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Now tracking the new emerging South Africa Omicron Variant

CoViD and immunity

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Dutch Josh View Drop Down
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    Posted: November 09 2022 at 5:06am

[url]https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/the-pandemic-discussion-forum/962279-controversy-what-if-covid-19-reinfections-wear-down-our-immunity-the-leonardi-effect[/url] or https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/the-pandemic-discussion-forum/962279-controversy-what-if-covid-19-reinfections-wear-down-our-immunity-the-leonardi-effect :

Controversy - What If COVID-19 Reinfections Wear Down Our Immunity? The Leonardi Effect



What If COVID Reinfections Wear Down Our Immunity?

Dr. Anthony Leonardi is a lightning rod for debate. If he’s right, this pandemic poses a greater threat than widely assumed.


Andrew Nikiforuk YesterdayTheTyee.ca

Tyee contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist whose books and articles focus on epidemics, the energy industry, nature and more. T cells are a body’s key line of defence against infection. COVID infections can cause them to prematurely age, harm organs and become exhausted, warns Dr. Anthony Leonardi.

snip

Nearly three years into the pandemic, it’s clear early expectations about the behaviour of the coronavirus and its toll on our bodies have proven overly optimistic.

Recall those early days when experts broadly assumed that once we’d withstood an infection our immune systems would adjust and fully resist another reinfection.

And then hopes rose that mass vaccination would provide the path out of the pandemic. Although vaccines did reduce deaths and hospitalizations, the effort failed to produce herd immunity.

But researchers saw further promise in what they called hybrid immunity: people who had been infected with COVID and then received mRNA vaccines would, it was assumed, develop a formidable protection through raised levels of antibodies (proteins made by the immune system to battle infection).

However variants emerged, capable of evading those antibodies. Many people who had been vaccinated or already had endured a bout of COVID were experiencing “breakthrough infections.” What could put the brakes on this ever-evolving virus, which can kill, damage organs and linger for months?

The answer from many scientists has been T cells — our bodies’ line of immune defence after antibodies. T cells can spot and attack viruses and even remember previous invaders. As virologist Vincent Racaniello titled one of his articles: “T cells will save us from COVID-19.”

But what if COVID wears down T cells in people who get it, and does so increasingly with each reinfection?

That concern lies at the heart of a rolling, rancorous scientific debate, a lot of it conducted on Twitter. A person at the centre of the storm, sounding alarms about T cell “dysregulation” since the early days of the pandemic, has been a U.S. immunologist named Anthony Leonardi.

By dysregulation Leonardi means three effects of COVID:
  • The hyperactivation of many T cells, which can prematurely age them
  • The exuberant function of those hyperactivated T cells, which can then cause organ damage
  • The exhaustion of those hyperactivated T cells, which implies they aren’t winning the battle against viral proteins they are supposed to defeat.
In other words, argues Leonardi, T cells are becoming hyperactivated by SARS-CoV-2 and are prematurely aging, harming organs, and becoming exhausted trying to rid the body of an immune-evasive virus.

If he is right, then no, we cannot assume that T cells will save us — not as thoroughly, at least, as we’ve been led to believe.

Which is why The Tyee decided Anthony Leonardi and his controversial assertions merit a deep dive.

Leonardi’s critics say he paints too dire a picture. Some prominent researchers have accused him of being misguided, their tweeted insults scathing.

Reached by The Tyee, Leonardi did not apologize for the pessimistic edge to his warnings. “Optimism sells and optimism around T-cell memory sold well too.” Rather than practice a “passive conventionalism” that pretends the pandemic is over, he said, public health officials “need to be candid with the public.”

In a recent tweet Leonardi punched back at his most vociferous attackers, saying:

“All I have done is warn people and people find the warnings unpalatable. Not only that, people have given opinions on the trajectory of the virus and the immunology and have been blatantly wrong and are seeking a pound of flesh out of anger.”


A BAD FEELING

To understand why Leonardi is such a lightning rod requires a bit more discussion about how the human immune system works. It is composed of two complementary branches: one directed by antibodies and another mediated by T cells.

