'Died Suddenly' Clots - Fact Checking The Fact Checkers

This is basically what A Midwestern Doctor does here, following a long Twitter thread posted by someone called Eric Burnett, purporting to debunk AMD’s earlier post What is Causing the Blood Clots from "Died Suddenly?":

Critical Thinking in The Age of Censorship Pt. 2

Burnett starts off with this tweet, and then goes on, and on, and on:

You can read it if you have the patience. His debunking consists primarily of the assertion that the vaccine spike proteins are safe because they have been altered with two proline insertions which stabilise the spike and lock it into a so-called pre-fusion conformation where it cannot bind to cells. Here’s his tweet:

Burnett’s ‘fact check’ of AMD isn’t even original, it’s a hand-me-down, a second hand fact check published in July 2021, attacking Byram Bridle. written by Catalina Jaramillo here:

https://www.factcheck.org/2021/07/scicheck-covid-19-vaccine-generated-spike-protein-is-safe-contrary-to-viral-claims/

Jaramillo also chipped in with a fact check of ‘Died Suddenly’ which is so absurd, it’s laughable. It says:

What appear to be ordinary postmortem blood clots are held up in a viral online video as supposed evidence that there’s a depopulation plot underway using COVID-19 vaccination to kill people.

The roughly hourlong video repeatedly flashes across the screen what appear to be postmortem blood clots, which are often found in dead bodies. Although such clots are common, the video features nine embalmers and funeral directors who describe the clots as a new anomaly and surmise that they were caused by COVID-19 vaccines.

Jaramillo and co-authors are seriously trying to suggest that foot long rubbery white clots pulled out of the veins and arteries of deceased people at a rate of at least 1 in every 2 corpses are normal and thus embalmers are lying about these clots when they say they are something new, seen only after the mass vaccination rollout! They’ve been pulling these things out of corpses for years apparently. Have you ever looked inside a golf ball? Beneath the hard white shell is layer upon layer of rubbery strings, wrapped around the core. That must be it. This has obviously been a cottage industry for embalmers. They’ve been donating these rubbery clots to golf ball manufacturers and making money on the side, but for obvious reasons, kept it a bit quiet! That should give you an idea of the quality of Jaramillo’s ‘fact checking’, which should in turn inform you of the standard of Eric Burnett’s fact check, relying as it does on the hand-me-down debunking claims of a clown. The clown wrote in July 2021:

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the “most intensive safety monitoring in U.S. history” has found that most of the reported side effects after COVID-19 vaccination are minor, such as pain at the injection site or fever. Severe adverse reactions to the vaccines have been rare. 

Yet, a Canadian virus immunologist recently claimed that the vaccine’s spike protein is “a pathogenic protein,” “a toxin” that gets into the bloodstream, then accumulates in breast milk and “in a number of tissues” and could lead to cardiovascular and neurological damage in adults, children and infants. 

“Most intensive safety monitoring in US history”? LOL. They basically ignored all the numerous safety signals and all the VAERS reports!

But here’s the sciency bit:

The spike proteins from the virus and the ones generated by the vaccines are “essentially the same,” McLellan, the spike protein researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, told us, noting that they have the same function, structure and way of processing.

But, he said, there is “one key difference,” in that the spikes encoded by the vaccines “contain 2 amino acid changes that help stabilize the spike in its initial conformation and help prevent the spike from undergoing a conformational change that is required to facilitate membrane fusion.”

That’s because the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is a shape-shifter. To fuse its viral membrane with the host cell membrane it substantially changes its shape from an unstable pre-fusion state to a stable post-fusion state. While previously working on a vaccine for MERS, a disease caused by another coronavirus, McLellan and others discovered that by adding two proline molecules to the spike protein, they could lock it into its pre-fusion state, triggering a more effective immune response and preventing cell entry. The same harmless mutation, called 2P, as in two proline molecules, is used in the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. 

During a SARS-CoV-2 infection, the NIAID told us, the virus spike proteins can latch onto human cells, allowing the virus to infect them. With the live virus, the protein “attaches to receptors on the surface of cells and fuses the viral membrane with the host-cell membrane,” McLellan said.

However, vaccine-generated spike proteins can’t do that fusion because they are locked in the pre-fusion shape.

“The spike protein encoded by the mRNA vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech) and the J&J vaccine instruct the cells in our arm (where the injection is given) to produce spike protein that is tethered to the surface of the cell. It is not secreted and thus does not float through the body,” McLellan said. 

