Immunity
The Virus Can Mutate
Viral mutations aren't always dangerous—a strong immune system with adequate selenium leads to milder variants, not more dangerous ones.
Immunity
Viral mutations aren't always dangerous—a strong immune system with adequate selenium leads to milder variants, not more dangerous ones.
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The coronavirus era was in many respects... "special." Currently: the new Infection Protection Act, for example, considers your vaccination status relevant only if your last vaccination was no more than three months ago. Had COVID once? Completely irrelevant. Vaccinated three times? Completely irrelevant. Had COVID and been vaccinated? Completely irrelevant. As the song goes: "Whatever!"
Factually, anyone who has received any form of basic immunization—whether through infection, vaccination, or both—possesses a broad arsenal of T-cell immunity that offers very good protection against many variants from severe disease. But that's no longer the point. Apparently, the hope is to avoid infections through continuous vaccination, not just "severe illness."
Speaking of severe illness: one reads [source no longer available] with Dr. Markus Unnwehr, Head of Pneumology and Infectious Diseases: COVID-19 as we came to know it (= severe pneumonia, often respiratory failure and death) no longer exists. Because we're basically immunized, because Omicron no longer produces such a clinical picture. This knowledge doesn't seem to be reaching much of the general population. In fact, "Omicron mortality has even dropped below that of influenza." Whatever!
Our media prefer to keep warning. For instance, about "mutating coronaviruses in the body and why that's so dangerous" (Focus article, here). Virologist Stephan Becker put it this way:
For example, there's the assumption that Omicron may have originated in an immunocompromised HIV patient in Africa. But there's more information:
Vaccinations and a large number of infections have increased selection pressure on SARS-CoV-2. "Viruses that through random mutation better evade antibodies now have a survival advantage."
Masks and social distancing would help protect.
So now, people with weak immunity are supposedly pandemic drivers, because viruses mutate much more heavily in them. They're basically a variant incubator. Funny, when for so long it's been said that an immune system can't be strengthened. But the statement only becomes correct if alongside a weak immune system there exists a strong or at least normally functioning one. Ah, now there is!
And indeed, there are fascinating findings from animal models. Slightly adapted but transferable: Over 10 years ago (and before!) it could be shown, for example, that in animals not getting enough selenium, the mutation rate of viruses is massively increased. To the point where even viruses that are actually harmless suddenly become virulent—that is, disease-causing. Here's the quote: "When virus-infected hosts with selenium deficiency were provided selenium through diet, viral mutation rates decreased and immune competence improved."
Selenium is "somewhat" important for the immune system, to say the least. In the same paper you also find a nice figure correlating virus occurrence and appearance with selenium levels. There too, SARS in China and Ebola in Africa show up. But selenium has nothing to do with Corona, of course. In the selenium-deficient region of Central Europe, which includes Switzerland... You could increase selenium levels incredibly easily within a few weeks and thereby "improve immune competence."
But the real reason we're writing these lines is that viral mutations in the body aren't always dangerous—quite the opposite. In this regard, there was a study just six months ago that showed the body deliberately causes mutations in viruses with the help of a particular enzyme. So the body actually mutates viruses quite deliberately, because they typically lose pathogenicity as a result.
Which means, conversely, when a healthy person with a healthy immune system deliberately mutates viruses, they become less harmful, not more dangerous. When a sick body encounters a virus, the probability is higher that unfavorable virus variants won't emerge. Viral mutations in the body, even though it sounds ominous, are often harmless:
Mutations can make a virus more infectious, but in most cases the mutations we studied made the virus weaker; instead of spreading, it's cleared from infected cells.
The coronavirus puts its finger in the wound, submits our society, the "human system," to a stress test.
By the way, virologist Becker's lines are very interesting, as noted. He speaks of increased selection pressure after vaccination. Like a bottleneck, measures ensure that the virus has an increasingly harder time spreading. And that too increases the likelihood of producing "smarter" coronaviruses that better evade immune defenses—as has happened with the current Omicron subvariant.
Of course, Mr. Becker doesn't come to the idea that wearing masks and maintaining distance are also double-edged swords and raise the bar for the virus. For many decades, young, healthy people served as a protective shield for older or sick ones. Young, healthy people clear viruses quickly (= "herd immunity"), they can still spread them well, but mutate more slowly. And the vulnerable were deliberately protected.
Once you recognize that a virus's pathogenicity is declining, you actually need to have the courage to open up—as is the case with Omicron. Because that's exactly what will lead, over time, to building very broad population-wide background immunity—while simultaneously keeping the bar for the virus relatively low. A kind of coevolution establishes itself that promotes both the virus's existence and humanity's existence (= no death and severe illness).
With "vaccination every three months" (= high antibody titers = higher bar for the virus) and other "rules" given an actually relatively harmless pathogenicity profile... that probably won't happen or will take a very long time. Be that as it may, in this country over the past two years, hardly anyone was open to rational thought anyway.
