Pat’s Paradox
From a thread on Twitter, March 23, 2023
Pat asked the hypothetical question, about Long Covid:
Now consider two patients. One with LC, one without. LC one gets PEM cured post-vax, the other falls ill with PEM post-vax. Paradox?
Author’s note: below is (edited) the long Twitter thread I wrote as a hypothetical answer to the hypothetical question, based on my heretical hypothesis about the nature of this class of diseases medicine doesn’t understand. I am pro-vax and was vaxxed and boosted for Long Covid at my first opportunity, as was every member of my family. This isn’t a discussion of vaccines at all, it’s a discussion applying a novel hypothesis about a disease mechanism to Long Covid.
Interesting (and valid) thought experiment
I had an “Alice through the looking glass” experience about 27 years ago, incidental to a failed “Lorenzo’s Oil” style effort trying to head off MCS in my then 7 and 3 year old children after a sick house hit crisis
In the strange way of looking at the human body I stumbled over, the paradox you propose not only is no paradox but makes perfect sense.
I am of course a heretic
And I am a retired computer designer with no training or credentials in medicine or biology, so be skeptical of me
On my side of the looking glass, the human body has a basic mechanism of sorting and inventorying of materials, at a molecular level, both things the body needs to inventory and things from outside that just have to stay out from underfoot…
This sorting and inventorying is done by the collection of circulating proteins in the blood albumin with binding sites for small molecules and ions, acting as a system
So, Ca++ sits on Calmodulin, Fe+++ sits on Ferritin, and so on, probably thousands epigenetically expressed
But there’s a catch. The immune system sees a protein with an empty binding site as “self”, but a protein with the binding site occupied as non-self to attack. So the body has to use or detox every molecule/ion on every binding site every 24 hours or so, or the immune system mounts an attack. If the molecule or ion is ubiquitous, every instance of that binding site is destroyed as soon as the molecule lands on it, punching a hole in the sorting and inventorying process and letting that molecule type loose in the body like a toddler
What does that mean? Pretty much nothing. One loose molecule type is probably asymptomatic (as long as it’s not Oxygen, from hemolytic anemia) But that loose molecule can land somewhere, and if it stuck the immune system would attack that combination as well, which is where symptoms start.
Remember, I’m a heretic with no education or credentials. Use your critical thinking skills on anything I say.
So if that loose molecule lands on the binding site of a key neurotransmitter or ion channel ion, and that binding site type went away…
This retired computer designer thinks the effect would be much like all the little decoupling capacitors disappearing from the motherboard of the computer you’re reading this on: you’d get vague, semi-repeatable malfunctions of the nervous system which evade controlled experiment
Like, for example, MCS. Or hypersensitivity to electromagnetic fields (EHS). Or “neurasthenia” debated by medicine in the 1880s. Brain fog. Improper processing of pain signals (ie fibromyalgia). Improper processing of sensory signals. and so on.
This is heresy, of course.
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But what if that loose molecule landed on a site involved in delivering oxygen to cells (not on the red blood cell), either the myoglobin or some intermediary which is normally occupied by an oxygen molecule, but after exertion (physical or mental) is empty. And the immune system destroyed the combination of the stray molecule and the place oxygen is transported into the cell, but could only do so if the oxygen was depleted first. This would be PEM (PESE), of course.
Now let’s get a bit uglier and more heretical:
Let’s say that loose molecule is now a Fungal Extracellular Enzyme, one of the molecules ubiquitous fungi secrete very selectively to externally digest the stuff in their immediate environment. But it’s in the bloodstream. So it lands on whatever it is supposed to digest, and starts doing its thing, which somehow miraculously never happens in our bodies when we’re alive but then suddenly happens pretty fast after we’re dead. The immune system will of course attack the combination of enzyme and, say, connective tissue, giving ME’s CCI or EDS or etc
Now, in this context, let’s think about both LC and the LC vaccine. In both cases, the body will elevate the action of the immune system, and will form an attack on the only thing it can see, which is the spike protein.
Well, actually, anything it was close to autoimmune attack as well. This is important: elevation of the immune system in either LC or vaccine response could cause autoimmune disease unrelated to the spike protein.
Let’s also assume, rashly and without proof, that the reason why allergy shots work is that the immune system regulates itself with antibodies to antibodies, that is, so long as neither is recognized as “self”, if the antibodies to something rage out of control in the bloodstream the immune system will decide they’re a problem too and create antibodies to them, mutual assured destruction.
So, the Long Covid patient with PEM gets the vaccine, their immune system gets elevated, it sees all these antibodies to the loose molecule plus the body structure used getting oxygen into cells, and it creates anti-antibodies, which do their thing, curing the PEM (momentarily)
The second patient, without LC, who gets the vax, also has their immune system elevated. But they have a high level of some non-self molecule in their bloodstream, and develop an autoimmune attack on that molecule plus its binding protein just because of elevating immune system
In that second patient’s body, that loose molecule then lands on that site involved in transporting oxygen into the cell (it would be too simple if it was just the myoglobin), and the still elevated immune system attacks there too, giving the patient PEM/PESE
This is too simple, right?
I just violated three pieces of dogma held so dearly by the medical profession that every med student is taught these as absolute fact rather than as the approximations which hold in maybe 2/3 of the population which they really are:
1. Linear dose/response. If circulating proteins with binding sites are of consequence, dose/response is nonlinear as the last open binding site is filled, and even more nonlinear as loose molecules induce synthesis of more binding protein by the liver (ex Metallothionein — Zinc)
2. The way we do experiments to prove facts in medicine varies one variable at a time while controlling the rest. But if open binding sites matter, and occupied binding sites matter, we don’t know how to measure those and therefore can’t control them.
3. I just attributed to circulating proteins in the blood a lot of what we are taught to attribute to the magic “blood/air barrier” in the lungs (alveoli), the skin, the digestive system wall, etc
Those are just semipermeable membranes It’s done in the blood, not at the barrier
So, I’m a heretic
I just showed you a glance through a looking glass
The glance is so blasphemous, denying not just one but three pieces of medical dogma, as to be un discussable in any medical context (much less discoverable and publishable)
And I’m almost certainly wrong
/E
