Ready for 'the next pandemic'? Norwegian Researchers are Testing New Jabs vs. Avian Flu
As reported by legacy media, a new vaccine trial is now open for enrolment
As always, translation, emphases, and bottom lines mine. Source.
The Next Pandemic Could be Much Worse than the Coronavirus. Now, a New Vaccine is tested on Helene Oldeide.
Norwegian researchers have been working for 13 years to develop a vaccine against bird flu. On Monday, Helene Oldeide became the first test subject to receive the vaccine.
The vaccine has so far been tested on mice, ferrets, monkeys, and pigs with good results. Therefore, the vaccine is now being tested on humans.
On Monday morning, Helene Oldeide became the first person to receive the vaccine as part of the testing. This took place at Ullevål Hospital. She volunteered to be a test person.
‘I'm young and healthy and can contribute to this job in this way’, the 27-year-old veterinarian told Aftenposten.
She will have to return to Ullevål Hospital several times over the next few weeks so that the researchers can see the effect of the vaccine. For the first few minutes after the vaccination, she didn't notice much.
‘I feel exactly the same as before’, she smiles.
Fear and Joy
‘I've been waiting for this day with horror, joy, terror and delight’, says Gunnveig Grødeland enthusiastically.
In 2013, Grødeland completed a PhD in immunology and vaccinology in the group of Professor of Medicine Bjarne Bogen. The development of this new vaccine was central to her research.
Today, Grødeland leads her own research group at Oslo University Hospital and the University of Oslo (UiO). Together with a team of researchers and doctors, they will test the vaccine on humans. The doctor responsible for the clinical trials is Professor and Senior Consultant Dag Kvale. He is also head of the Department of Clinical Medicine at UiO.
If all goes well, another person will receive the vaccine next week. This will continue for another week. Only in week 4 of the period (from 13 November) can three people receive the vaccine. If everything goes according to plan, the test subjects will eventually receive a higher dose than the one Oldeide received.
In this phase of the testing, 27 healthy people will receive the vaccine. How quickly this will happen will depend on possible side effects.
There is currently no authorised vaccine against bird flu. The Norwegian-developed vaccine could therefore be the first to be authorised.
‘The road to this point has been incredibly long and winding. Now I'm very happy’, smiles Professor Kvale.
Could be worse than corona
This summer there was an avian flu outbreak in Northern Norway. Up to 30,000 birds died as a result. In August, A-magasinet documented how crews worked at full speed to collect and destroy birds in order to limit the infection.
Infection between birds and humans is highly unusual. According to Grødeland, it is only a matter of time before it happens on a larger scale: ‘The horror scenario is massive infection between humans.’
[Grødeland] Bird flu has a mortality rate of between 20-90%. That is very high. It's a pandemic we fear will happen in the future. We don't know if it will happen tomorrow or in 100 years, but it will happen.
How long will it take before you can start mass-producing the vaccine?
[Grødeland] If a threatening virus starts to emerge, mass production can start immediately.
One thing that affects whether the viruses become dangerous is the basic protection we have in the population.
[Grødeland] The bird flu viruses are very different from the flu viruses we have encountered in the past, so they have a high potential for high mortality since we have very little basis for protection in the first place.
Will you get rich if the vaccine is mass-produced?
[Grødeland] Ha ha ha. No, my share will be quite small once the vaccine industry has taken its share.
DNA Vaccine
The Norwegian-developed vaccine is a so-called DNA vaccine. It consists of DNA that is injected into the skin using air pressure. In other words, no syringes are used. The method used for vaccination is called jet delivery.
‘In short, the cells at the delivery site produce the actual vaccine proteins. These will then seek out specialised immune cells via a targeting unit that we have linked to the influenza protein haemagglutinin (surface protein, similar to Spike on SARS-CoV-2)’, says the senior researcher.
‘We have seen a very good effect of this vaccine in larger animals. The effect of the vaccine has been good because it comes into direct contact with the most relevant immune cells’, adds Grødeland.
Bottom Lines
Fear is an excellent sales pitch.
If you’re not afraid (enough) just yet, go an read this piece in The Scientific American.
Lest you’re wondering just what kind of product the above-referred vaccine is, well, here you go. In a 2015, paper Grødeland and Bogen explain it this way (source; emphases mine):
DNA vaccination could represent a solution to these problems, but efficacy needs to be enhanced. In a separate line of research, it has been established that targeting of vaccine molecules to antigen-presenting cells enhances immune responses. We have combined the two principles by constructing DNA vaccines that encode bivalent fusion proteins; these target hemagglutinin to MHC class II molecules on antigen-presenting cells. Such DNA vaccines rapidly induce hemagglutinin-specific antibodies and T cell responses in immunized mice. Responses are long-lasting and protect mice against challenge with influenza virus. In a pandemic situation, targeted DNA vaccines could be produced and tested within a month.
Here’s another paper from 2017 (source; emphases mine):
Novel vaccines that can be rapidly produced for global distribution are urgently needed, and DNA vaccines may be the only type of vaccine that allows for the speed necessary to quench an emerging pandemic. Here, we constructed DNA vaccines encoding the hemagglutinin (HA) from influenza A/chicken/Italy/13474/99 (H7N1). In order to increase the efficacy of DNA vaccination, HA was targeted to either major histocompatibility complex class II molecules or chemokine receptors 1, 3, and 5 (CCR1/3/5) that are expressed on antigen-presenting cells (APC). A single DNA vaccination with APC-targeted HA significantly increased antibody levels in sera compared to nontargeted control vaccines. The antibodies were confirmed neutralizing in an H7 pseudotype-based neutralization assay. Furthermore, the APC-targeted vaccines increased the levels of antigen-specific cytotoxic T cells, and a single DNA vaccination could confer protection against a lethal challenge with influenza A/turkey/Italy/3889/1999 (H7N1) in mice.
More on this probably ‘soon’, I suspect.
Do note the same measurement techniques (antibody titers) and other problems, such as lack of efficacy.
Now Ms. Oldeide is the first human test subject. Let’s hope these products are at least ‘safer’ that the Covid shots…
I notice that mice, ferrets, monkeys, pigs and humans are not birds. Why hasn't the bloody thing been tested on birds? If the disease comes with mortality rate of 20-90% in birds, it should become pretty obvious if the vaccine is efficacious. Or are birds' immune systems so different from mammals' that this does not make sense? But then, what is the danger of the disease to mammals?
I used to be troubled by the possibility of the bird flu. In theory, that would make me a good target for this vaccine campaign.
But absolutely not. Hard pass from me.
And now that I have seen in the flesh how brutally they manipulate people with fear, I question how deadly the bird flu even is. Perhaps just as with the 1918 epidemic, the treatment causes part of the problems.