Claire’s analysis is instructive as it addresses and counters the content of the anti-vax argument. Few journalists do this, as msm simply dismisses with condescending label - “those Q-Anon freaks”. Concurrent with need for individuals to intelligently weigh evidence is the need for self-discipline within institutions (science and data). I find it tragic that critical institution knowledge legitimate in it’s own right, becomes stigmatized due to institutional posturing in social justice.
I think that's one of the common cognitive errors of our day. Knowledge or data are dismissed because it is derived by an out-group.
At the same time, I'm not sure if I'm prepared to carefully research every claim I come across, regardless of source. I have to outsource some of this project, and I'm not sure if there's a bright line between them.
Claire’s article is the perfect refutation of the nonsense peddled by the anti-vaccination crowd.
The suggestion that spike protein is toxic is crazy. Humans have been exposed to spike protein which decorates all corona viruses for thousands of years: long before SARS-CoV-2 made its ugly appearance.
The common cold in humans is caused by hundreds of viruses including four viruses in the corona family. All corona viruses use spike protein to gain passages through the cell membrane. If spike protein was toxic we would have suffered long term consequences from exposure to the corona viruses which cause colds. Almost 80 percent of human adults have been exposed to all four corona cold viruses with no long term ill effect from contact with spike protein.
Alpha and beta corona viruses (of which SARS-CoV-2 is a member) are ubiquitous in mammals. Different mammalian species become ill from some of these viruses but not others. Dogs, cats, cattle and many other animals become sick from corona viruses that do not make human beings ill. But the fact that we don’t become ill from these particular corona viruses doesn’t mean we’re not exposed to them. Like all corona viruses, the ones that make animals but not humans ill are decorated with spike protein. If spike protein was toxic there would be consequences to this exposure; there aren’t.
As for mistrust of Pharma, there is simply no better proof of the superiority of the capitalist system then the success of this industry. The number of human diseases conquered or ameliorated by the pharmaceutical industry is too numerous to mention. There is probably not another industry that has alleviated more human suffering than Pharma. There is a good chance that anyone over 50 who is reading these words is alive only because of some form of pharmaceutical intervention. We should be on our hands and knees expressing gratitude for the miracles that the pharmaceutical industry has made possible.
What makes these miraculous pharmaceutical innovations possible?
Although I completely agree with your conclusion (go, Big Pharma!) I don't think the argument you're making to get there quite works. The spike proteins aren't all biochemically identical (1,160 amino acids in avian infectious bronchitis virus; 1,400 amino acids for feline coronavirus; some spike proteins are cleaved and some aren't during the assembly and exocytosis of virions; in most alpha coronaviruses, the spike protein is uncleaved; in some beta- and all gamma coronaviruses the protein is cleaved at the S1/S2 junction--and infamously, in SARS-CoV-2, by a furin cleaver in the Golgi apparatus--etc.). It seems plausible to me you could have a mutation to a spike protein that makes it more harmful. I don't know exactly how, or why there would be any selection pressure to favor that, but surely it's not impossible. Lord knows, Nature makes a lot of dangerous things (either by accident, through random mutation and natural selection, or maybe out of sheer malice).
I agree that spike protein comes in a multitude of different flavors. In fact, in large part it’s the structure of the particular spike protein which determines whether it can bind to its target receptor on the mammalian cell. If there’s no binding site the genetic material of the virus can’t traverse the membrane and cause illness.
Of all of the corona viruses that cause illness in mammals, I’ve never heard of one where the spike protein itself was pathogenic but admittedly that probably hasn’t been investigated very carefully.
Is it plausible that a mutation could have occurred that makes the spike protein that decorates SARS-CoV-2 pathogenic?
I suppose it’s plausible, but as you indicated in your piece, the evidence is basically non-existent. The one paper people site as evidence of this hypothesis is a very slim reed.
In a sense we are lucky that the virus causing Covid-19 requires spike protein to do its dirty work. The presence of this protein gave vaccine developers the perfect target to shoot for. Without spike protein as a target, developing vaccines would probably have taken much longer.
