Vaccines ‘Overload’ the Immune System?

Dec 14 2024 The New York Times
Updated - Dec 24 2024 The New York Times
Updated again - Jan 14 2025 The New York Times

There is a piece in the Times about the claims that vaccines overload the immune system. Like it says in the piece, they very clearly do not, especially the modern ones which are used in the 21st century. The link is below. Well worth the few minutes it takes to read it. Definitely worth more than the algorithm driven, brain rot inducing, stuff on social media.

Are Childhood Vaccines ‘Overloading’ the Immune System? No.

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And here is the Dec 24 update, which ends with a quote about the causes of autism; “Whatever it is, it’s not vaccines.”

Research Finds Vaccines Are Not Behind the Rise in Autism. So What Is?

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Update on Jan 14 2025.

Even Adults May Soon Be Vulnerable to ‘Childhood’ Diseases

“Outbreaks among the unvaccinated are a predictable consequence of falling immunization rates. But even vaccinated adults may be vulnerable to some illnesses.”

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Looks like some people did not learn anything from the pandemic.

What would the Covid death toll be by now, without the vaccines? The latest numbers, I think, were over seven million deaths, and over seven hundred million cases. And those numbers are as ‘low’ as they are, because we had the very rapidly developed effective vaccines. Those vaccines saved lives, most likely tens of millions of lives across the globe.

We may need another pandemic to hammer the message home. Bird flu, m-pox, zika, ebola or marburg, or maybe one from the “good old times, when everything was better”, polio, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, cholera or smallpox, or if these are not bad enough, what about The Plague? What will it take for some people to “wake up and smell the coffee”?

The argument that we are somehow “overloading the immune system” is, in my humble opinion, not very thought through, to put it mildly.

We humans, as a species, originally developed in the African jungle. And for tens of thousands of years we lived in caves or huts or communal round houses or other similar places, none of which are exactly known to be clean and hygienic living environments by today’s standards.

You do not have to go too far back in time, when we all were still using outhouses or were living on farms with animals, or in cities with open sewers. During the hot summer of 1858 the great city of London basically came to a standstill due to The Great Stink; the overwhelming stench that radiated from the surface of the River Thames. The river was described at the time by none other than Michael Faraday as “a real sewer”.

If anything, instead of “overloading” the immune system, we in the developed world at least, are “underloading” the immune system. The clean and hygienic environment we live in now, is not the environment our species, including our immune system, developed in. Our bodies developed in an environment where we constantly came into contact with all kinds of pathogens, and our immune system developed to fight those pathogens to keep us healthy and alive.

We are definitely not overloading our immune system with the historically ultra clean environment we live in, or with the extensively researched and tested 21st century vaccines which have far fewer antigens (bits of pathogens) than the previous ones.

We do have more allergies and autoimmune diseases today than “in the good old days”, and one dominant idea is, that our environment is too clean. Our immune system developed to constantly fight pathogens around us, and now that the pathogens are not there anymore, our immune system attacks something it thinks is a pathogen, but which is not, and the result is an autoimmune disease.

We are still the same creatures we were “in the good old days”, but our environment is drastically different. The development in the last hundred or so years has been unprecedented in human history, but we humans, as a species, are still the same creatures we were thousands of years ago.

Evolution is slow, our genes do not radically change from one generation to the next, any fundamental change takes hundreds or thousands of generations. So, we as a species stay pretty much the same as the generations before us.

But if you look at the environment we live in, we definitely have changed it, and we have changed it very fast, and not that long ago. The last naturally occurring Smallpox case was in 1977, and the disease was declared eradicated in 1980. That is not ancient history, that was just over 40 years ago. Two generations ago, or one and a half, in today’s standards.

We still also have polio. We are close to eradicating it, but because of wars and instability, we are not there yet. Measles, chickenpox, mumps and other previously common childhood diseases have not been eradicated, but are kept in check with vaccination programs.

