g'day
@squarepantscheers squarepants. and good on you for keeping your body healthy.
I'm not a medical expert with my career in health..... your readings though are different to mine these days as I learned that many of the published "natural health" articles are usually fads/fashions and used to inspire uptake of supplements regardless of health effects. I learned to be sceptical of natural health articles as much as scepticism is required of all medical articles.
apart from your reluctance/hesitancy to have the vaccination you are obviously very active and focused on maintaining a high level of immune system status.
I too lived for many years following my own health regime and for some time also took various supplements.the immune system responds mostly to diet, activity level and hydration from the medical science literature. its often been said of supplements that the effects are of dubious value and are mostly marketing. for around a decade I held doubts about this claim.the whole point of vaccination is, as I described above, that a healthy immune system is vitally important.....
yet the fact remains that the system remains naive to the virus. this leaves you vulnerable as anyone else.any immune response doesn't recognise a novel virus until it triggers a reproductive viral load and then the immune response kicks in.
the first reaction is inflammatory - the cytokine storm that causes clotting also causes many of the initial symptoms that give people grief in the initial phases and can cause a range of ischaemic issues such as lung embolism, myocardial infarction, stroke and compartment syndrome due to wide-spread blockages of capillaries.the second phase of the infection is triggered by the viral load causing standard covid symptoms.
if the viral load is extreme, as happens in the unvaccinated, the infection can progress to lower levels of the lungs and cause fluid build up in the alveoli - this feels like drowning and is far worse than emphysema and is what causes the need for ICU ventilation.
certainly many don't get to this severity, however this is indeed a matter of how quickly the virus colonises the airways and progresses.the third phase is the attack of the immune system on the virus as antibodies are formed (there is no limit to antibody development and doesn't detract from activity on other pathological processes).
Usually this is sufficient to defeat the disease process, yet often there remains a lower level of viral load. this enables the longer term disease process termed "long covid".the vaccine prepares the immune response by triggering T and B memory functions as well as attack T cells. over around 3-12 months the B cells don't mature and the more active T cells reduce if there is no significant virus to remove. This doesn't mean that the vaccine is less effective but many have been making such assertions.
I've kept this response as simple as I can and the immune response is far more complex than I've described. but do you see the logic involved? again I fully agree with your reasoning and have used similar reasoning in my life....
yet the fact remains that an unprepared immune system leaves you vulnerable and this is where my expression of "good luck" comes in.
I didn't intend to question your intelligence, but space in postings is important and I kept it brief.
I wish you well squarepants.
