Covid endless variants and RA immune suppression

@frogmorton Still hanging in there, yes, covid rising, however as the variant mainly deadly to immune compromised & elderly, the powers that be are pretending its not there. Indeed, the health sec said unkindly “adding more cash to the NGS would be unfair to the young”, echoing the policy of not admitting anyone over 60 at the height of covid when ICU beds were tight. Fully understand from a financial perspective, the elderly & chronically sick are a drain on the young & healthy taxpayers, and given a choice to treat a drain or a future source of taxes… What they forget is these people have already paid their tax dues over a life time, even if squandered by successive govts, and looking after the frail is what makes the difference between the civilised & not.

@stickywicket I think the article could have been better written, but in short the main points are:

1. All the approved vaccines today prepare your immune response against the part that changes its “mask” (spike head) most frequently, like the flu. As the spike mutates the vaccine stimulated antibodies bind only weakly to it, which means you need increasingly higher concentrations of antibody to make the virus struggle to wade through. This is why you need repeated vaccinations of the same vax-antigen to maintain high concentrations. The pharmas can’t adapt to the changing spike mask as quickly as it can mutate & swap them.
2. The longer you host a virus, esp an RNA virus the higher the chance of developing a mutation by random chance that will bypass a healthy vaccinated carer’s defences and go on to replicate, either as a mild illness or something more serious, however the milder one is more likely to spread as humans treat mild covid as “a cold”, and something that knocks them out as “maybe its flu or covid”. The length of time needed to evolve an effective mutation is quite long, is months, usually in a hospital. The evolution is through random chance, so most mutations will fail.

The antivirals are not that good, Molnupiravir barely works and passed FDA approval because there was little else, and works by accelerating mutations to cause more failed progeny. Remdesivir works a little better by halting viral RNA synthesis, however these drugs, like all drugs, are not free of side effects and we don’t know how well they will be tolerated as they are new, but hey, when its life or death best to take whats available.

@MoiraA I am not aware of any approved vaccine customised to the current variants. The Walter Reed Army hosp & research centre (US Army) are working on developing a vaccine against the essential parts of the virus that it cannot mutate eg you can swap your disguise mask but you can’t swap your blood type kind of logic. However the virus is smart, and hides this vulnerable part well. This type of research is very expensive and there’s no prospect of selling govts multiple doses, so not commercially attractive and best run by a govt or non profit.

@jamieA Good CNN article, I might have covered similar points here in my post.

The vaccines are generally well tolerated by older people, ie over 45, in fact the older you are the more likely it will be a non event, and you need the help, as older immune systems are fairly weak with age already and won’t go nuts on a marauding rampage like a young person’s, shooting at everything in sight and over reacting.

So for it to be a non event for you, I’d guess you are over 45, with a worldly wiser immune system but my apologies if I offended! 😉

Personally I’d rather not have an endless series of vax stimulation for the same virus if my cellular response after 2 jabs is adequate, even if my antibodies have dropped off after my mRNA vax. I have worked in some grotty parts of the world so have a very lengthy vaccination record card, but accutely aware that until I am a bit older my immune sys is more likely to go nuts with each stimulant!

@Baloo Its as @jamieA describes, the immune suppressants (accurate) temporarily disables a part of the complex machine that is your immune system. The more modern versions and steroids interfere with the signalling process. So you could have like huge hive of white cells with the potential to attack, but they can’t receive the attack signal, so nothing happens. Older ones like MTX deplete the warrior cell supply by preventing new ones from being produced at a rapid rate, so RA is greatly slowed down. (MTX competes with folate, essential for new cell production, which is why children and pregnant women cannot take this). When you stop taking these “DMARDS” as they are euphemistically called (they suppress your immune sys and the useful side effect is relief from RA, however they do not directly modify the disease-causing faulty dendritic cells exclusively, but pharma likes to call them “Disease Modifying AntiRheumatic Drugs”, as it sells better than “nuke your immune system for RA pain relief”).

Unfortunately the moment you stop taking them, your immune system will go on the rampage destroying anything it thinks is out of place, including your joints, and any other disease present, which will just stimulate it more like an angry hornet’s nest.