Winning The Biological Arms Race

The human immune system (and indeed, other immune systems, but we are all humans here, after all) is in a constant state of war with pathogens, and that war is a constant biological arms race:

• We improve our defenses and destroy the attackers; the 1% of pathogens that survived now “know” how to counter that trick.
• The pathogens wreak havoc in our systems; the n% of us that survive now have immune systems that “know” how to counter that trick.

Vaccines are a mighty tool in our favor here, because they’re the technology that stops our n% from also being a very low number.

With vaccines, we can effectively pass on established defenses onto the population at large, as this cute video explains very well and very simply in 57 seconds:

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The problem with vaccines

The problem is that this accelerates the arms race. It’s like a chess game where we are able to respond to every move quickly (which is good for us), and/but this means passing the move over to our opponent sooner.

That problem’s hard to avoid, because the alternative has always been “let people die in much larger numbers”.

Traditional vs mRNA vaccines

A quick refresher before we continue to the big news of the day:

• Traditional vaccines use a disabled version of a pathogen to trigger an immune response that will teach the body to recognize the pathogen ready for when the full version shows up
• mRNA vaccines use a custom-made bit of genetic information to tell the body to make its own harmless fake pathogen and then respond to the harmless fake pathogen it made.

Note: this happens independently of the host’s DNA, so no, it does not change your DNA

See also: The Truth About Vaccines

Here’s a more detailed explainer (with a helpful diagram) using the COVID mRNA vaccine as an example:

Genome.gov | How does an mRNA vaccine work?

However, this still leaves us “chasing strains”, because as the pathogen (in this case, a virus) adapts, the vaccine has to be updated too, hence all the boosters.

This is a lot like a security update for your computer’s antivirus software. They’re annoying, but they do an important job.

No more “chasing strains”

The press conference soundbite on this sums it up well:

❝Scientists at UC Riverside have demonstrated a new, RNA-based vaccine strategy that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised.❞

~ Jules Bernstein

Read in full: Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains

You may be wondering: what makes this one effective against any strain?

❝What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad.

It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.

Viruses may mutate in regions not targeted by traditional vaccines. However, we are targeting their whole genome with thousands of small RNAs. They cannot escape this.❞

~ Dr. Rong Hai

Importantly, this means it can be applied not just to one disease, let alone just one strain of COVID. Rather, it can be used for a wide variety of viruses that have similar viral functions—COVID / SARS in general, including influenza, and even viruses such as dengue.

How it does this: the above article explains in more detail, but in few words: it targets tiny strings of the genome that are present in all strains of the virus.

Illustrative example: if you wanted to block 10almonds (please don’t), you could block our email address.

But if we were malicious (we’re not) we could be sneaky and change it, so you’d have to block the new one, and the cycle repeats.

But if you were block all emails containing the tiny string of characters “10almonds”, changing our email address would no longer penetrate your defenses.

Now imagine also blocking strings such as “One-Minute Book Review” and “Today’s almonds have been activated by” and other strings we use in every email.

Now multiply this by thousands of strings (because genomes are much larger than our little newsletter), and you see its effectiveness!

Great! How can I get this?

It’s still in the testing stages for now; this is “breaking news” science, after all.

The study itself

…is paywalled for now, sadly, but if you happen to have institutional access, here it is:

Live-attenuated virus vaccine defective in RNAi suppression induces rapid protection in neonatal and adult mice lacking mature B and T cells

Take care!

First, what is it?

Many more people have chronic fatigue, which is the symptom of being exhausted all the time, than have chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) which is the illness of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

This is because fatigue can be a symptom of many, many other conditions, and can be heavily influenced by lifestyle factors too.

A lot of the advice for dealing with chronic fatigue is often the same in both cases, but some will be different, because for example:

• If your fatigue is from some other condition, that condition probably impacts what lifestyle factors you are (and are not) able to change, too
• If your fatigue is from lifestyle factors, that hopefully means you can change those and enjoy less fatigue…
  • But if it’s not from lifestyle factors, as in ME/CFS, then advice to “exercise more” etc is not going to help so much.

There are ways to know the difference though:

Check out: Do You Have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

The chronic disease pipeline

While it had been strongly suspected that COVID infection could lead to CFS, with long COVID having chronic fatigue as one of its characteristic symptoms, a research team led by Dr. Suzanne Vernon has now established the nature of the relationship.

It was a large (n=13,224) longitudinal observational cohort study of people with no pre-existing ME/CFS, grouped according to their COVID infection status:

1. acute infected, enrolled within 30 days of infection or enrolled as uninfected who became infected (n=4,515)
2. post-acute infected, enrolled greater than 30 days after infection (n=7,270)
3. uninfected (n=1,439).

(to be clear, that last means “never infected”, or else they would be in group 2)

Note: people who had COVID and were hospitalized for it were excluded from the study, so this risk is the risk represented by even just more “moderate” infections.

What they found:

❝The proportion of all RECOVER-Adult participants that met criteria for ME/CFS following SARS-CoV-2 infection was 4.5% (531 of 11,785) compared to 0.6% (9 of 1439) in uninfected participants.❞

There are then different numbers if we look per 100 person-years, as the study also did—in which case, we get a re-modelled increase in risk of 5x instead of 7.5x, but a) that’s still not good b) the “here-and-now” figures of 4.5% vs 0.6% are also relevant.

Read in full: Incidence and Prevalence of Post-COVID-19 Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A Report from the Observational RECOVER-Adult Study

The killer nobody wants to talk about anymore

Of course, as we all know the pandemic is over, because politicians declared it so, which is very reassuring.

Nevertheless, COVID is currently the still 4th leading cause of death in the US, placing it higher than stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and others.

See also: Emergency or Not, Covid Is Still Killing People. Here’s What Doctors Advise to Stay Safe

So, while it’s very good to take care of our hearts, brains, blood sugars, and so forth, let’s at the very least continue to keep on top of our vaccinations, avoid enclosed crowded spaces where possible, etc.

And for extra boosts to one’s chances: Why Some People Get Sick More (And How To Not Be One Of Them)

What if I do get (or already have) long COVID and/or ME/CFS?

Well, that is definitely going to suck, but there are still some things that can be done.

Here’s a big one: How To Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue ← this will not, of course, cure you, but it’s a way of getting maximum nutrition for minimum effort, given that for someone with chronic fatigue, effort is a very finite resource that must be used sparingly

Finally, here are some further resources:

Support For Long COVID & Chronic Fatigue

Take care!