⚠️ALERT: EVIDENCE FROM THE NETHERLANDS STRONGLY SUGGESTS: THE CURRENT BA.5 OMICRON WAVE IS A CONSEQUENCE OF MASS VACCINATION! See this thread for the explanation🧵
The Netherlands is a country that constantly measures concentrations of SARS-COV-2 in sewage on a daily basis, for every municipality. This gives a very strong signal for differences in SARS-COV-2 prevalence not affected by how often people get tested or other distorting metrics.
In addition to this, the existence of small protestant communities (the Dutch Bible belt) means that vaccination rates differ massively from one municipality to the next. This is of course useful for comparisons between municipalities, to check the impact of vaccination.
The least vaccinated municipality in the country is the traditional fishing island Urk, a very traditional Christian community, where just 18% is boosted and 34% fully vaccinated:
We can also check the concentrations of SARS-COV-2 RNA in the different municipalities. What we encounter is that Urk is the municipality with the lowest relative concentrations of SARS-COV-2 RNA in sewage, of all Dutch municipalities!
You can verify these findings for yourself on the following page:
coronadashboard.rijksoverheid.nl
You will not find a municipality in the country with lower levels of RNA than Urk, at 97. The one next to Urk also hits 97, but there are none to be found below 97.
coronadashboard.rijksoverheid.nl
You will not find a municipality in the country with lower levels of RNA than Urk, at 97. The one next to Urk also hits 97, but there are none to be found below 97.
So what could possibly be the reason? Well, Urk is a perfect demonstration of my theory: Unvaccinated communities will have a big Omicron wave, followed by widespread immunity against Omicron, preventing waves of new Omicron variants.
Vaccinated communities however can not develop full immunity against Omicron due to homogenous herd level immune fixation and thus suffer from constant reinfections with slightly different variants, which is visible in the form of the constant prevalence of SARS-COV-2 in sewage.
We can check this by simply looking at Urk's sewage concentrations over time. It becomes clear they had a big Omicron wave, followed by no additional waves. Their BA.1 wave caused widespread strong broad immunity against other Omicron variants.
If on the other hand, we look at similar relatively isolated but highly boosted municipalities, like 78% boosted Raalte, we see a relatively constant high prevalence of SARS-COV-2 RNA in sewage:
And if you look at a highly vaccinated & boosted and relatively well connected municipality like Voorschoten, you see a currently ongoing Omicron wave that is as big as the original BA.1 wave:
What does all of this suggest? It suggests original antigenic sin, a process induced by vaccination whereby the body responds to BA.1 infections with an immune response that can be easily escaped by other Omicron variants through a small number of mutations.
On the other hand, it looks as if for communities without mass vaccination, a BA.1 infection causes the development of an immune response that is broad and thus can not be escaped by small mutations. As a consequence they do not suffer constant repeat infections.
This doesn't just explain why the least vaccinated Dutch municipality has the least SARS-COV-2 RNA in its sewage. It explains why a ~15% vaccinated country like Algeria has not really seen any real COVID waves since march:
Is all of this a problem, if the Omicron infections are mild? Well, if we accept as a given the evidence that it takes the average person's body at least 6 months to fully recover its CD4+ T cell count from a mild SARS-COV-2 infection, constant reinfections are very disturbing.
Only time will tell what the constantly ongoing high prevalence of Omicron variants in our communities will cause. But if populations of hundreds of millions of people now suffer ongoing CD4+ T cell depletion, I would expect big problems to emerge as a result.
Scientists need to hurry up and take a honest look at this ugly question: Is mass vaccination induced antigenic fixation prohibiting entire populations from developing broad durable immunity against the Omicron family of variants after a BA.1 infection?
When Algeria has had no COVID for the last three months, you can pretend they're just ignoring it. But when the least vaccinated community in a developed country like the Netherlands has the least SARS-COV-2 in its sewage, you need to pay attention and ask: What's going on here?
Loading suggestions...