Vaccines for the SARS Cov 2

Disclaimer: I am not a virologist, a biologist or a doctor. I hated biology at school and that is the very reason that I am an Engineer.

    The amount of write-ups on SCV2 on the public network is un-imaginable. I have also written a couple of posts on the same. In this post I would like to write more about how the vaccines work. This is for people who dont want to combine the information available on the public network. If readers are ready to go that extra mile, they can piece all this information together. Let us start

About SCV2(Sars CoV 2):

    SCV2 is a RNA based virus. That is, the re-production information is stored as RNA. The RNA strand is safely encased in a protein shell with additional proteins, now known infamously as the spike proteins(S protein). The RNA is the blue print which will be understood by the material which makes up the cytoplasm of a cell. On the most simplest side,  a cell is made up of a nucleus, surrounded by cytoplasm held together by a membrane. The nucleus contains the DNA which is converted to RNA, which in turn enters the cytoplasm. The code in the RNA is understood in this area. Normally, the information in the RNA is to make proteins. 

    Why should we know this minimal amount of a human cell composition. Without this premise, we will not know how SCV2 multiplies in the human body. The SCV2, to begin with mainly affects the upper respiratory system. You will now ask me why does it not affect other cells. Well, these respiratory cells have a receptor to which the spike protein attaches itself easily. It is like the spike protein knows the language of the receptor on these cells and it does not understand the language of receptors on other cells. 

    The SCV2 attaches itself on to this receptor and by biological magic, the RNA inside the protein casing is released into the cytoplasm in the affected cell. Now, the RNA which enters the cytoplasm is executed by the constituents of the cytoplasm(It is like running a binary compiled program). The main result of the execution is to create one more copy of the SCV2. This then gets out of the cytoplasm and locks with the receptor of the next cell and so on and so forth. What damages this replication does is known to all. Let us not dwell on this. We have discussed issues which might be helpful for us in understanding how the vaccines hope to work against this virus.

About Adenovirus:

    Adenovirus is a DNA based virus. That is, the re-production information is stored as a DNA safely encased in a protein shell. These viruses are known to be harmless on humans, if affected would result in a cold only. Of course, as with other viruses there have been several mutations.

mRNA based vaccines:

    There are two popular vaccines based on this methodology and they are from pfizer and moderna. As we have discussed earlier, the spike protein with the which the SCV2 starts its journey into the human cell, is a very important identifier. This protein is found to be unique. This uniqueness of the protein lends itself to identify the virus. mRNA vaccines work by delivering the mRNA to the cytoplasm of the muscle cells. This mRNA is a compiled program executed by the constituents in the cytoplasm of the cell. The result of the execution is the production of spike proteins. 

    To elicit an immune response, enough cells should be invaded and the mRNA has to be delivered to the cytoplasm. The mRNA is pure chemistry and can be very well understood by people in that field. The chemical formula is a copy of the chemical formula of the spike protein found in the SCV2. The immune response peaks in about 2 weeks time based on the present dosage. Increasing the dosage would improve the response times, but would also result in such a great immune response that it would start attacking the healthy cells also. This is the reason that the second dose is given after a gap of a month or so. The second jab also helps in creating memory cells which stay in the body for a long time, maybe enough for a lifetime. 

    The optimum dosage has been finalized based on the 3 phases of vaccine development. The medium through which the mRNA is delivered to the cell is though lipid solution which bonds easily with the cell membrane and allows the entry of the mRNA into the cytoplasm. Here we can have issues. One is the allergy of the individual to the lipid solution used to deliver the mRNA. If the person is allergic then the boding does not happen between the lipid solution and the cell membrane which stops the mRNA to enter the cytoplasm. Since the mRNA enters the cytoplasm and does not have to deal with the nucleus it is clear that it does not alter the host DNA contained in the nucleus of the cell.

Adenovirus based vaccine:

    The most known ones are the Astrazeneca and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Trillions of adenovrirus are cultivated in a controlled lab environment. The DNA of this virus is altered to result in the following

a. The DNA part which allows it to duplicate is edited out.
b. The chemically formulated compiled code for producing the spike protein in the form of a DNA is added to the original adenovirus DNA strand.
c. Its infecting capability is intact.

