VACCINES AND FLU SHOTS This is a long video. TL;DR: Vaccines are cool. TRANSCRIPT: (I really need to figure out how to insert great captions without resorting to using YouTube) Now we will talk about vaccines... and flu shots. Flu is a type of viruses which mean antibiotics do not work. That is why many people who have a cold = flu = virus. They went to their doctor, and said, "I have a cold, what should I do?" The doctor said go home, sleep, rest, eat soup, take a hot shower, etc etc. That is it. There is no specific medicine to prescribe, just let the natural immunity do its work. Sleep well, eat well. That is a holistic approach. It tends not to be one single solution, one single pill to help. It takes a combination of actions to improve your chances of recovery. Because flu is a virus - again, I am oversimplifying here (shows picture of virus) - this is a generic virus. I know it looks like coronavirus but I like to use this image as an example of what a virus looks like. There is the capsid (the coat), on the outside of the capsid, there are proteins/receptors, then there is the genetic material (DNA/RNA). These contain information about toxins which is why viruses are dangerous. This figure can be applied to a flu virus or coronavirus. The virus contains 3 parts: the capsid, the proteins/receptors, and the genetic material. The proteins on the outside of the capsid are what makes the virus unique, special. (Its genetic material is specific too.) These proteins are "signatures" from that certain virus strain, helps us recognize what kind of virus it is. Medical professionals or scientists would try to identify these proteins, and figure out how to suppress that mechanism by preventing the virus from binding to our cells. But what is amazing is that sometimes instead of wasting our efforts, we let our natural immune system takes over. Scientists thought (shows figure of active virus) - what if we leave the proteins on the surface of the virus, but remove the harmful genetic materials inside the virus? That will remove the ability of the virus to create toxins in our body. What if it looks like this? (shows figure of the virus with genetic material absent from its center). Ok the proteins on the outside look different from the other figure but really, they are supposed to be the same virus, with just the genetic material gone. The virus doesn't have the genes to make the toxins but the proteins are the same so it saves us time. Scientists do not have to identify every single protein so we just make live viruses... ok they are not alive, better is that they are active. Then we remove the dangerous genetic materials while leaving the proteins alone. Then they put it in a shot, or a solution, which is called... A VACCINE. [NOTE: Scientists also use a different approach of creating inactive viruses - sometimes they use a small part of the virus, like the proteins on the capsid, and put it in the vaccine. I oversimplified the part about the vaccine components so if you are interested, there are many medical websites showing different ways of making incomplete, harmless viruses, or protein receptors of the virus without the entire virus components.] The inactive virus makes your body think it is being infected - which it kinda is being infected, but there are no toxins, there are no severe onset of viral infections (excluding adverse reactions or allergies for a few). This form of virus does not spread. There is no genetic material to tell the host cell to make certain things like toxins or new viruses. The infection won't propagate further than the initial host cell infection. The cells are fine after exposure to the inactive virus - the host cells won't deplete its own resources, burst open with new viruses spreading, and die. So this approach is an amazing way of how we use the natural immune system to work for better. So I think it is ridiculous when people (in particular, anti-vaxxers) say, "Oh I prefer to use my natural immunity." So do we. Scientists use natural immune responses. But I do not like being infected naturally with the actual infectious version of the virus (shows figure of the active virus with its genetic material intact) which is harmful for your body. Do you prefer this? Or do you prefer being infected by inactive viruses? (shows figure of inactive virus with its genetic material absent) The inactive virus still teaches your body to learn, recognize, develop immune memories of the virus. For memory, our body will make antibodies that respond against the proteins/receptors of the virus. Some people debated the length of memory in our immune systems so it depends. Even if the memory is short, it is better than nothing. It is better to have some sort of memory than having nothing then getting infected and suffering all the side effects, having toxins in your body on top of that. I don't encourage "natural immunization". Some people are paranoid about having vaccines because of potential side effects but they are okay with horrible side effects of natural infections. Hmmmm.... That does not make sense. The big picture is that we the scientists are aiming to help while minimizing the side effects and risks. I am not getting paid by pharmaceutical companies. I am just explaining the scientific foundation of how we develop the vaccines (but again I am oversimplifying in this video because science is rich and complex and cool! So, if you are interested in specific sciences of vaccine development, go to this website for starters: https://www.vaccines.gov/basics). Pharmaceutical companies can be mean, cruel, price-gouging their products. That is mainly the marketing department. I have nothing to do with that. So vaccines are SAFE. Flu shot is known as flu vaccine. But the flu strains tend to change. There are many different flu viruses. SO scientists will pick out the most common flu strains with serious symptoms. One common group is influenzae. Many people got severely ill from that. Scientists and medical people will identify the proteins and make flu shots and have them distributed to clinics. Every year, flu strains in the flu shots vary. Sometimes there is a new strain appearing that the scientists did not predict, and the efficacy (of the flu shot) decreases. It is because the group of medical professional and scientists miscalculated. We are not perfect. You should try making predictions of flu strains! (It is harder than you think!) Some people suggested including as many flu strains as we can into one flu shot. It is impractical. We have to fit our vaccine mixtures into 1 to 1.5 mL - that is a small volume! You think we are exorbitantly rich? Capable of making every virus strain and fit them all into this small vaccine? No, we need to work smarter, not harder. To maximize our resources we pick out the top infectious strains we've observed in past years and make a flu shot out of that. Now, Covid vaccines -- should I take it? Many covid vaccines have passed Phase 3 clinical trials. For vaccine trials, to ensure we