T cells are one of two white blood cells that defend the body against foreign invaders. (The other are B cells, which make antibodies.)

The human body supports millions of both T and B cells.

T cells, which originate in bone marrow and then mature in the thymus, perform multiple different roles as the human body matures and ages. Some T cells, for example, regulate the immune response while others directly bind to and kill cells infected by cancer or viruses. Others survey the body for signs of cancer. And some are simply “naive”: young cells not yet stimulated by an antigen.

Another group known as memory T cells can remember a foreign invader and lead the charge against reinfection. T cells can also secrete chemicals that help B cells produce antibodies. As a general rule T cells protect against reinfection by providing durable memory of past invaders.

Which is why it’s a big deal if Leonardi is correct in his belief that COVID exhausts, ages and cumulatively wears down the immune system with each infection.

snip

And then along came the pandemic. In the Twitterverse he was one of the first scientists to openly speculate about COVID’s ability to disarm the immune system. He reasoned that a weakened immune system would have profound implications for the severity of disease, the effectiveness of vaccines and the health of the elderly over the course of the pandemic.

Given nearly five years of work on T cells, Leonardi got a bad feeling while reading a Lancet study that appeared at the beginning of the pandemic.

The study described the unhealthy state of the first patients in Wuhan, China. Scientists noted that the virus had diminished the patient’s white blood cells — the ones responsible for fighting infection. Moreover descriptions of the patients suggested that a blood infection might be contributing to shock and death. That profile looked like a super antigenic infection whereby a particular molecule has set off an extreme immune response. As a result the immune system began to attack the body, it appeared to Leonardi.

Lots of viruses can set off autoimmune reactions in select populations, but Leonardi thought COVID might have the potential to unsettle the general health of the globe, and even change life expectancy patterns.

Readings on the long-term health impact of the original SARS virus and its cousin MERS also alarmed Leonardi.

These pathogens also disrupted the immune system. MERS, for example, not only infected and killed the cells lining blood walls but T cells as well. Both SARS and MERS could overcome the defences of the immune system, and result in prolonged chronic illness that lasted years.


To Leonardi the ramifications seemed highly significant. It meant that repeated waves of COVID infection might not leave durable or competent memory to fight reinfection or to clear the virus. Repeat infections could get worse over time resulting in more death, organ damage and long-term disability. He started writing letters to school boards and issuing warnings about his conclusions based on his extensive readings.

snip

The uproar reached a fever peak this year when Leonardi speculated that repeated COVID infections could exhaust T cells in people 50 years or older leading to a blunted immune response. (Chronic infections such as HIV or Epstein-Barr virus typically exhaust T cells.)

Leonardi first offered this opinion in August 2020 but it gained currency as reinfections skyrocketed with Omicron.

So, too, did the naysaying. Early this year, Vincent Rajkumar, the editor of Blood Cancer Journal, called the idea “nonsense,” as did U.S. virologists Vincent Racaniello and Amy Rosenfeld.

In January, sociologist and New York Times writer Zeynep Tufecki implied Leonardi was a solo outlier not to be trusted, tweeting:

“Reminder that not every crank is Galileo. Yes, experts can be wrong, even a field can be wrong — we saw with airborne — but challenges involve *groups* of actual working, publishing scientists.”

One of the barbs often tossed at Leonardi by critics is that he is not ensconced in a lab churning out results from experiments, so he doesn’t really belong to the club of researchers seriously trying to crack COVID. Leonardi is in fact a PhD accredited immunologist currently pursuing a master’s degree in public health.

One high-profile T cell expert among Leonardi’s harshest critics is Duke University scientist Antonio Bertoletti, who often ends his Twitter posts with “Go T Cells Go.” On Twitter he posted a Nature study on health-care workers claiming that it showed that “exposure [to COVID] broadens T-cell repertoire,” and that there was no problem with exhaustion.

However, the paper only looked at working age people and did not include individuals with long COVID in which chronic and persistent infection inflames the immune system.

snip


The Leonardi Effect may well explain a surge in bacterial, viral and fungal infections after waves of COVID.


