The CDC, FDA, and multiple pharma companies raced toward the development of a new class of Covid-19 vaccines in 2020 in the hope of reducing the spread of the virus.
According to the CDC’s own website on “Understanding how vaccines work”, this statement appears in a block at the top of the page:
Vaccines prevent diseases that can be dangerous, or even deadly. Vaccines greatly reduce the risk of infection by working with the body’s natural defenses to safely develop immunity to disease.
This is an interesting statement. It is an acknowledgment that a vaccine can “prevent” diseases. This may be true if the disease does not mutate to a new and different form.
The current class of Covid-19 vaccines was developed as protection against the original Covid-19 virus.
A study involving the original Moderna Covid-19 vaccine was published in December 2020, almost a year after the first original Covid-19 infections were noted — but also after the first “variants” began to appear.
Variants? Yes. These variants indicate changes in the genetic code for the virus itself. And since viruses are not “alive”, their genetic sequences need to be replicated in the body for them to survive.
The Moderna vaccine showed efficacy against the original virus. However, as variants have begun to show up, the FDA admits that the original vaccine may not fully protect against those variants.
The question now becomes whether the same vaccine should be used to protect against a “changed” virus – or whether that same vaccine even can be used to protect against current or subsequent variants.
I’m not going to get deep into the science involved here. There’s plenty of valid information regarding viruses and vaccines from FDA, NIAID, CDC, the WHO, and other similar organizations. Read up and become informed on the actual science.
Let me remind the readers about the 2016-2017 flu season, and reports that the vaccine distributed during that flu season “missed the mark”. Nobody is to blame for this: sometimes a virus mutates before the vaccine is distributed, or the wrong virus is targeted. In 2017, both situations occurred.
So here are some pertinent questions:
- If the Covid-19 virus has been mutating, shouldn’t the vaccine be changed to become more effective against those mutations?
- Is using the same vaccine, but increasing the quantity in the human body, effective?
- We’re beginning to see reports that vaccinated people are coming down with the virus. Is this a failure in the vaccine? Or has the virus mutated so that the original vaccine is no longer fully effective as protection?
- If a new vaccine is required to defend against new strains of the influenza virus, wouldn’t we need a modified vaccine to defend against new strains of the Covid virus?
Should we continue with a policy that appears to be failing: take more and more of the original vaccine in the hope that it will protect us against new variants of the original virus?
Bibliography:
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/conversations/understanding-vacc-work.html
https://theconversation.com/heres-why-the-2017-flu-season-was-so-bad-86605
