quote:

I love the way these authors tried their best to sugar coat it.

"these data shed light on these novel vaccine formats and might have potential implications for their long-term efficacy."

quote:

Agalactosylated (G0) IgG Abs have been linked to severe conditions in inflammatory (auto-) immune diseases, whereas IgG sialylation has been associated with a decreased affinity of IgG to classical activating FcyRs and lower or anti-inflammatory effects (21, 24, 36, 37, 44–52). The functional analysis of differently glycosylated IgG Abs is complex because single terminal glycan residues may in addition interact with glycan binding receptors, such as galectins, siglecs, and C-type lectin receptors (37, 44, 53–55). In vivo, immune inhibitory functions have been described for sialylated as well as terminally galactosylated antigen-specific and total IgG Abs (36, 44–48, 52, 54, 56). IgG Fc bisection is often increased in inflammatory autoimmune diseases (57). However, the biological significance of IgG bisection is less clear and remains to be investigated.

MikeC posted:

See above. Take your crusading somewhere else thanks.

James Garfield posted:

The source for the claim about repeated doses of vaccines damaging the immune system seems to be this tweet:

https://mobile.twitter.com/nerdtechgasm/status/1614202853387829249

quote:

For almost three years I hardly knew anyone with corona in China. After that, just about everyone contracted the virus at the same time: I hardly know any people who have not been infected.

For the first time in China, it really makes sense to wear a face mask. It is the end of a dark age, the awakening from a bad dream. You are happy about the regained freedom.

MikeC posted:

I need someone with a medical background to parse this study for me if possible. Claims include "Don't take repeated doses of mRNA vaccines. It will mess up your immune system. (Over stimulates IgG4 leading to immuno-suppression effect)". I came across this from a twitter user who isn't psycho but is definitely on the don't vaccinate excessively side of the isle. Too much jargon in the article for me to parse the claim.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2022.1020844/full

Thanks in advance.

M31 posted:

Found this in a local news article today (translated from https://nos.nl/artikel/2459996-van-zero-covid-naar-vrijheid-een-persoonlijk-verslag-uit-china):

For once I can understand the Chinese governments annoyance at everybody else. The west hasn't cared about Covid for the last two years, and 60.000 deaths in one month (which the above journalists implies is probably too low, since that number came from the Chinese government) is apparently the same as waking up from a bad dream, but now suddenly the possibility of a new variant is too scary so better ask everybody from China to do a test.

NoDamage posted:

This tactic of people intentionally misrepresenting highly technical lab studies to jump to conclusions not actually supported by the authors themselves is getting pretty tiresome.

PT6A posted:

Also: "hey, did you know that so-and-so got the vaccine and then died?" as if death from any cause was simply out of the question before the vaccine came around, and somehow it's robbed us of our immortality.

The irony is particularly amazing when you consider these people were the ones crowing about how all sorts of unrelated deaths were being reported as being due to COVID. I guess, just as with all rightwing brainworms, that was mainly projection.

PT6A posted:

Largely, what we've been seeing and what we are seeing is that the people who do have the required expertise are still broadly supportive of the vaccines

Platystemon posted:

I do not think that the authors are “sugar coating” concerns. You don’t write phrases like “linked to severe conditions in inflammatory (auto-) immune diseases” if you’re sugarcoating. You know that that’s a spicy one.

NoDamage posted:

This tactic of people intentionally misrepresenting highly technical lab studies to jump to conclusions not actually supported by the authors themselves is getting pretty tiresome.

Fortunately in this case you don't really need to parse this study in depth to realize it does not claim what your Twitter user thinks it claims. The study merely says that people who received mRNA-based vaccines have higher levels of IgG4 antibodies compared to people who received adenovirus-based vaccines, that's it. The claim that this will then "mess up your immune system" appears to be speculation on the part of Mr. nerdtechgasm and is not supported by the study itself.