Maybe the whole issue here is the two words in that sentence, “previously common”. Since we do not have first hand experience with these diseases, we start to think that they are not that serious, a mere inconvenience and not something that could potentially kill you.

Then again, I do not think anyone actually really wants to have that first hand experience. My own grandmother was one of eight siblings, of which only two lived long enough to have children of their own, the other six succumbed to the “previously common diseases”. And on top of that, she lost two of her own children to what we today call “preventable diseases”.

Preventable with vaccinations, that is. Her generation had personal experience with these diseases, and saw that vaccines really saved lives. To them this was a question of life and death, and vaccinations were the obvious rational choice. They saw vaccination programs fundamentally change the world they lived in, and the scientists who developed the vaccines, and the doctors who administered them were highly respected.

It is a fact that there are more autoimmune diseases today than before, and maybe there are more diagnoses of autism as well, and that is not just the case of better diagnostic methods. But, rather than blaming thoroughly researched vaccines, and spending money on trying to prove that already debunked science and bogus theories are valid, maybe we should instead use the money to research how the radically changed environment we live in today has affected how our immune system works.

Like it or not, it is a fact that vaccines save lives.

(Maybe if I wrote it in ALL CAPS, it would work better.)

Rats against Tuberculosis

Dec 18 2024 The Guardian

Cheap, smart and efficient: how giant rats are transforming the fight against TB

This is not a story about the sequel for Ratatouille, though it sounds like it would be.

African giant pouched rats are used to detect TB in sputum samples in Tanzania, because of their exceptional sense of smell.

And they are very good at it. Samples that were deemed to be negative in laboratory tests, are sent for secondary screening by the rats, and “52% of initially negative tests are reassessed as positive by the rats”.

The samples are clinically tested again, and “rats are correct in at least 82% of cases”.

They test about 400 samples a week, and have found more than 30.000 “missed” cases so far. Since TB is so infectious, this means at least 300.000 potential infection prevented.

“One untreated person can infect 10-15 people, multiply that by 24,000 people correctly treated, who had been missed through regular tests. These were not just samples, these were lives saved,” says Dr Joseph Soka, a manager at Apopo’s laboratory.

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BTW, these are the same rats which are used in mine detection, they can be trained to sniff out explosives. Link to that story is below,

'Heroic' giant rats sniff out landmines in Tanzania

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Ratatouille was about a rat who loved good food and had an exquisite sense of taste, shouldn’t these African rats get their own movie?

No-pain vaccination

Apr 30th 2024 The BBC

Patch to protect against measles in children shows promise

Vaccinations with no needle and no pain, and it is safe, effective and fast.

Actually this new technology includes a lot of needles, but they are microscopic, and in a patch the size of a normal plaster.

The patch is attached to skin and the microneedles deliver the vaccine through skin.

In a trial with 200 toddlers, the effectiveness of measles vaccine was over 90%, and 100% for rubella; after just one dose.

The patch is easy to use, and can be applied with minimal training, and best of all, especially for developing countries, it does not need cold storage in transportation or storage.

And if and when the next pandemic arrives, this tech will help with the vaccinations, and takes some pressure off from doctors and nurses.

The best medicine?

Aug 28 2023 The Guardian

The best medicine? Study finds laughter is good for heart health

It is a small study, but it

… has demonstrated that having a chuckle causes the tissue inside the heart to expand – and increases oxygen flow around the body.

Patients with coronary artery disease who engaged in a course of laughter therapy had reduced inflammation and better health, the research found. …

“Laughter helps the heart because it releases endorphins, which reduce inflammation and helps the heart and blood vessels relax”… “It also reduces the levels of stress hormones, which place strain on the heart.”

“Laughing helps people feel happier overall, and we know when people are happier they are better at adhering to medication.”

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Well, you can start with the Not so Serious? part of this blog.

Bacteria against Malaria

Aug 4 2023 The BBC

Chance discovery helps fight against malaria

Scientists have found a naturally occurring strain of bacteria which can help stop the transmission of malaria from mosquitoes to humans.

