Hi-Vi-Cron Could Now Emerge at Any Time and, in No Time, Gain an Absolute Fitness Advantage
Some followers were wondering what I meant in my previous Substack article (https://voiceforscienceandsolidarity.substack.com/p/this-in-a-nutshell-is-how-the-ongoing) by:
“HIVICRON (HI-ghly VI-rulent Omi-CRON descendant), however, will shut down immune inflammation and collectively silence immune responses in these populations – a mechanism that will ultimately allow the virus to come back stronger and more virulent.”
This statement relates to a previous analysis of mine on the evolutionary dynamics of this immune escape pandemic (https://voiceforscienceandsolidarity.substack.com/p/two-things-are-infinite-the-universe), in which I stated:
“In those individuals in whom weakening cell-mediated adaptive immune responses still provide sufficient resistance to the virus -and thus keep the cellular inflammation from escalating into chronic disease or immune pathology- SC-2 variants that manage to break through the humoral arm of the innate immune system (cytokines and the like) gain a fulminant fitness advantage.”
This means that in individuals whose cell-mediated innate immunity got sidelined by antibody-dependent enhancement of infection and who subsequently experienced adaptive immune refocusing and dysregulation due to repeated breakthrough infections (as seen in many COVID-19 vaccinees), only one final line of immune defense remains operational against the virus. This last line of defense belongs to the innate immune system and depends on the enhanced production of antiviral cytokines, which is triggered by the strong inflammatory response caused by the increased infectiousness of currently circulating variants.
If a newly emerging recombinant variant were to acquire a protein sequence capable of downregulating the production of inflammatory cytokines, it would deprive exposed individuals of their last functional immune safeguard and thereby enable high viral virulence (as would be the case for many COVID-19 vaccinees).
The timing of such a variant’s emergence now depends primarily on stochastic recombination among circulating strains. However, given the multitude of (sub)variants currently in circulation, such a ‘highly virulent’ strain (provisionally termed ‘Hi-Vi-CRON’) could emerge at any time and, in no time, gain an absolute fitness advantage!
Geert Vanden Bossche received his DVM from the University of Ghent, Belgium, and his PhD degree in Virology from the University of Hohenheim, Germany. He held adjunct faculty appointments at universities in Belgium and Germany. After his career in Academia, Geert joined several vaccine companies (GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay Biologicals) to serve various roles in vaccine R&D as well as in late vaccine development.
Geert then moved on to join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery team in Seattle (USA) as Senior Program Officer; he then worked with the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) in Geneva as Senior Ebola Program Manager. At GAVI he tracked efforts to develop an Ebola vaccine. He also represented GAVI in fora with other partners, including WHO, to review progress on the fight against Ebola and to build plans for global pandemic preparedness.
Back in 2015, Geert scrutinized and questioned the safety of the Ebola vaccine that was used in ring vaccination trials conducted by WHO in Guinea. His critical scientific analysis and report on the data published by WHO in the Lancet in 2015 was sent to all international health and regulatory authorities involved in the Ebola vaccination program. After working for GAVI, Geert joined the German Center for Infection Research in Cologne as Head of the Vaccine Development Office. He is at present primarily serving as a Biotech / Vaccine consultant while also conducting his own research on Natural Killer cell-based vaccines.
Email: info@voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org
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