When you think about it, it’s really remarkable. It took about six months to develop the mRNA vaccines (and another six months to test them). Scientists have been trying to develop vaccines for malaria (not a viral disease) for thirty years with no luck. It’s been so hard for many reasons including the fact that there’s no juicy candidate to shoot for.
It sounds crazy but we actually got lucky this time. Because it is a corona virus, SARS-CoV-2 was easily “vaccinable.” Instead we could have been hit by a pathogen that wasn’t.
In the absence of the new Covid vaccines we would have had to rely on the development of herd immunity or successful treatments after illness developed.
Our ancestors did much worse; bubonic plague killed between 25-50 million Europeans in the 1300s.
What’s the moral of the story? Pharma has turned spike protein from an enemy into a friend or at least a friendly acquaintance.
"Remarkable" is an understatement. It's a scientific triumph of the highest order, with immense ramifications for the treatment of so many other diseases, too. I'm driven half mad (as you can probably tell) that people who *know better* could be so decadent as to allege that Pfizer is involved in some giant murderous conspiracy when they should be using their influence over some very gullible people to say, "Go out and lay bouquets of roses outside Pfizer's gates, then *rejoice* at your extraordinary fortune. Very few people in the world have the privilege of having access to a safe, effective vaccine against this ghastly disease." (Among other things, these lies and vituperation must be so demoralizing for the scientists who work there--probably frightening, too.)
Yes, mRNA vaccines against cancer are on the way. Along with CAR T-cell therapy and other forms of immunotherapy, vaccines against cancer are extremely promising.
In fact, these trials have already commenced. BioNTech, Pfizer’s partner in the Covid vaccine, has begun a Phase II in melanoma. See,
Something that I find interesting is the degree to which we have not yet seen anti-vax sentiment on the political left especially the far left with it's scepticism of capitalism. Most far left scepticism of the vaccines has centered around patent issues to date with almost nothing about the effectiveness of the vaccines themselves. In fact many of the far right anti-vaxxers are currently a bit surprised that a political "horseshoe" has not yet been created between far right and far left anti-vax forces in the US yet.
You have to wonder to what degree has Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden put the fear of god privately into the most left wing elements of the institutional democratic party about giving off even a hint of anti-vax sentiment. The closest analogy I can think of is when many Republicans I knew in 2008 voted for Obama despite hating him and the Democratic Party as they were in deathly fear that John McCain was not up to dealing with the financial crisis.(All of these people once the immediate crisis passed eventually return to supporting the GOP right up through Trump) This right now seems to be the relationship between the Sanders/Warren/AOC wing of the Democratic Party and "Big Pharma"
I am going to take two quotes from Matthew Yglesias Substack today which I think accurately describe the furthest elements of the far left and state I am absolutely stunned that these types of people have not gone anti-vax in reference to my previous point about the far left.
"authweight4 hr ago
I think a lot of the climate left is operating under something like a psuedo-accelerationist model where the only thing that matters is ramping up the confrontation and conflict.
I think where they're coming from is that they don't think that a normal political process is capable of generating enough change rapidly enough. So even if they win fight after fight, they think they're losing the war, and they believe what's on the line is survival of the human race. I think activists quietly (or sometimes not so quietly, in the case of some of my friends) believe aggressive economic degrowth is necessary for human survival (though such people often also want to see degrowth happen for other aesthetic and moral reasons).
The consequence of this stew of beliefs is that the real goal is a violent revolution that sweeps away the capitalist order and replaces it with something new and different. The point of climate politics, for them, is to lay the groundwork for revolution, not to actually get concrete wins on specific aspects of climate policy."
evan bear4 hr ago
If you draw everything out to its logical conclusion, then yes there is no feasible solution within our democratic system of government, so the way forward is to overthrow the government and impose climate solutions with an iron fist.
In reality, 99% of these people do not really have the courage of their convictions and are not willing to explore the full logical implications of their belief system. The best explanation for these people's actions is that their primary motivation is not to achieve the results they are ostensibly seeking. Instead, their primary motivation is psychological: they get a high out of feeling like prophetic voices denouncing the decadent normie sheeple around them, so that is what they prioritize. Outcomes don't matter."