Trials are taking place, and new data suggests the bacteria can reduce a mosquito's parasite load by up to 73%.

"Malaria kills a child every minute. Significant progress has been made in reducing the global burden of malaria, but to get us back on track we need new and innovative tools in the arsenal.

"With a strong innovation pipeline, it is possible to end the threat of malaria in our lifetimes."

Coronavirus - updated May 5th, 2023

This post is a mix of updates and a brief history of the pandemic. This will be updated as needed and has been moved from the Latest section, as of May 5th, as the WHO has declared the global health emergency over.

The numbers below are for confirmed cases and deaths, which means that the real numbers are higher.

The numbers here are not scientifically exact, the idea here is to give a general picture of how the virus situation develops. Not all numbers are from the same source, so some may be a bit higher or lower depending on the source. And time zones may move a milestone to a different date, depending on when the sources are updated.

Keep your vaccinations up to date.

The global health emergency may have ended, but the threat is still there.

And, Good Luck Everyone.

May 5th 2023

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that Covid-19 no longer represents a "global health emergency".

Officially there have been nearly 7 million deaths, but the true figure was likely to be closer to 20 million.

May 1st 2023

US government will end most Covid vaccine mandates and other Covid-19 policies, on May 11th. The virus is still here, but since the start of 2021, deaths have come down by 95% and hospitalisations by 91%.

The pandemic is not over, we are just entering another phase of it.

According to the WHO, there have been worldwide;
nearly 750,000,000 confirmed cases,
over 6,900,000 confirmed deaths,
and more than 13,000,000,000 vaccine doses have been administered.

Winter 2022-23

The was a spike in cases in December, but then the numbers started to consistently go down.

Despite being vaccinated, some people still got seriously ill with Covid. The virus keeps on mutating, but the most serious phase of the pandemic seems to be over.

Autumn 2022

The number of confirmed cases stayed relatively low, and though the virus did not go away, life pretty much returned to normal.

Summer 2022

By the end of the summer the numbers started to come down, the virus still mutates, but it seems that the worst is over.

Mar 7th 2022

UK - A record number of cases in the UK, 4,900,000 have Covid.

Mar 7th 2022

The confirmed death toll in the world from the pandemic reached 6,000,000

Feb 19th 2022

This is the toll of the virus in about two years:
US - 78,300,000 confirmed cases
US - 933,000 confirmed deaths
UK - 18,600,000 confirmed cases
UK - 161,000 confirmed deaths
World - 422,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 5,870,000 confirmed deaths

Feb 4th 2022

US - 900,000 confirmed deaths

Jan 07th 2022

The global number of known cases reached 300,000,000 yesterday, Jan 6th.
It took more than a year to reach 100 million, more than six months to reach 200 million and about five months to reach 300 million.

Jan 03rd 2022

US records 1,080,211 cases in a single day (yes, that is one million in a day).
UK records 200,000 cases.

Dec 29th 2021

Omicron variant emerged in South Africa in late November, and is spreading rapidly.
The US daily record set in January this year for Covid-19 cases is broken.
The US seven-day average was more than 267,000 yesterday.
US - 53,168,862 confirmed cases
US - 819,201 confirmed deaths
World - 282,859,605 confirmed cases
World - 5,413,189 confirmed deaths

Dec 14th 2021

US - 800,000 confirmed deaths

Nov 21st 2021

US - 2021 death toll surpasses the toll of 2020. There are now 770,800 confirmed deaths in total, and the 2020 toll was 385,343.

Aug 29th 2021

US - The U.S. reaches 100,000 average daily Covid hospitalizations for the first time since winter’s peak.
US - 156,886 new cases, that is up 20% in two weeks (=14-day-change)
US - 38,875,807 confirmed cases
US - 637,356 confirmed deaths

Jul 26th 2021

US - The number of Covid-19 cases across the US may have been undercounted by as much as 60%, researchers at the University of Washington have found. Covid cases in US may have been undercounted by 60%, study shows

Jul 22nd 2021

US - Life expectancy dropped by year and a half in 2020, due mostly to Covid-19, but drug deaths also contributed to the drop, which is the biggest since WW II.
India - More that 4300 ‘black fungus’ deaths on record so far, and most likely that is a fraction of the real number.

