Do We Need a Vaccine to Go Back to Normal?

The idea that we need a vaccine in order to get back to normal has been repeated so many times lately that people are starting to accept it as the truth [1]. But there are many problems with relying on a hypothetical vaccine to allow us to continue our culture. For one, it does not exist yet. And a safe and effective vaccine may never exist. Past coronavirus vaccine attempts have failed to make it to market because of serious safety issues [2]. The new type of vaccine technology used by some vaccine developers, mRNA and DNA, has never been proven safe or effective enough to be used in human vaccines. The virus may mutate too much – like annual influenza viruses – for a vaccine to ever be sufficiently effective [3]. Enough people to create “herd immunity” may refuse to take the vaccine once it is developed [4] due to legitimate concerns over rushed and insufficient safety testing (i.e. starting human trials before animal studies are complete) [5] and/or the lack of legal recourse in the event the vaccine causes an injury (see the PREP Act) [6].

 

And then there is the logic problem. Despite scaremongering from the mainstream media, current data shows that only a small minority of people with preexisting health problems will have negative outcomes from the virus [7]. Using the current best data, the CDC estimates the symptomatic case fatality rate (CFR) to be 0.4% (which does not include the estimated 35% of people with asymptomatic cases which would bring the CFR to below 0.3%) [8]. This is higher than the estimated seasonal influenza CFR of 0.1%, but well below initial estimates of 3.4% by the WHO in March. The large majority of people that contract the virus will either not have any symptoms or survive with mild to moderate symptoms [9]. I do not see the logic in spending billions of dollars to develop a vaccine designed for all humans to take – one that, if indeed taken by the majority of the world, will create hundreds of billions in profit for pharmaceutical companies – when only a small minority is negatively impacted by the virus. Shouldn’t we focus our attention on helping that small minority, virtually all of which have one or more preexisting health conditions that weakens their immune system? [10] Shouldn’t we focus on helping that minority improve their health, their resilience, and thus their immune systems? Shouldn’t we spend billions on targeted treatments and recommendations instead of a one-size-fits-all approach?

 

Logically, I think we should start with the basics of human health: air, food, water, stress, movement, sleep, nature, sunlight, social support. Our health authorities, politicians, and media outlets either do not notice or do not acknowledge the fact that places with higher death counts – Wuhan, northern Italy, New York City – do not have clean air for residents to breath. And this has been a huge problem prior to the pandemic – our leaders don’t seem to know or care that pollution kills close to 10 million people every year [11]. They do not emphasize the fact that the vast majority of those dying of COVID-19 have other serious health conditions – obesity, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes – that are directly related to diet and lifestyle factors that we can help each other change. They do not highlight the emerging science about preexisting nutritional status such as low vitamin D levels – resulting mostly from being indoors away from the sun – being correlated with more severe outcomes from the virus [12]. And they forget that humans are social creatures that need to feel at peace, creatively satisfied, and intellectually fulfilled for their immune systems to work best [13].

 

We need to abandon the militaristic paradigm of the world as a war between humans and pathogenic microbes from nature that we must eradicate. Granted, this paradigm has been hugely successful (at making money) for a small number of pharmaceutical companies and their leaders that offer “solutions” to health problems that do not actually cure disease but create drug customers for life. But it has not bettered our health. In fact, our health is deteriorating fast as we spend more and more on healthcare (drugs) and get sicker and sicker [14]. Living in an environment devoid of all microbes is not only impossible, but it is probably highly lethal [15]. Our genetics expect an environment teeming with microbes. I suspect that – like astronauts losing bone mass due to low gravity – our immune systems wither in an overly sanitized environment. In my view, germs are not the main problem. Rather, disease is caused by an imbalance in one’s being or an insult on the body by pollution or toxins from the environment. If germs were the sole cause of disease, everyone who tested positive would be sick with the same symptoms. But there are asymptomatic COVID-19 cases over a third of the time. And there is a range of manifestations from mild to severe for the people that do show symptoms. The idea that one virus causes one disease just does not make sense. Also, fear of an invisible virus tends to encourage anti-human behaviour, like distrusting other people in your community [16], wearing masks that may reduce blood oxygen as well as hamper highly important nonverbal communication [17], not gathering together to sing [18], and staying isolated indoors [19]. Therefore we need to focus on strength and health as our main concern during this time.