    The viruses are then transferred to an injection medium. In summary, live viruses are injected into the human body through the vaccine jab, but crippled as mentioned above. So, if 25 billion viruses are injected, then they stay 25 billion and cannot replicate. Once injected, the adenovirus clings on to a muscle cell and transfers the DNA into the nucleus of the host cell. The vaccine makers are telling that though the DNA enters the host cell it does not interact with the host DNA. Once inside the DNA is converted to mRNA and then moves out of the nucleus into the cytoplasm. From here the procedure of making the spike proteins and generation of immune response is the same. 

    There are some issues here. When the live attenuated adenovirus is injected, there are chances that the human body produces immune response for the virus itself. This will kill the virus before it delivers the DNA payload. This is the exact reason why the astrazeneca vaccine did not work for people in South Africa and all the doses were returned back. This is because, the people in this country are already exposed to this variant of adenovirus and already have antibodies developed which will kill the virus once they are injected. This vaccine works only if the virus is unknown to the human body. There have also been instances of blood clots and other related issues in some countries while in some countries the issues are minimal in this regard.

De-activated SCV2 vaccine:

    This is the most simple and the most straightforward type of vaccine considering the fact that the methodology is used for various classic vaccines like the small pox. So, you cultivate SCV2 in the lab. Totally de-activate them. Put them in an injection solution. Inject this into the muscle cells. The body will produce immune response to various facets of the virus composition. So, this seems to be the best possible solution. 

    Yes. However, there are some issues. It is costly to manufacture. It cannot be manufactured quickly in large scale. The quality constraints are very high. Every jab should be free of any live virus, otherwise the result can be catastrophic. The quality procedure should have a testing procedure to ensure that all the batches of the vaccine, every drop of it, does not have any live virus. The most well known is the Covaxin. There are others being used and I am afraid of even naming them since I dont trust them, the trust is lesser than the size of the virus.

Chemically fabricated spike proteins:

    This method of preparing the vaccine is the cheapest. The most important one is the one from Biological E(Named Corbevax). Here the spike proteins are fabricated in a lab. These proteins in an injection medium is delivered to the muscle cell. The body develops immune response to the spike proteins. Instead of the human body producing the spike proteins and then expecting an immune response, here we are doing the job of making the spike protein in the lab.

    The purpose of the vaccines are to produce immune response to the UID of the virus and to ensure that enough memory cells are created which remember this UID and be ready with the necessary immunity response when dealing with a real SCV2.

    Thanks to all the virologists and all the hard working health professionals for developing a vaccine in such a short time. Condolences to all the people succumbing to this virus. Everybody alive, kindly wear your masks properly and try to learn the "mask etiquette" properly. Get your vaccine shots. Dont forget that all the vaccines require a minimum of 2 weeks to create an immune response. The first three days of taking a vaccine shot are crucial. The immune system will be at its most crippled. Kindly stay at home for these three to four days. You might have a light fever. Stat away from alcohol and smoking for a minimum of two months from your second jab.

The same post on the fediverse:   https://qua.name/zbqmle9wsf

PS: An example for a virus which alters the host DNA is the HIV

Profiteering from vaccines funded by tax payers money

    Majority of the governments funded the research and development of the vaccines which have yielded positive results. The first thing to talk here is that the governments money is the tax payers money. Whatif the investments made by the government did not yield results? Well, the funding from for the various companies would have evaporated. All the infrastructure developed as a consequence would have been wasted. However, majority of the vaccines funded have been succesful. Lucky taxpayers, Ha. Let us now see what is happening after this success. Now, the corporations want to make profit out of it. 

    Either the governments are naive or are in bed with these corporations. When the government agreed to bear all the risks of failure, cant the government add another clause for success? The clause for success would be to produce and sell the vaccines on cost of production and distribution only. The distribution, can again be taken up by the government, if the corporations feel that it is not strong point. So, the cost of production of the vaccine should be the selling price of the vaccine.