And yet, it remains key for each of us to wear masks, keep socially distanced, and inhabit spaces lightly populated with good ventilation, if only, by Leonardi’s analysis, to stave off reinfection given the chance that each one grinds down our immune systems.

In recent weeks U.S. virologists such as Jeremy Kamil have expressed little concern about recent hospitalization rates in Europe and new immune-evasive variants. Kamil, for example doesn’t expect “a catastrophic” wave from “antibody-evasive convergent variants” in the future.

more...


https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/11/...ampaign=071122

DJ...Both herd/group and vaccine immunity show their limits by now. Dealing with CoViD as if it is some sort of flu has been wrong...New-more contagious-variants-now spreading (also) in China even make Zero-CoViD policies no longer effective...

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
~Albert Einstein
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dutch Josh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 09 2022 at 9:35am

related [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement[/url] or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement ;Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), sometimes less precisely called immune enhancement or disease enhancement, is a phenomenon in which binding of a virus to suboptimal antibodies enhances its entry into host cells, followed by its replication.[1][2] The suboptimal antibodies can result from natural infection or from vaccination. ADE may cause enhanced respiratory disease, but is not limited to respiratory disease.[3] It has been observed in HIV, RSV virus and Dengue virus and is monitored for in vaccine development

DJ...the virus using immunity to get into the host...So immunity being hijacked...

[url]https://www.coronaheadsup.com/science/ade/preprint-reevaluation-of-antibody-dependent-enhancement-for-sars-cov-2-treatments/[/url] or https://www.coronaheadsup.com/science/ade/preprint-reevaluation-of-antibody-dependent-enhancement-for-sars-cov-2-treatments/ ;

A new preprint looking at the evidence for antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) is getting a LOT of attention online – we link to it below so that you can read it for yourself.

In the present study, we reevaluated whether the approved therapeutic Ab drugs (casirivimab, imdevimab, and sotrovimab) have any potential to cause ADE even in FcR- and ACE2-positive cells. In addition, we investigated sera from mRNA (Moderna)-vaccinated individuals in terms of ADE-causing potential by using the same double-positive cells. Here, we show that the casirivimab and imdevimab mAbs have the ability to induce ADE, but sotrovimab does not. Furthermore, some sera from individuals vaccinated with the mRNA vaccine targeting the S-protein also exhibited ADE potential against infection with the original strain. All sera examined, including sera showing neutralizing activity against the original Wuhan strain of SARS-CoV-2, exhibited no neutralizing activity against Omicron. Rather, some ADE activity was observed in some sera.

Although sera collected from mRNA-vaccinated individuals exhibited neutralizing activity, some sera gradually exhibited dominance of ADE activity in a time-dependent manner. None of the sera examined exhibited neutralizing activity against infection with the Omicron strain. Rather, some ADE of Omicron infection was observed in some sera. These results suggest the possible emergence of adverse effects caused by these Abs in addition to the therapeutic or preventive effect.

 

Preprint: Reevaluation of antibody-dependent enhancement of infection in anti-SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic antibodies and mRNA-vaccine antisera using FcR- and ACE2-positive cells

 DJ -https://www.coronaheadsup.com/science/side-effects/sars-cov-2-can-infect-and-kill-different-immunity-cell-types-independently-of-ace2/

In one of the most disturbing preprints we have seen during the entire pandemic, researchers outline the damage that SARS-CoV-2 can do to key components of the human immune system, independently of ACE2.

