The Crisis of the Unvaccinated: Why Business Travel Will Not Rebound This Year
By Robert McGarvey
I know a guy – call him Tom – who is fully vaccinated and a couple weeks ago his company told him to show up at a golf tournament they were holding for big customers at one of the nation’s swankiest courses.
At this event there were no masks and why would there be, everybody being fully vaccinated, or at least claiming to be.
There wasn’t much social distancing either.
You know where this story is ending, right?
Tom now is in bed with a case of Covid.
His case so far is mild. But he has Covid and he was fully vaccinated.
That is why I now say it is plain delusional and loony to talk about a return of business travel this year. And there won’t be a return of in-person events, either.
Not in 2021.
Don’t blame me. Blame the unvaccinated who right now are about 50% of us. Why so many? I have no idea. Cockamamie beliefs, twisted politics, who knows – but here’s the deal: their refusal to get vaccinated is endangering the rest of us. Sure, if they quarantined they would be out of harm’s way, at least our harms way. That would be fine by me.
But I don’t trust them to self quarantine until the Covid-19 epidemic runs its course.
I don’t even trust them to wear masks.
Will they get vaccinated now that the Delta variant is rampaging across the country (and especially in states such as Florida and Louisiana with loudly anti vax populations)?
So far many of them have ignored the carrot and what comes next is the stick. Such as? Some experts suggest allowing health insurers to charge a penalty premium from the unvaccinated and why not? Insurers already charge smokers a penalty fee on the grounds that personal choices sometimes have horrendous health consequences and who better to pay for it than the person who made the choice?
Most who are sickened by the Delta variant are unvaccinated and the vast majority of serious illnesses are. Which means a price could be paid.
That might help motivate the unvaccinated to get on the script.
Meantime, a stampede of large employers has announced a vaccine requirement for employees, although most offer a loophole where an employee who wants to stay unvaccinated can provide frequent, negative Covid test results. The federal government, WalMart, Disney, Google, Facebook have all joined the parade.
Another parade is forming of organizations that are pushing back their return to the office date for employees. Many had been noodling on a September date. As the Delta variant explodes across America, employers have torn up those orders and now are talking about a late winter 2022 return date, say February.
Do you hear the sound of business travel plans coursing through the shredder?
To quote from Business Travel News, “Corporate travel’s return from its Covid-19-induced standstill will pick up speed throughout the remainder of 2021 but likely will remain significantly below pre-pandemic levels for at least another year, and some types of travel may never fully return, according to a new study from Deloitte.”
To quote from Finance & Commerce: “A year and a half of forgoing virtually all travel and doing business by video conference has led many business people to conclude that a lot of their previous travel wasn’t worth the time and toll on their bodies and mental state, on their families and the environment. That’s even before considering the role that travel played in transmitting the virus across continents.”
Unpack, those business trips you had been planning just a few weeks ago – and they looked very probable – now look like mirages that disappeared.
Thank the unvaccinated in our midst.
As Dr. Anthony Fauci said on “Face the Nation,” “We have 100 million people in this country … who are eligible to be vaccinated, who are not vaccinated. We’ve really got to get those people to change their minds, make it easy for them, convince them, do something to get them to be vaccinated because they are the ones that are propagating this outbreak.”
Amen.
Just to note that those arriving at any event with people of uncertain vaccination status (not specifically verified) can take precautions by 1) wearing a mask themselves; 2) being outside (when possible); and 3) trying to distance from others.
First, a recent study showed that nearly 3/4ths of infections were in vaccinated people. Second, there are real issues with the vaccines. Here’s a summary: There has been a lot of discussion about the Covid vaccines, and there is a massive push to get them. However, these vaccines have never been used in humans and have not undergone adequate testing to determine long term effects. Here is a summary of the concerns about these vaccines.
Here is a quote from this study. “The investigation was undertaken to study the effect vaccine-induced, spike-protein antibodies have on preventing SARS-CoV infections and to examine the possible effect the spike-protein antibodies have on the immune system.
Here, we present evidence of a detrimental role of anti–S-IgG in ALI (acute lung injury) during SARS-CoV infection. Respiratory CoVs infection poses a unique challenge to the immune system: not only must the virus be rapidly eliminated, but lung inflammation must also be controlled to prevent acute respiratory failure. In the present study, we show that, despite markedly reducing virus titers, anti–S-IgG caused lung injury during the early stages of infection by abrogating a wound-healing macrophage response and TGF-β production, while promoting proinflammatory cytokine IL-8 and MCP1 production and inflammatory macrophage accumulation. To our knowledge, our data demonstrate a previously unrecognized mechanism underlying virus-mediated ALI and suggest that modulation of the anti-S antibody response or blockage of Fcγ receptors during acute infection might be needed for effective treatment for respiratory CoV infection.”
