Roitt Chapter 0: Introduction

In which we discover a rabbit hole and willingly enter it

Disclaimer:

I have no immunology training or formal education. Everything I write should be taken with a grain of salt. If something I write doesn’t make sense, feel free to let me know. If you are in the field and willing to correct, please, go for it.

That said - I do not intend to wade past toenail height in terms of detail and will only write what I feel I understand and will not do so lightly.

Human dendritic cell - this stuff is seriously sci-fi level fascinating

The what:

I recently asked Hidden Markov Respecter for a book recommendation on immunology, and he suggested Roitt’s Essential Immunology.

I started reading it this week and finished Chapter 1. I have never read anything on the topic before. I recognised a bunch of terms - T cells, B cells, innate immunity, adaptive immunity, etc, having read articles here on substack and different studies on the vaccine and covid topic, but the bits in between were numerous and heavy going.

I am going to return to the start of Chapter 1 and do a slow read now, and make sure I understand things as I read them. There’s a great summary at the end of the chapter too, so I’ll probably start there and work through it methodically. I’d like to document that process as I go, and share it here.

I came away from Chapter 1 with the distinct impression that the human immune system is incredible. I am literally in awe of what it can do, does do, for us.

The why:

I find trying to explain something to someone else a really good way to solidify concepts in my own understanding matrix. So I am going to go through this book and write little articles about the concepts that I learn, paying particular attention to viruses and how our immune system handles them, and vaccines, as these are the issues du jour.

Introduction:

We have an immune system for a reason: we need one to survive in a world filled with pathogens. It has been evolving alongside and developing mechanisms to deal with viruses, bacteria, worms, and all the other pathogens that want access to our nutrient rich bodies.

The only mention of vaccines in Chapter 1 was on page 11:

Importantly, because the antigen receptors of the adaptive immune system are custom‐built to recognize specific pathogens, such responses improve upon each encounter with a particular infectious agent, a feature called immunological memory, which underpins the concept of vaccination.

Already there is an issue for me here with the mRNA vaccines. This book, written by experts in the field of immunology, seem to think our immune system can remember what pathogens (eg a COVID virion) “look” like, based on prior encounters, and deal with them based on those memories. (Deal with them using custom-built recognition thingies. Custom built! So cool!!)

They also seem to think this process underpins the concept of vaccines.

There is no more detail on vaccines in this chapter, but (taking a sneaky peek ahead to Chapter 2) the basic premise is: safely (!!!!!) show the immune system the pathogen, then the second time the immune system encounters the pathogen, it will remember it and do its thing defending us, because it remembers this pathogen and how it dealt with it in the past.

Compare that to what we have:

1. Jab 1 - ok that fits. It’s not safe, IMO, but ok whatever.

2. Jab 2 N weeks later - ok reinforce the memory. Immune system now knows how to handle the next presentation of this Fauci-funded pathogen when we get infected with it.

3. Booster 6 months later - hang on a second. Already? Why!?!?

4. Booster 6 months later - ok this is looking kinda dumb now.

5. Boo— ok this is getting ridiculous…

It’s like all of a sudden this amazing piece of biological wizardry that is our immune system is not trustworthy. Or the vaccine doesn’t do what it’s supposed to: ie teach the immune system to recognise the COVID virus.

Is a million years of successful evolution all of a sudden stumped by this COVID virus?

The thing is - the powers that be won’t even try to find out if this is true. Immunity suddenly means “antibodies”. “Immunity wanes” = “antibodies go down”. Well duh, there’s no infection (or spike proteins in the case of the vaccine), of course they go down.

Ooh ooh hit the immune system again - with a booster! Force it to make antibodies, immediately.

Which is not how the immune system works. Chapter 1 discusses the immune system process for dealing with a pathogen, and antibodies don’t come into the picture until right near the end. And only if they’re needed!

We are not giving our immune system the chance to do its thing.

The thing it’s done very successfully for aeons. You only have to look at Singapore’s 0.0052% (5.2/100,000) critically ill rate in non-fully vaccinated citizens to see the truth of this.

The immune system as described in Chapter 1 was fascinating, and I hope to share the amazingness of it all through this series of articles.