Warning: Another Crazy Theory

I’m no scientist or doctor. I have no real knowledge of the inner workings of the immune system, except personal experience and Doctors doling out both wisdom and speculation during the pandemic. But I have been a walking ball of contagion. So here goes.

When my son was little, he got a bad cut on his foot. I knew I needed to kill the bacteria that got in the wound. Rubbing alcohol was all I had on hand, but it would be painful for him. So I told him a story as to why it was gonna hurt. The bacteria are bad guys. The good guys were in the rubbing alcohol. They had to battle the bad guys, just like in cartoons and video games. And while they were doing that there would be a war. He would feel pain when the good guys accidentally missed the bad guys with their tiny swords and it would stick him. It was nothing to worry about. Just little good guy swords. And it worked! Yes, it hurt. But his tears dried. He even laughed telling me he could feel the little swords. He said it tickled. The power of mind over matter.

I hadn’t thought of that moment until today. For more than a year, since our dance with the devil that is Covid in Spain, we have both experienced lingering flare ups of symptoms. While mine have been more dramatic, Jeff has had them, too. Weird fevers and other stuff that he attributes to Spring of 2020. It has not made us happy.

There are periods where it seems to get better. Tricking us that it might just be over, before dragging us back into it’s den. We claw the ground, trying to resist, but it always wins. And then it vanishes, laying in wait for another day. Here is where our new theory comes in.

After each of us got the Pfizer vaccine, we were sick as dogs for a few days. But there were similarities to our experiences. As we usually do, we started mapping them out. And then doing a bit of research.

We will skip the superficial stuff. Arm pain. A headache. On top of running fevers and eyeballs on fire. By day 2, both of us had unimaginable joint and bone pain. The kind that makes rolling over in bed excruciating. The joints in my feet hurt to walk. And Jeff’s hands, his bread and butter, were rendered immobile. It felt like at any moment our limbs would crumble like crackers. But we have a new theory as to why.

Most of us only heard the acronym ‘RNA’ because of the new coronavirus vaccines. And it’s made a lot of people nervous. ‘How safe is something developed in less than a year?’ ‘They’re just experimenting on us all!’ But it’s actually the result of research that has been going on for the past 30 yrs. And really smart people at universities like MIT, have been conducting groundbreaking studies using RNA for a long time.

And its not just for vaccines to prevent things like being infected with Covid. Its being used for noninvasive biopsies, and for targeted treatments after disease is detected. It’s the future of bespoke medicine, based on the individual’s bio makeup. Exciting stuff.

Here’s where our completely unscientific, epidemiologically uneducated theory comes in. Since RNA is now being studied for cures and new treatments for cancers, and previously incurable viruses, like Chickenpox aka herpes, we think this is why our bodies hurt so bad after getting the miracle that is the Pfizer vaccine.

Think about it. Diseases like some cancers and Chickenpox hang out in your body, silent. Under the radar. Sure, they have a traditional Chickenpox vaccine now. My kids got it to prevent infection. But if you get infected with Chickenpox it never leaves your system. It just floats around, and can reemerge. It’s the virus that also causes cold sores or shingles. It hides in your spinal fluid. Stress can bring on cold sores or a shingles outbreak from that lingering first infection decades before. And it’s incurable once you get it.

After our experience with Covid, we are wondering if the virus has been hiding out in our joints, among other places in the body. Then periodically, it rears it’s head and reeks havoc for a bit. Then goes into hiding again, to a place the immune system can’t see, unable to react to it and eliminate it for good. But these RNA vaccines are like nothing that the body’s immune system has ever experienced before. And it supercharges the whole system with exponentially more good soldiers (antibodies) to fight the bad ones. According to Dr. Fauci, more that ten times the antibodies generated without help.

Getting Covid, and surviving it, gives you antibodies generated by your immune system. Naturally. But it stops fighting what it can’t see. Like it does when the herpes virus goes dormant after a bout of shingles or a cold sore. Yet it is still inside you. Lingering like a shadow. But the RNA vaccine doesn’t rely on natural immune response. It literally tells the body what to do. And it does it on the scale that the body would never be able to do on it’s own. Jeff calls it ‘Search and Destroy.’

So Jeff and I think the reason our joints and bones hurt so bad after getting the jab, along with other symptoms like swollen lymph nodes and limbs, is that it’s teaching our cells and training our immune system into fighting the hiding virus. It’s finding it in places it could never see before.

Do we have proof of this, that Covid is still hiding in our bodies? No. The PCR test shows it is not present inside us today. But we have battled the roller coaster of after effects of infection for a long time now. And it might help explain why some people with long Covid see some symptoms disappear after getting the RNA vaccine.

Again, we are just two people speculating after personal experience. That can be a dangerous thing. I know. Crazy theories abound on the internet. But I’m betting our theory pans out in some form, and that these Covid vaccines will do what I am hoping for us. Alleviate some of these lingering year-long symptoms. If so, the few days of post-jab discomfort has been well worth it. I’d do it ten times over if they said it would work.

And there is another Covid vaccine coming in 2022. Developed right here in Spain, they are saying it may be our booster shot next year. Just more antibodies. Because it’s been developed later than the first round of RNA vaccines, it is taking into account the variants. Sounds cool. But, whether Jeff’s and my hopes are realized this time around, either way, the potential for this new groundbreaking technology, and innovative treatments to save lives in so many areas of medicine should excite us all. Maybe it’s just like that moment with my son when his tears stopped. Mind over matter. I’m always rooting for the good soldiers.