There is a lot we don’t know about this COVID pandemic and how to overcome it. To make matters worse, sceptics, such as the local ‘COVID-19 judicial protest’ (November 28), doubt everything including PCR test reliability, viral infectivity and vaccine efficacy and safety.
Nothing wrong in having a critical mind but frivolous objections are precious time-wasters. We had objectors to Dr Jenner’s vaccine invention (against smallpox), to the invention of the train and to human flight (“if God meant us to fly, He would have given us wings”).
So, nothing new in having to deal with blinkered, know-all objectors.
The COVID vaccines announced recently are definitely a bright light at the end of this dark restrictive tunnel but they still need evaluation by the US Food and Drug Administration and by the European Medicines Agency.
One wonders whether the huge scientific effort made to create these vaccines in such a short time might possibly come to nought. How could this be possible?
The Spanish Flu of 1918, which is claimed to have killed more people than the Great War, is said to have been characterised by three infective waves: a relatively small one in spring, a big second wave in autumn/winter and a very small one the following spring. It then disappeared never to return. That means most of the surviving population got immune to that virus.
Could the same happen with COVID-19, disappearing ‘spontaneously’ next year and we would not need any vaccines?
Perhaps not, because COVID has not killed anywhere near so many people as the Spanish Flu, so we probably may not have enough COVID-exposed and immune individuals for it to disappear next year and we’ll indeed need vaccines to stop it and start getting our lives back to normal.
Regarding some autopsies carried out on COVID-related cases, these have been performed not only in Germany, as the judicial protestors’ letter seemed to claim. The main findings of these autopsies (reported previously in this paper) have been lung damage and blood clots (thrombosis or disseminated intravascular coagulation, in medical jargon) in various organs, knocking out their function.
COVID is a new coronavirus so it would be entirely its prerogative to elicit new pathology not seen with other coronaviruses.
The mechanism through which COVID induces these blood clots was initially put down to damage to the inner lining of blood vessels, however, more recently, the virus has been suspected of being responsible for circulating autoantibodies, which induce blood clotting.
COVID has affected most seriously the elderly while the Spanish Flu is said to have been most lethal to the young.
Different viruses, different clinical pictures.
The judicial protestors would like us to believe that radio frequency may be responsible for blood clotting in COVID fatalities. How frivolous can one get? If current radio frequency levels caused such pathology, we would all be dead.
Instead, the highest COVID mortality has been in elderly men and the commonest co-morbidity has been obesity. Women seem to have suffered less mortality but more long-term post-COVID infection symptoms, such as chronic fatigue syndrome and ‘brain fog’. Why this sex difference is not yet clear.
I would agree with the judicial protestors that the ruling to have to wear a mask in open-air locations, where there are few or no people around, makes no scientific sense.
Furthermore, joggers are inhaling and exhaling more air (and potentially more virus) than walkers and their exemption is a scientific contradiction.
None of our COVID deaths have been walkers. They have been mainly care- home residents – presumably directly related to failure of public health measures, ironically where they should have been most rigidly applied.
The world awaits vaccines approved by licensing authorities. Vaccine sceptics, claiming there is no way they’ll be convinced to be immunised by any of these new vaccines, should perhaps be reminded that when, last year, some European countries experienced serious measles outbreaks (because some mums had been refusing to immunise their kids), the health authorities issued a decree prohibiting unvaccinated children from attending school.
Albert Cilia-Vincenti is a pathologist and former scientific delegate, European Medicines Agency.