Focus? Understanding the Truth of COVID-19 Vaccine With Basic Knowledge of Biology

Author: Zhi Shi
Editor: Lish

Image Source: Reuters

Preface: I have tried to explain the truth about the COVID-19 vaccine to many of my friends, but I found that most of them were not familiar with some terminology, making it difficult to understand. Even in my social media group of clinicians, the majority of doctors are not quite familiar with terms like envelope protein, spike protein, etc., not to mention more specific ones like the receptor-binding domain (RBD), furin cleavage sites, antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) and other virological terms. After all, most people did not have the opportunity to receive Dr Li-Meng Yan’s education on the CCP virus from Lude Media since January 2020. Therefore, this article attempts to explain the fact about the COVID-19 vaccine using basic knowledge of biology, trying not to use any term beyond what we learned from our secondary school biology class. I hope it will be of benefit to those who do not have time to learn more virology terms.?

The invention and widespread use of vaccines is a great achievement of modern medicine. In most countries around the world, vaccines in the childhood immunisation programme have undeniably played a key role in controlling epidemics and protecting children’s health. Examples include measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, meningitis, polio, hepatitis B and many others. The most striking example is smallpox, for which there is no specific treatment and was defeated only by the introduction of a worldwide smallpox vaccine.

But is it possible to develop vaccines for all infectious diseases? Absolutely not. The list of infectious diseases for which there is no vaccine is much longer than the list of those for which there is a vaccine, such as AIDS, hepatitis C, Ebola, MERS coronavirus, etc. There are a million reasons why a vaccine may fail or be ineffective, but the development of a successful vaccine and its immune protection depends on one key factor: the stability of the antigen.

Why can I say that? Let’s review the basic principles of vaccines. Immunisation is actually the process of stimulating the body to produce immunity with an antigen that is not pathogenic. For example, when the body is exposed to the measles virus, its immune system develops antibodies to a specific antigen of the measles virus, which mobilises the immune system to clear the virus. After recovery from the disease, this antibody protects the body from re-infection with measles throughout life. On the other hand, the measles vaccine is an extract of the antigenic component of the measles virus, which is not an intact virus and does not cause measles infection but also mobilizes the immune system to produce antibodies, resulting in lifelong immunity without measles infection. Although the measles virus can mutate, this antigen of the measles virus is so stable that the measles vaccine has not needed to be changed for decades and has been just as effective in preventing measles outbreaks. The pathogens in all countries’ childhood immunisation programmes basically have this feature: the antigens are very stable. If the antigen is stable and does not mutate, then the vaccine is effective. That is why the vaccines in the childhood immunisation programme are quite effective, and you don’t see children who have been vaccinated and still have measles, whooping cough, meningitis, etc. On the other hand, if the virus is tricky and the antigens change frequently, the antibodies will fail, and so will the vaccine. I will give you two examples of instability of virus antigens affecting the effectiveness of vaccines.

The first example is dengue fever. Dengue fever is a common tropical insect-borne disease. The dengue virus is also a highly mutated RNA virus, which has mutated into four subtypes. People who are infected with one subtype are immune for life, but they can still be infected with other subtypes. The French pharmaceutical company Sanofi developed a quadrivalent vaccine that theoretically protects against all four subtypes at the same time. The vaccine underwent a complete phase III clinical trial for six years before it was used on a large scale, but hundreds of children who received the vaccine died, and it had to be stopped. After 20 years of development and US$1.5 billion, the vaccine was eventually banned by the Philippine Department of Health. The fear caused by the dengue vaccine in the Philippines led to a loss of confidence in the vaccine. Many people were afraid even to get the measles vaccine, which eventually led to an outbreak of measles in the Philippines in 2019.

The second example of a ‘cunning’ virus is influenza, which was first isolated by scientists in 1933, and the influenza vaccine was launched in 1945. Influenza viruses are highly mutable; for example, the influenza A virus can theoretically have 198 subtypes. This is why the flu vaccine changes from year to year and should be given every year. We know that it is extremely rare for a vaccinated person to get measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, etc., but it is not uncommon for a person to get the flu after receiving the flu vaccine, because a vaccine only targets one subtype of flu and does not protect against all other subtypes of flu. Therefore, the flu vaccine is not as effective.