Pro-tip: if someone makes a bunch of sweeping claims about your immune system based solely on in-vitro analyses of blood samples you should ask yourself if there is any corresponding real-world epidemiological data to support their claim. For example: if repeated doses of mRNA vaccines will mess up your immune system then you might expect to see people who received three doses of an mRNA vaccine to have worse Covid outcomes compared to people who only received two doses. Is that what we see in the real world? Nope, people who have been boosted have much lower rates of hospitalization and death. You might also expect to see people who received mRNA-based vaccines to have worse Covid outcomes compared to people who received adenovirus-based vaccines. Is that what we see in the real world? Again, nope, rates of hospitalization and death are similar between the two.

Of course Mr. nerdtechgasm probably knows all this but doesn't give a poo poo because he's working backwards to justify his pre-existing opinions on vaccines and he knows he can get away with it because probably none of his followers are going to actually bother reading the study anyway.

PT6A posted:

In contrast, I think it was a mistake to stop pushing pro-public-health propaganda to counterbalance the issue.

MikeC posted:

Would a responsible takeaway from this study be that this is something they should look into in the future? I read one of the posted twitter threads and one of the many unknowns in that thread was that we have never tried to do multiple vaccine doses so close together and maybe that was one reason for the response.

MikeC posted:

It is tiresome but I feel a responsible individual who comes across stuff like this should make a good-faith effort to understand what the linked study actually says so they can refute or qualify statements for themselves in the future instead of just choosing to be in one herd of sheep or the other. Obviously, in today's world, it is impossible to be an expert at everything, much less an expert in one thing, but dismissing the source of the claim and saying "nuh-uh" is not productive for oneself or society as a whole. The entire problem we have with this covid vaccine thing is that too many people refuse to sit down and do the hard work of trying to understand what is being presented to them in all its nuance and instead simply choose blind faith. It just becomes a matter of which altar you have chosen to place your allegiance in and it becomes a matter of ensuring you are right rather than actually finding out what is right. Of course, blind faith is a lot easier since you get to spend more of your free time watching the Karshasians or Monday Night Football instead of trying to go through a dense paper in field where you have no training in.

That is the reason why I posted that question the way I did. I almost certainly knew for a fact the claim at face value was false, but almost always there is some kernel of truth when such studies are linked with outrageous claims. My goal was to extract that small morsel but I lacked the technical knowledge to parse the study so I asked for help. I explicitly avoided mentioning the source precisely because I didn't care for a dissection of nerdtechgasm's personality, politics, views, and what-have-yous because frankly, it didn't matter to me and I knew it would draw the derails. I knew he was not a medical expert (he tweets about the semiconductor industry) so he was obviously out of his depth but I wanted to know precisely what was in there for him to link it.

Main Paineframe posted:

...they're a full-on antivaxxer who thinks that COVID is mild and easily curable with ivermectin and zinc supplements

MikeC posted:

Would a responsible takeaway from this study be that this is something they should look into in the future? I read one of the posted twitter threads and one of the many unknowns in that thread was that we have never tried to do multiple vaccine doses so close together and maybe that was one reason for the response.

https://doi.org/10.1126/sciimmunol.ade2798 posted:

Generally, IgG4 responses have been rarely observed even after repeated immunizations or infections. To corroborate this, we analyzed tetanus-specific antibody responses in 23 volunteers who had received several doses (2–16, median 6) of a tetanus toxoid (TT) vaccine (Table S3). Sera were tested for TT-specific total IgG or IgG4 antibodies using an ELISA format. TT-specific IgG4 were detectable in 9 of 23 sera, albeit at very low levels, and no correlation was found with the number of vaccinations received (Fig. S5A, B). Additionally, we tested ten individuals from our cohort 2 (Table 1) for the presence of antibodies against the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a respiratory pathogen that regularly causes re-infections in humans. While we found RSV-F protein-specific IgG1 antibodies in all tested sera, IgG4 was not detected (Fig. S5C). These findings support the notion that class-switching to IgG4 is not a general consequence of repeated antigen exposure in form of vaccinations or infections.

Main Paineframe posted:

Are you leaving something out of this claim?

Main Paineframe posted:

Because you admitted you don't understand the paper yourself, and are instead taking someone else's word for what it means.

Platystemon posted:

MikeC posted:

I can't find the exact tweet at the moment, it was clearly me paraphrasing something longer. If I find it again I will edit it.

