Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD
No issue in the history of medicine has been as strident and polarized as that of the risk/benefit profiles of the various COVID vaccines being administered around the world. This article does not seek to clarify this issue to the satisfaction of either the pro-vaccine or the anti-vaccine advocates. However, all parties should realize that some toxicity does result in some vaccinated individuals some of the time, and that such toxicity can sometimes be unequivocally attributed to the preceding administration of the vaccine. Whether this toxicity occurs often enough and with great enough severity in vaccinated persons to be of greater concern than dealing with the contraction and evolution of COVID infections remains the question for many people.
Practically speaking, it does not matter whether an adverse event that occurs after a vaccination gets “blamed” on the vaccination. Such a matter may never get resolved. The issue of greatest concern is whether that adverse event can be clinically resolved if not effectively prevented, and whether any long-term damage to the body can be prevented once an adverse event is recognized. The remainder of this article will address the etiologies of such damage along with measures that can mitigate or even resolve such damage.
Concern has been raised regarding the dissemination of the spike protein throughout the body after vaccination. Rather than staying localized at the injection site in order to provoke the immune response and nothing more, spike protein presence has been detected throughout the body of some vaccinated individuals. Furthermore, it appears that some of the circulating spike proteins simply bind the ACE2 receptors without entering the cell, inducing an autoimmune response to the entire cell-spike protein entity. Depending on the cell type that binds the spike protein, any of a number of autoimmune medical conditions can result.
While the underlying pathology remains to be completely defined, one explanation for the problems with thrombotic tendencies and other symptomatology seen with chronic COVID and post-vaccination patients relates directly to the persistent presence of the spike protein part of the coronavirus. Some reports assert that the spike protein can continue to be produced after the initial binding to the ACE2 receptors and entry into some of the cells that it initially targets. The clinical pictures of chronic COVID and post-vaccine toxicity appear very similar, and both are likely due to this continued presence, and body-wide dissemination, of the spike protein (Mendelson et al., 2020; Aucott and Rebman, 2021; Levy, 2021; Raveendran, 2021).
Although they are found on many different types of cells throughout the body, the ACE2 receptors on the epithelial cells lining the airways are the first targets of the COVID virus upon initial encounter when inhaled (Hoffman et al., 2020). Furthermore, the concentration of these receptors is especially high on lung alveolar epithelial cells, further causing the lung tissue to be disproportionately targeted by the virus (Alifano et al., 2020). Unchecked, this avid receptor binding and subsequent viral replication inside the lung cells leads directly to low blood oxygen levels and the adult respiratory distress syndrome [ARDS] (Batah and Fabro, 2021). Eventually there is a surge of intracellular oxidation known as the cytokine storm, and death from respiratory failure results (Perrotta et al., 2020; Saponaro et al., 2020; Hu et al., 2021).
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