Jul 21st 2021

New infections were going down, but case counts are rising again, due to both the Delta variant and vaccine skepticism. (C.D.C. - Delta variant accounts for 83% of new cases in the US.)
US - 161,500,000 or 49% of population fully vaccinated, but vaccination rate is slowing.
US - 38,000 new cases, that is 195% up from two weeks ago
US - 34,159,723 confirmed cases
US - 608,717 confirmed deaths
World - 500,000 new cases, up 26% in two weeks, bringing the total to 191,300,000 confirmed cases
World - 4,100,000 confirmed deaths
(India’s true pandemic death toll is likely to be over 3,000,000, according to a study by the Center for Global Development, a Washington research institute.)

Jun 15th 2021

Brazil - 500,000 confirmed deaths

Jun 15th 2021

US - 600,000 confirmed deaths
US - 33,500,000 confirmed cases
India - 377,000 confirmed deaths
Brazil - 488,000 confirmed deaths

May 6th 2021

India - 410,000 new cases in 24 hours, a world record, and 3,980 deaths, a daily record
India - 20,600,000 confirmed cases
India -226,000 confirmed deaths

Apr 28th 2021

India - 360,960 new cases in 24 hours, another world record, and 3,293 deaths, a daily record
India - 18,000,000 confirmed cases
India -200,000 confirmed deaths

Apr 22nd 2021

India - 340,000 new cases in 24 hours, another world record
India - 16,500,000 confirmed cases
India - 189,000 confirmed deaths

Apr 22nd 2021

India - 332,730 new cases in 24 hours, another world record
India - 16,000,000 confirmed cases
India - 187,000 confirmed deaths

Apr 21st 2021

India - 310,000 new cases in 24 hours, a new world record
World - 3,000,000 confirmed deaths
World - 142,000,000 confirmed cases

Apr 20th 2021

India - 295,000 new cases in one day
India - 15,600,000 confirmed cases
India - 183,000 confirmed deaths
Turkey - 362 deaths and 62,000 cases in 24 hours
Turkey - 4,450,000 confirmed cases
Turkey - 37,000 confirmed deaths

Apr 18th 2021

Half of US adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and about a third are fully vaccinated.
US - 130,000,000 vaccinated, including
US - 84,000,000 fully vaccinated

Apr 11th 2021

India - 168,000 new cases, another daily record

Apr 10th 2021

India - 152,879 new cases, a daily record
India - 13,300,000 confirmed cases
India - 169,000 confirmed deaths

Apr 6th 2021

Brazil - Yet another record of 4,185 daily deaths
Brazil - 337,000 confirmed deaths
Brazil - 13,100,000 confirmed cases

Apr 4th 2021 - Easter Sunday

US - 30,700,000 confirmed cases
US - 555,000 confirmed deaths
US - 106,000,000+ vaccinated, including
US - 61,000,000+ fully vaccinated
About a third of the US population has received a shot.
India reported 100,000 new cases a day, the third country to do so, after the US and Brazil. India has a total of 12,500,000 cases.

Apr 3rd 2021

On the positive side:
US - on average 3,000,000+ people vaccinated per day, and
US - 4,000,000+ doses of vaccine in one day on Apr 3rd
But, there are worrying signs: The average number of new US cases is up 19% in two weeks, and virus variants are spreading.

