Mu Covid Variant & Abortions

The World Health Organization has another variant in the sight and this time it is the Mu variant. Many people don’t know that there are different strains. Like certain types of bacteria, there are also different strains of a virus. Mu variant is another variant that has been seen and there can be many more that we do not know of [1]. 

What do we know about the variant so far?

• First discovered in Colombia in January 2021. So far it has reached 39 countries. The good news is that so far it is not overtaking the delta strain [2].
• Preliminary findings are showing that the Mu variant can potentially evade the antibodies created from the vaccine.
• Vaccine manufacturers are turning their focus on the Delta and Mu variants. There is a potential for “escape variants” to come into existence. An escape variant is a variant that has different spike proteins and other components that would render our current vaccines useless. 
• So far there are around 2,000 cases the most in California, Florida, Texas, and New York. 
• Fauci stated that the Mu variant can evade certain antibodies, among them those associated with the vaccines. 

How do Viruses Mutate?

A virus’s goal is to enter a host and replicate. When the virus replicates there are instances that go through replication errors and those errors lead to mutations. Sometimes those mutations make the virus weaker but often times it strengthens it. 

The virus’s antigens can change and that’s when our immune system, specifically our antibodies, is not able to recognize the invading virus. 

• Influenza is another RNA virus. When comparing Influenza and Covid, Covid replicates slower than influenza at a rate of about 4 times slower.
• Scientists think that Covid has the ability to proofread newly-made RNA copies. 
• Scientists also don’t see an “antigen shift” coming soon. Antigen shift is when the 2 different strains of the same virus infect a host and their genomes merge together to create another strain. This leads to the immune system’s inability to recognize or combat the virus. This usually leads to pandemics or worsening of pandemics. 

Antibody-dependent Enhancement

Antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), sometimes less precisely called immune enhancement or disease enhancement, is a phenomenon in which the binding of a virus to suboptimal antibodies enhances its entry into host cells, followed by its replication. Suboptimal antibodies can result from natural infection or from vaccination.

ADE may cause enhanced respiratory disease and acute lung injury after respiratory virus infection (ERD) with symptoms of monocytic infiltration and an excess of eosinophils in the respiratory tract. This along with type 2 T helper cell-dependent mechanisms may contribute to the development of the vaccine-associated disease enhancement (VADE), which is not limited to respiratory disease.

Some vaccine candidates that targeted coronaviruses, RSV virus, and Dengue virus elicited VADE and were terminated from further development or became approved for use only for patients who had those viruses before.

ADE was observed in animal studies during the development of coronavirus vaccines, but as of 14 December 2020 no incidents had been observed in human trials. “Overall, while ADE is a theoretical possibility with a COVID-19 vaccine, clinical trials in people so far have not shown that participants who received the vaccine have a higher rate of severe illness compared to participants who did not receive the vaccine.

Mechanism of ADE

ADE has been documented to occur through two distinct mechanisms in viral infections: by enhanced antibody-mediated virus uptake into Fc gamma receptor IIa (FcγRIIa)-expressing phagocytic cells leading to increased viral infection and replication, or by excessive antibody Fc-mediated effector functions or immune complex formation causing enhanced inflammation and immunopathology

Abortion

An abortion can also be called a “termination of pregnancy”. It is when a pregnancy does not end with a birth of a child. 

History of Abortion

By the 1900s abortion was a felony in every state with some acceptions in limited circumstances when the woman’s life was in danger, rape, or incest. Abortions did continue to occur and reached about 800,000 a year by the 1930s. American Birth Control League was founded in 1921 and then changed to Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942 [3].

Pre Roe vs. Wade

• In 1964, Gerri Santoro died trying to do an illegal abortion, and her photo became the symbol of an abortion-rights movement. Some women’s rights activist groups started developing their own skills in abortions. In Chicago, a group known as “Jane” operated a floating abortion clinic throughout much of the 1960s. Women seeking the procedure would call a designated number and be given instructions on how to find “Jane” [4].
• In 1965 the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued a medical bulletin accepting a recommendation that clarified that “conception is the implantation of a fertilized ovum” and birth control methods that prevented implantation became classified as contraceptives, not abortifacients.
• In 1967, Colorado became the first state to decriminalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, or if pregnancy would lead to permanent physical disability of the woman. Similar laws were passed in California, Oregon, and North Carolina. 
• In 1970, Hawaii became the first state to legalize abortions on the request of the woman, and New York repealed its 1830 law and allowed abortions up to the 24th week of pregnancy. Similar laws were soon passed in Alaska and Washington. 
• In 1970, Washington held a referendum on legalizing early pregnancy abortions, becoming the first state to legalize abortion through a vote of the people. 
• A law in Washington, D.C., which allowed abortion to protect the life or health of the woman, was challenged in the Supreme Court in 1971 in the United States v. Vuitch. The court upheld the law, deeming that “health” meant “psychological and physical well-being”, essentially allowing abortion in Washington, D.C. 
• By the end of 1972, 13 states had a law similar to that of Colorado, while Mississippi allowed abortion in cases of rape or incest only and Alabama and Massachusetts allowed abortions only in cases where the woman’s physical health was endangered. In order to obtain abortions during this period, women would often travel from a state where abortion was illegal to one where it was legal. 
• The legal position prior to Roe v. Wade was that abortion was illegal in 30 states and legal under certain circumstances in 20 states.

Roe vs. Wade

• Roe vs. Wade was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. It struck down many U.S. federal and state abortion laws and prompted an ongoing national debate in the United States about whether and to what extent abortion should be legal, who should decide the legality of abortion, what methods the Supreme Court should use in constitutional adjudication, and what the role of religious and moral views in the political sphere should be.
• The decision involved the case of Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) who in 1969 became pregnant with her third child. McCorvey wanted an abortion, but she lived in Texas, where abortion was illegal except when necessary to save the mother’s life. She was referred to lawyers Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, who filed a lawsuit on her behalf in U.S. federal court against her local district attorney, Henry Wade, alleging that Texas’s abortion laws were unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas heard the case and ruled in her favor. Texas then appealed this ruling directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
• In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision ruling that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a “right to privacy” that protects a pregnant woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. 
  • But it also ruled that this right is not absolute, and must be balanced against the government’s interests in protecting women’s health and protecting prenatal life. The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: 
    • During the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all
    • In the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations 
    • During the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.
  • The Court classified the right to choose to have an abortion as “fundamental”, which required courts to evaluate challenged abortion laws under the “strict scrutiny” standard, the highest level of judicial review in the United States.

What’s Going on in Texas?

Know more about this law by watching the full video here 👇👇

SHOW NOTES

0:00 Introduction
1:31 Episode Introduction
2:38 What is Mu Covid Variant?
8:20 Antibody-Dependent Enhancement
20:25 Abortion History
29:32 Texas Abortion Law