    However, the corporations and governments have different ideas. The corporations, particularly pharmaceuticals are seeing a cash cow. Majority of the vaccines are based on some information of the crown of the virus. As the virus updates the constituents of the crown, the information provided by the vaccine into the body becomes outdated. So, for every major mutation wherein the chemical formula of the crown changes in a major way, the human body cannot identify it as a virus, so the corporations are free to now produce an updated vaccine with this updated chemical structure. This can be an ifinite loop. This money source will become something like water, which is abundantly available and available whenever you are thirsty. 

    Why am I now talking corporations and governments, Well, that is the correct way. In fact you can combine both these terms and you will not find any difference at all. Let me give you an example. One vaccine vendor states the cost of vaccine in a particular country. When there is a backlash from the public, what does the government do? Well it decided to absorb certain portion of the price stated by the corporation. This decision was taken in split second. Why, elections are under way and it can have an adverse effect on the results. No communication happened between the government and the corporation. No discussions held. Well, is the public happy. Yes, why not? But, this is not as easy as it appears. You see, the government does not receive money from the gods. Whatever, the government has decided to absorb is the money from the tax payers. It is as good as paying what the corporation was asking.

Now, what is the point of investing and supporting the entire excersize of design and development of the vaccine with public money and the same is sold to the public on profit. It is not wrong, if you have developed a comfort product. In this case you have produced a vaccine. This particular vaccine should be out of the profit strategy. You first ensure that you have enough people on the planet. Corporations and goverments dont exist in vaccum. They are agian people. But as the famous phrase goes "..Some people are more equal..". 

    The reason for profit has been touted as the inputs for increasing the outputs further. Instead of the profit margin, the government can decide whether this increase in production is justifiable. Instead, the government can support other manufacturers who already have the majority of the capabilities for producing such a vaccine by giving them just enough support to produce the vaccine. This will result in investment in that corporation and bring it upto a standard wherein it can be competitive. And, competition is always better.

Profiteering from a vaccine funded by the taxpayers money for the survival of the taxpayer is murder and nothing else.

My rants on the sars-cov-2 pandemic

Disclaimer: The words below are "my" rants. I am not a Doctor, chemist or a  Biologist. I am an Engineer. So, there may be mistakes. Do your homework like I have done mine. I dont vouch for authenticity of the matter in the links provided.

     Plenty has been written about the birth and spread of Covid 19. Plenty more than any other pandemic the earth has ever seen. There are already books on the origins and the spread of the virus. They also speak of the spineless governments of the world. The pandemic has had its share of false news and conspiracy theories ranging from 

1. The virus was already existing 

2. It is the same as the normal cold virus 

3. Pharma companies along with the governments have blown it out of proportion

4. Pharma companies wanted to move the people away from usual way of administering medicines to RNA/DNA medicines 

5. Some other businessmen wanted to reduce the population of the world 

6. Pharma industry was not getting enough grants from the governments of the world to shift medicines to RNA/DNA based and ....... 

https://www.livescience.com/common-cold-coronaviruses-t-cells-covid-19-immunity.html 

    The above link tries to explain why the sars-cov-2 virus does not impact certain people. It also talks about our immune system and how it gets trained by one variant of a similar virus and can produce the necessary actions required to nullify the effects of the virus. So, what about a human who has not contacted any related virus. Well, as per the link, that particular person is at risk. If that is so, Americans normally had a vaccine every year for the influenza virus and yet they are one of the most affected countries in terms of percentage of death and infections. First thing is the influenza and the covid virus are of a different class. The antibodies developed for the influenza virus will not(may not) help in fighting the covid 19 variant. 

https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-the-difference-between-influenza-and-covid-19u 

There, lets us stop the discussion regarding the similarities between them. What about the class of corona virus, were they already existing? Yes. As per the link below 

https://www.healthline.com/health/coronavirus-types

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2021/01/covid-19-will-likely-be-with-us-forever-heres-how-well-live-with-it/

     There have been two well known and documented class of "corona" virus. When we talk about corona virus, we are talking about a class of virus, with a spiked protein cover around the viral payload. These two instances have been contained by isolation and quarantine. These were not spread by asymptomatic humans. If we already know about the corona virus and we contained the previous two, how did we end up in a global pandemic. 