Highlights:

  • SARS-CoV-2 antigens were present inside the T lymphocytes, the virus could directly infect T cells
  • Lung tissue contained high levels of T lymphocytes, many T lymphocytes tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 proteins
  • T lymphocytes from SARS-CoV-2 patients displayed nearly ten times the number of apoptotic cells than healthy individuals
  • SARS-CoV-2 infection of T cells occurs independently from the ACE2 receptors
  • After SARS-CoV-2 infection “CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes almost declined to zero in some patients
  • Both Jurkat and M4 cell lines were infected in vitro
  • SARS-CoV-2 can infect T lymphocytes and induce pronounced programmed apoptosis, or cell death

 

Preprint:  ACE2-independent infection of T lymphocytes by SARS-CoV-2

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
~Albert Einstein
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KiwiMum View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote KiwiMum Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 09 2022 at 11:29am

The only people I know who have had Covid more than once are the people who were also vaccinated. One of my children has just spent 9 days at sea only to discover that a fellow crew member who had been experiencing cold and flu symptoms for a few days, actually had Covid. The voyage was abandoned and my son flew home. We tested him on arrival and no covid and he's been absolutely fine ever since. Not at all ill, he feels fine, and yet he was living cheek by jowl with this other crew member. We've all had Covid in our family and so all I can think is that he has natural immunity to it. 


Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dutch Josh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 09 2022 at 10:26pm

I wonder if all cases of "re-infection" are real...or was the virus still around ? So not re-infection, but still the initial infection...The idea that infected people would recover from infection within 28 days/4 weeks may be based on first-limited knowledge on cases....

Also vaccinations may work out differently-not all immunity systems respond in the same way. In the last Indie-SAGE video a woman with ME-CFS mentioned vaccination did NOT result in building immunity...(she did get her blood tested-I think)....

So in trials vaccine producers maybe not go for a cross section of society...miss vaccinated cases that do not get a (good enough) vaccine response. (On top of the side effects it does change somewhat the calculation...knowing more on people who do not get a immune response after vaccination deserves more study...)

Maybe also another point...as far as I know I did not get CoViD (in the way of CoViD symptoms) but I did have a "strange cold" october/november 2019...Was that an early-"milder"-form of CoViD ? Or another virus going around ? There must be data on that... corona-cold-virus on its way to become CoViD ? 

Can the immune system get exhausted ? (MIS-C/A Multi Inflamatory Syndrome in Children/Adults) [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisystem_inflammatory_syndrome[/url] or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisystem_inflammatory_syndrome suggests science still is learning....

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote cn65 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2022 at 8:44am

Originally posted by KiwiMum KiwiMum wrote:

The only people I know who have had Covid more than once are the people who were also vaccinated


I've had it twice and I am totally unvaccinated.

First time March 2020, strange cough with no sore throat, loss of taste and also the lack of breath as if I'd become instantly unfit.  I'd describe it a a very strange mild winter's cold.  Up and about as normal just one or two days when I went to bed early with a paracetamol

Second time July 2022.  Virtually no symptoms, Just the arrival of the same strange cough which prompted me to do a test being the only symptom this time.  Positive for 8 days otherwise up and about in house,garden as normal, mowing lawns, up and down ladders cleaning gutters - ie no effect at all.

In both cases the cough lingered for maybe a couple of weeks.  All this has sent my medically qualified friends into a totally tizzy, tying themselves in knots trying to extract themselves from the hole they had dug: that being you must get vaxed otherwise you will end up very ill indeed.  First stage was to claim my positive tests were in error, several positive days later photographed and emailed to them and me swapping test batch numbers and that excuse fell flat.  This was all in line with their prior claim that my March 2020 episode was actualy "flu" in the knowledge that no tests existed them so they could safely pump out this load of twadlle.

I thought I'd add further fuel to the fire by saying that one of them could collect something I had for them on the basis that "you have been fully vaxed etc and seem to believe the vax works so what's the problem in coming into my house to collect it."  !!!! They were not happy and refused to come anywhere near me until I had tested negative - that was the same tests the previous week they were claiming were in error.....

I do know several couples who are fully vaxed, got the virus and ended up in bed at home with flu like symptoms: one having caught it off the other who got it from somewhere.

Anyway the real positive outcome for me is that No one has mentioned the virus or the "vax" to me for months now.  Finally most have now realized that when you have people fully vaxed getting ill while someone not vaxed is technically "ill" but in practice is not, that there might be something rather more complex going on.

