Back to herd immunity. Do you remember the AP programme that got so much attention? I don’t really know why it did. All the boxes were ticked after all: oppressive soundtrack, gloomy street scenes, numerous experts interviewed, assumption that the vaccines were safe, and encouragement to get vaccinated. The only crime was that the programme cast a little doubt on the level of antibodies in some of the people who had been injected with the AZ vaccine (to be fair to the critics - a ridiculously small sample size). In the debate/discussion with the experts at the end, there was reference to cell immunity being another method of calculating immunity. It got precious little discussion, which was interesting because (as you can read here in a piece from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/02/t-cell-covid-immunity-present-in-adults-six-months-after-first-infection) “cellular (T-cell) immunity against the virus that causes Covid-19 is likely to be present within adults six months after primary infection, with levels considerably higher in patients with symptoms…. Overall the results offer evidence that T-cell immunity may last longer than antibodies.”

So, that would appear to be really important to me. I mean if T-cell immunity, which can be acquired through contact with the virus, lasts longer than antibodies, then the original definition of herd immunity would seem to be the best, wouldn’t it?

Here’s more about a report published in Nature: “SARS-CoV-2 belongs to a large family of coronaviruses, six of which were previously known to infect humans. Four of them are responsible for the common cold. The other two are more dangerous: SARS-CoV-1, the virus responsible for the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which ended in 2004; and MERS-CoV, the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012. All six previously known coronaviruses spark production of both antibodies and memory T-cells. In addition, studies of immunity to SARS-Cov1 have shown that T-cells stick around for many years longer than acquired antibodies” (https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/07/28/immune-t-cells-may-offer-lasting-protection-against-covid-19/).

Is this kind of information being discussed in the media you engage with? I found it absolutely astonishing that in a programme that dealt with immunity to the virus, T-cell immunity was acknowledged and then dismissed in under three seconds.

I’ll finish with an observation about the ‘expert response’ to the AP programme from an article in ir.lv (https://ir.lv/2021/04/01/zinatnes-paklausana-un-nepiedodama-augstpratiba/). Initially, and without having watched the show myself, I couldn’t really understand what the problem was until I got to this part:

“Mums priekšā sarežģīta vasara, kurā nāksies saskarties ar faktu, ka liela daļa iedzīvotāju atsacīsies vakcinēties. Šobrīd par to šķiet dīvaini runāt (tik daudzi taču sitas vai nost, lai tiktu pie vakcīnas).”

This is the stance of the esteemed science journalist. She wants us to get vaccinated, and she is appalled at the temerity of a programme, whose crime is to have wondered about the efficacy of one particular vaccine. She doesn’t address the arguments for or against: is this the kind of objective science reporting you are happy with? It has started to get - forgive the wordplay - under my skin.

Okay, I have spent way too much time on this. If you get this far, thanks for reading it. If you want, I will have a crack at the WEF et al. But only if you want me to.