Thread by @enn_nafnlaus

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Sorry, Elon, but this article is fringe.

1 . "Mounting evidence indicates that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity." - Here's a meta-review of the entire corpus. No, it is not.

cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya 2. "In a study from Israel..."

Hmm, what does the text say at the top of that "Study from Israel", I wonder?

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya The "study from Israel" is a non-peer-reviewed preprint that not only contradicts the rest of the corpus, but does so by *over an order of magnitude*. Giant flashing red lights with loud sirens should be going off in your head by now.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Hey 74%-infected Manaus, how well did "natural immunity" protect you when Gamma swung around?

thelancet.com/article/S0140-…

Same story yet again with Delta.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Hey Iran, how well did "natural immunity" protect you from reinfection and death? Oh...

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

(Note - this is a preprint, and I'll *actually call that out* but it also doesn't contradict an entire corpus by over an order of magnitude)

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Why is "natural immunity" not standing up to variants? It only tends to target one epitope on S, E484 - thus small changes = evasion. Vaccine-based immunity tends to only focus on the RBD, but multiple, more evolutionarily-conserved regions.

science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Well, what about other proteins? The problem is there's only 4 proteins: S, N, E and M. E and M are tiny, recessed, & poorly immunogenic. N is abundant (though internal) & immunogenic, but is associated with ADE. You *don't* want N antibodies.

nature.com/articles/s4157…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Indeed, while most studies show roughly similar infection resistance from 2x-vaccinated vs. infected patients, *hospitalization* rates from reinfections are much higher.

cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Note that we're only discussing *2x vaccinated*, with only 3 weeks between doses. This is *not* the sort of schedule you use if you're looking to build strong, lasting, cross-neutralizing immunity. Time is a key aspect, which is why childhood immunizations are spaced.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Emphasis on "cross neutralizing". Note the top (vs. Beta, an "evasive" strain). See the GMR (ratio of neutralization of variant vs. wild type). 27-30% after 2x. Up to 46-47% at 6 months. 73-77% after the booster. *The body has never seen Beta before*, yet neutralizes it well.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Continuing:

"We have known about natural immunity from disease at least since the Athenian Plague in 430 BC."

The Athenian Plague killed a quarter of the population. Is that the plan being proposed?

Furthermore, not all diseases create lasting immunity, and more to the...

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya ... point, some diseases *actually make it worse when you get reinfected*. As much as antivaxxers like to talk about ADE, ADE is *far* more commonly a problem with infection. Dengue is the classic example: your second dengue infection is much more likely to be worse.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya "Protecting the elderly" .... HAS. NEVER. WORKED.

We've been trying to protect the elderly this entire pandemic. It. Has. Not. Worked. And it *especially* won't work if you subscribe to their opposition of vaccine mandates for healthcare workers.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya My uncle has advanced coronary heart disease. So he was double vaxxed and has been isolating himself. But guess what? People with advanced coronary heart disease *sometimes have to go to the hospital*, and take a guess what happened there? He was infected.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Thanks to 2x vaccination and Regeneron, he survived, but also seems to have suffered long-term damage from his infection. This will probably rob him of years of his life. And FYI, this policy of allowing infection spread is creating mutations to evade Regeneron.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya But the disease is not simply killing and maiming the elderly. Even among the *by far* lowest risk group, 5-14yo children, COVID was the sixth leading cause of death in August-September in the US.

healthsystemtracker.org/brief/covid19-…

This while people are *trying* to prevent infections.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya A disease's acute risk is not simply its IFR; it's its IFR ***times the number of people at risk***, which is 1-1/R0. SARS-CoV-2 is an order of magnitude higher IFR ***times an order of magnitude higher vulnerability*** vs the flu - two orders of magnitude that you have to offset

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya (Ignoring that influenza is *already a scourge*, and the last thing we need is to *double* that scourge)

"Schools are major transmission points for influenza, but not for COVID"

Schools are *driving COVID transmission* in western countries now. Here's the UK.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya "Sweden ... the result?"

"The Result" of Sweden's policy was mass death and the government's handling being excoriated by the commission set up to analyze it.

regeringen.se/rattsliga-doku…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Yet they performed no better economically than their neighbors.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya " Zero COVID deaths "

Wrong.

statista.com/statistics/110…

Seriously, linking data from *June 2020*?

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya And by the way, can we back away from the "only death matters" aspect for a moment to point out the *massive wave of Long COVID* being created? If we're talking Sweden, where about 30% of the population has been infected, 3% of the *total population* has not recovered their...

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya sense of smell.

dn.se/sverige/manga-…

Around 10-15% of infections / 20-25% of symptomatic infections end in Long COVID. About half of those are unrecovered after a year. In one in three it's severe enough to impact their daily lives.

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya There's so many papers on the topic that I don't know where to even start, and probably shouldn't even try - but on the specific topic of loss of smell from COVID, that's directly associated with cognitive impairment and risk of dementia.

alz.org/aaic/releases_…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya That was from the last Alzheimers Association conference. They're concerned because SARS-CoV-2 infection raises your Alzheimers' markers, and they fear it may lead to increasing rates of dementia later in life.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jm…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya Cognitive impairment post-infection is a serious concern. This study for example found that hospitalization with COVID is associated with similar impairment to having a stroke. Even non-hospitalized cases showed measurable impairment.

thelancet.com/journals/eclin…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya There's a whole wealth of papers on the directly visible brain damage, both at a microscopic level:

nature.com/articles/s4159…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya And a macroscopic level.

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

@elonmusk @MartinKulldorff @joerogan @DrJBhattacharya But I digress.

Do I really need to keep going through this Newsweek article to make a point? It's two Great Barrington Declaration authors - a fringe position sponsored by the (also climate-change denying) American Enterprise Institute - cherry-picking an entire orchard.