And here is a summary of those findings:
“We present evidence of a detrimental role of the anti-S-IgG (anti-spike protein antibody) and acute lung injury during a SARS-CoV infection.
Vaccine-induced, spike-specific antibodies resulted in severe acute lung injury in SARS-CoV infected Chinese macaques
Anti-S-IgG antibody failed to prevent SARS-CoV lower respiratory tract infection (pneumonia) and amplify (increase) M1 macrophage infiltration and accumulation in the lungs.
Anti-S-IgG causes severe acute lung injury (ALI) when the lungs become re-infected and/or re-exposed to coronaviruses by removing the inflammation-resolving work of the M2 macrophages.
Animals who died of SARS-CoV infection had an accumulation of pro-inflammatory M1 macrophages and an absence of wound-healing M2 macrophages in their lungs.
Histological examination [the lung tissue of the sacrificed animals] in 6 of the vaccinated macaques revealed acute diffuse alveolar damage (DAD) with various degrees of severity. Most of the macaques in the control group given the non-spike protein vaccine showed only minor to moderate lung inflammation. (Note: alveoli are the tiny air sacs in the lungs that oxygenate the blood.)
Without the presence of the anti-S-IgG antibodies, M2 macrophages began healing the lungs within two days of infection.
The above study was very recent (2019) but is it one of MANY dating back to 2002 documenting how damaging the COVID vaccine(s) are going to be once a person is vaccinated and then is re-exposed to circulating coronaviruses.
But that’s not the only problem caused by the COVID-19 vaccines.
Most garden-variety respiratory viruses cause infection by binding to specific receptors on the surface of the host’s cells. To block this attachment, antibodies formed from previous infections or by vaccines bind the circulating virus and neutralize it. This stops, or at least weakens, the progression to a full-blown infection.
However, in some viruses, the antibodies formed against them bind only loosely to the viral surface proteins. Instead of stopping an infection, this mechanism promotes invasion into the cell, enhancing the infection instead of stopping it.”
Li Liu, et. al. JCI, Anti–spike IgG causes severe acute lung injury by skewing macrophage responses during acute SARS-CoV infection. Insight. 2019;4(4):e123158. https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.123158.
And here’s another one, which also addresses the way in which the vaccine studies were conducted:
“Methods used to conduct the study: Published literature was reviewed to identify preclinical and clinical evidence that COVID-19 vaccines could worsen disease upon exposure to challenge or circulating virus. Clinical trial protocols for COVID-19 vaccines were reviewed to determine if risks were properly disclosed.
Results of the study: COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated. Vaccines for SARS, MERS and RSV have never been approved, and the data generated in the development and testing of these vaccines suggest a serious mechanistic concern: that vaccines designed empirically using the traditional approach (consisting of the unmodified or minimally modified coronavirus viral spike to elicit neutralising antibodies), be they composed of protein, viral vector, DNA or RNA and irrespective of delivery method, may worsen COVID-19 disease via antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). This risk is sufficiently obscured in clinical trial protocols and consent forms for ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials that adequate patient comprehension of this risk is unlikely to occur, obviating truly informed consent by subjects in these trials.
Conclusions drawn from the study and clinical implications: The specific and significant COVID-19 risk of ADE should have been and should be prominently and independently disclosed to research subjects currently in vaccine trials, as well as those being recruited for the trials and future patients after vaccine approval, in order to meet the medical ethics standard of patient comprehension for informed consent.”
Since we are all “research subjects” for these vaccines, everyone should be told about these issues. Instead, these remain hidden and are never disclosed, and thus people are not able to make any kind of informed decision. This is against ALL medical ethics and standards of conduct.
Timothy Cardozo , Ronald Veazey. Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease. Int J Clin Pract, 2020 Oct 28;e13795. doi: 10.1111/ijcp.13795
We are now seeing multiple variants of the Covid virus. We still don’t know how effective the current vaccines are for these variants. But here’s the bad news: we will continue to see multiple variants for years to come. How many vaccines will we need to have? This study shows that this could go on indefinitely.