Hang on a sec, I wasn't going to engage any further on this but at what point did I do this? At no point did I even come close to saying or insinuating I believed what he tweeted. Since I have to take people's word for what it means, I went the route of sourcing other people, such as this thread to try and understand it better and it definitely helped along with a twitter thread by an author of a study that did something similar. Are you saying that I was wrong to even ask about the contents of this study merely because it was linked to nerdtechgasm's twitter account?

MikeC posted:

I think this attitude is bad. Especially since you use the word propaganda. I know anecdotally that it was an overreach by media personalities and politicians in their messaging that directly contributed to vaccine hesitation in social circles I am a part of be it family or friends. A good example is the framing of why to take the vaccine. There was a big push early on that vaccination would mean that you would not be a carrier and thus protect others. You may know this clip for example https://twitter.com/aginnt/status/1475193955704881152?s=20&t=V0e_pMhJ-zU6rBx41tZNDw where Maddow claims that if you are vaccinated then you can't be a carrier 'for sure' (paraphrasing). We know that obviously isn't true now but 'propaganda' which is what Maddow was spewing there was an awful lot like what Biden was saying in spring of '21 (patriotic duty to protect others etc). Then when the omicrom wave hit and it turns out the vaccines didn't do all that it was said to do, and talk of renewed lockdowns came about, public confidence in the entire system was hurt.

Whenever you lie, even through omission, those lies will eventually surface and will form the chains in which those who pedal in misinformation thrive. Indeed you can say what Maddow was doing was misinformation itself. In the end it just hurts the medical community and degrades trust in the authorities. Vaccine 'propaganda' had worked this time but imo, seeing the very real destruction in the credibility of the medical establishment in my own social circles leads me to believe it probably wasn't worth it. Whatever you gained out of COVID you are going to lose whenever the next pandemic comes around.

This isn't coming from an anti-vaxxer or someone who hangs out in such a circle. My mother would have never questioned medical authorities before covid. She duly got her first and second vaccinations as did I at the earliest availability but when promises are made and broken when the medical community and politicians weren't sure in the first place, it made her directly start looking online at counter claims which invariably led her to hardcore anti-vaxxer content. I am a natural skeptic at everything but she wasn't and there was a period of about a year when she didn't know who to trust. It took a lot of work by me to get her back onside for her booster shot when omicron came around and I read that mRNA efficacy might have waned by the time it was on the rise here in Canada. If we are going to live in a society that is supposedly free and democratic, then we ought to just release the whole ugly truth and accept that people will make mistakes or unwise decisions with that freedom. Trying to mask it only exacerbates issues down the road.

MikeC posted:

I can't find the exact tweet at the moment, it was clearly me paraphrasing something longer. If I find it again I will edit it.

Hang on a sec, I wasn't going to engage any further on this but at what point did I do this? At no point did I even come close to saying or insinuating I believed what he tweeted. Since I have to take people's word for what it means, I went the route of sourcing other people, such as this thread to try and understand it better and it definitely helped along with a twitter thread by an author of a study that did something similar. Are you saying that I was wrong to even ask about the contents of this study merely because it was linked to nerdtechgasm's twitter account?

You sir are once again the hero. Appreciate the followup.

Main Paineframe posted:

What makes you think that the Twitter user in question has the expertise to parse the article?

If the authors had the evidence to back up such a bold and important claim, they likely would have said it directly instead of burying it in jargon. Failing that, someone with actual medical expertise almost certainly would have picked up on such a significant claim and disseminated it in laymen's terms.

If someone actually had serious evidence that mRNA boosters were destroying people's immune systems, I can absolutely guarantee that you wouldn't have to hear it from some random Twitter user who posts all day about "excessive vaccination".

Main Paineframe posted:

Instead of spending your time hunting for the tweet, I'd much prefer to see you address the sentence immediately after the one you quoted. You know, the sentences where I pointed out that the claim you were making was blatantly false, and then followed it up by providing specific examples with a source. I don't really care that you got the claim from a tweet originally, nor do I care that you may have misunderstood the tweet. I'm responding to the post that you made based on your interpretation of the knowledge you gathered, and I hoped you would apply that

Main Paineframe posted:

If you can't understand what's in the study, why do you think this other person can understand it any better than you can? And if you don't think they understand it better than you, then why would you bother to investigate further based solely on their claims?

