On June 3, 2021, an approximately 60-year-old man from the German riverside city of Magdeburg received his first coronavirus vaccination. He chose the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. It was popular at the time because it requires only one shot, unlike the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. But that was clearly not what he had in mind. The following month, he received the AstraZeneca vaccine. The next month, he doubled down on AstraZeneca and added Pfizer just in case. Things only accelerated from there. In January 2022, he received at least 49 doses of the coronavirus vaccine.
A few months later, an employee at a local vaccination center wondered: Hey, he was here yesterday, right? and reported it to the police. The German news agency reported that the man had received multiple vaccinations by that point. 90 times. But he wasn’t finished. As of November, he said he had received 217 doses of the coronavirus vaccine.217!
According to some people, new paper was announced on lancet. German researchers learned about the man from a newspaper article and managed to contact him through the prosecutor investigating the case. He was “very interested” in participating in the study. Uniclinicum Erlangen and co-author of the paper stated in a statement. They compiled his vaccination schedule through interviews and medical records, and collected blood and saliva samples to examine the immunological effects of “overvaccination.”
The man’s identity has not been disclosed, and the paper refers to him only as “HIM” (which appears to be an acronym but does not reveal what it stands for). He’s not the only overvaccinator in the world. A former postman in India said he was reportedly shot 12 times by January 2022. new york times, “I still want it.” On the other hand, New Zealand men reportedly We collected 10 pieces in one day. But let’s stop for a moment and consider the entire story behind HIM’s feat. In just under two and a half years, they have received a total of 217 vaccinations, averaging seven and a half a month, but the distribution has been far from equal. For several weeks in early 2022, he received two shots almost every day. He appears to have strongly preferred the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but also received at least one dose of the AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, and, of course, Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
why? You may be wondering. The paper itself ignored the question, saying only that he did it “deliberately and for personal reasons.” Perhaps the most obvious explanation is extreme, perhaps pathological, anxiety about the new coronavirus. News reports from April 2022 offer another possible explanation: He may have done it to sell vaccination cards. However, German prosecutors did not press charges even after HIM’s plan was revealed, and he continued to receive unnecessary gunfire.
Receiving 217 doses of the coronavirus vaccine is completely contrary to public health guidelines, both in Germany and elsewhere. But the strategy seems to have worked. Researchers concluded that HIM has never been infected with the new coronavirus, based on antigen, PCR, and blood tests. “If you asked an immunologist, they might have predicted that it wouldn’t be beneficial to do this,” said Cindy Leifer, an immunologist at Cornell University. lancet He told me to study. They may have expected that the constant activity would exhaust the immune system, making it vulnerable to real viral threats. However, such worries turned out to be unfounded.
Still, immunologists cautioned against inferring strong causal relationships. He avoided the virus. He has received 217 vaccinations.He wasn’t necessarily avoiding the virus. because He has received 217 vaccinations. In fact, the authors found that over-vaccination appears to have increased the amount of antibodies HIM’s body produces to defend against the virus and his T cells, but even after 216 doses, his 217th They wrote that while there was still a slight increase, there was no real impact on patients. quality An immune response. “If he had received the normal number of vaccinations, three or four, he would have been well protected as well,” Shober told me.
Overvaccination also did not cause any adverse effects. By shot 217, rare side effects There have been symptoms associated with the vaccine, including myocarditis, pericarditis, and Guillain-Barre syndrome, but as far as the researchers know, HIM has been completely benign. Remarkably, he did not report feeling even mild side effects from the 217 injections. On one level, this makes perfect sense. As Shober reasonably pointed out, he probably wouldn’t have taken all these shots if each shot had knocked him out for a day. Fair enough, but still he has 217 shots and no side effects? How?
At the very least, HIM is an outrageous ad for a vaccine. Are you worried about side effects from the third booster? Well, this guy gets over 200, and he’s fine. Travis Kelsey is called Mr. Pfizer, but he doesn’t know anything about HIM. Scientifically, things are a little more murky. Researchers say the results of the HIM study were hardly surprising, but the mystery behind the lack of side effects is that immunology still exists four years after the pandemic began. A former colleague of mine told me that it’s a good reminder of what’s going on. “Where intuition goes to die,” writes Ed Yong.
At the end of the paper, the authors state unequivocally that they “do not advocate over-vaccination as a strategy to enhance adaptive immunity.” Leifer said they shouldn’t take it home. The more shots, the better. Shober said he even tried to get this message to him privately after his 216th shot. “As a doctor, I really said from the bottom of my heart that I should never get vaccinated again,” Shober said.
He seems to have taken this advice seriously. Then he went and got number 217 shot anyway.