    This can be attributed to the carelessness of the governments of the world. The governments governed by the corporations decided that the aviation industry cannot be stopped. They decided that, the best way to cover this up is to remain silent. May be in many other cases, it might have worked. However, it did not work out in this case. When all the nationalist/jingoist mindsets have been satisfied, the news was allowed into the open. 

    By now SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes covid 19 was taken everywhere across the globe. The main attribute for this wide spread is that the asymptomatic people were the major spreaders. This aspect of this variant, is what makes it stand apart in the corona series. The damage by the viral load are very similar and attack the respiratory system, the most, with other aspects being discovered as we move ahead in time. If the virus spread was isolated at origin, like the previous two cases, we could have stopped the spread and this blog post wouldn't have existed. 

    Time is a *^%^h. This would be one more instance of a corona virus isolated in a particular geographic place and affect a few 100 people. It is very difficult to gauge the importance of an individual in this business minded planet. It is like this planet has been outsourced and business has to run at any cost, even if the last human is erased. It is like the next batch of humans are toiling somewhere else in a similar manner and all the business will shift to the next planet after the end of the last human on this planet. 

    The lockdowns, or worldwide isolation and quarantine appeared like an eye wash and half hearted, last resort plan. People were moving and the virus was already taken to all the countries across the globe. This isolation and quarantine works only if applied on a scale taken up on the previous known variants of the corona virus. Lockdowns are "face savers" for the politicians and the businessmen. There is no scientific/economical backing for a global lockdown except a political/business perspective. 

    Now, let us come to the treatment. I dont know why the medical companies gave up on treatment and focused only on a vaccine. I dont know the logic/economical aspect of this decision and we dont have a treatment as of date. But, vaccines have been cleared and have been administered to lakhs based on studies on thousands in a very short time. Majority of the vaccines are like proof of concept and highly advanced science of gene editing and precise chemistry of RNA. Reading about the RNA/DNA vaccines, is like reading a fantasy book. It reads like science fiction. If we can do this much for producing a vaccine, how difficult is to use the same technology to do something bad. Dont get me started by denying this. We are not far away, wherein, DNA/RNA jabs with blueprints of all the known viruses will be injected into the human body. It is like an attack dictionary on Missile warning systems. The approach for these vaccines is to generate antibodies for the spike protein. Now, this approach can fail once there is a change in this, in a drastic way. Yes the virus can mutate in many ways. What if, the spike mutates?

    The medical industry took this route by telling that the traditional way of making a vaccine by killing the virus and then injecting this into the human body is time consuming. This is totally %#^*^t. We already have vaccines made from this method and also cleared for use. The major advantage with this approach is we are giving a hint to our immune system about nearly all the properties of this virus. So, this would generate antibodies for many of the chemical combinations present in the virus. 

    The RNA/DNA methodology of making medicines is a great method for big pharma for getting a tight grip on the medicines. This will nearly kill the generics industry. Two recently cleared DNA/RNA vaccines make a statement that the DNA/RNA in the human cells are not touched. Can a normal human, know whether this is true? If DNA/RNA is the methodology of administering medicines, then, governments need to wakeup and ensure that enough competition is fostered and all the developments are available in public domain. It is not wrong, even if the governments start investing in state owned research facilities and upgrade them to the same capabilities as big pharma. In this way we can ensure that there is a lot of testing and availability of these advances are available to the common man. 

    The most interesting take from this pandemic is the polarization of people across the world. The main reason is that big pharma is not good at explaining the cause and the effect. It is like explaining light to the last animal in evolution which had not felt light around it. Our belief systems, our blind beliefs, our limited education, our limited brain usage, our limitation as a human being, has showcased beautifully. It is very interesting to listen to all the conclusions and the reason for these conclusions regarding the pandemic. No two individuals in the same home share the same idea about the pandemic. Many people are convinced that Europeans and Americans are dying of Covid 19 because their immune system is not as strong as their Asian counterpart. This class is forgetting that it originated in Asia and the highest number of deaths happened in Asia. This would have made Russel peters so angry that he would have to change the portion of his standup comedy where he talks about an instance of him landing at Mumbai Airport for the first time and welcomed with smell of shit. 

