Respiratory infections are local infections of the upper respiratory tract (if our innate immune system doesn’t clear the infection before it takes hold, half of people inoculated with SARS-CoV-2 never even turn pcr positive) unlike systemic administration of lipid nanoparticles with synthetic Modified RNA which can transfect cells indiscriminately
Only my opinion but I think you have to evaluate the value of the Covid vaccine over time. Back in 2020 we were faced with a more serious virus that was killing 10-15,000 people per day making a vaccine invaluable for those at risk. 3-4 years later, we now face a weakened virus for which almost everyone through vaccine or infection has been exposed to and has T cell immunity.
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Yes I alluded to adaptive mucosal immunity and there is also barrier and innate immunity, but just think about the magnitude of the comparison you made: “humans have dealt with respiratory viruses for eons”. That’s still an enormous number of systemic infections over millenia vs. 4 years of vaccinations. For example; ever heard of smallpox ? That caused half a billion of deaths in 20th century ALONE.
Moreover your use of an adjective “synthetic” is supposed sound sinister. How exactly is lab created viral RNA/DNA worse than wild form ? The sequence was modified to create only spike protein… AND PREVENT THE WHOLE VIRUS PRODUCTION. Smallpox was a wild form genome and had 40% mortality.
BTW, many people believe COVID-19 was created in the Wuhan lab, so it might have been “synthetic” anyway.
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The delta was certainly more deadly and I believe the initial vaccination had a better benefit to risk ration especially in certain population like first responders or elderly. Most successful viruses don’t kill their host because their need them for propagation, so evolution in to a milder form was inevitable.
My problem with the latter vaccines is that I am not certain they were able to keep up with the antigenic drift and shift. Multiple boosters for the improper antigen (or even proper) in very immunocompetent people can be counter productive. They can overwhelm the immune system and potentially compromise their ability to mount appropriate response for COVID with a new antigen.
Like I said, I did not partake in vaccine administration for many reasons: lack of proper refrigeration, liability and it was too controversial for me to mess with. However I did have a good number of consults for vaccine exclusion, a lot of those people had positive COVID IgG- which does not guarantee immunity but at least proves exposure.
Amazingly in the past 4 years I saw only a handful of actual vaccine side effects - one myocarditis and one Steven Johnson Syndrome.
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That has been my thought process, but I’m trying to fit that H5N1 bird flu into that model. It sounds remarkably lethal.
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if the bird is the host then may be mild for them but lethal when it makes the interspecies jump
The whole ebola thing as well. If that ever got out of Africa, God help us all.
Without prompt and appropriate treatment as many as 90% of people who become sick with Ebola virus disease die.
Crap. Somewhere along the line in my past 3 weeks of sickness, I have caught COVID as well. Two cases of conjunctivitis as well as two bacterial URIs. This has not been a good 3 weeks. I recover from one and then get hit with the next one. I take public transportation to work, so I am assuming I have gotten these from there.
Fortunately all the symptoms have been mild, yet highly annoying.
I have been off Rapamycin the entire time I have been sick.
Imagine if you were 65 or 70 years old instead of much younger and healthier too. Might be worth thinking about what is causing this and prevention.
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It’s because I live in a crowded city and many of my clients and colleagues are also sick. I have no clue whether the Rapamycin has had any affect on any of these sicknesses.
I’d just like to be healthy again. This is getting old.
I’m beginning to think it may have been COVID all along for everything. Although initial tests were negative.
I would look into the URI vaccine, zinc supplementation and other supplements that might help with immunity and are safe. I don’t think you’re interested in covid vaccine boosters so that’s off the table. If you are packed like sardines in public transportation, for example, you might need all the vaccines you can get. Modern problems require modern solutions.
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I believe these cold seasons (23-24) and previous (22-23) have been unprecedentedly prolific in terms of viral diversity. I have seen in it my office and with myself, I don’t typically get sick very much but this last couple of seasons I got hammered. Even developed a mild post-viral syndrome that wreaked havoc in my cycling training and prompted me to start taking rapamycin (also recalcitrant periodontal disease).
