Wormbrain Strikes Again

How the restrictions on mRNA research could bite you in the ass.

Despite compelling and mostly irrefutable evidence that the COVID mRNA vaccine has saved countless lives, there still exists a sizeable faction of biological flat earthers who insist that the vaccine is bad juju, an evil ploy by the immunological Mephistopheles, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who collaborated -- no doubt around a boiling cauldron of children’s skulls -- with the CDC, the WHO, the red Chinese, drug companies, insurance companies, Lex Luthor, and probably even that Gru guy from “Despicable Me” to kill all the people stupid enough to allow the needle to penetrate their bodies.

Maybe they’re right. Consider the assertion made by highly respected immunologist John Stockton that over 1,000 athletes died on the field after being vaccinated with the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine… wait a minute, John Stockton’s not an immunologist? He’s a former basketball player? Never mind. Still, come to think of it, I haven’t seen Travis Kelce around lately. Anybody know what happened to him?

Okay, I’m fucking around. Still, there’s no credible evidence that there’s been a large-scale increase in the sudden-death of athletes around the world. I mean, wouldn’t we have noticed if a rash of athletes, some who must have been high-profile, suddenly disappeared from starting rosters?

But forget that asshole Stockton. The big problem sits at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services. He isn’t Wormtongue from LOTR, but Wormbrain, a man so lacking in basic scientific knowledge (and analytical reason) as to take your breath away, a phrase which is now only an idiom but will likely soon be a real-life manifestation of a new surge of Covid-19 patients, all struggling to breathe.

As you surely know, Wormbrain, after listening to his coterie of hand-picked “experts,” has terminated at least 22 mRNA vaccine development investments because “the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”

That means no more money for federally funded research and while Wormbrain’s FDA approved the latest round of Covid vaccines, they set new limits on who can get them. People over 65 are still eligible, as are younger people with certain medical conditions (blood cancers, HIV, tuberculosis, Parkinson’s, etc.), but there are now serious questions about whether insurance plans will cover them. Worse yet, the truly tragic part of his announcement, is that it will hamstring development of new mRNA vaccines and treatments, treatments that could quite feasibly cure (yes, cure) a multitude of cancers.

But hey, if you don’t know much about the mechanics of mRNA vaccines, please read the following so that when the time comes, you can stand up and give throaty support for these medical marvels and fight this medical tyranny.

Teaching Your Body How to Make Its Own Medicine

You’re probably aware that COVID-19 belongs to the “corona” family of viruses, other members of which include those that cause the common cold and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). I bring this up not to bore you or allow you to run the board the next time the Jeopardy category is “Viruses,” but to give you a clue as to how mRNA vaccines work.

The surfaces of corona viruses are covered by large protein structures called spike protein and when you look at these spikes using negative stain transmission electron microscopy, they “recall the solar corona,” hence their name.

These spikes, “pretty” as they are, serve an insidious purpose: They bind to specific receptors on the surface of cells in the respiratory tract, allowing the virus membrane to fuse with lung cells and them. Once inside the cells, the viruses release their genetic material (RNA) and use the cells machinery to create more viruses, which are then released from the infected cell to infect other cells.

If you’re lucky and have a properly functioning efficient immune system, T-cells and B-cells will recognize these spikes on the surface of the virus as foreign invaders and produce antibodies against them but they’ll often fail, especially if you’ve never been exposed to COVID-19 before. They simply won’t be able to ramp up production of more “soldiers” in time.

Here’s where the elegance of mRNA vaccines becomes clear. Most traditional vaccines introduce a weakened (attenuated) or inactive viral components to elicit immunity, but this approach would have been problematic in the case of COVID for a variety of reasons. For one, dealing with large quantities of a live virus is perhaps dangerous and definitely problematic. Secondly, it would take a long time. Third, it potentially doesn’t do much good because viruses mutate all the time, possibly making the weakened or inactive viral vaccine ineffective. But the mRNA vaccine largely circumvents all that.

Before I tell you how it circumvents all that, you have to first know what mRNA is. It stands for messenger ribonucleic acid and it was discovered in the early 1960’s. It carries essential instructions from the cell’s DNA in chromosomes to the cell’s watery interior (the cytoplasm).

That’s where the cell’s machinery kicks in – it reads the instructions relayed by mRNA and translates it into corresponding amino acids that ultimately grow into one of the estimated 80,000 to 400,000 different proteins that constitute the human body.

Now here’s where the vaccine comes in. Remember the “spikes” I describe earlier, the ones that “recall the solar corona”? Well, some brilliant scientists figured out that they could take the instructions for building those spikes into a strand of mRNA, encapsulate it in a lipid envelope, and then introduce it into the human body. Once those lipid envelopes traverse human cell membranes, they dump the mRNA into the cell’s cytoplasm, instructing it to build those same little spikes that are on the COVID virus to populate the surface of the infected cell.

The immune system then recognizes these protein spikes as foreign, triggering T-cells and B-cells to produce antibodies. Get it? The healthy cells only look like COVID to the immune system but they elicit the same immunological response as the real thing without the actual disease. It's like putting on a Freddy Krueger mask to scare the bejesus out of your kids – you’re not really Freddy Krueger, but you look like him and elicit the same, terrified, crap-their-pants response.

After the job is complete, the mRNA quickly breaks down but the T-cells and B-cells retain the “memory” of how to fight the virus so that when the actual COVID virus decides to attack your body, your immune system is ready.

Think of it this way: mRNA teaches your body how to make its own medicine.

Yeah, but Wormbrain Says It wasn’t Tested…

There seems to be a prevailing notion among immunological flat earthers that the COVD-19 vaccines were unleashed unto the masses, like the horrors in Pandora’s box, without being tested. It’s not true. The concept of mRNA vaccines originated in the early 1970’s but it was years before scientists could figure out how to introduce such vaccines without causing systemic inflammation. They did so by substituting a particular nucleoside – uridine – with a slightly modified version called pseudouridine.

When they finally made it feasible and safe, expedited by the onset of COVID, the vaccines were tested in tens of thousands of people for safety and efficacy in rigorous clinical trials by expert scientists and regulators around the world. In fact, the safety and efficacy testing for mRNA was no different than for any other vaccine – maybe only a little faster.

True, some people experienced side effects, but the numbers were few. In a scant few cases, the vaccines were linked to inflammation of the heart muscle (myocarditis) and the fluid-filled sack that surrounds the heart (pericarditis). However, these symptoms are also known complications of COVID-19, suggesting that people who got the shots contracted actual COVID (no one said the vaccines were 100% effective, but even in those cases where the vaccine “didn’t work,” the vaccine likely mitigated the damage that the virus could have caused).

What Else Will We be Missing Out on?

Unless the research on mRNA vaccines is reinstituted, we lose the ability to rapidly respond to any new viral threats as the technology allows immunologists to potentially respond to new pandemics in as few as a hundred days.

Likewise, most research on the use of mRNA vaccines against influenza, Zika, cytomegalovirus (CMV), respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and HIV has been shuttered.

Perhaps more tragically, the cessation of mRNA research programs hamstrings a promising cancer fighting technology. Let’s say you or a loved one was diagnosed with some type of cancer. mRNA technology would allow clinicians to do a biopsy and look for a difference – a marker – associated with tumor cells that’s not found on healthy cells. This “neo antigen” could then be turned into an mRNA vaccine that would allow your body to kick cancer’s butt all on its own, or at least with a little help from other treatments.

But all that may remain a dream. Thankfully, other countries will likely continue their research and we may yet see widespread use (and acceptance) of this potentially game-changing technology. Or, Wormbrain could resign or get fired. Wouldn’t that be nice?

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