Plain English thread on how VITT might work, according to the latest Greinacher findings https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-440461/v1. One of your immune system's jobs is to deal with infections like colds and flus. The whole point of the vax is to give it a taste of that (which it does very well)...

Another one of its jobs however is take care of things when you cut your finger on a rusty nail. VITT resembles that part more. When you cut your finger on that nail two things need to happen. You need clotting so your blood doesn't all end up on the floor, and you need to ...

make sure that any rust, crap, bacteria, etc. is cleaned up and doesn't circulate through your body. One of the ways all this works goes something like this. Platelets (a type of cell in your blood) become "activated". They release stuff called PF4 (small proteins) whose jobs ...

include: letting clots happen, summoning other immune cells including neutrophils to the scene of the crime, and in some cases actually sticking to blobs of foreign material themselves. When that happens, antibodies (more small proteins) stick to these blobs of foreign crap+PF4..

The antibodies activate more platelets reinforcing the whole process, and other immune cells, including those neutrophils, attack anything with antibodies on it (as well as anything they don't like the look of generally). Neutrophils in particular have a special party trick...

which is to literally vomit their own guts over an intruder in an attack that is usually suicidal, entangling it in DNA. Normally DNA is only found right in the middle of cells where it is working like a computer. But outside cells it's mainly just a sticky spider's web.

These even larger blobs of crap + PF4 + antibodies + DNA gluing it all together attract even more PF4, which activates more platelets, recruits more neutrophils, and aggravates the whole situation. Obviously at some point it's all supposed to calm downagain and one of the ...

ways that happens is that another protein called DNAse breaks down that DNA. So what is happening with VITT? The suggestion is that EDTA, a preservative used in the vaccine, has the side-effect of letting the vaccine through capillary walls and into your blood. Another...

suggestion (not in this paper) is that it might sometimes just be injected directly into your blood by mistake. Once there something gets the platelets interested initially. It may be the EDTA itself, it may be the adenoviruses that are supposed to be there, or it may be some ...

of the junk proteins in the vaccine. Then PF4 sticks to blobs of junk in the vaccine. In this image the PF4 has been marked with the small black dots (actually bits of gold). The more defined blobs are adenoviruses. As you can see the PF4 is apparently not interested in them...

But it is sticking to the junk, *which doesn't need to be there anyway*. Then apparently things proceed as described above, with neutrophils engulfing things in DNA...

But in VITT patients DNAse doesn't seem to be doing its job at clearing this away again. This isn't mentioned in the paper but I wonder if the reason might be that EDTA is what's preventing DNAse from working (EDTA soaks up Calcium and DNAse needs Calcium)...

It's not known for sure if all this is really what's causing VITT. That's why the paper is called "Towards Understanding...". But if it is it implies that higher purity and a different (or different amount of) preservative might make the problem go away.
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