My title concerning mRNA vaccines is a play on the Animal Farm slogan.  It’s prompted by research reports looking for answers why highly vaccinated populations like those in Europe and North America experience continuing Omicron infections, while other places like Africa do not.  The surprising finding is summarized at the end of the report.  While two vax shots do not prevent future infections, they do protect against serious illness from the virus, and thus benefit the persons.  But the data suggest that additional booster shots are counter-productive by diminishing the immune system response to further viral exposure.

The paper published in Science is Immune boosting by B.1.1.529 (Omicron) depends on previous SARS-CoV-2 exposure.

A long-term study of healthcare workers in the United Kingdom has allowed their history of infection and vaccination to be traced precisely. Reynolds et al. found some unexpected immune-damping effects caused by infection with a heterologous variant to the latest wave of infection by the Omicron/Pango lineage B.1.1.529. The authors found that Omicron infection boosted immune responses to all other variants, but responses to Omicron itself were muted. Infection with the Alpha variant provided weaker boosting for Omicron-specific responses. Furthermore, Omicron infection after previous Wuhan Hu-1 infection failed to boost neutralizing antibody and T cell responses against Omicron, revealing a profound imprinting effect and explaining why frequent reinfections occur.

Vaccine boosting results in distinct, imprinted patterns of hybrid immunity with different combinations of SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination. Immune protection is boosted by B.1.1.529 (Omicron) infection in the triple-vaccinated, previously infection-naïve individuals, but this boosting is lost with prior Wuhan Hu-1 imprinting. This “hybrid immune damping” indicates substantial subversion of immune recognition and differential modulation through immune imprinting and may be the reason why the B.1.1.529 (Omicron) wave has been characterized by breakthrough infection and frequent reinfection with relatively preserved protection against severe disease in triple-vaccinated individuals.

The report by Jennifer Margulis and Joe Wang from Epoch Times is New Science Shows Vaccines Help Omicron Spread: Peer-Reviewed Study.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

A team of 19 scientists from the United Kingdom have published new research that helps explain why countries with the highest vaccination rates are experiencing the highest numbers of what they call “breakthrough infections,” as well as reinfection with other variants of COVID-19.

This research article, published on June 14, 2022, in the peer-reviewed journal Science, has been downloaded nearly 277,500 times in less than two months. That is very unusual for a densely worded highly technical scientific study.

We can only speculate the reason so many people have been reading it. But what this study suggests—which many clinicians and research scientists have expressed concerns about—is that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines as well as the booster shots may be making our immune response less effective against the Omicron variant of the virus.

If this is correct, it means that the vaccine itself is leading to widespread infection. Instead of stopping the virus, it appears that the mRNA vaccination programs around the world may have inadvertently made the virus more ubiquitous.

Higher Vaccine Uptake Leads to Higher Infection Rates

Analyzing why the most vaccinated populations are getting the most Omicron infections, this study focused on the most-vaccinated professionals: Medical personnel who had been given the two doses of mRNA vaccines early on and were then given booster shots twice more. To find out what was happening on a cellular level with these highly vaccinated healthcare workers, the scientists kept close track of the different types of immunoglobin in the participants’ blood.

Immunoglobin (Ig), also known as antibody (Ab), finds viruses, bacteria, and such and leads the immune system to respond appropriately.

Scientists have identified several types of immunoglobulins, each guiding the immune response in a different way for different phases and types of infection.

IgG4, a Tolerance Immune Response

IgG4 is the form of immunoglobin that activates a tolerance response in the immune system, for things you have been exposed to repeatedly and do not need to mount an inflammatory response to. This is good if you are trying to avoid immune sensitivity to a food, for example. But it is not the kind of immune response that the COVID-19 vaccines were designed to create.

Beekeepers, when they are repeatedly stung by bees over their career, mount an IgG4 response to the assault on their immune systems. Basically, their bodies learn that the bee venom is not dangerous and their immune response to bee venom becomes an IgG4 response, so they are able to tolerate the stings very well. While the bee venom itself will not harm the body, the body’s own inflammatory response can be dangerous.

If the body overreacts and develops a generalized response in which the inflammation itself jeopardizes a person’s breathing, the immune response can be lethal.

More Vaccines Lead to More COVID-19 Infections

This study demonstrates exactly how the repeat vaccinations are causing people to be more susceptible to COVID-19. Initial doses of the vaccine brought about classic inflammatory immune responses. Inflammation is a fundamental part of an immune response (to a vaccine or to an infection), and is responsible for most of what you feel when you are sick: fever, aches, lethargy, etc. This inflammation is why you may feel sick if you get a flu shot, and why the COVID-19 vaccine has become famous for making people feel so sick for a few days. Your body is producing an inflammatory response to the COVID-19 proteins.

But what happens in the body after you have had two vaccines and then you are given a third? The scientists found that successive doses of the mRNA vaccines start to habituate or desensitize the subjects to the COVID-19 proteins, migrating their immune response over to being dominated by the IgG4 form, which essentially teaches the body to tolerate the proteins.

A Different Kind of Protection?

The participants’ response to COVID-19 had actually been turned off, making them even more vulnerable to infection and less likely to mount a response to it than those who had never been vaccinated.

When you are exposed to a cold or any other virus repeatedly, spaced out over a lifetime, which is what happens with natural exposure, you don’t develop a tolerance to it, your body fights it off without you knowing it. Your body is using the normal disease-fighting immune response but, since it recognizes the infectious agent, you do not get symptoms of inflammation. This is why when you are naturally exposed to many diseases, you then have lifelong immunity.

In contrast, this new study shows that the repeated mRNA injections and boosters for COVID-19 are producing a tolerance response, as if they were allergy shots. They are habituating the body to the virus, so that you no longer recognize it as something dangerous.

Another study, published in July by a team of more than 20 German scientists, independently confirmed that successive COVID-19 shots and boosters were converting the immune response from the protective class of IgG response to the toleration class.

via Science Matters

August 7, 2022

Two Vax Good, Four Vax Bad | Science Matters (rclutz.com)