[HN Gopher] Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs fr...
___________________________________________________________________
Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection
Author : rolph
Score : 175 points
Date : 2021-08-26 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (directorsblog.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (directorsblog.nih.gov)
| civilized wrote:
| There's a critical point I think is getting lost in the shuffle:
| vaccine immunity may be different from natural immunity, but (1)
| it does seem to protect against severe cases, (2) precisely
| because the protection is imperfect, the first infection you get
| after being vaccinated should train the immune system in a
| similar way as an unvaccinated infection.
|
| So to me, the real question is, what is your immunity like after
| you get vaccinated AND then infected? Because that's what is most
| likely to happen in the long run, as COVID becomes endemic.
| Everyone's going to get an infection, so does vaccine + infection
| give you better or worse immunity than no vaccine + infection?
| [deleted]
| arisAlexis wrote:
| And then the question is, should you as a vaccinated healthy
| person mind getting infected in the sense that it can shield
| you maybe even more from future variants or is this a dangerous
| game to play?
| [deleted]
| nightfly wrote:
| I think it's all about timing. Right now in Oregon our
| hospitals are full. So the less people getting infected right
| now the better.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| If I remember correctly, the number of vaccinated people
| who get infected and require hospitalization is quite low.
| retrac wrote:
| The number of people possibly infected by a vaccinated
| person as an asymptomatic or mild symptomatic carrier and
| who may require hospitalization is still ambiguous. I
| will continue to err on the side of caution, tho I have
| little worry for myself personally.
| exhilaration wrote:
| You remember correctly:
|
| _More than 99% of recent deaths were among the
| unvaccinated, infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci
| said earlier this month on NBC 's Meet the Press, while
| Walensky noted on Friday that unvaccinated people
| accounted for over 97% of hospitalizations._
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/1017002907/u-s-covid-
| deaths-a...
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's probably still worth trying to reduce the amount of
| virus in circulation, even if individual risk is low. There's
| someone in another thread talking about being on
| immunosuppressants, for example.
|
| I don't think it's a binary condition either, we can do
| things that are more effective and less costly (like cutting
| down on large, indoor, adult social gatherings) and not do
| things that are less effective.
| randomopining wrote:
| That's what I've been proposing for a few months. Get the
| vaccine and then get the delta variant a few weeks later to
| crush it and then be super immune for future variants that
| jet off of that one.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Do you have evidence that this is the best course of
| action?
| contravariant wrote:
| Well the obvious problems with it is that it's hard to
| tell you've been infected and you need to quarantine for
| the entire duration until you are sure you've been
| infected and have recovered.
|
| Apart from that, if the protection from a vaccine is
| temporary then there's no reason to believe your immune
| system will learn anything from an infection it can
| already handle. That part of the immune response takes a
| while and may never succeed if the virus is long gone
| before then.
| pajamanaut wrote:
| It seems like the article is saying that vaccine immunity is
| actually more robust that natural immunity though.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| If that's the case, then they should retract and work towards
| understanding why their methodology failed so miserably.
|
| The data from Israel shows an order of magnitude better
| immunity from prior infection than the vaccine.
| flatiron wrote:
| For spike proteins. Not for the other targets you get with
| natural immunity.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _For spike proteins. Not for the other targets you get
| with natural immunity_
|
| From the article: "the new evidence shows that protective
| antibodies generated in response to an mRNA vaccine will
| target a broader range of SARS-CoV-2 variants carrying
| 'single letter' changes in a key portion of their spike
| protein compared to antibodies acquired from an infection."
| The study discussed in the article unequivocally states
| that vaccine-induced immunity is more robust than that from
| infection.
| criticaltinker wrote:
| > unequivocally states that vaccine-induced immunity is
| more robust than that from infection.
|
| It absolutely does not make such a strong claim - a more
| accurate takeaway is that vaccination using the current
| mRNA based formulations induces an immune response highly
| targeted toward the S protein RBD. This has not been
| conclusively proven to provide better or worse protection
| than immunity acquired through natural infection.
|
| _> At first glance, the RBD targeting of the vaccine
| sera neutralization might seem likely to increase
| susceptibility to viral mutations, but the rest of our
| results SUGGEST that this MAY not be the case. _
|
| _> We found that the specificity of the mRNA-1273
| vaccine-induced RBD-binding antibody response often
| narrows over time. In contrast, the infection-elicited
| RBD-binding antibody response often broadens over time _
|
| _> The vaccinated individuals in our study were
| relatively young (18-55 years) and healthy, whereas the
| convalescent individuals were older (23-76 years, median
| 56) with a range of comorbidities (13)._
|
| _> Additionally, we did not examine effects of mutations
| or deletions to the N-terminal domain of the spike
| protein, which can also affect neutralization by vaccine
| sera (7). _
|
| _> Our experiments assayed binding of antibodies to
| isolated RBD expressed by yeast, and so cannot capture
| mutational effects on trimer conformation or antibodies
| with quaternary epitopes _
|
| _> Evidence from multiple experimental studies showing
| that single RBD point mutations can lead to resistance to
| neutralizing convalescent plasma from multiple donors
| suggests that specific single mutants may be able to
| evade spike-targeting vaccinal immunity in many
| individuals and rapidly lead to spread of vaccine-
| resistant SARS-CoV-2. _ [1]
|
| [1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical
| interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
| civilized wrote:
| Good point, edited to clarify.
