COVID, Vaccines n Shit...

I'm going to take the time to write an extended piece on Covid and the vaccines because on my internet journey, I keep getting frustrated by the lack of knowledge and understanding out there, not from the fruitcakes who are just fruitcakes, but by well meaning people who want to know the facts but simply don't understand them.

First off, to help with your understanding, I want to talk about the flu. It, like covid, is a virus. Each year we vaccinate ourselves against the strain which we think is going to be most threatening. The reason we have to do it each year is because the virus mutates. In simple terms, it changes into a different kind of virus which our immune system doesn't recognise, and so the previous shot becomes useless. That said, the shot is still useful because the flu takes a lot of lives each year. Mostly older people.

We need to take an even further step back to understand how our immune system works. When a virus enters our bodies, eventually our antibodies, lets call them "soldiers", will recognise that we are under attack and they will go fight the virus. If they win, the soldiers have learnt how to beat the virus, so if the SAME virus comes back in, our soldiers destroy it quickly. Hence you are now immune against that virus. However, if that virus has mutated even slightly, our soldiers are blinded, so they won't respond immediately because they won't recognise it as the same threat. Thus we get sick again till our soldiers finally do their job.

We could eliminate the flu globally if we got everybody to vaccinate against the strains doing the rounds. This would then prevent the virus from mutating into a different form, because to do that it needs an obliging host (an unvaccinated person) The problem with this plan is that viruses mutate at different speeds. The flu mutates too fast for us to get everybody vaccinated before it changes. I often hear "We made a vaccine for the Rona so quickly but still haven't got one for AIDS". This is because of the speed factor. The HIV virus is one of the fastest mutating viruses out there. By the time we make a vaccine, it has already turned into a plethora of variants.

We are lucky that Covid-19 is a slowly mutating virus. It gives us a chance.

Going back to the flu virus. I want to talk about how the flu vaccine works. Firstly, the flu kills a lot of people each year, and even though the rate seems only a little less than Covid, it is the exponential spread of the Rona which makes it a much greater threat, to the point where our hospitals can get overrun, and as the death toll climbs, society begins to break down. The flu will never do this.

When we first began developing a flu vaccine, it was based on a system where you are injected with a very small and harmless amount of the virus. It won't make you sick, maybe slightly, but this wakes our soldiers up, they learn to recognise that strain, and now you're immune. In developing the flu vaccine, the biologists who do the coding etc take the virus and weaken it. This is why we do animal trials. We give it to some poor creatures to test that it is weak enough to do its job on humans but not hurt them. Since the Covid vaccine works differently, we didn't need this stage.

With that background and understanding, we can now move onto Covid. I'm sure you've all seen the pic I used of the covid virus as my banner for this blog. I want you to imagine it as a spider. The grey outer circle is the body of the arachnid. The red things, which are the spike proteins, are the fangs. The virus itself, the spider's poison, is actually contained inside the body.

These little spiders enter your system. They then begin working their way towards some suitable cells, like those in your lungs. Once there the spike proteins bite your cells and enable the virus to get into them. This is when you begin to get sick. Our soldiers then wake up because they realise we are under attack. Alas, in many cases, it might be too late because the virus numbers grow too large and our army is defeated. Hello ventilator and agonisingly slow and lonely death.

That's how the Rona works. The vaccine we developed for it is completely different to the flu vax, which is why I first explained how the flu vaccine works. It is important you understand the difference. The Covid vaccine is a ground breaking tech called mRNA. You will hear people say, "How did they develop it so fast? It can't be safe". We actually began working on this tech in 1989. We then began applying it to developing a coronavirus vaccine following the outbreak of SARS in the early 2000s. What we didn't know how to do at that point in time was deliver it safely to the body without side effects. We began work on this delivery method in 2010. So, in all, this current vaccine has been 3 decades in the making.

Hopefully, you understood how the flu vax works. Now I'll explain how the Covid vax does its job. It is very, very simple but very, very brilliant.

The scientists took some covid and removed the virus. So basically, you now have a spider with a bite but no poison. This is what they inject into you. The spider then tries to do its job as normal. It will go to your cells and bite them with its spike protein fangs, but it has nothing to inject. Our soldiers will then realise we are under attack and go to work. Once the job is done, they now have a threat which they recognise. So, if you catch Covid, they will immediately begin attacking it because they now recognise it as a threat. They can kill it before the virus infects too many cells.

Now this bit is important: With the flu vaccine our soldiers recognise the virus itself as the threat because that is what you are injected with. With the Covid vax, our soldiers recognise the carrier as the threat. They see the spike proteins and go for them.

Thus, you can still catch Covid and spread it even if you have been vaccinated, but you will most likely not be hospitalised, or more importantly, die. This is what the efficacy measures. This is why we still have mask mandates despite more and more people getting vaccinated.

Before we move on, I want to address animal testing again because it is one of the points the fruitcakes keep raising. So hopefully you understand the difference between the flu and Covid vaccines. Since you are not actually getting injected with the Covid virus itself, we don't need to test a weaker version on animals. That's why we skipped that step, as I've said. However, we also test on animals for another reason; side effects. Given the urgency of this pandemic, a lot of very brave people became our guinea pigs and took the vaccine so we could save time. Essentially, we had human trials for side effects. Fortunately the results were excellent.

When we do these human trials, 99% of side effects will present within the first 2 months. If we're being really, really safe, we could wait another 2 years to see if that 1% of slow side effects eventuate, but the urgency of the global situation meant it made sense to ignore this negligible risk. I do not deny that it is there. It is very possible that 2 years from now, all vaccinated people will have a penis grow out of their forehead. Lets hope so.

So why does everybody need to get vaccinated? "My body, my choice"

This comes down to a choice about individual liberties versus the greater good of the community. Rest assured though, if too many people exercise their liberties, we're fucked. Here's why...

As discussed, viruses mutate, and Covid mutates slowly. This gives us a chance of eradication. For a virus to mutate, it needs an obliging host. That is, a person who hasn't been vaccinated or who hasn't already had that variant before. Put simply, if we all get vaccinated quickly enough, then we can eliminate Covid. However, if the "my freedumbs" people are too many, we give the virus a chance to mutate.

As it stands, that is not a problem presently because, if you remember, the virus is inside the spider and our soldiers recognise and attack the fangs, so it's all good, right?

Nope.

The danger we face is that with enough obliging hosts enabling the virus to mutate, it might actually change its SPIKE PROTEINS, and then every single thing we've done so far will be completely useless and we will be back to where we were right at the start of the pandemic. Our only hope might be a flu like vaccine which will take another 10 years to develop, and who knows what Covid will mutate into within that time.

Currently this looks to be our path with the way a large portion of humanity thinks about themselves rather than the greater good, or simply because they are conspiracy theory fruitcakes.

Humans are stupid, but if enough of us get educated, we can overcome this stupidity. So please don't be shy in passing on your knowledge and helping people understand why getting vaccinated is crucial. There are too many people out there who just don't understand, and rest assured, the fruitcakes are bombarding them with their misinformation. We're gonna lose this battle unless you step up.