© Ariana Drehsler/AFP/Getty ImagesHealth care workers tend to a patient with COVID-19 in Apple Valley, Calif., on Jan. 11, 2021.
If the authorities had heeded advice from those with the most profound knowledge of the mechanics of COVID-19, the pandemic could have been handled more adeptly, according to an immunologist, one of perhaps a few hundred in the world with that specific expertise. Instead, he said, his and others' voices were silenced.
Shortly after news of the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged in Wuhan, China, in early 2020, Vojtech Thon, clinical immunologist and professor at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, started examining tissue samples of infected patients. His goal wasn't just to understand how the virus infects people but mainly to see the immune response dynamics that would protect a person. He focused on the mucosal system in the nose, mouth, and lungs โ his area of expertise.
His findings were striking and ran counter to many of the public health narratives heard worldwide.He concluded that:1) Early treatment was possible, available, and critical.2) Pandemic mitigation measures were misused and, in many cases, counterproductive to fighting the disease.3) Vaccines were rolled out improperly and presented to the public inaccurately. They couldn't achieve sterilizing immunity, that is, elimination of the virus before it could multiply in the body.Virtually all of this was known at the pandemic's beginning or at least by late 2020. Yet his attempts to make his expertise available to authorities were largely shut down.
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