I don't have any apparant lasting effects and living my life just as I did before - I'm aged 60.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote KiwiMum Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 13 2022 at 11:37am

That's great to hear. I'm glad you recovered so well. We've also all had it and recovered fine but it took time. We felt very tired for weeks after having Covid. I'm not at all worried about coming into contact with it again. In fact I'm buying theatre tickets today to a performance that will be a sell out.

Those who got it wrong, for whatever reason, may feel defensive and retrench into a position that doesn’t accord with the facts.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dutch Josh Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 24 2023 at 7:46am







Impaired immune function like seen in malnutrition & HIV.... but somehow ppl are still buying the "it's a cold" narrative.😬

and 

Yaneer Bar-Yam @yaneerbaryam@forall.social

@yaneerbaryam
·
Merck: Low lymphocyte count in adults or children. Consequences: opportunistic infections and increased risk of malignant and autoimmune disorders. 

Most common causes: 

-Protein-energy undernutrition 
-HIV infection 
-COVID-19 
-Certain other viral infections

[url]https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/hematology-and-oncology/leukopenias/lymphocytopenia#v79853724[/url] or https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/hematology-and-oncology/leukopenias/lymphocytopenia#v79853724 ;

Lymphocytopenia is suspected in patients with recurrent viral, bacterial, fungal, or parasitic infections but is usually detected incidentally with a CBC. P. jirovecii, cytomegalovirus, rubeola, or varicella pneumonias with lymphocytopenia suggest immunodeficiency.

Lymphocyte subpopulations are measured in patients with lymphocytopenia. Measurement of immunoglobulin levels should also be done to evaluate antibody production. Patients with a history of recurrent infections should undergo complete laboratory evaluation for immunodeficiency, even if initial screening test results are normal.

DJ, Are we getting hundreds of millions of people lab-tested for immunity damage after (several) CoViD infections ? 

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymphocytopenia[/url] or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lymphocytopenia;

Lymphocytopenia is the condition of having an abnormally low level of lymphocytes in the blood. Lymphocytes are a white blood cell with important functions in the immune system. It is also called lymphopenia.[1] The opposite is lymphocytosis, which refers to an excessive level of lymphocytes.

Lymphocytopenia may be present as part of a pancytopenia, when the total numbers of all types of blood cells are reduced.

-

The most common cause of temporary lymphocytopenia is a recent infection, such as the common cold.[citation needed]

Lymphocytopenia, but not idiopathic CD4+ lymphocytopenia, is associated with corticosteroid use, infections with HIV and other viralbacterial, and fungal agents, malnutritionsystemic lupus erythematosus,[3] severe stress,[4] intense or prolonged physical exercise (due to cortisol release),[5] rheumatoid arthritissarcoidosis,[6] multiple sclerosis,[7] and iatrogenic (caused by other medical treatments) conditions.

Lymphocytopenia is a frequent, temporary result from many types of chemotherapy, such as with cytotoxic agents or immunosuppressive drugs. Some malignancies that have spread to involve the bone marrow, such as leukemia or advanced Hodgkin's disease,[8][9] also cause lymphocytopenia.

Another cause is infection with Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 (and other subtypes of the Influenza A virus) and is then often associated with Monocytosis;[10] H1N1 was responsible for the Spanish flu, the 2009 flu pandemic and in 2016 for the Influenza-epidemic in Brazil.[11] The SARS disease caused lymphocytopenia.[12] Among patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 in Wuhan China through January 29th, 2020, 83.2 percent had Lymphocytopenia at admission.[13]

Large doses of radiation, such as those involved with nuclear accidents or medical whole body radiation, may cause lymphocytopenia.[14]

-

Lymphocytopenia that is caused by infections tends to resolve once the infection has cleared. Patients with idiopathic CD4+ lymphocytopenia may have either abnormally low but stable CD4+ cell counts, or abnormally low and progressively falling CD4+ cell counts; the latter condition is terminal.

DJ...a problem may be the vius is not cleared...

An outcome could be much more infections -with much more variants/mutations...

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
~Albert Einstein
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