Once again from the research: “scientists address the influence of antigenic drift (slow mutational changes over time) on immune evasion of seasonal coronaviruses. In doing so, they show that two seasonal human coronaviruses undergo adaptive evolution in regions of the viral spike protein that are exposed to human humoral immunity. The findings suggest that a continual reformulation of coronavirus vaccines may be necessary”
Kathryn E Kistler ,Trevor Bedford. Evidence for adaptive evolution in the receptor-binding domain of seasonal coronaviruses OC43 and 229e. eLife 2021;10:e64509 doi: 10.7554/eLife.64509
And now for the really bad news: these types of vaccines are capable of producing long term, irreversible neurological damage.
“Development of new vaccine technology has been plagued with problems in the past. The current RNA based SARS- CoV-2 vaccines were approved in the US using an emergency order without extensive long term safety testing. In this paper the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was evaluated for the potential to induce prion-based disease in vaccine recipients. The RNA sequence of the vaccine as well as the spike protein target interaction were analyzed for the potential to convert intracellular RNA binding proteins TAR DNA binding protein (TDP-43) and Fused in Sarcoma (FUS) into their pathologic prion conformations. The results indicate that the vaccine RNA has specific sequences that may induce TDP-43 and FUS to fold into their pathologic prion confirmations. In the current analysis a total of sixteen UG tandem repeats (ΨGΨG) were identified and additional UG (ΨG) rich sequences were identified. Two GGΨA sequences were found. Potential G Quadruplex sequences are possibly present but a more sophisticated computer program is needed to verify these. Furthermore, the spike protein, created by the translation of the vaccine RNA, binds angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a zinc containing enzyme. This interaction has the potential to increase intracellular zinc. Zinc ions have been shown to cause the transformation of TDP-43 to its pathologic prion configuration. The folding of TDP-43 and FUS into their pathologic prion confirmations is known to cause ALS, front temporal lobar degeneration, Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological degenerative diseases. The enclosed finding as well as additional potential risks leads the author to believe that regulatory approval of the RNA based vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 was premature and that the vaccine may cause much more harm than benefit.”
Prion disease is also know as Creutzfeldt-Jakob, or “mad cow” disease. There is no cure and it is a nasty way to go, as is another possible issue, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). The problem is that these side effects might not become apparent for anywhere from several months to several years.
Classen JB. COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease. Microbiol Infect Dis. 2021; 5(1): 1-3.
Based on this research, I cannot recommend the current vaccines. There are too many possible risks, and the benefit is small as it’s being administered for a virus with a 99.85% survival rate. Here are some more references that have the same types of findings.
James Lyons-Wei. Pathogenic Priming Likely Contributes to Serious and Critical Illness and Mortality in COVID-19 via Autoimmunity. Journal of Translational Autoimmunity. April 2020. DOI: 10.1016/j.jtauto.2020.100051.
The above study demonstrated that the vaccines can cause auto-immune disorders.
Chien-Te Tseng. Immunization with SARS coronavirus vaccines leads to pulmonary immunopathology on challenge with the SARS virus. PLoS One. 2012;7(8). doi:10.1371/annotation/2965cfae-b77d-4014-8b7b-236e01a35492
Negro Francesco. Is antibody-dependent enhancement playing a role in COVID-19 pathogenesis? Swiss Med Wkly. 2020;150:w20249. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4414/smw.2020.20249
Akiko Iwasaki , Yexin Yang. The potential danger of suboptimal antibody responses in COVID-19. Nature Reviews Immunology volume 20, pages339–341(2020).
Martial Jaume, et. Al. Anti-Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Spike Antibodies Trigger Infection of Human Immune Cells via a pH- and Cysteine Protease-Independent FcγR Pathway. Journal of Virology Sep 2011, 85 (20) 10582-10597; DOI: 10.1128/JVI.00671-11
I will make two short points.
First, your first paragraph contracts your thesis. Someone who attended a vaccinated event still caught Covid. There have been MANY cases of this. The huge spreader event in Provincetown a couple of weeks ago. The infections among the fully vaccinated Texas legislators is another recent obvious case. This leads me to my second point.
Put away your stick. Blame Delta, not people. It’s massive infectiousness and its ability to get past vaccines. See the Israeli data if you doubt me. The CDC head lied when she said 99% of seriously ill and 95% of deaths were among the unvaccinated. She admitted on tv that these numbers were based on data from January through June, when only a small percentage of people were vaccinated. And she “didn’t yet have more recent data”.
The reality is that Delta poses a threat to us all. If you want to punish people who refuse (and by the way, I was vaccinated in April), using your “smoker” analogy, then you better punish people who don’t eat right, don’t exercise, drink too much, are stoned, etc. create your new Utopia (it’s called the CCP). No room for human freedom, and yes, mistakes.