Danger of ignoring the COVID-19 Pandemic

Risk in Highly Vaccinated regions

Many scientific and political leaders are giving the impression that the COVID-19 pandemic is over. This is only true in regions with low vaccination rates across the population, like Africa and Papua New Guinea which have acquired natural herd immunity.

JOSE GEFAELL @ChGefaell

90+ countries positioning as per their Covid Deaths in 2020 before the vaccines rollout versus their Covid Deaths in the last 12 months as of march 7, 2023.

In highly vaccinated regions, there are a number of factors impacting on persistent viral circulation:

• Higher circulation of viruses

• Lower temperature and closed spaces with reduced ventilation in temperate climates

• Weakened upper airway mucosal immunity with a spike specific response which is unable to neutralise Omicron

• Increased levels of interferon autoantibodies making viral infection more likely

If there is not an acknowledgement of risks across those populations, governments may assume that letting the virus spread without mitigation at this stage makes sense. This does not mean further lockdown is necessary, but with a good grasp of the pathophysiology around COVID-19 autoimmunity, simple measures can be implemented to potentially reduce population risk.

Sadly, the damage to natural mucosal immunity is already done through vaccination and herd immunity is now unlikely to be achieved in highly vaccinated regions.

Have COVID-19 vaccines blunted the immune response to Omicron?

The data below points to increased mortality within 90 days on Covid infection. What could be the mechanism and is it possible to be mitigated?

Possible reasons for the excess deaths (Singapore Data)

One immediate reason is that some excess deaths not attributable to a documented COVID-19 infection could partly reflect undiagnosed COVID-19. Further, COVID-19 may have also changed health behaviours and health-seeking behaviours of the population, for example, putting off health screening and medication for chronic illnesses, and this may have contributed to some of the excess deaths.

The likely and more significant explanation is death due to underlying medical conditions, but made worse by COVID-19 infections.

The gap between official death toll and estimated excess deaths can be explained by deaths in patients recently infected with COVID-19 in the past 90 days. In a secondary analysis of persons without recent infection, no additional excess deaths were found.

Report On Excess Mortality During The Covid Pandemic 18sep2022

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Over the next few weeks, explanation will be given as to the autoimmune mechanism of repeated SARS-COV-2 infection leading to excess mortality within 3 months.

The COVID-19 journey is only just beginning.