don't have adverse reactions and allergies, FDA has 4 phases in the vaccine approval process. My opinion, not an expert's opinion - Phase 2 is the most tough phase to get approval. Once they got approval in Phase 2, I trust their results in Phase 3. Trials in Phase 3 monitor for any allergic and adverse reactions to the shots. Taking in the fact that the virus in the vaccine does not have information for toxins, it is an amazing thing! However, when you take the covid vaccine, you will experience some symptoms like fever and slight respiratory problems. This is because your body thinks it is being attacked and it IS being infected!!! But because there are no toxins, no subsequential stages of infections occurring, there are minimal side effects from the vaccinations. I strongly urge you to take the covid vaccine. Please don't fight against it. Often when a person fights back, he/she comes off as a bit idiotic, uneducated, and frankly, ridiculous. There are innumerable experts researching vaccines and their safety, so they are ensuring the vaccines are safe. So, please take the covid vaccine. Take the flu shot too. These shots give your body ammo to battle against viral infections without any side effects. Ok, I just lied. Actually, there is no such thing as NO side effects. There ARE some side effects but they are minimal, very low. Those risks are SO much better than actually getting infected with the active virus. It is so much better than infecting somebody else with the virus. With the vaccine, you CANNOT infect other people because the virus is inactive. There is no viral genetic information to pass on, no genetic information to make "baby viruses" (cute as they may sound, you do NOT want those babies, trust me!). You do not give the virus to another person if you get the vaccine. If you are infected with the active form of the virus instead of the inactive form, you actually CAN pass on the virus to other people. With the vaccine, you cannot pass on the virus because there is nothing to pass it on. With the vaccine, it just gives us memory for our immune systems; however, we cannot give this memory to other people. It does not work that way. Covid tends to work in tandem with other diseases.. like FLU... Your body would be fighting off the covid, then flu appears, and now your body is trying to fight off 2 diseases. It depletes the resources and wear down your immune system. It can result in death. Often, covid is labeled as a co-morbidity, meaning covid leads to death by working with another disease at the same time. Also, a lot of people are paranoid about... sigh... there is a rumor circulating online - which is NOT TRUE AT ALL because I do not see any evidence or reliable sources - but there is a rumor that states that: There are microchips in vaccines. Okay, there are several things wrong with this statement. First of all, who is paying for the microchipping? Pharmaceutical companies? Well, they are rich. But they have to pay their scientists and stuff. But it does not answer the other question: Who is making the microchips? People do not realize that the smaller the chip is, the more expensive it gets. They thought it is cheaper to make smaller things but that is NOT true. So that means each shot/vaccine would not be like $6, they would be more like $1000-3000 each shot even after insurance covering the costs. Who is really capable of making microchips that small? The military? Maybe but they won't share it with the public, they keep to themselves. But it is ridiculous to make something so small that can fit through a needle of the vaccine. Have you see the needle? So you need to make a perfectly operating microchip that can fit through that size of the needle. So that leads to our next question. How can we make sure that the chip is capable of containing all vital information. It needs nanotransistors, storage, capacitators, various parts of a computer chip, etc. to fit on one single chip, it needs to be fully working at this incredibly tiny scale, smaller than a grain of rice. It requires an atrocious amount of money to design that microchip. (Who has that kind of money and the ability????) Also, people forget about the quality control. What about the quality control of the microchips? How can we ensure that each microchip is working well? Because of its size, it means there is more room for errors, more chances of messing it up. The QC would be horrible, resulting in microchips not working right. And how can we make sure they still work in liquid??? There are many things about the logistics of this that people do not consider. They probably think it just magically happens. But they need to think about the big picture - how do they deliver microchips in vaccines??? No one has successfully made microchips smaller than a grain of rice (so far). If they did make microchips, do you think they would waste that much money to implant them in vaccines. They would have worked smarter, not harder. There are chips out there storing information about YOU already and they are FREE. You all voluntarily gave information about yourselves. Where are those chips? THEY ARE IN YOUR PHONES. So, if you truly believe that the vaccines have microchips, the next thing you must do is: throw away your phone. Erase your information from the phone and throw it away. You cannot use it anymore - it has a chip. Throw it away. Throw away your laptop. Throw away that has electronics. Throw away your car - even your car has a chip embedded in it! Throw away anything that has a chip. Throw, throw, throw it all away. And you would need to deactivate your Facebook profile. Facebook is tracking you everywhere you go even if you publicly stated, "I do not consent to any information to be used by Facebook." They do not care. Once you are a member of FB, you are held to their Terms of Conditions (TOC). Anyway... this rumor is RIDICULOUS. Some people objected to being forced to take the vaccine. This is not a new regulation. This isn't new. We all are forced to have auto insurance, home insurance, etc. (and to have a driver license too) The government is forcing us because they want to? No, they are doing it for our safety. They knew that if the insurance is not mandatory, people would have not taken it seriously. We would have not brought any insurance coverage. But then we would lose money. If a house burns down and they are not insured, then there is a big problem. So, we have those mandates to help us. So, please take the vaccine. Please, please, please... I do not want to see more people ending up in the hospital (250,000 deaths are way too many for me). Please... I am tired of this battle, arguing about the covid pandemic. Please, just get along, get the covid vaccine, get the flu shot, so that things can get back to normal SOONER. Please... do it for me. Okay, maybe not for me. Do it for your family, do it for someone you love. You may hate me, that is fine. Do it because you love somebody. Okay? Great.

Posted by Pep Si Holmquist on Tuesday, November 24, 2020