Funny thing the season of (21-22) I had patients telling me how great it is that we are all masking because they are not getting sick anymore…My theory is that this reduced exposure allowed the antigenic drift to develop without progressive neutralizing antibody formation due to low exposure and we end up with subsequent seasons where many people were unprepared what was in the store for them.
So in short, this may not have much to do with you.
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I am old and would arguably have a weaker immune system than someone younger.
Since I have been on rapamycin for 2 ½ years I have had nothing (fingers crossed) no, colds, flues, etc.
My main sources of exposure would be gym patrons and gym equipment.
Grocery shopping; carts, patrons, etc.
Family members etc.
IMO: Rapamycin boosts the older immune system.
Confounding factors: I have had decades of annual flu shots, and many other vaccines including, yellow fever, tetanus, pneumonia, shingles, and Hep.A, etc.
The only vaccine I have ever had an adverse reaction to was the Pfizer Covid 19 vaccine and I sincerely regret taking it.
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Well, once you have COVID, there’s no use getting the vaccine in the immediate future. Every sickness this cycle has been mild yet annoying. I’m just amazed at how I can’t recover. It’s one after another after another! That’s never happened to me before. However the general population is a lot sicker too. Lots of coughing everywhere. I am now taking PAXLOVID again since I have the positive indication for COVID.
I guess I need to mask up and wash my hands more!
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One detriment I have experienced from this bout of COVID, probably from the conjunctivitis, seems to be a permanent downgrade in my eyesight. My short distance eyesight has gotten markedly worse. I now have to use the next most powerful reading glasses to read. Everything is a bit more blurry.
Diseases like COVID damage and downgrade your body. It’s best to avoid them.
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How early after positive test/symptoms did you start? Might want to consider taking it 7-10 days instead of 5 to avoid covid rebound infection that is very common with early admin of pax and/or only 5 day dosing.
See also large, heavy studies discussed elsewhere on the forum that 14 days of metformin can help, including to avoid long covid.
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The latest Pfizer paper from this month shows that Paxlovid is useless: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309003
Comments on the study:
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I would disagree with you regarding PAXLOVID. It may not reduce recovery time much, but the studies I have read state that it reduces serious outcomes by 89%. I don’t want the disease to kill me or cause a serious health degradation. I don’t mind if it takes the same amount of time to make a full recovery.
When I used PAXLOVID before, in the heart of the pandemic, it stopped me from getting sicker (I was coughing up blood). I started PAXLOVID and my body stopped going downhill and I got better after that.
It may not be as powerful as it once was, but given my experience, I’ll take PAXLOVID over nothing. The opportunity cost is also quite low, so why not?
From the commentary you cited:
And, while I tend to think that Paxlovid’s benefits have been overstated lately (that is, the benefits are not what they were in the pre-vaccine era), I spent a fair amount of time squinting at these new results this evening. When I did that, I was not convinced these new findings render Paxlovid useless for high-risk vaccinated people, and for two reasons. First, the confidence intervals on the severe outcome results were mostly in the negative terrain, hinting that a larger study designed to study this question might have found Paxlovid remains helpful. Second, a bunch of other outcomes bent towards Paxlovid retaining some benefit—like how many ICU visits occurred, and how long ER visits and hospitalizations lasted.
We are in a weird moment here. Paxlovid remains the best anti-viral we have, but the data supporting it are not nearly as impressive as they once were.
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Interesting read…
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Covid increased our markers in our annual Trudiagnostic test in 2022.
We have done 4 Tru tests over the past 3 years; Oct 21, Nov 22, Jun 23 and Feb 24. We have shortened our testing schedule to every 9 months as we are doing a lot more “testing” of various dietary supplements, peptides and drugs… sounds crazy when I say it out loud LoL!
Both my wife and I had Covid in August of 2022 and Nov 22 our test showed significant increases in most markers in that test. Since Covid has a significant impact on the lungs and generates senescent cells, we were interested to see if our standard senolytic program would change any of those markers after this infection. And sure enough it did.
Also we are pro-vaccination and have had all the Covid shots offered, get our annual Flu vax, had pneumococcal and shingles vax when we both turned 65
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