 

The best way forward, in my opinion, is to shed the fear and to realize that we humans have the potential to be incredibly resilient. As long as we provide ourselves with the basic, foundational health requirements, our immune systems can rise to the task. Health does not come through a needle that costs billions to develop and expects more in remuneration. Health simply requires that we provide our bodies with the environment that our genetics expect. We need to eat fresh, uncontaminated, nutrient-dense food. We need to drink clean, life-promoting water. We need to breathe fresh air free from pollution. We need to feel at peace, unburdened by chronic stress. We need to fulfill our potentials and move our bodies, spend time in nature and sunlight, and sleep soundly. And we need to feel love, gratitude, and caring for other human beings.

 

Will you join me in helping ourselves and those around us in prioritizing our health?

 

Leave a note in the comments if you feel like it. Do you agree or disagree? What are you doing to be proactive about your health and wellness?

Notes:

[1] Bill Gates has been especially vocal in perpetuating this idea. He said in an April 9 CNBC interview, “We’re gonna have this intermediate period of opening up, and it won’t be normal until we get an amazing vaccine to the entire world.” He is understandably biased towards vaccines as the best solution to many of the world’s problems because he contributes billions of dollars towards their development. For a thorough exploration of Bill Gates’ influence on world health and mainstream news, see the excellent Corbett Report videos How Bill Gates Monopolized Global Health and Bill Gates’ Plan to Vaccinate the World.

 

[2] Peter Hotez, vaccinologist and usual defender of vaccines, testified about these safety issues to the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Hearing on Coronavirus on March 5: “One of the things we are not hearing a lot about is potential safety problems of coronavirus vaccines. This was first found in the 1960s with Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccines done in Washington with the  NIH and Children’s National Medical Center. Some of those kids who got the vaccine actually did worse, and I believe there were two deaths as a consequence of that study. Because what happens with certain types of respiratory virus vaccines, you get immunized and then when you get actually exposed to the virus you get this kind of paradoxical immune enhancement phenomenon and what—and we don’t entirely understand the basis of it. But we recognize that it’s a real problem for certain respiratory virus vaccines. … But when we started developing coronavirus vaccines—and our colleagues—we noticed in laboratory animals that they started to show some of the same immune pathology that resembled what had happened 50 years earlier.”

 

[3] In the Nature article entitled Don’t rush to deploy COVID-19 vaccines and drugs without sufficient safety guarantees author Shibo Jiang writes “The virus behind COVID-19 might well mutate in ways that would make previously effective vaccines and antivirals useless.”

 

[4] MSN article: Data Point: 23 percent say they won’t get a COVID-19 vaccine

 

[5] From a STAT article Researchers rush to test coronavirus vaccine in people without knowing how well it works in animals: “As they race to test an experimental coronavirus vaccine, researchers aren’t waiting to see how well it prevents infection in animals before trying it in people, breaking from the usual protocol.”

 

[6] In a March 17 notice from the Department of Health and Human Services entitled Declaration Under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act for Medical Countermeasures Against COVID–19, under Section VI: Covered Countermeasures it defines what types of countermeasures are declared free from liability: “Covered Countermeasures are any antiviral, any other drug, any biologic, any diagnostic, any other device, or any vaccine, used to treat, diagnose, cure, prevent, or mitigate COVID–19…”

 

[7] For example, from the preprint article Population-level COVID-19 mortality risk for non-elderly individuals overall and for non-elderly individuals without underlying diseases in pandemic epicenters: “People <65 years old have very small risks of COVID-19 death even in pandemic epicenters and deaths for people <65 years without underlying predisposing conditions are remarkably uncommon. Strategies focusing specifically on protecting high-risk elderly individuals should be considered in managing the pandemic.” And from a Bloomberg article Italy Says 96% of Virus Fatalities Suffered From Other Illnesses: “The most recent ISS weekly study, based on a sample of about 10% of fatalities until May 21, also showed that just 124 victims, or 4.1% of the total, had no previous pathology. Almost 60% of victims suffered from at least three prior illnesses and about a fifth had two conditions. More than 68% had high blood pressure, about 30% had diabetes and 28% suffered from heart disease, according to the report.”