Claire’s analysis is instructive as it addresses and counters the content of the anti-vax argument. Few journalists do this, as msm simply dismisses with condescending label - “those Q-Anon freaks”. Concurrent with need for individuals to intelligently weigh evidence is the need for self-discipline within institutions (science and data). I find it tragic that critical institution knowledge legitimate in it’s own right, becomes stigmatized due to institutional posturing in social justice.
I think that's one of the common cognitive errors of our day. Knowledge or data are dismissed because it is derived by an out-group.
At the same time, I'm not sure if I'm prepared to carefully research every claim I come across, regardless of source. I have to outsource some of this project, and I'm not sure if there's a bright line between them.
Claire’s article is the perfect refutation of the nonsense peddled by the anti-vaccination crowd.
The suggestion that spike protein is toxic is crazy. Humans have been exposed to spike protein which decorates all corona viruses for thousands of years: long before SARS-CoV-2 made its ugly appearance.
The common cold in humans is caused by hundreds of viruses including four viruses in the corona family. All corona viruses use spike protein to gain passages through the cell membrane. If spike protein was toxic we would have suffered long term consequences from exposure to the corona viruses which cause colds. Almost 80 percent of human adults have been exposed to all four corona cold viruses with no long term ill effect from contact with spike protein.
Alpha and beta corona viruses (of which SARS-CoV-2 is a member) are ubiquitous in mammals. Different mammalian species become ill from some of these viruses but not others. Dogs, cats, cattle and many other animals become sick from corona viruses that do not make human beings ill. But the fact that we don’t become ill from these particular corona viruses doesn’t mean we’re not exposed to them. Like all corona viruses, the ones that make animals but not humans ill are decorated with spike protein. If spike protein was toxic there would be consequences to this exposure; there aren’t.
As for mistrust of Pharma, there is simply no better proof of the superiority of the capitalist system then the success of this industry. The number of human diseases conquered or ameliorated by the pharmaceutical industry is too numerous to mention. There is probably not another industry that has alleviated more human suffering than Pharma. There is a good chance that anyone over 50 who is reading these words is alive only because of some form of pharmaceutical intervention. We should be on our hands and knees expressing gratitude for the miracles that the pharmaceutical industry has made possible.
What makes these miraculous pharmaceutical innovations possible?
It’s called capitalism.
Although I completely agree with your conclusion (go, Big Pharma!) I don't think the argument you're making to get there quite works. The spike proteins aren't all biochemically identical (1,160 amino acids in avian infectious bronchitis virus; 1,400 amino acids for feline coronavirus; some spike proteins are cleaved and some aren't during the assembly and exocytosis of virions; in most alpha coronaviruses, the spike protein is uncleaved; in some beta- and all gamma coronaviruses the protein is cleaved at the S1/S2 junction--and infamously, in SARS-CoV-2, by a furin cleaver in the Golgi apparatus--etc.). It seems plausible to me you could have a mutation to a spike protein that makes it more harmful. I don't know exactly how, or why there would be any selection pressure to favor that, but surely it's not impossible. Lord knows, Nature makes a lot of dangerous things (either by accident, through random mutation and natural selection, or maybe out of sheer malice).
I agree that spike protein comes in a multitude of different flavors. In fact, in large part it’s the structure of the particular spike protein which determines whether it can bind to its target receptor on the mammalian cell. If there’s no binding site the genetic material of the virus can’t traverse the membrane and cause illness.
Of all of the corona viruses that cause illness in mammals, I’ve never heard of one where the spike protein itself was pathogenic but admittedly that probably hasn’t been investigated very carefully.
Is it plausible that a mutation could have occurred that makes the spike protein that decorates SARS-CoV-2 pathogenic?
I suppose it’s plausible, but as you indicated in your piece, the evidence is basically non-existent. The one paper people site as evidence of this hypothesis is a very slim reed.
In a sense we are lucky that the virus causing Covid-19 requires spike protein to do its dirty work. The presence of this protein gave vaccine developers the perfect target to shoot for. Without spike protein as a target, developing vaccines would probably have taken much longer.
When you think about it, it’s really remarkable. It took about six months to develop the mRNA vaccines (and another six months to test them). Scientists have been trying to develop vaccines for malaria (not a viral disease) for thirty years with no luck. It’s been so hard for many reasons including the fact that there’s no juicy candidate to shoot for.