Main Paineframe posted:

I don't really want to be an rear end, but you came in here asking us to verify for you whether an article matched what you said some random Twitter user was claiming it said. And then when people asked you more about the tweet, you accused them of turning it into a "culture war skirmish" and asked them to "take their crusading somewhere else". You then followed it up by accusing us of being "sheep" who put "blind faith" in doctors and health authorities. Is it any wonder people are annoyed?

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

I have a friend who has gone down the covid doomer rabbit hole and I find myself spending significant amounts of time refuting his bullshit, especially in online group chats we're both a part of.

Examples:

Covid destroys your immune system and lowers your T-cell count, which makes you more susceptible to both covid and other diseases, which basically means covid is airborne AIDS

GargleBlaster posted:

I'd bet a tenner he follows "fitterhappieraj" aka Anthony J Leonardi on Twitter where at lot of this poo poo seems to come from. I had to do a lot of digging on Reddit to find someone with sense talking about him (wading through a lot of results that are automated reposts of clickbait articles or doomer subs) but essentially after finding some more scientific corners you find that most of the more scientifically minded consider him a crank. One who whenever he finds something that vaguely supports his view is all "See! You all called me crazy but I was right all along!" and thinks he's the next Galileo, mocked by the world for telling a truth as obvious as the earth not being flat.

Problem is a lot of crap gets posted under the comments for his tweets and heavily liked/retweeted that he isn't necessarily saying but doesn't challenge. Could be that it does cause some T cell depletion in some cases and have a link to "Long Covid" and that he's making reasonable speculations (albeit just that, speculations, and written in an alarmist and arrogant way) but it's almost like he encourages the comments saying "hey it's airborne HIV/AIDS and we're all going to be dead in 10 years".

He did eventually address the countless people commenting underneath his threads saying "the vaccine looks like the virus and so kills the T cells too, therefore vaccines are bad" but not before probably thousands of people had been turned antivax.

shirunei posted:

GargleBlaster posted:

I'd bet a tenner he follows "fitterhappieraj" aka Anthony J Leonardi on Twitter where at lot of this poo poo seems to come from. I had to do a lot of digging on Reddit to find someone with sense talking about him (wading through a lot of results that are automated reposts of clickbait articles or doomer subs) but essentially after finding some more scientific corners you find that most of the more scientifically minded consider him a crank. One who whenever he finds something that vaguely supports his view is all "See! You all called me crazy but I was right all along!" and thinks he's the next Galileo, mocked by the world for telling a truth as obvious as the earth not being flat.

Problem is a lot of crap gets posted under the comments for his tweets and heavily liked/retweeted that he isn't necessarily saying but doesn't challenge. Could be that it does cause some T cell depletion in some cases and have a link to "Long Covid" and that he's making reasonable speculations (albeit just that, speculations, and written in an alarmist and arrogant way) but it's almost like he encourages the comments saying "hey it's airborne HIV/AIDS and we're all going to be dead in 10 years".

He did eventually address the countless people commenting underneath his threads saying "the vaccine looks like the virus and so kills the T cells too, therefore vaccines are bad" but not before probably thousands of people had been turned antivax.

GargleBlaster posted:

Blank post there fella

GargleBlaster posted:

but essentially after finding some more scientific corners you find that most of the more scientifically minded consider him a crank.

Fansy posted:

He also appears to be correct about T-Cell exhaustion, (pre-print alert)
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.16.23284612v1

Fansy posted:

he was right about mutations avoiding any sort of "hybrid immunity" back when that was the big hope.

James Garfield posted:

Assuming this is the same Anthony J Leonardi, he does not seem to be involved in covid research (the 7 publications are opinion articles and an open letter he signed) or to have a background in infectious diseases. It's not obvious to me why that would be the go to covid expert, I mean there are immunologists who study covid with twitter accounts.