Apr 2nd 2021

US - 30,500,000 confirmed cases
US - 553,000 confirmed deaths
On the positive side:
US - 101,000,000 vaccinated, including
US - 58,000,000 fully vaccinated
UK - 36,600,000 vaccinated, including
UK - 5,200,000 fully vaccinated
47% of UK population has received the first dose

Mar 30th 2021

US - 550,000 confirmed deaths

Mar 28th 2021

Mexico’s pandemic death toll revised up by the government to 321,000
US - 93,000,000+ vaccinated, including
US - 51,000,000+ fully vaccinated

Mar 26th 2021

Brazil - Another record of 3,650 daily deaths

Mar 25th 2021

US - 30,000,000 confirmed cases
Brazil - 300,000 confirmed deaths
Mexico - 200,000 confirmed deaths

Mar 23rd 2021

Brazil - Record number of 3,251 daily deaths
Brazil - 12,000,000 confirmed cases
Brazil - 298,900 confirmed deaths

Mar 21st 2021

BBC News: Record day for UK vaccinations
“…half of all UK adults - some 26,853,407 people - have now received a first dose of a vaccine.”
And over 2,100,000 fully vaccinated

Mar 20th 2021 - Spring Equinox - Nowruz

US - 29,750,000 confirmed cases
US - 540,000 confirmed deaths
World - 122,500,000 confirmed cases
World - 2,700,000 confirmed deaths
News from Brazil
Brazil - 11,800,000 confirmed cases
Brazil - 290,000 confirmed deaths
On the positive side:
US - 74,500,000 vaccinated, including
US - 43,000,000 fully vaccinated
On average, more than 2,250,000 doses of vaccines are given per day in the US.
World - 420,000,000 vaccine doses administered

Mar 14th 2021

US - 29,500,000 confirmed cases
US - 532,000 confirmed deaths
On the positive side:
US - 70,000,000 vaccinated, including
US - 37,000,000 fully vaccinated
On average, more than 2,500,000 doses of vaccines are given per day in the US.

Mar 8th 2021

US - 60,000,000 vaccinated, including
US - 31,500,000 fully vaccinated
On average, more than 2,000,000 doses of vaccines are given per day in the US.
World - 309,000,000 vaccine doses administered

Mar 7th 2021

US - 29,000,000 confirmed cases
US - 524,000 confirmed deaths
World - 116,500,000 confirmed cases
World - 2,587,000 confirmed deaths
On the positive side:
US - 59,000,000 vaccinated, including
US - 30,000,000 fully vaccinated
World - 289,500,000 vaccinated (That is 3.8% of the world’s population.)

Mar 1st 2021

US - 50,000,000 vaccinated, including
US - 25,500,000 fully vaccinated

Feb 28th 2021

US - 28,500,000 confirmed cases
US - 511,000 confirmed deaths
World - 113,500,000 confirmed cases
World - 2,500,000 confirmed deaths
On the positive side:
US - 48,500,000 vaccinated, including
US - 24,000,000 fully vaccinated
World - 235,000,000 vaccinated

Feb 22nd 2021

US - 500,000 confirmed deaths
World - 112,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 2,485,000 confirmed deaths
On the positive side:
US - 44,000,000 vaccinated, including
US - 19,400,000 fully vaccinated

Feb 19th 2021

US - 28,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 111,000,000 confirmed cases

Feb 17th 2021

World - 110,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 2,430,000 confirmed deaths
On the positive side:
US - 40,000,000 vaccinated, including
US - 15,000,000 fully vaccinated

Feb 12th 2021

US - 27,500,000 confirmed cases
US - 480,000 confirmed deaths
World - 108,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 2,380,000 confirmed deaths
News from the UK:
UK - 4,000,000 confirmed cases
UK - 116,000 confirmed deaths
UK has the highest number of deaths in Europe. (And, as mentioned below on Jan 26th, UK numbers are minimums.)
On the positive side:
US - 36,000,000 vaccinated, including
US - 12,000,000 fully vaccinated
UK - 14,000,000+ vaccinated

Feb 8th 2021

US - 27,000,000 confirmed cases
US - 463,000 confirmed deaths
World - 106,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 2,300,000 confirmed deaths
On the positive side:
US - 31,600,000 vaccinated, including
US - 9,100,000 fully vaccinated

Feb 7th 2021

South Africa suspends Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine rollout - study reports ‘minimal’ protection against variant B.1.351.