    We have politicians feeling for the dead, at the least. No corporation has stopped working or repented for any death of their workers. The politicians feel for the dead but are not ready to consider universal healthcare as an option. What is the use of feeling for the dead, when you did not feel for the living? This is the same in all businesses. The plentiful Human resource at its disposal make the business not at all concerned about the people dead with a known reason. People die every minute for a plenty of reasons, but when they die for a reason which the whole world knows may happen is what makes the death more sick. In fact majority of the work available in the world is broken to such an extent that you just have to plugin a new human to do that job. This is what is making the corporations not to take any serious thought towards the pandemic. 

    The medical profession is also at its most liberal best. Any complication can be labelled a "covid 19" case. Stop, dont draw your daggers, this statement was for medical practitioners who have done it or on planning to do it. How am I making this statement so confidently. Well, nobody is allowed to see or touch the patient. He is packed completely and burnt without any second opinion. So, what I am telling is it is very much possible, has been done and can be done. 

    There is one more issue regarding non believers. They are so pissed off by the care taken by the people who believe that there is a virus. Like the non believers who throw the caution to the wind, there is a population who believe that yes, we have a pandemic at hand. Of course there is another population which is exactly in between. They wear their mask below the chin. Never was their hands. These people will wear the mask when they hear some bad news regarding people whom they knew. It will be momentary, maybe for a few days. These people are not bothered about the complete believers or complete non-believers. The problem is with the non-believers. They will make fun of the middlemen and the complete believers alike. The believers will not make fun of the non-believers but are worried that this group will get them affected. They believers are angry on the other two groups. 

    The reason for the hue and cry created by the spread of sars-cov-2 is that, the human body might not detect it as a virus and fight it with enough fervor similar to a virus database it maintains. As time passed we got to know that a major portion of humanity had this virus in their immune database. However, one more issue which caused such widespread attention and lockdown is the fact that asymptomatic people were spreading it. And the virus once in the air, lived a very long time. All this information led to the situation we are today. 

    The good news is that, contrary to initial belief, the human body did fight the virus and many people did develop immunity. Now, the vaccines are here to help people with lesser immunity by adding the info of this virus into their database. This is the reason, I am of the opinion that recipients of the vaccine should be checked for antibodies and the situation of the immune system for this virus before vaccinating them. If they have already developed sufficient amount of immunity, it is of no use to vaccinate them. And we dont know what would be the result of such an action. But, nowhere this is being tested. In fact, every person to be vaccinated should be checked thoroughly for his medical history and compare it with the side effects of the vaccine. Based on satisfactory study and heuristics, the person should be suggested for vaccination. 

 

    Proteins are made of amino acids. And the "some" amino acids on the spike of sars-cov-2 virus are similar to the ones found on the placenta. In fact "some" of these amino acids can be found in other proteins in the human body. A vaccine based on this protein might induce antibodies against the protein with "some" similar amino acids. There is no proof for this. Hence there is no proof to stat that a similarly designed vaccine will induce antibodies attacking the placenta and in turn render woman infertile. There is no proof for this. 

    The human genome is made of DNA. The mRNA vaccine is not supposed to enter the nucleous of the cell. The DNA based vaccines which put the DNA of the spike protein into the cell are not supposed to interfere with the Human DNA. The chances of the vaccine altering the DNA is nearly nil. We dont know what will be the result of that small chance and we dont have any proof if it might happen at all. 

     Whatever be the truth, The wearing of re-usable masks have man advantages. During your commute you are going to filter out at least some of the dust. It will protect your face from the cold breeze. And of course, you are going to be protected from other viruses floating in the air. The other aspect we are practicing is what is difficult to maintain and that is physical distancing. But it is also has many advantages. This will avoid crowded meetings and only the required personnel will be called. This will require plenty of advance planning and to the point discussions. And please kindly use re-usable masks. The planet is already strained to the max with the plastic piling up.