Day 635: Original Antigenic Sin

Not surprisingly, the FDA ruled yesterday to authorize Pfizer's experimental (in children) vaccine for healthy children 5–11 years of age who are statistically at no risk from COVID-19. It may seem like the only risk to children is from side-effects of the vaccine itself, but vaccinating against harmless, variable diseases is in fact counter-productive due to original antigenic sin:

Original Antigenic Sin was most influentially described by Thomas Francis in 1960. He noted that, regardless of whatever influenza A strains were in circulation, subjects tended to have dominant antibody responses to the strains that were current in their early childhood:

The antibody of childhood is largely a response to … the virus causing the first Type A influenza infection of the lifetime. As the group grows older and subsequent infections take place, antibodies to additional families of virus are acquired. But … the antibody which is first established continues to characterize that cohort of the population throughout its life. The antibody forming mechanisms have been highly conditioned by the first stimulus, so that later infections with strains of the same type successively enhance the original antibody to maintain it at the highest level at all times in that age group. The imprint established by the original virus infection governs the antibody response thereafter. This we have called the doctrine of original antigenic sin.

An important consequence of this childhood conditioning, is that different age cohorts within the population have overlapping or layered immunity to different influenza strains. This is an important if subtle aspect of our population-wide immunity to influenza A.[...]

The most dangerous thing to do, at this point, would be to vaccinate children. The virus is not a threat to them, and if they are infected by the new forms of SARS-2 that are sure to emerge every winter, we will begin to establish – through them and the as yet unvaccinated – the layered immunity that is the only way of coming to terms with SARS-2 in the longer term. As long as the vaccinators are permitted to continue their radical and increasingly insane campaign, though, nothing will improve. Indeed, their policies threaten to bring about a semi-permanent pandemic state for generations to come.

Read the whole thing for lessons learned from dengue fever and why the flu vaccine doesn't work, yet appears to help at the epidemiological level, and check out the rest of eugyppius' substack.

Massachusetts cases were up a sixth of a percentage point again yesterday.

P.S. When finally reported, cases were up a sixth of a percentage point.