THE PSYCHOLOGIST : Should vaccines be adjuvenated with alum?

Should vaccines be adjuvenated with alum?

For a long time vaccines were adjuvenated (made more effective) by adding aluminium salts to them. Eventually, however, sufficient concerns about the practice emerged for the practice to be dropped and Covid vaccines did not contain such adjuvants.

But was something lost by that? Might the Covid vaccines have worked better with adjuvants? The study below used mice to suggest an answer to that. They found that breakthrough infections were much worse with adjuvants.

While COVID-19 vaccines have generally remained effective in stopping more severe illness associated with SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, significant concerns emerge regarding vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory diseases (VAERD) post breakthrough infections. This means even though people get vaccinated, because the COVID-19 vaccines are not of the sterilizing type, they fail to protect against infection, especially over time, less intermittent boosters to bolster protection. Importantly, this recent animal study reveals spike protein subunit vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 induce VAERD in hamsters, where aluminum adjuvants promote a Th2-biased immune response, leading to increased type 2 pulmonary inflammation in animals with breakthrough infections.

Other research such as a study funded by China’s Beijing Science and Technology Plan and Emergency Key Program of Guangzhou Laboratory, found that both novel low-dose and high-dose adjuvanted inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine with CpG and Alum induced high levels of specific IgG antibodies as well as neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, and the continuous stability of high-level neutralizing antibody titers over time demonstrates long-lasting immunity.

The prominent study team was represented by Weishan Huang, Ph.D. Department of Pathobiological Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine, Louisiana State University, as well as Cornell University’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Veterinary Medicine.

With a focus on virology and immunology, Huang’s lab studies the development and functions of regulatory immunity and immune memory during vaccination, infections, and cancers.

With this infrastructure and expertise in place, plus support in the form of grants by the National Institutes of Health, and a “Big Idea Research Grant” from the Provost’s Fund at Louisiana State University, Huang and colleagues from Louisiana State University sought to gain a more comprehensive understanding of possible risks and the underlying mechanisms of VAERD designed a study involving the immunization of ACE2-humanized mice with SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein adjuvanted with aluminum and CpG-ODN.

After the immunization, the scientists challenged (intentionally infected) the mice with SARS-CoV-2 to establish the breakthrough condition.

What were the findings?

In this case, the authors report that their experimental vaccine A) elicited robust neutralizing antibody responses, B) reduced viral titers and C) enhanced host survival. Yet upon breakthrough infection, the vaccinated animals presented “severe pulmonary immunopathology, characterized by a significant perivascular infiltration of eosinophils and CD4+ T cells, along with increased expression of Th2/Th17 cytokines.”

Th2/Th17 cytokines are groups of signaling molecules produced by specific subsets of T-helped cells (Th cells) that play an important role in the immune system. These cytokines are involved in regulating responses and inflammation, and they are often associated with various immune reactions.

The study team conducted intracellular flow cytometric analysis (a technique used to identify cell types plus analyze signaling and functional responses within cell lines and heterogenous cell samples), revealing a systemic Th17 inflammatory response, especially intense in the subjects’ lungs.

The study authors report in the uploaded preprint server manuscript that the generated data demonstrate that aluminum/CpG adjuvants induce strong antibody and Th1-associated immunity against COVID-19 but also prime a robust Th2/Th17 inflammatory response, which may contribute to the rapid onset of T cell-mediated pulmonary immunopathology post breakthrough infection.

Food for Thought

There are no easy vaccine fixes for SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. These authors reaffirm that especially important principle. They declare in this yet-to-be peer-reviewed paper, “In conclusion, this research underscores the complexity of COVID-19 vaccination and the need for a comprehensive understanding of vaccine-induced immune responses. While vaccines remain a vital tool in combating pandemics, the potential for VAERD highlights the importance of ongoing research, surveillance, and careful vaccine development to achieve broad protection and maximal safety.”

Next Steps

Do these findings underscore the necessity for further research to unravel the complexities of VAERD in COVID-19? Does the study output point to the necessity to enhance vaccine formulations for broad protection and maximum safety? The study authors believe so.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/spike-protein-subunit-vaccine-adjuvanted-with-alum-and-cpg-elicits-t-cell-mediated-pulmonary-immunopathology-upon-breakthrough-infection-a8919e13

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

Should vaccines be adjuvenated with alum?

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