Post COVID Thoughts

We all tend to think that COVID has simply disappeared .....

Montgomery Burns Natural
Resistance To Viruses Was Novel.

...... dissipated and of no concern.

In fact like the Flu, it has never gone away, but we as a herd have developed a certain immunity, and that protects even those who chose not to ever be inoculated. For example in April 2025 the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDPC) was reporting that there were SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern with Omicron LP81 (47%) and Omicron XEC (18%) the two largest variants in Europe. 

While in the USA at the same time, the dominant variant nationwide was LP.8.1, with 64% of cases, followed by XEC, with 15% of cases, and MC.10.1, with 4% of cases. In the UK LP.8.1 was 60 % of all cases reported.

When test positivity is above 5%, transmission is considered uncontrolled, and the transmission rate in the USA was 3.6% and I assume similar in Europe. I am also assuming that this sort of level of transmission rate will persist as a minimum in the developed world for some years to come.

So with that in mind .... Apparently we are not even equal to a virus. People in low skilled occupations such as packers, bottlers, and industrial cleaners, were far less likely to have taken up all three Covid vaccination shots during the crisis than the majority of us. Now perhaps its not too surprising that the lack of ambition that these people showed in school, and that led to them being only able to find employment in such elementary trades and related occupations, also translates into a lack of health ambition as well.

According to the UK Department of Health and Social Care, only 48 per cent of those in those employment sectors had taken all three vaccination shots (for comparison 84 per cent of health professionals had all three shots). We have had free and comprehensive education in the UK for over 100 years, and free health care for nearly 82 years. Yet we still have sections of our society who don't have even the native wit to protect themselves and their families by availing themselves of free vaccinations during a pandemic.

So were there any other lessons that might have been learnt after the main crisis passed?

Well lesson one: Data from the US suggested that having a natural immunity against COVID was 2.8 times better in preventing hospitalisation, than the vaccinated immunity, and that having both a natural resistance and the vaccinations only meant that you had the same protection as having natural immunity on its own.

Lesson two: Then there was the cost of developing and distributing the vaccination ..... would therapeutics have been a better cost solution? e.g. Paxlovid is an antiviral medication, that in a clinical trial reduced COVID deaths to zero, while Fluvoxamine, an £8 ($10) anti-depressant medication was found in two reputable studies to also reduce COVID deaths (by up to 91% in the latest study).

Lesson three: Myocarditis (Inflammation of the Heart Muscle) is now thought to occur in 1 in 1,862 young males, after they received their second COVID vaccine dose. So longer time spacings between the first and second vaccine doses would likely have made the vaccines more effective, and lowered the side effect profile such as Myocarditis and Pericarditis.

Lesson four: A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the mortality risk of a vaccine un-boosted person under age 30 was statistically zero (there are of course those with health pre-conditions, but those with normal health only need the first vaccine shot). You can’t lower a risk of zero any further with a booster. So why do boosters for that age group?

Lesson five: There are only three corona viruses that cause serious illness in humans: SARS, MERS and COVID. SARS and MERS spread by air. So why did anyone think COVID was so different?

Then there is the lack of transparency: Apparently many scientists knew about the fact that Covid was leaked from the lab in Wuhan China. However they deliberately suppressed the fact, for fear that the Chinese would stop co-operating in fighting the pandemic. This has come to light now, after emails between SAGE expert (UK scientific advisors to the government), Sir Jeremy Farrar and his American colleagues have been made public.

In them Farrar admitted that the virus had most probably leaked from the lab in Wuhan China. What makes this admission worse, is that as well as lying to us about the cause of the biggest public health issue in a century Sir Jeremy had gone on public record as denouncing the notion of a Wuhan Lab leak as a "conspiracy theory" .... No one came out of this crisis well.

Hopefully COVID won't evolve into something dangerous again, but at sometime in the future another 'lab accident' will release something equally or even more lethal in to the atmosphere. With luck the lessons learnt from this event will mitigate the response and the outcome.