I'm done with this subject. I'll leave it with this:
As I stated near the beginning of this post, antivaxxers strive mightily, above all, to claim that vaccines are dangerous to those receiving them and those around the recipients, all with added conspiracy theories. It doesn’t matter how much they have to misinterpret or misrepresent scientific studies to do so. They’ll find a way to make their misrepresentations (or failure to put studies into proper context) sound like plausible evidence that vaccines are dangerous, and they’ve certainly been doing this with COVID-19 vaccines, starting with pointing to any study that finds a role for the spike protein alone in causing cell damage. Such studies are critical to the elucidation of the molecular mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 infects cells, replicates itself, and causes so much damage to the lungs. It’s also important to note that target effects matter. Location matters. The main infection starts in the lungs, which is where the highest concentration of virus and therefore spike protein would be expected in the case of real infections. In the case of vaccination, the location is the muscle cells of the shoulder, and any spike protein that escapes is rapidly diluted in the bloodstream to the pg/ml range.
But what does Olgata’s finding for the Moderna mean regarding the safety of the vaccine? Basically nothing. The reason is simple. If there were a safety problem due to spike protein, after more than a quarter of a billion doses of vaccine administered in the US alone, there would have been safety signal by now, given the unprecedentedly intense vaccine safety surveillance effort that accompanied the rollout of these vaccines. Remember, this is a pharmacosurveillance effort that detected literally a one-in-a-million serious adverse event associated with vaccination with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine within a month and a half of its being distributed under an emergency use authorization. It beggars the imagination to suggest that, even if the transient appearance of spike protein after vaccination at a concentration of (at most) tens of picograms/ml were toxic, there would be no safety signal after so many doses. It’s even more ridiculous to propose that such a minuscule concentration of spike protein can be “shed” in quantities that could affect other people, given the incredibly low and transient concentration produced after vaccination.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-deadly-coronavirus-spike-protein/ |
