Miguel Bronchud: COVID19 – The Enigma?
Miguel Bronchud, Co-Founder and Advisory Board at Regenerative Medicine Solutions, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“COVID19- The Enigma ?
Five years ago, I warned on the imminent danger of a new pandemic virus coming into Europe . Officials of our very competent Epidemiology and Health Department in Spain were aware of the risks, but were in general “a little skeptical”.
One month earlier (following preliminary and little confusing early reports from Wuhan) I had personally warned, over Christmas 2019, my two children- who were at the time working (or visiting) China and Thailand.
One month later I fell while at work seriously ill myself (like many frontline medics at the time)- developing encephalopathy for 3-4 weeks, about which I fortunately remember almost nothing.
I was even interviewed over the phone in my convalescence….but don’t quite remember how I managed (from bed) to reply to questions.
Scientists are still working on data they gathered on how the immune system reacted to SARS-CoV-2, and no definitive textbook on the virus (precise origins, mechanisms or other) has yet been published but (according to Nature- article by Heidi Ledford) at least four lessons have already emerged.
- It became clear that the immune response against the virus relied heavily on T cells, not just antibodies. In spite of my serious illness, my antibodies were negative months after and only became positive after the second dose of RNA IM vaccine.
- The body’s early-warning alarm, the innate immune response, rings out across the whole body, not just around the site of infection.
- Antibodies and T cells differ sharply from tissue to tissue.
- Finally, researchers have learnt that a variety of factors, such as SARS-CoV-2 hiding dormant in the body, might “probably contribute” to long COVID (but more questions remain unanswered…)
In many ways, we have treated Covid-19 like it were an “RNA-flu virus”; and indeed “the nose” became the main culprit under suspicion. Indeed, the later Covid variants fortunately bound better than earlier forms of the virus to cells in the nose, keeping the virus in the upper airways for longer.
That probably allowed time for the innate warning signals (including interferons that can activate or disable hundreds if not thousands of immune response genes) to reach the lungs and bolster defences there before the virus arrived.
But when I then asked (in March 2020) for data about RNA-Covid fragments in fecal waters, I was not at all surprised that scientists at Spain’s CSIC (and others) consistently detected Covid RNAs long before the pandemic respiratory peaks and deaths.
This fecal contamination (not transmission, as far as we know) does not happen with classical respiratory viruses (including influenza) and does provide some evidence for a “gastrointestinal Covid virus phase” (including- especially in early days and children- symptoms).
I said in my interview.”
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