After looking at these two cunning viruses, one may ask: Is the COVID virus cunning? In fact, the COVID virus is more mutable than the influenza virus. Like influenza viruses, coronaviruses are single-stranded RNA viruses, and single-stranded RNA viruses can mutate up to a million times faster than double-stranded DNA viruses. The larger the genome of the virus, the greater the probability of mutation. The genome of COVID-19 virus is 2-3 times larger than that of the flu virus, so it is more likely to make mistakes during replication and therefore mutates faster than the flu virus. The faster mutation rate means that when the human immune system produces antibodies against the virus’s antigen, the virus can mutate more quickly and change the antigen, thus making the antibodies ineffective and, of course, the vaccine ineffective. It is no wonder that secondary infections of COVID have been reported around the world. Even the COVID-19 virus itself cannot induce immunity to prevent the next infection, how can the vaccine do so?

Let’s compare these three mutable, antigenically unstable RNA viruses – dengue, influenza and COVID-19 virus – and their vaccines: the dengue vaccine has been in development for 20 years, and there is still no universal dengue vaccine. Flu vaccine research has been going on for 76 years, but there has been almost no universal vaccination. The COVID-19 virus vaccine has been in development for less than a year, and it is mutating faster than Influenza virus, but countries around the world are now trying to get universal or even mandatory vaccination, is this really appropriate?

There is another indicator of the reliability of a vaccine: the stability of the antibodies. This is how long protective antibodies can remain in the body, determining how long the efficacy of the immunisation is maintained. The measles vaccine, for example, gives lifelong immunity. In contrast, the concentration of antibodies induced by the tetanus vaccine drops by half after ten years, and the effect of the flu vaccine, for example, may be less than 90 days. So how long does a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus maintain its efficacy? Some studies have found that protective antibodies in the serum of newly recovered patients may disappear after a few weeks of recovery. If this is true for infected patients, what about the vaccinated person? I’m afraid it won’t be much better and is likely to last only a few months at most. Influenza is seasonal, and 90 days of protection is enough, but the COVID epidemic is not seasonal, so do we need a shot every three months?

An analysis of the history of the development of these antigenically unstable vaccines shows that the development of vaccines for mutable RNA viruses is difficult, and even after decades of research, breakthrough success is not always possible. Let’s look at the history of vaccines’ development for mutable RNA viruses to predict the future of COVID-19 vaccines. If we are pessimistic, it might be like the dengue vaccine, which caused too many deaths and ended in controversy or even failure. If we are optimistic, the efforts of a few major pharmaceutical companies around the world in less than a year would be equivalent to the 76 years of research into the flu vaccine, which has succeeded in developing COVID-19 vaccines that are as effective as the flu vaccines. I’m afraid that the results will be at best like the flu vaccine and will not be able to keep up with the mutation rate of the virus, no wonder you still have to wear a mask after receiving the COVID-19 vaccines. This suggests that its protection is very limited. Have you ever heard that you still need to be isolated from a measles patient after proper measles vaccination? 

In short, the future for the COVID-19 vaccines is not promising. The current optimism about the COVID-19 vaccines stems only from confidence in vaccines such as measles and smallpox. There is a confusion between vaccines with stable antigens (e.g., smallpox measles meningitis vaccine) and vaccines with cunning and variable antigens (e.g., influenza, dengue?COVID-19 vaccine). Vaccines and vaccines are not the same, and many people ignore this and hold baselessly optimistic expectations of the COVID-19 vaccines.

As well as the effectiveness of the vaccine being important, safety is a crucial factor. The current news has brought to light many cases and data of deaths and severe side effects after the injection of the COVID-19 vaccines. These phenomena are not surprising at all for a vaccine that has been in development for less than one year before being released. There were many historical examples of rapidly developed vaccines ending up as failures, the most famous of which was probably the swine flu vaccine’s failure in the US in 1976. There are three similarities between this history and today’s COVID-19 vaccines:

  • Both were vaccines that were developed and approved for production in a rapid series of processes within a few months.
  • Both were intended for universal vaccination.
  • Presidential-level officials publicly administered both.