You’ll note that there are two ‘debunking’ claims here. Firstly, that the vaccine spike is made safe because it cannot bind to cell receptors in its locked-in prefusion form and secondly, that it does not get into the circulation; it stays in the deltoid muscle and draining lymph nodes as claimed by the vaccine manufacturers. Well, the second ‘debunk’ has itself now been thoroughly debunked; the mRNA lipid nanoparticles and the spike protein are routinely found in the circulatory system and indeed throughout every organ of the body, including the brain. There is no disputing this. Even Pfizer’s own biodistribution study performed in Japan proved it. If one ‘fact check’ can be debunked then another certainly can too and that will be the case with the assertion that the vaccine spikes are ‘safe’ because they cannot bind to cells, in particular, endothelial cells. The clinical evidence of vaccine harms clearly disproves this theory.

I have to admit to having some confusion over the issue of pre-fusion and post-fusion! So I had to do some more reading. As I understand it now, the full length Coronavirus spike consists of two regions - the S1 and S2 subunits which are bound together by the furin cleavage site (which shows definite signs of having been genetically engineered in a lab). During the process of binding to a cell, thus allowing the virus to infect that cell, the S1 subunit ‘breaks off’, leaving only the S2 part in place, which subsequently attaches itself to the cell, allowing viral entry. It’s explained here:

The spike protein (S-protein) of SARS-CoV-2 is the most critical target for neutralizing antibody therapeutics generation and vaccine developments. Spike protein is divided into two structural subunits, namely S1 and S2, based on their unique functionalities. S1 is a heavily glycosylated region that harbors the receptor binding domain (RBD), which is responsible for host cell recognition and interaction. Meanwhile, the S2 subunit contains important conformational elements required for membrane fusion.

The spike protein resides on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 virions in a trimeric conformation (also known as the pre-fusion format). Upon interaction with host cell ACE2 receptor, the S1 subunit is cleaved by host cell proteases (e.g. TMPRSS2) and removed from the S protein to yield the post-fusion format that allows conformational rearrangements in the S2 region, subsequently leads to membrane fusion.

This source also explains that the post-fusion conformation of the spike protein is actually pretty rare:

In February 2020, researchers from NIH and the University of Texas announced a cryo-EM structure of trimeric spike protein for the first time, which revealed the dynamics of conformational changes of RBD upon ACE2 interaction. Subsequently, David Veesler's research team from the University of Washington discovered the presence of multiple conformations of the S protein trimer. Upon evaluation of the information on the structure, conformation and distribution of S trimer on the surface of virion, researchers concluded that the pre-fusion format of spike timer is the predominate form on the virion surface, which counts for 97% of the total spike proteins, while the remainder are in the post-fusion status.

So, what I understand from this is that, during an infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, a small proportion of spike proteins convert to their post-fusion form in order to bind to the host cells and in the process the S1 subunit detaches itself from the virus and becomes free-floating in the organs and in the blood stream. But the S1 subunit still retains the receptor binding domain, so I ask myself, is the free-floating S1 subunit still able to bind to the surfaces of cells using the ACE2 receptor or some other receptors? I’m guessing that the answer to this must be yes, because the S1 subunit alone is implicated in blood clotting associated with severe Covid and with long term sequelae associated with ‘Long Covid’.

The obvious question to ask now is: after injection with the ‘vaccine’, do the ‘safe’, pre-fusion whole spike proteins released into the general circulation get cleaved such that S1 also becomes free-floating? Does the binding of S1 to endothelial cells explain the runaway inflammation and hyper-coagulation associated with the formation of the highly resistant abnormal fibrous clotting found in the veins and arteries of corpses? Probably. Watch this space for more updates. I’ll just leave you with this from Dr Peter McCullough:

One of the remarkable observations about SARS-CoV-2 infection is the clinical manifestation of venous and arterial thrombosis.  Multiple studies have described thrombotic complications of the infection including stroke, myocardial infarction, systemic arterial embolism, and deep venous thrombosis with pulmonary embolism.  In my practice I have seen virtually every one of these complications.  De Michele and colleagues studied patients with COVID-19 in 2020, before there were vaccines for the population.[i] 

They found SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein directly attached to platelets within the blood clots retrieved from patients.  Importantly, there was no evidence of the entire virus.  This suggests the Spike protein disassociates from the virus and becomes its own clot forming missile within the human body.  I could anticipate that mRNA, adenoviral DNA, and Spike protein antigen-based vaccines act the same way by generating free Spike protein within plasma which is able to circulate and participate in the development of blood clots. 

SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Causes Blood Clots