original antigenic sin

did the UK just say the quiet part out loud?

read a zillion SEC documents and medical studies, and you come to realize one useful fact: all the nasty, juicy stuff is in the footnotes.

that’s what makes this FIND by alex berenson so interesting.

the UK’s most recent vaccine surveillance report (you can find it HERE) had a funny little tidbit in the notes to the week 42 update. it goes like this:

they are predominantly talking about the prevalence of N antibodies for covid. N stands for nucleocapsid. this is a set of structural proteins than forms complexes with the RNA of viruses like covid.

the reason to track it is simple: if you get vaccinated with any of the currently existing covid-19 vaccines, they teach you to respond to and attack S-1 proteins. this is what you learn, express, and carry antibodies for. so, if you test a vaccinated person for S antibodies, you’ll find them.

but you will NOT find antibodies to N proteins. those will ONLY be found in those who got covid, recovered, and acquired resistance.

the vaccines train to one specific aspect of the viruses effects. actual exposure trains to that and to other aspects as well. your body has seen the whole pathogen and generated broader immunity.

• so, if we track S antibodies, we learn how many people have had covid or have been vaccinated.

• if we track N, we see ONLY those that actually had covid.

this is the issue the UK report is discussing: the rising prevalence of N antibodies and thus signs of rising covid exposure.

the note shown above is simply a set of 3 reasons that they believe than N antibody counts will understate true past covid prevalence. this all seems reasonable.

but that third reason is a potential doozy. this is data i have never seen shared before.

(iii) recent observations from UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) surveillance data that N antibody levels appear to be lower in individuals who acquire infection following 2 doses of vaccination.

unless i’m misreading it (possible) what this is saying is that those who got double dose vaccinated and then got covid express fewer N antibodies in response.

let’s be clear: this is a somewhat vague and non-quantified statement. BUT it’s something that’s a big enough deal that they think it could affect counts sufficiently that it warrants mention. and if that’s so, it could be a BIG deal indeed.

• the reason is this: N antibodies work faster. they are also more likely to be sterilizing. they are your body learning to kill the actual virus when it sees it.

• the S antibodies trained by the vaccines are not responsive to the virus. they are responsive to the effects of the virus once it infects cells and causes them to express the S protein on their surface. (and we have already seen that this training does not stop infection, transmission, or spread)

this is like the difference between a watchman knowing how to spot an arsonist as opposed to only spotting fires that have been set.

this likely has a great deal to do with why natural immunity IS sterilizing and stops future infection and why vaccines do not.

but if having been vaccinated later prevents you from mounting as strong an N antibody response, then it may actually be significantly reducing the effectiveness of the immunity acquired from exposure to covid, which is, BY FAR the strongest immunity currently known.

this would imply that the vaccines:

• not only do not stop you from getting covid and may well make it more likely,

• but also that they prevent you from getting the full benefit of the immunity you require when you GET covid.

• if this suppression is substantial enough, it might even render your recovery acquired immunity non-sterilizing and leave you active as a carrier and spreader by preventing the immune response that seems to be generating effective sterilization and replacing it with one known not to.

• this might make the vaccinated into durable or even perpetual carriers even if they have had disease and recovered.

obviously, that would be BAD.

this is not an unheard of idea. there is, in fact, a name for it: original antigenic sin (OAS). this sounds biblical, but it’s not. it’s a well studied immune phenomenon.

it works like this: (read through this carefully)

Original antigenic sin, also known as antigenic imprinting or the Hoskins effect,[1] refers to the propensity of the body's immune system to preferentially utilize immunological memory based on a previous infection when a second slightly different version of that foreign pathogen (e.g. a virus or bacterium) is encountered. This leaves the immune system "trapped" by the first response it has made to each antigen, and unable to mount potentially more effective responses during subsequent infections. Antibodies or T-cells induced during infections with the first variant of the pathogen are subject to a form of original antigenic sin, termed repertoire freeze.

The phenomenon of original antigenic sin has been described in relation to influenza virus, dengue fever, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) [2] and to several other viruses.[3]

This phenomenon was first described in 1960 by Thomas Francis Jr. in the article "On the Doctrine of Original Antigenic Sin".[4][5] It is named by analogy to the theological concept of original sin. According to Francis as cited by Richard Krause:[5]

The original antigenic sin: When the body first encounters an infection it produces effective antibodies against its dominant antigens and thus eliminates the infection. But when it encounters the same infection, at a later evolved stage, with a new dominant antigen, with the original antigen now being recessive, the immune system will still produce the former antibodies against this old "now recessive antigen" and not develop new antibodies against the new dominant one, this results in the production of ineffective antibodies and thus a weak immunity

it all comes down to B cells that store recipes for antibody production working very quickly when faced with the familiar yet slowly when faced with a novel intruder.

so they go with what they know and this crowds out more specific and better adapted response. you do the dumb thing ingrained by habit and you get bad outcomes. this same thing can happen in T cells as well.

this can mean a vaccine ultimately winds up making infection worse or a wide variety of other outcomes.

is this happening here?

i don’t think there is any way to say from such a thin explanatory note. whether and to what extent this is going on would take more information to establish.

but it’s far from implausible given the massive dose of S-1 proteins training a body gets from vaccines. that’s a very intense and extremely specific form of training. it’s just the sort of thing that could turn your immune response into a one trick pony and leaky vaccines are just the sort of thing to drive viral escape from the aforementioned equid.

just what the effects of this would be are so dependent on quantities (which we don’t know) and other effects like T cells (that i’m not sure have even been studied) that trying to guess based on that note seems premature.

but it has potential to be very, very bad and it appears that the UK has this data and has not (to my knowledge) been talking about it. (though if anyone has seen it, please share)

it’s also seemingly not new. this text also appears in the report from last week. it does not appear in the week 35 report from early september. precisely when it first showed up is an interesting question. if anyone feels like hunting it down, all the reports are HERE.

the bottom line is this:

the UKHSA is in possession of what looks like it might be some very interesting information. it seems to have been referenced in passing, but getting the rest of that story seems like a useful and important undertaking.

just to be VERY clear: this could be minor, it could be nothing, or there could be some other explanation here that i have not thought of. this is, perhaps, smoke, but not yet a smoking gun.

but to paraphrase the great tom lehrer,

trust the cat who’s got religion to tell you if this sin’s original…

will keep trying to run this down.