weaker and can indeed stlll be a killer in a few percent of the cases, as well as leading to hospitalization, or long-term disability.
Dr Mercola points out that "People who are vaccinated still get infected, it only seems particularly good at blunting the disease, and what that tells you therefore is that these vaccines in the vast majority of people are applying a nonlethal pressure, narrowly focused on one protein, and the vaccine rollout is occurring over a long period of time. That’s the recipe for driving variants.” That would appear to be the case, if we do not reach herd immunity. Thus the vaccines will need to be enhanced to compete with the new variants. However, rather than pushing for increasing vaccination, the only remedy Dr. Mercola appears to encourage is the natural infection which as mentioned above can lead to hospitalization, death or long-term disability.
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People with more severe infections appear to have stronger antibody responses than those who had milder or asymptomatic infections, said Dr. Lisa Maragakis, senior director for infection prevention at Johns Hopkins.
A study published in July in the New England Journal of Medicine found that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine was 88% effective at preventing symptomatic disease from the delta variant, compared to about 95% for the original virus strain. Data from Israel estimated lower effectiveness against symptomatic disease, but said that the protection against severe illness remains high.
The concern, though, is that “the more the virus is allowed to circulate, the more variants may emerge and we may see a time that a variant escapes the currently available vaccine. And at that point, we would have to modify the vaccines and re-vaccinate people against the new variant,” Maragakis said.
Overall the immunity induced by both vaccination and prior infection was still robust one year later, particularly against wild-type SARS-CoV-2 and the now more common alpha and delta strains, though potency towards the later-emerging beta and gamma strains is waning. In low vaccine availability locations, this is reassuring, as some protection can still be granted to individuals without committing to regular vaccine boosters in the short term.
However, the next generation of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines will need to account for mutations that allow evasion of the previously developed antibodies and preferably be better future-proofed against other novel mutations.
The rise of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VoCs), especially the Delta variant, has increased concerns on the effectiveness of vaccines against these more transmissible VoCs.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-protection.html
A study of COVID-19 infections in Kentucky among people who were previously infected with SAR-CoV-2 shows that unvaccinated individuals are more than twice as likely to be reinfected with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated after initially contracting the virus. These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone and that vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections.
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