By David Bell at Brownstone dot org.
The Seduction of New Revelations
People always seem to need something new, or at least those who consider it important to educate the public think this. Hence, we replace great children's stories, remake movies, and desperately seek to excite people with something that seems more 'now.' Fashions change sometimes for good reasons, and knowledge does expand, but the danger in all this is forgetting the most fundamental truths because they seem a bit old, out-of-date.
The world of Covid, or post-Covid angst, is no different. The public, most of whom took a number of vaccine doses because governments convinced or coerced them to do so, are now confronted with 'bombshell' reports that will 'change everything,' to convince them of their error.
These are then duly refuted (often based on far less evidence) by the other (e.g. pro-vaccination) camp. Updated information is of course important, as informed consent is our main bulwark against medical fascism. However, the scientific and public health community does itself a disservice if it hypes information based on novelty rather than depth.
An attractive story suggested by recurrent breaking news around Covid vaccines (e.g., DNA contamination, integration into host DNA, cancer links) is that we are just discovering unpredictable risks of this quite new and clever class of pharmaceuticals. Under this narrative, the public was not deceived, but simply paid the price of not having had sufficient taxes purloined beforehand to pay the public health industry to be better prepared. The risk of this approach is excusing the deliberate abrogation of basic responsibility, ethics, and decency by the health professions and our governments in the entire act of mass Covid vaccination.
Let us rewind to the end of 2020 and early 2021, what was known, proven, and non-controversial. Irrespective of the important data coming out now, this is what the public most needs to understand, so that they stop trusting medical professionals and public health authorities until the wrong is acknowledged and dealt with.
Designing a Drug to Do What "It Won't"
Modified RNA (mRNA) had not been used on a mass level in humans before. Normal mRNA (messenger RNA or ribonucleic acid) in our bodies is a copy of a segment of our own DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid; our genes) that our cells use to manufacture proteins. Such proteins are then used within the cell or excreted (for example, into the blood as albumin, or cell walls as keratin [our hair]).
This mRNA only lasts hours or days. The mRNA vaccines are modified (one of four bases, uridine, is replaced by pseudouridine). This makes them persist longer than our own mRNA, so that they can produce more protein over a much longer period. Studies have shown that this works, with modified RNA and spike protein detectable weeks or months after injection.
These were not shocking revelations but intended outcomes of drug design. The problem is that the public was told, in 2020 and 2021, that the vaccines act like their own mRNA and rapidly break down. This sounds safer. The public was deliberately misinformed, an unquestionable breach of basic informed consent, to make them more likely to agree to be vaccinated.
When we want a drug to disseminate quickly throughout the body, we often inject it into a muscle. We do this with hydrocortisone to treat allergic reactions, or penicillin to ensure that it spreads quickly to wherever an infection is. Muscles have a lot of tiny blood and lymph vessels that carry injected material to the large vessels from where it is pumped through the body in the bloodstream.
While the lipid nanoparticles enclosing the mRNA vaccines are designed to enter cells quickly, it is inevitable that quite a lot will go far beyond the muscle. Before the Covid vaccines were approved, studies by Pfizer/BioNTech, and presumably by Moderna, using the same lipid but enclosing a fluorescent marker, showed just that. About 25% or so left...