The swine flu vaccine was administered to 40 million Americans in two and a half months, and 530 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome (a severe neurological disorder requiring intensive care) occurred among those vaccinated. Eventually, the universal swine flu vaccination programme had to be stopped and not only was the entire stockpile of vaccine scrapped, but there were more than 4,000 lawsuits for compensation for side effects of the vaccine, all of which had to be paid for by the American taxpayer rather than the drug companies. We can only hope that the COVID-19 vaccines do not cause serious side effects on a massive scale as the 1976 swine flu vaccine did.

The above discussion, based solely on basic secondary school biology knowledge about antigens and antibodies and the real history of vaccine development, is already able to paint a pessimistic picture of the COVID-19 vaccines. This article avoids some of the more specialized content to increase readability, and readers who wish to learn more about the more deadly risks of vaccination with the COVID-19 vaccines can see my article “Vaccine will cause a bigger disaster!

At this point in the article, the new coronavirus’s origin has not been addressed at all.  This is because many people still do not believe that the COVID-19 virus originated in laboratories. Too many kind people find it hard to believe that a government can infect its own people and all of humanity in ways that are more anti-human than terrorism. Although this is a rock-solid fact, I will not set it up as a precondition for discussion for the moment. In other words, even if the COVID-19 came from nature, do not expect a hastily completed COVID-19 vaccine to contain the pandemic like the smallpox vaccine did magically.

However, as in all emerging infectious diseases, the real key to solving the COVID-19 pandemic is to trace the origin of the COVID-19 virus. Precisely because the COVID-19 virus came from laboratories, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) refused to share information about the virus, including samples of the strain, from the beginning of the outbreak. The CCP also denied foreign scientists access to the infected areas to investigate, only allowing pro-Communist WHO scientists to enter China to investigate the virus’s origin almost a year after the outbreak. This has added many deadly obstacles to vaccine and drug development. More crucially, Dr Li-Meng Yan has long warned that there must be other strains of the COVID-19 virus and even other dangerous pathogens in the CCP’s laboratories, ready to be used as biochemical weapons. If this time it is not pursued to the end, the CCP will inevitably repeat the crime and carry out more biochemical attacks. Even if the vaccine is effective, it is unlikely that its development will ever catch up with a biochemical weapon launch’s speed. The CCP is perfectly capable of selectively releasing vaccine ineffective strains and then blaming the natural mutation of the virus. So the first priority to overcome the pandemic is to take down the CCP. Pinning our hopes on the vaccine is just an unrealistic fantasy. Every dose of vaccine, including potentially massive compensation for injuries caused by the vaccine, is paid for by taxpayers, not by Big Pharma. We should have spent the time and money tracing the origin of the virus, holding the CCP accountable and helping those affected by the pandemic. However, all fund is wasted on vaccines for which there is little hope.

The vaccine industry is backed by substantial pharmaceutical industry interests and is a source of research funding for many scientists. It is no surprise that few scientists would dare to risk their careers by publicly questioning the effectiveness and safety of the COVID-19 vaccine. But the virus endangers everyone’s life, health, job, business, and even freedom. As Dr Yan warned, “The world is running out of time!” Each of our efforts is important, and we should try to spread the truth about the COVID-19 and especially its origins. Like the Buddha’s teaching on “Skilful Means”, it is essential to decide which level of truth to tell depending on the other person’s receptiveness. Whether or not to get the COVID-19 vaccine is a choice that most people today have to face immediately. The primary purpose of this article is to provide a simple perspective on the general knowledge of the vaccine. I hope this article will be easy for the readers to understand so that they can tell those around them in short and straightforward language. There is also a copy of Dr Zelenko’s Covid-19 prevention protocol which includes over-the-counter supplements of zinc, quercetin, vitamins D and C. You can highlight this section and tell them that there is no harm in trying it. This would be most acceptable even to a loyal audience of the mainstream media. Starting with matters of personal interest, step by step, they will pursue the truth that has been covered up by the mainstream media giants. One more person knowing the truth will be one step closer to ending the CCP, and therefore the pandemic.

(The content of this article represents the views of the author only)

Reference links

Dr Zelenko’s Covid-19 Prevention Protocol

Studies Report Rapid Loss of COVID-19 Antibodies

Acting Prime Minister Michael McCormack has sought to allay concerns over the Pfizer vaccine following 13 deaths in elderly people being reported in Norway.

Doctor’s Death After Covid Vaccine Is Being Investigated

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