It sounds crazy but we actually got lucky this time. Because it is a corona virus, SARS-CoV-2 was easily “vaccinable.” Instead we could have been hit by a pathogen that wasn’t.
In the absence of the new Covid vaccines we would have had to rely on the development of herd immunity or successful treatments after illness developed.
Our ancestors did much worse; bubonic plague killed between 25-50 million Europeans in the 1300s.
What’s the moral of the story? Pharma has turned spike protein from an enemy into a friend or at least a friendly acquaintance.
"Remarkable" is an understatement. It's a scientific triumph of the highest order, with immense ramifications for the treatment of so many other diseases, too. I'm driven half mad (as you can probably tell) that people who *know better* could be so decadent as to allege that Pfizer is involved in some giant murderous conspiracy when they should be using their influence over some very gullible people to say, "Go out and lay bouquets of roses outside Pfizer's gates, then *rejoice* at your extraordinary fortune. Very few people in the world have the privilege of having access to a safe, effective vaccine against this ghastly disease." (Among other things, these lies and vituperation must be so demoralizing for the scientists who work there--probably frightening, too.)
Yes, mRNA vaccines against cancer are on the way. Along with CAR T-cell therapy and other forms of immunotherapy, vaccines against cancer are extremely promising.
In fact, these trials have already commenced. BioNTech, Pfizer’s partner in the Covid vaccine, has begun a Phase II in melanoma. See,
https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/first-patient-dosed-in-biontech-phase-ii-trial-of-mrna-cancer-vaccine/
In case any of your readers are interested in the subject, here is a pretty understandable review article that may be of interest.
https://molecular-cancer.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12943-021-01335-5
Something that I find interesting is the degree to which we have not yet seen anti-vax sentiment on the political left especially the far left with it's scepticism of capitalism. Most far left scepticism of the vaccines has centered around patent issues to date with almost nothing about the effectiveness of the vaccines themselves. In fact many of the far right anti-vaxxers are currently a bit surprised that a political "horseshoe" has not yet been created between far right and far left anti-vax forces in the US yet.
You have to wonder to what degree has Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden put the fear of god privately into the most left wing elements of the institutional democratic party about giving off even a hint of anti-vax sentiment. The closest analogy I can think of is when many Republicans I knew in 2008 voted for Obama despite hating him and the Democratic Party as they were in deathly fear that John McCain was not up to dealing with the financial crisis.(All of these people once the immediate crisis passed eventually return to supporting the GOP right up through Trump) This right now seems to be the relationship between the Sanders/Warren/AOC wing of the Democratic Party and "Big Pharma"
I am going to take two quotes from Matthew Yglesias Substack today which I think accurately describe the furthest elements of the far left and state I am absolutely stunned that these types of people have not gone anti-vax in reference to my previous point about the far left.
"authweight4 hr ago
I think a lot of the climate left is operating under something like a psuedo-accelerationist model where the only thing that matters is ramping up the confrontation and conflict.
I think where they're coming from is that they don't think that a normal political process is capable of generating enough change rapidly enough. So even if they win fight after fight, they think they're losing the war, and they believe what's on the line is survival of the human race. I think activists quietly (or sometimes not so quietly, in the case of some of my friends) believe aggressive economic degrowth is necessary for human survival (though such people often also want to see degrowth happen for other aesthetic and moral reasons).
The consequence of this stew of beliefs is that the real goal is a violent revolution that sweeps away the capitalist order and replaces it with something new and different. The point of climate politics, for them, is to lay the groundwork for revolution, not to actually get concrete wins on specific aspects of climate policy."
evan bear4 hr ago
If you draw everything out to its logical conclusion, then yes there is no feasible solution within our democratic system of government, so the way forward is to overthrow the government and impose climate solutions with an iron fist.
In reality, 99% of these people do not really have the courage of their convictions and are not willing to explore the full logical implications of their belief system. The best explanation for these people's actions is that their primary motivation is not to achieve the results they are ostensibly seeking. Instead, their primary motivation is psychological: they get a high out of feeling like prophetic voices denouncing the decadent normie sheeple around them, so that is what they prioritize. Outcomes don't matter."