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The Real Wuhan Virus Vaccine
During the first year of the Wuhan Pandemic, my wife and I took part in a research study to see whether a 100-year-old vaccine for tuberculosis had any protective effect from the virus. We both got inoculated with the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin or ‘BCG’ vaccine, which was first used in the 1920s.
As I have shared with y’all before, both my wife and I are nurses, at a clinic and emergency room, respectively. During the pandemic, we each had daily contact while at work with multiple Wuhan Virus patients. We also had contact with people in our personal lives who shortly thereafter were diagnosed with the disease. Despite all these contacts, we never contracted the disease, or at least never had any symptoms. I was only tested for the virus once during this period and my wife was tested twice. All of the tests were negative.
We got the BCG vaccine in the summer of 2020. Once we were done with our part of the study, I didn’t much think about it. I did wonder why we didn’t get the Wuhan Virus when everyone else seemed to, but I just assumed it was either luck, good general health, or exceptional immune systems. It didn’t occur to me that the BCG study may have been the reason.
Until I read a brief story on PowerLinea couple of days ago. Heck, the story is so short, I’ll just quote the whole thing:
WHY CAN’T LIBERALS DO MATH?
I suppose the answer is, if they could do math they wouldn’t be liberals. No one with a decent respect for numbers could fling around hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars with only the vaguest notion of where those vast sums are going (but secure in the knowledge that they are other people’s money).
The latest case in point comes via the New York Times’s invaluable Corrections section:
An article on Wednesday about a tuberculosis vaccine from the early 1900s and the possibility that it might protect people from Covid-19 incorrectly described the percentage represented by the 1 in 96 people who received B.C.G. tuberculosis vaccine doses and developed Covid. It is slightly more, not less, than 1 percent.
If a person doesn’t know that 1/96 is more than one percent, you can hazard a wild guess that he is a liberal. Likely a journalist, too. And we have to assume that the Times employs at least two people who didn’t understand that bit of elementary arithmetic, if you believe the claim that papers like the Times employ editors. I am skeptical about that.
The original article in the former newspaper is behind a paywall, so I didn’t read it. It appears to be about this study at Massachusetts General Hospital. I can’t find any information on the Texas A&M study that I participated in.
I think that Powerline buried the lede here. There is a 100-year-old, proven, inexpensive vaccine with only minor side effects that’s over 90% effective against contracting the Wuhan Virus? Why are you harping about minor math errors? This should be shouted from the rooftops!
Published in Healthcare
It is the liberals’ inability to do math, and their justification for not knowing or doing math, that forces me to avoid them.
They have as one of their Primary Principles the adopted idea that feelings are what should motivate humanity.
But feelings without an understanding of reality are exactly the predicament an age old adage warns us about: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
In an ideal world, the individual manages to arrive at a balanced way of living such that one’s heart and one’s mind are able to work together. I think most sane people strive for this balance.
Anyway, I found your experience with this tuberculosis vaccine to be interesting.
W ere there any risks spelled out to you and your wife when you took part in the trial?
Anyway I am glad to hear it worked so well. And in an ideal world, we would all have this as an option, rather than the mRNA PEG-contaminated injections that are turning out so badly for so many.
How does Pfizer make any money on a non-proprietary drug? What’s in it for Tony Fauci?
Or The Big Guy?
Yes, of course. It was a clinical trial sponsored by a major medical research university (the opinions of t.u. graduates notwithstanding). If you have never participated in one of those, the qualifications and screening process are extensive. If you qualify, you have to sign a consent that minutely explains the process and all risks. BCG has been used on millions of people worldwide for decades, so the adverse side effects are well-known.
Yes, Thailand Medical News reported very early in 2020 that BCG protected against covid. But that would have upset the apple cart for those who wanted to put out the new mRNA vaccine — like Tony Fauci.
I went back to find the study but now it looks like it’s gone. Humph.
I received the BCG when I was young… I assumed I never showed any real symptoms for COVID not that I was immune.
It’s not the inability to do math , although there are certainly loads of not so bright Prog’s.
It’s the agenda . Always the agenda. All the progs I know pretend not to know things.
Follow the money.
Another:
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/145157
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/05/06/coronavirus-deaths-texas-am-tuberculosis-vaccine/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355304427_COVID-19_and_Beyond_Exploring_Public_Health_Benefits_from_Non-Specific_Effects_of_BCG_Vaccination
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34683441/#affiliation-1
Other BCGs:
Wow! That was published in November 2020! Why wasn’t everyone given the BCG vaccine then? As an aside, maybe that’s one of the reasons that Africa is doing so well with the Wuhan Virus.
Exactly this point should be hammered daily by Republican office seekers and office holders.
OP:
Like there is a long proven vaccine against smallpox that also provides 86% efficacy against another pox, Monkeypox?
What we really need is another pox vaccine: for DonkeyPox, the Democrat Party infection.
Another study reports that the BCG vaccine appears to show effectiveness as long as 40 years after inoculation.
I recall getting at least a couple of TB patch tests as a child in grammar school in the early ’60s. I don’t think I actually got the vaccine however. Does anyone know how many Americans were innoculated from 1960-1990?
You do realize that from now on you may need to get an annual chest X-ray for TB since you will now have a good chance of a false positive with a PPD…..
Not many. BCG has a spotty record in actually protecting against TB. It’s given in countries with high rates of endemic TB to try and prevent childhood TB meningitis and military TB. It’s not very effective against pulmonary TB. Second it really complicates public health surveillance for TB. US strategy because we had a low prevalence of TB ( that worked extremely well, we had TB eradicated in the US), was PPD skin testing as a screen, and chest Xray in questionable cases, followed by treatment with INH or Rifampin.
From the article :
I suppose it would be good to have some idea as to why it has these effects before using it instead of polio and influenza vaccines, too.
I haven’t had a TB test in over ten years. Apparently they’re not too concerned.
My Darling Daughter was given BCG as an infant in South Korea. She cannot take TB tests for fear of skin sloughing. She had a mild case of Covid in November 2020.
I thought you worked in the ER? Supposed to do annual surveillance . I had to get a PPD every year. Even when I moved to the Urgent Care.