The man who (allegedly) had 217 COVID jabs

A hyper case of absurdity that otherwise present with an interesting case for review.

Well, if you thought one COVID shot would be considered crazy what would you think about 217?

In a case report published by The Lancet¹ on Monday researchers highlight a strange case in which a 62-year old man from Magdeburg, Germany (named HIM) has come under investigation for allegedly obtaining 217 vaccines within a 29-month time span.

Hypervaccinated seems like a gross understatement here! The story seems rather complex, but the case report seems to suggest that a case was being constructed by prosecutors, who may have caught wind of all of these vaccination events:

HIM's hypervaccination occurred outside of a clinical study context and against national vaccination recommendations. Evidence for 130 vaccinations in a 9 month period was collected by the public prosecutor of Magdeburg, Germany, who opened an investigation of this case with the allegation of fraud, but criminal charges were not filed. 108 vaccinations are individually recorded and partly overlap with the total of 130 prosecutor-confirmed vaccinations (appendix 2 p 12).

It’s worth noting that the details of the actual number of vaccination is murky, likely due to lack of clear corroborating evidence (at least at this time). The authors provide a spreadsheet with up to 130 suspected vaccination claims, with only 26 being documented as being “confirmed”. The rest of the claims are either “recorded” or left blank regarding vaccine documentation, so take the actual number of vaccinations with a grain of salt for the time being.

Even more alarming is that the man allegedly got multiple vaccines of different platforms in the same day! Again, the whole situation seems extremely absurd, and hopefully some more information comes to light for this scenario.

Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, researchers considered this a good learning opportunity, and thus wanted to examine the immune response of HIM:

To investigate the immunological consequences of hypervaccination in this unique situation, we submitted an analysis proposal to HIM via the public prosecutor. HIM then actively and voluntarily consented to provide medical information and donate blood and saliva.

There are a few additional points to raise.

• Note that HIM appears to have gotten all of these vaccines for personal reasons. It seems that people are looking into these reasons right now, but that’s not much of a concern for me.

• The case report doesn’t make mention of any adverse events related to the vaccines. Given the high degree of subjectivity in this report it’d be difficult to dismiss this possibility, especially if this individual was so eager to get this many vaccine to begin with. That is, I wouldn’t be surprised if HIM downplayed any adverse events if it may make it less likely that he could get future jabs. Again, a ton of subjectivity is at play here.

• Strangely, even with all of these jabs HIM doesn’t appear to have any prior evidence of a SARS-COV2 infection, at least when tested using PCR and serology tests. Of course, one may assume that an individual so ready to receive this many vaccines may take other precautions to avoid COVID altogether. The case report doesn’t make mention of this individual’s behavior, o we’re left in the dark regarding that as well.

• HIM seems to have gotten predominately Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines. However, the initial vaccines were of the adenoviral platforms. Thus, aside from one protein-unit vaccine booster (from Sanofi/GSK), as well as the first few adenoviral platforms, nearly all of the reported vaccines are of the mRNA platforms.

From Table S1. The first series of reported vaccines for HIM are shown above, with dates, platform, arm, PCR status, and confirmed status provided.

But what appears to be one of the strangest, and possibly unethical situations, is that HIM appears to have gone on to get 4 additional vaccine even after being included in the study:

From Kocher, et al. It appears that the 4 most recent vaccines occurred during the time of actual assessment (boxed red dots above), allowing for a better immunological profile to be constructed, although it certainly raises some ethical questions.

This at least explains why immunological profiles were constructed for HIM in between the alleged 213th and 217th doses.

In order to compare HIM’s profile researchers used a reference group of 29 vaccinees who received 3-doses of mRNA vaccines.

So, given all of these alleged vaccines was there anything completely abnormal with HIM’s profile?

Strangely, it doesn’t seem as if HIM’s profile was all-too different from 3-dose vaccinees. As is reported in many studies anti-spike antibodies tend to increase in the time immediately following vaccination, eventually tapering off over time.