 

[8] COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios from May 20. Their best case scenario puts the CFR even lower at 0.2%.

 

[9] Coronavirus: 81% of cases are ‘mild,’ study says

 

[10] A study from the JAMA Network entitled Clinical Characteristics, Comorbidities, and Outcomes Among Patients With COVID-19 Hospitalized in the NYC Area reported that about 88% of those hospitalized for COVID-19 had more 2 or more comorbidities like obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.

 

[11] See these studies linking air pollution to COVID-19 mortality: A national study on long-term exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States and Assessing nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels as a contributing factor to coronavirus (COVID-19) fatality. And about the global pollution problem in general, see the The Lancet Commission on pollution and health which shockingly reports: “Pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and premature death in the world today. Diseases caused by pollution were responsible for an estimated 9 million premature deaths in 2015—16% of all deaths worldwide—three times more deaths than from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined and 15 times more than from all wars and other forms of violence. In the most severely affected countries, pollution-related disease is responsible for more than one death in four. Pollution disproportionately kills the poor and the vulnerable. Nearly 92% of pollution-related deaths occur in low-income and middle-income countries and, in countries at every income level, disease caused by pollution is most prevalent among minorities and the marginalised. Children are at high risk of pollution-related disease and even extremely low-dose exposures to pollutants during windows of vulnerability in utero and in early infancy can result in disease, disability, and death in childhood and across their lifespan.” [emphasis added]

 

[12] For example, the preprint study Vitamin D deficiency as risk factor for severe COVID-19: a convergence of two pandemics concludes that “vitamin D deficiency is a prevalent risk factor for severe COVID-19.”

 

[13] From the National Institute on Aging: Social isolation, loneliness in older people pose health risks 

 

[14] See this article from the Harvard Health Policy Review: Increasing Mortality and Declining Health Status in the USA: Where is Public Health? Also see the 2000 commentary by Barbara Starfield entitled Is US Health Really the Best in the World? which estimates 225,000 annual deaths caused unintentionally by the practice of medicine (including 12,000 deaths per year from unnecessary surgery, 7,000 deaths per year from medication errors in hospitals, 20,000 deaths per year from other errors in hospitals, 80,000 deaths per year from hospital-acquired infections, and 106,000 deaths per year from adverse effects of properly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs). Another report by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices calculated that in 2011 prescription drugs were associated with two to four million people in the US experiencing “serious, disabling, or fatal injuries,” including 128,000 deaths and that prescribed medicines are “one of the most significant perils to human health resulting from human activity.”

 

[15] Life in a World without Microbes: “In short, we argue that humans could get by without microbes just fine, for a few days. Although the quality of life on this planet would become incomprehensibly bad, life as an entity would endure.”

 

[16] An extreme example of distrust and fear of others who may be harboring disease from PennLive: Shots fired at Pa. Sheetz after man coughs, doesn’t cover mouth amid coronavirus epidemic: report

 

[17] For some of the issues with wearing masks, see Masks Don’t Work: A review of science relevant to COVID-19 social policy by Denis Rancourt, PhD, and Preliminary Report on Surgical Mask Induced Deoxygenation During Major Surgery by Beder, et al. Also, facial expression is a very important part of nonverbal communication. See Role of facial expressions in social interactions.

 

[18] See an article reviewing a National Association of Teachers of Singing presentation: NATS Panel of Experts Lays Out Sobering Future for Singers: “No Vaccine, No Safe Public Singing” in which author Zach Finkelstein writes, “In a presentation that sent shockwaves through the singing community, Dr. Lucinda Halstead, the president of the Performing Arts Medical Association and the Medical Director of the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of South Carolina, concluded that there is no safe way for singers to rehearse together until there is a COVID-19 vaccine and a 95% effective treatment in place, in her estimates at least 18-24 months away.” I assume that this presentation was working with the estimation of a much higher case fatality rate than the latest CDC number of 0.4%. Also, keep in mind that there is scientific precedence that singing increases immune function: Recreational music-making modulates natural killer cell activity, cytokines, and mood states in corporate employees.

 

[19] See [13] above.