The vaccine has to be the live, attenuated type. Here’s a quote about this type of vaccine for bacille Calmette-Guerin, or BCG:
It’s not just BCG that seems to have this effect. There’s growing evidence that any live vaccines can offer some broad, nonspecific protection, including the oral polio vaccine, measles and the live flu vaccine.
. . . and another snippet . . .
In other words, the vaccines were doing something to boost the immune system’s response to many kinds of pathogens.
FluMist is the live, attenuated version of flu vaccine. Here’s what the NPR article has to say about it:
You watch," Gallo says. "People who get the live flu vaccine will also be protected against the COVID-19. That’s the hypothesis.
A friend is a caver (spelunker?) and due to all the bats, he looked into pre-exposure rabies vaccination. His insurance didn’t cover it and it was expensive. So, the next time he injured himself he went to the Emergency Room and claimed the wound on his hand was from a raccoon that he tried to pet.
Of course, his insurance covered post-exposure treatment which was/is the same as pre-exposure with the addition of an immunoglobulin injection. So, he lied and is now protected against rabies virus.
Hrm. Only a few years ago, I got a tetanus vaccine, when I stabbed my own hand while skewing a turkey breast and pork roast on the rotisserie (it happens.) Tetanus vaccine is easy to get – just about any injury and the Dr is dying to offer it. But that’s an inactive toxoid, a chemically modified proteinaceous toxin, so I don’t know if that applies.
Fascinating article! Thanks very much for posting it.
Hmm. I wonder about a potential connection here:
“There’s plenty of evidence for it,” Gallo says. “The weakness is we don’t really know the longevity [of the protection]. It will probably work only for months, but we can’t say for sure.”
But, he says, the BCG vaccine has several advantages to a specific vaccine. It’s cheap. A dose only costs a few dollars. And we already know it’s safe. “More than 130 million kids every year — every year — receive the BCG vaccine so the safety profile has been very strong,” Arditi says.
And then, of course, the observation that children very rarely suffer from Covid-19. That hypothesis seems as worthy of exploration as the one about ACE receptors.
I like good news. However, every time I encounter the name Robert Gallo, I remember the book “And the Band Played On”, about the early years of the AIDS epidemic.
In the book, Gallo came off as an amazingly despicable person. Despicable enough to lodge in my mind for 20 years — although all he really did was to lie shamelessly in order to steal scientific credit from another researcher.
From the Chicago Tribune
A controversial piece of scientific history will be officially rewritten this week, with the publication of an acknowledgment by Dr. Robert C. Gallo that the AIDS virus he claimed to have discovered in 1984 was in reality a virus sent to him from France the year before.