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Aaron Kheriaty, MD

@akheriaty

20 Sep

News from the UK: a new mutation is associated with immune escape – suggesting the virus is coming under pressure from highly vaccinated population inews.co.uk/news/politics/…

"Although case numbers are very low, the presence of E484K – known in virology circles as “Eeek” because of its vaccine-dodging qualities – is a cause for concern and Public Health England have classed it as a 'signal under investigation'."

"Scientists have warned... that a combination of highly transmissible Delta with an immune escape mutation could pose a threat to vaccines. The shift also suggests the virus is coming under pressure in a largely vaccinated population in the UK and is trying to adapt to survive."

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Aaron Kheriaty, MD

@akheriaty

17 Sep

1/ A fellow physician recently reached out expressing support for my lawsuit and shared the following with me:

"I was ill for about 3 months or more after my first Pfizer shot in February 2021.

2/ "I never knew I had Covid but suspected my reaction was amnestic, especially due to the lump at the injection site that reminded me of a positive PPD [tuberculosis skin test], and persisted beyond when I was scheduled for the second shot. I declined the second shot.

3/ "My supposition was that I had exposure to Covid before the vaccine, had T cell immunity and was protected. I decided to check for antibodies. I had the test and my level was high, consistent with my supposition especially since it was 7 months after my single dose of vaccine.

Read 6 tweets

Aaron Kheriaty, MD

@akheriaty

16 Sep

Regarding asymptomatic testing, the distinction between vaccinated/unvaccinated makes no scientific sense, since both can be infected with and transmit Covid.

The scientifically defensible categories should be:

1. Fully Immune (Covid recovered)
2. Partially Immune (vaccinated)
3. Non-Immune (everyone else)

For #1, no need for testing, since there is not a single case reported of transmission in naturally immune.

For #2,3, test only if symptomatic.

If asymptomatic testing is determined to be necessary, both 2 and 3 should be subjected to the same testing schedule since both can get infected and transmit the virus, as the CDC has acknowledged.

Read 4 tweets

Aaron Kheriaty, MD

@akheriaty

15 Sep

From the outset, this pandemic was an affront to the idea of unlimited Progress, our ability to dominate nature through science and technology, through our pragmatic ingenuity. But then nature (or perhaps science itself) threw a virus at us that we fundamentally couldn't control.

This is one reason why natural immunity cannot be acknowledged as a major contribution to herd immunity and the pathway out of the pandemic. For us to reassert the idea of Progress requires that the solution be of our own making--scientific progress must offer the sole fix.

So, in the name of Progress, we forbade socializing, forbade encountering others face-to-face, forbade working unless the work could be technologically mediated or was necessary for bare biological survival. For the first time since Antigone, we forbade burying our dead.

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Aaron Kheriaty, MD

@akheriaty

14 Sep

1/ The 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts SCOTUS ruling is often cited by proponents as the basis for compulsory vaccine mandates and other emergency pandemic mitigation public health measures. But Jacobson was a narrow ruling at the time and the precedent it set was modest.

2/ Justice Harlan’s decision in 1905 upheld the State’s, not Federal government's, power to impose a nominal fine ($5, the equivalent of $155 today adjusted for inflation) on a person who refused to be vaccinated against smallpox during an outbreak in Boston.

3/ Smallpox was more deadly than Covid, and State's action more modest than losing one's job or being excluded from attending school. But this is not the first time the Jacobson precedent has been misapplied in acts of expansive overreach. The most notorious example being...

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Aaron Kheriaty, MD

@akheriaty

13 Sep

In Washington v. Harper, a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court case, the Court found that a “forcible injection … into a nonconsenting person’s body represents a substantial interference with that person’s liberty[.]” 494 U.S. 210, 229 (1990).

The common law baseline from which this right developed was that “even the touching of one person by another without consent and without legal justification was a battery.” 497 U.S. at 278.

Furthermore, “[t]he Ninth Circuit has reaffirmed the Court’s recognition of fundamental rights to determine one’s own medical treatment, to refuse unwanted medical treatment, and a fundamental liberty interest in medical autonomy.”

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