Jan 31st 2021

US - 26,000,000 confirmed cases
US - 440,000 confirmed deaths
On the positive side:
US - 25,000,000 have received at least one dose of vaccine, including
US - 5,400,000 who are fully vaccinated

Jan 30th 2021

UK -The Guardian January's daily UK death toll averages more than 1,000

Jan 26th 2021

News from UK:
UK - 3,700,000 confirmed cases, and
UK - 100,000 confirmed deaths
(UK figures include only people who have died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus, so unfortunately this is a minimum number. Some report 100,000 deaths already on Jan 7th.)

Jan 26th 2021

World - 100,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 2,100,000 confirmed deaths

Jan 23rd 2021

US - 25,000,000 confirmed cases
US - 414,000 confirmed deaths

From The New York Times (emphasis is mine)

Experts say that as staggering as that figure is, it significantly understates the true number of people in the country who have been infected and the scope of the nation’s failure to contain the spread of the virus.

Starting with the first reported case in the country last January, it took the United States more than nine months to reach 10 million cases.

By the last day of 2020, the country had added another 10 million cases in just seven weeks. Getting to 25 million took about three more weeks.

(It took the US 4 days to add 1,000,000 cases from Jan 19th to 23rd.)

Jan 19th 2021

US - 24,000,000 confirmed cases
US - 400,000 confirmed deaths
World - 95,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 2,000,000 confirmed deaths

In about a week we will reach 100,000,000 worldwide cases, and 25,000,000 in the US.

These numbers mean that the US has roughly 25% of confirmed cases and roughly 20% of confirmed deaths.

Jan 1st 2021

US - 20,000,000 confirmed cases

Dec 23rd 2020

US - 11,000,000 confirmed cases

Dec 14th 2020

US - 300,000 confirmed deaths

Nov 26th 2020

UK - 75,000 confirmed deaths

Nov 21st 2020

US - 10,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 50,000,000 confirmed cases

Oct 30th 2020

US - 9,000,000 confirmed cases

Sep 22nd 2020

US - 200,000 confirmed deaths

Aug 31st 2020

US - 6,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 25,000,000 confirmed cases

Aug 9th 2020

US - 5,000,000 confirmed cases

Jul 8th 2020

US - 3,000,000 confirmed cases

Jun 10th 2020

US - 2,000,000 confirmed cases

May 27th 2020

US - 100,000 confirmed deaths

May 23rd 2020

UK - 50,000 confirmed deaths

Apr 26th 2020

World - 2,800,000 confirmed cases
World - 200,000 confirmed deaths

Apr 2nd 2020

World - 1,000,000 confirmed cases
World - 51,000 confirmed deaths

Mar 26th 2020 - The US becomes the country hardest hit by the pandemic

US - 80,000 confirmed cases
US - 1,000 confirmed deaths

Mar 11th 2020

WHO declares a pandemic

Feb 29th 2020

US - First US death reported; this was thought to be the first at the time.

Feb 14th 2020

First confirmed death in Europe, in France.

Feb 6th 2020

US - First confirmed death (confirmed on Apr 21st)

Feb 2nd 2020

First confirmed death outside China (what was considered first at the time)

Jan 31st 2020

WHO declares Coronavirus a global health emergency.

Jan 30th 2020

UK - First confirmed death in the UK (confirmed in August)

Jan 21st 2020

US - First confirmed case in the US.

Jan 11th 2020

China reports first death.

Dec 2019

The virus emerges in a market in Wuhan, China.

Unvaccinated filling ICUs

Nov 21 2021 The Guardian

ICU is full of the unvaccinated – my patience with them is wearing thin

The unvaccinated are hoarding the ICUs and taking up valuable resources which should be available for the normal operations of the hospitals. A quote from the piece makes this clear:

If everyone got vaccinated, hospitals would be under much less pressure; this is beyond debate. Your wait for your clinic appointment/operation/diagnostic test/A&E department would be shorter. Your ambulance would arrive sooner. Reports of the pressure on the NHS are not exaggerated, I promise you.