The only distinction appears to be the fact that HIM appears to be producing more antibodies in general relative to vaccinees, and appears to be related to the higher neutralization capacity of HIM antibodies against both Wildtype and Omicron relative to vaccinees’ neutralizing capacity:

Relative to reference vaccinees (in grey/dark blue) HIM (in red) appears to show far higher anti-spike IgG production. However, the trajectory of IgG production follows a similar path, such that IgG levels decline in the months following vaccination and increase after subsequent boosters. The higher neutralization capacity of HIM relative to vaccinees may be due strictly to the number of anti-spike antibodiesHIM is producing.

This seem to be reflected in the fact that HIM appears to have a higher number of CD8+ effector memory and effector T cells, as well as spike-specific B-cells. T cells also appear to show higher clonal expansion, but once again the differences between HIM and vaccinees don’t appear to be egregiously different (at least based on surface review).

Now what may interest readers is the idea of IgG4 conversion. If any person would show a clear indication of IgG4 conversion it may be an individual who has allegedly received hundreds of vaccines.

Again, this seems to be case of quantity, such that HIM appears to produce a higher number of IgG4 antibodies relative to 3-dose vaccinees. However, this is likely reflective of the fact that HIM is producing far more anti-spike antibodies in general.

This is reflected in the comparison between Figure S1 B and C:

Therefore, although it appears that HIM is producing 2.9x more IgG4 antibodies compared to vaccinees, HIM also appears to be producing a lower proportion of IgG4 relative to the total IgG pool quantified, with HIM appearing to have a 4.39% anti-spike IgG4 antibody pool as compared to controls who show around a 12.38% anti-spike IgG4 pool relative to their total IgG pool.

So even with far more vaccines HIM doesn’t appear to show extensive IgG4 conversion. It’s important to consider that, once again, this case is extremely subjective- we don’t know the extent of this person’s actual vaccine history or what his personal medical history entails.

That being said, one possible explanation for this lack of IgG4 conversion would be that HIM’s initial vaccinations with the adenoviral vectors may have buffered any IgG4 conversion down the line. Growing evidence suggests that those who took the adenoviral vaccines as their initial vaccines don’t appear to show the same degree of IgG4 conversion as mRNA vaccinees, even after heterologous vaccination with the mRNA platforms.

This creates a very interesting route for speculation. Barring other confounders and variables, the case of HIM helps to raise the following questions:

• Is there a jumping off point in IgG4 conversion, in which case IgG4 conversion may taper off after repeat spike exposure?

  • This one seems more speculative.

• Does the initial presentation of spike dictate the direction that IgG4 conversion will take? That is, in those who are not presented with spike through mRNA will the IgG4 conversion be buffeted regardless of how many spike events occur, and the manner in which it is presented?

  • The current evidence already seems to point in this direction, but HIM’s case appears to provide an extreme case of IgG4 conversion being hindered, possibly with initial adenoviral vaccine administration. Maybe an original vaccination sin is in order? (I kid!)

So outside of the absurdity presented by this case it at least provides some avenues to consider when it comes to too much vaccination. Of course, we should keep in mind that this case is a super special one with a ton of subjectivity and uncertainty.

Hopefully researchers can continue to poke and prod HIM for future insights immunological-wise- he’s already shown that he has no problems serving as a guinea pig anyways!

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1. Katharina Kocher, Carolin Moosmann, Felix Drost, Christine Schülein, Pascal Irrgang, Philipp Steininger, Jahn Zhong, Johannes Träger, Bernd Spriewald, Christoph Bock, Dirk H Busch, Christian Bogdan, Benjamin Schubert, Thomas H Winkler, Matthias Tenbusch, Ev-Marie Schuster, Kilian Schober, Adaptive immune responses are larger and functionally preserved in a hypervaccinated individual, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2024, ,ISSN 1473-3099, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(24)00134-8. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1473309924001348)