I’m going on with my detailed with my vaccination experience with Sputnik V / Gam-COVID-VAC vaccine (or placebo, in case I’m not as lucky).
For those who haven’t seen the previous post, here it is: WAAAGH-cinating with Sputnik V vaccine
A week has passed. I had no side effects for the first days except for one: I felt tired, as if I’ve been working at a coal mine. In the morning it was more or less bearable, in the evening you begin to feel like an old man and can’t do a thing – just lay down and thing about nothing.
The forth day was the worst. I woke up with a headache, though quite mild, not terrible enough to swallow pills. Weakness in muscles, crappy coordination. I used Doom Eternal on Nightmare difficulty to assess it, and having my butt kicked by the demons concluded that I’m not in the best shape for SA Gaming. VR was even worse, moving in VR with joystick was suddenly a very ‘vertigo’ experience, though I never had any problems with that. Add a herpes on my lip, and you get the idea how terrible it was.
In the evening my body temperature was at those crappy 37.0 C, I got cough with sputum, though not severe and some mild pain in my chest. Not terrible enough to swallow any pills or panic, but alerting nevertheless.
On the fifth day the cough was almost done, could feel a little sputum down my throat, but nothing bad. I took another day off to rest and watch closely on how my body would behave. I felt more alive this day, symptoms were pretty much going away, even herpes healed faster than usual and was pretty much gone by the next day.
I never felt anything at the place of the shot, no itching, no inflammation, yet on the fifth day I could find a small whitish spot around the place of injection.
Telemetry
Oura Ring suggest that I really got the vaccine. I had a drastic elongation of the deep sleep phase (Can stress/common cold do the same?). I marked with the red bar the first night after the vaccination, so that you could see that for yourself.
One of the things I regret – I didn’t get all the tech I stuff I had in my lab ready for this huge experiment, for I could learn a lot more about my body. Well, better luck next time.
Big Brother watching you
If the apps were a complete gibberish at the start, they started making sense in a few days. The Check COVID-19 app with self assessment are planned for to check for the same thing, since the doctor would normally want to double check all the symptoms and fill in some small details you might’ve missed. The doctor usually calls you and asks for the best time to call next day, but in reality that could be any time.
The second app, “ТМЦ ДЗМ” is designed to be the emergency communication channel with your doctor and the video calling app. On the forth day, once my doctor learned I’ve installed it, she suggested that we switch to the video call, since she wanted to have a look at my (unshaved 😉 ) face. The app can accept incoming calls from the doctor, but either I disallowed it to do so in background, or it is designed like that – it only rang when I opened it.
Initial conclusions
And a few pieces of advice for brave orks who want to WAAAGH-cinate:
- Take a small leave or a few days off. Expect to be ‘zombie’ for a few days. No sick days, it’s all up to you to make time for that.
- Cook food beforehand. Or order food to be delivered. You don’t want to cook while you feel that crappy,
- Avoid driving or operating any machinery for a few days. Seriously Nothing that needs fast reaction times and good coordination. Even bachata or salsa is off the charts 😉
Just find a blanket and watch some nice TV Series.
Bonus: How COVID-19 generates truncated S-proteins and DDOS-es the immune system
This explanation was not included in the previous post, since it’s a lengthy read. I had to ask a lot of dumb questions to my friend to get a clear understanding of the process, so that I can just explain it in plain English. After all that’s way more interesting than my whining about side effects of a placebo 😉
So, if we have a good look at the genome of corona, we’ll eventually find that the gene that encodes the S-protein has a sequence tgtttgt ttttcttgtt ttatt. Note the abundance one nucleotide, the ‘t’ letter. That’s called a ‘slippery sequence’. When polymerase reads it, with some probability it slips and can easily add or drop a nucleotide, shift the reading frame and thus produce a truncated, non-functional S-protein. Since the process is stochastic, there’ll be a lot those different truncated versions that will annoy the immune system. And antibodies that are aimed at disarming those truncated versions would be of no use – they’ll just ramp up the inflammation.
Ebola has a slippery sequence in the genome as well, but this sequence is way shorter and optimal. It reads aaatcaaaaaa.
As if that’s not enough, SARS-Cov-2 has an FCS (Furine Cleaverage Site) in the S protein. Furine is an instracelluar proteinase, it cuts the S protein in two pieces.. The previous build SARS-COV didn’t have that one. Furine is a very tricky thing that plays a crucial role in the infection.
In simple words, furin is like a Pacman that cuts S protein in two pieces: S1 and S2. S1 is the part the binds to the ACE-2 receptor.
After being cut by furin, the S1 part drifts on it’s own and binds to ACE-2 receptors. S1 binding activates a chain of reactions that end up increasing levels adenosinemonophosphate and interleukin-6 that ramp up the inflammation
So, to sum up we have the following:
- The virus “lands” on an ACE-2 receptor and infiltrates the cell, instructing it to make copies of itself and ramping up inflammation,
- At the output, thanks to furine, we get more copies of the virus and those cut-off bits that recognize ACE-2 and land on it, further ramping up the inflammation, just like a full-blown virus would. When the immune system kicks in, it will destroy such cells as if they were infected.
- In addition the immunity will waste resources trying to generate antibodies that will destroy S1 parts, but won’t help against a full-blown virus.
- The virus itself has a ton of truncated S proteins that act as decoys for the immune system, forcing it to generate tons of antibodies that won’t be useful.
- Do the truncated versions of S protein have the S1 part and an FCS? The remains a mystery. We didn’t manage to find that in the articles.
As research shows (Nature), diabetic patients have a ton of furine, so COVID mortality rates is extremely high. Furine is also abundant in atherosclerotic plaques and takes part in the mechanism of blood coagulation. So, it all sounds pretty scary, but that’s just the way it is.
What next?
Still waiting for my second shot, “brand new” side effects and getting ready to do some fortune telling based on antibody tests. The COVID-19 stats went drastically up in my city, second wave incoming. I really hope that this experiment of mine will help out and if not protect me, but bring us all a little bit closer to the moment of total COVID-19 vaccination. WAAAGH!