And the basic message is sensible and realistic.

Fundamentally though, for me, it comes down to this. I can’t think of a single case offhand of a person who was previously fit and healthy who has ended up needing intensive care after being fully vaccinated. It may not stop you from catching Covid. But it can save your life when you do.

The writer of this piece is anonymous, and The Guardian desciption is: “The writer is an NHS respiratory consultant who works across a number of hospitals.”

A 'game changer' for Malaria?

Jul 28 2021 from The Guardian

Malaria kills about 400,000 people a year, more than half of them children, and there were about 229,000,000 cases in 2019.

Genetic engineering test with mosquitoes ‘may be game changer’ in eliminating malaria

Extract from the article, gives the basic picture:

Scientists have successfully wiped out a population of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes by using a radical form of genetic engineering to render the females infertile – in the most advanced and largest ever test of use of the technology to fight the disease.

As well as bringing fresh hope in the fight against one of the world’s biggest killers, the study lays the foundations for further trials of gene-drive technology, which could mean self-destroying mosquitoes being released into the wild within 10 years.

Malaria has been around for ages, and remains one of the biggest killers, about time we did something about it.

¿What if we poured the same resources in fighting Malaria, that we are using to control Covid-19?

Vaccine for Malaria?

Apr 23rd 2021

From The Guardian Oxford Malaria vaccine proves highly effective in Burkina Faso trial

Scientists at the Jenner Institute of Oxford University, where the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine was also invented, have developed a Malaria vaccine, which shows 77% efficacy in a trial of 450 children.

Malaria kills about 400,000 people a year, including about 270,000 children, and infects millions more. The WHO estimates that in 2018 there were more than 200,000,000 new cases, which caused lost work days, lost days for education, and costs for health care. The economic impact is estimated to be $12,000,000,000 (that is $12 billion) per year for Africa, where the majority of cases occur.

A vaccine for this devastating disease would be a huge achievement, and would save lives and help lift people and whole countries out of poverty.

Larger trials will be conducted in the near future, we will just have to hope that this vaccine works well in them as well.

To Share or Not To Share

Apr 22nd 2021

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, writes in The New York Times about fighting the pandemic. And he has some very good suggestions.

I Run the W.H.O., and I Know That Rich Countries Must Make a Choice

As some countries, the developed, are vaccinating at great speed, some, the developing, are left behind.

Nothing new under the sun…

The pandemic is, by definition, a global problem, so it obviously needs global solutions. As Dr. Tedros writes the mechanisms and agreements exist, we, i.e. the developed countries, just need to follow them.

Fixing things in your own country helps, but it does not solve the problem. It does help you get elected again, so it is understandable that politicians focus on that, but from a global perspective is it really acceptable?

The pandemic will not go away until we tackle it with a global attitude and share vaccines, technology and resources. We should have done this already, but we missed it, and the second best time is now.

If we do not share now, we should ask ourselves:

If we do not share now, then when?
If we do not share now, then who will?

We are survivors

April 29th 2020 - during the Covid-19 pandemic

“When you’re going through hell, keep going.” - Winston Churchill

The news of this global outbreak is not good; as of this writing, there are over 3 million cases, and over 200.000 deaths due to the virus. And these numbers are the “confirmed” ones.

Researchers are saying that the real number of infections is probably a lot higher, but no one knows for sure since we have not tested everyone, and have no capacity to do that, at least not now. We have most likely missed many cases because it seems a lot of the cases are asymptomatic, and many people only suffer a mild version and have not been tested. This means that the number of confirmed cases may be just the tip of the iceberg.

A vaccine will be available sometime in the future, but it will take months to develop, test, manufacture and distribute in the quantities needed globally. And then we have to actually reach and vaccinate enough people to get to herd immunity.

Doctors are getting more experienced every day in treating patients with this virus, but it is a steep learning curve, and they do not know enough about the virus yet. Treatment is getting better and catching up, but the virus seems to be faster and trickier.

The warmer summer weather may make a difference and diminish the number of infections, but that is by no means certain. And in any case, the virus may come back in the autumn at the same time with the seasonal flu, and overwhelm the hospitals again.

The unfortunate fact is that more people will get sick, and more people will die. But, despite all this, there is hope. A vaccine will be available, doctors will find ways to treat the patients, we will reach herd immunity, things will get better; eventually. There will be light at the end of the tunnel, there always is in pandemics, we just need to keep going as best we can. We just need to endure the lockdowns, the social distancing, the sickness, the deaths, the economic fallout; it will all pass one day.

I don’t know if I will survive this pandemic, and I don’t know if you will; I sure hope we both will. But, what I do know is that we will survive this. After all, we are humans, we are resilient and we are the descendants of survivors.

There have been countless pandemics, wars and disasters throughout history, but here we still are. Our ancestors survived among other calamities; the plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, measles, polio, influenza, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, floods, fires, locust swarms, famines, and if that is not enough, god knows how many genocides and wars.

The obvious fact is; if you can read this, your ancestors survived all that and probably more. How did they? Maybe something in their genes protected them, maybe something in their environment was just right, maybe they were lucky, maybe they were in the right place at the right time, maybe it was something else. Probably a combination of all of the above, and definitely some resilience.

Whatever it was, it enabled them to grow up, live their lives and have children, and maybe pass that something on to the next generation, and eventually to us. We may or may not have something special in our genetic code, but we definitely are the descendants of resilient survivors.

I know I am. I was not exactly a healthy baby, I had infant jaundice, got an exchange blood transfusion, did not breathe properly and had an extra finger; but here I am decades later. There had also been a baby before me, but he had something wrong with his lungs and unfortunately only lived for a day. Then again, if he had lived, I would not have been born. God (or depending on your beliefs Gods) moves in mysterious ways, I guess.

In my parents generation during WWII, my mother lost her twin and her baby sister to tuberculosis, and my father’s sister died of typhoid fever. The war also killed my father’s father and three of his uncles. In the previous generation on my mother’s side, out of eight children four reached adulthood, and only two lived long enough to have children of their own, tuberculosis took the rest. And the picture is not much different in the older generations.

Sounds tragic now, and was tragic then, but this was not that unusual at the time. And what is not unusual is normal. Tragedies like this were probably the normal life experience for most people throughout most of human history. But they did not give up, they kept going as best they could, if they had not, we would not be here.

Medicine has come a long way, thank god. We have vaccines, we can diagnose, cure and treat diseases, and we have even eradicated smallpox, and are on the road to eradicating other diseases as well. Our societies on the whole function better, public health problems can be solved, and information flows infinitely faster than before. So we are in a much better situation than our ancestors were, to deal with pandemics and disease.

But since we humans share this planet with other life, including pathogens, there will certainly be other infectious diseases and other pandemics in the future. When they come, we may or may not be better prepared for them, we humans are really good at forgetting lessons from history. Instead of preparing and planning for future pandemics, we may grow complacent as a society and forget what this Covid-19 pandemic was like. If that happens we just have to hope that we will have some of that same resilience that our ancestors had during their bad times. The good news is, why wouldn’t we have, they were our ancestors after all.

There is no sugarcoating this, Covid-19 is a serious disease, a lot more people will die before this is over, and this is far from over. We will have to live in a new-social-distancing-lockdown-normal for the foreseeable future. The economic fallout will be severe, and some job losses will probably be permanent. But, all pandemics end at some point, and so will this one, we just do not know when that will be. And we do not yet know how much damage, human and economic, this pandemic will leave behind.

But we will get through this. So once in a while, in the midst of this pandemic, take a deep breath and spare a thought for our resilient ancestors who got us this far. They did it without modern medicine and did not know what causes the diseases, but they did it and kept going. And remember, we are more resilient than we think, we are the descendants of survivors, we are survivors, and our descendants will be survivors.