|
| Beyond just this study, which doesn't give the whole picture
| of immunity, I think there is conflicting evidence. Given
| that vaccine effectiveness seems to be going down in Israel,
| I think there are legitimate concerns about the robustness of
| vaccine-based immunity - but the question is always "relative
| to what?". If it ultimately sets you up similar to or better
| than natural immunity from an infection (which also wanes, as
| we get, e.g., colds over and over throughout our lives),
| that's the best you can hope for.
| beamatronic wrote:
| Here's a pragmatic question - do we need large amounts of
| people who have natural (non-vaccine) antibodies to donate
| their blood? To put it more crudely, is there a way that
| everyone at large can benefit from their (unfortunate)
| suffering?
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I know someone who has been donating for exactly this purpose
| (he's a bar owner, and apparently was told by his doctors
| that he had an extraordinarily high antibody count).
| Unfortunately, the results from all of these kinds of
| treatments thus far has been less than hoped for.
| bsedlm wrote:
| > A third difference is that natural infection only exposes the
| body to the virus in the respiratory tract (unless the illness is
| very severe), while the vaccine is delivered to muscle, where the
| immune system may have an even better chance of seeing it and
| responding vigorously.
|
| But the respiratrory tract is constantly exposed to the external
| world, wheras the muscles are typically protected by the skin...
| Therefore I find this fact counterintuitive.
| walterbell wrote:
| A marketing person might consider this a way of spinning a
| known negative into a rhetorical positive.
|
| Unless people are being bitten by Covid-bearing mosquitoes,
| blood serum antibodies aren't going to be seeing virus earlier
| than the upper respiratory tract.
| bobbytit wrote:
| This more recent Thai study shows that natural immunity is far
| superior for all known variants... https://www.news-
| medical.net/news/20210719/Thai-study-looks-...
| jiocrag wrote:
| CoronaVac vaccine? This is a much less effective vaccine than
| Pfizer and Moderna (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoronaVac),
| so it's not surprising that natural immunity would be superior.
| bobbytit wrote:
| What about the Israeli study then..
| https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/natural-immunity-is-
| stro...
|
| Double pfizer jabbed idiots were 13 times more likely to be
| infected than those unjabbed who had already recovered from
| prior infection.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| It would be interesting to see the duration of the immunity or
| resistance across multiple vaccine variants. The latest data from
| the UK indicates that the AZ vaccine suffers less degradation
| over time than Pfizer, at least when it comes to the Delta
| variant which is now the prevalent one in the UK.
|
| Israel has now giving boosters to 30 year olds and older in order
| to boost the immunity to infection and resistance to severe
| illness.
| arisAlexis wrote:
| But the lower efficacy drop of Pfizer is still higher than the
| less degraded AZ efficacy...
| shin_lao wrote:
| My understanding is that it may be due to the difference of
| time during the two shots. It's possible that 2 weeks between
| the two shots of Pfizer is too short. We're learning.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| In the UK Pfizer and AZ both are on 8 weeks protocols and the
| UK has seen a sharper drop in Pfizer efficacy compared to AZ.
|
| I got Pfizer in the UK, I also suspect to have had it in
| March (3 days of some coughing and loss of smell), I'm under
| 40 so no AZ for me.
| munk-a wrote:
| In part due to immunity duration concerns and, honestly, in
| part due to supply issues - Canada ended up going way wide on
| vaccines - most people ended up with twelve weeks between
| vaccinations.
| walterbell wrote:
| Canada also made the bold move of mixing different
| vaccines, even though there were zero clinical trials of
| multi-vendor vaccines.
| graywh wrote:
| Pfizer is 3 weeks, Moderna is 4
| walterbell wrote:
| Moderna apparently has a 33% higher volume dosage?
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's 3x larger, at least by the amount of mRNA.
| nanis wrote:
| Full text here:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8369496/
|
| From the discussion section:
|
| > In this study, we have shown differences in the specificity of
| polyclonal serum antibodies acquired by infection versus
| vaccination with mRNA-1273. The neutralizing activity of vaccine
| sera is more targeted to the RBD than for convalescent sera, with
| the majority of vaccine sera losing all detectable neutralization
| at a 1:25 cutoff after depletion of RBD-directed antibodies.
| (emphasis mine)
|
| From the conclusion:
|
| > Despite these limitations, our results in conjunction with
| other recent studies (19) suggest that mRNA vaccines and
| infection elicit somewhat distinct anti-spike antibody responses.
| Therefore, it is important to differentiate antibody immunity
| acquired by different means when assessing the impact of viral
| evolution. Considerable effort is being expended to identify
| emerging antigenic variants of SARS-CoV-2 and determine which
| ones might evade immunity (3, 7, 8, 35). Our findings suggest
| that the results could vary depending on the source of immunity.
| Furthermore, carefully characterizing and comparing the
| specificity of antibody immunity elicited by additional vaccine
| modalities could provide a basis for determining whether some
| vaccine responses will be more resistant to viral evolution.
| brainbrane wrote:
| I just learned last week that my COVID antibody count from the
| vaccine is zero. Since I'm on an immunosuppressing medication
| that wipes out the B cells in my bloodstream, this isn't really
| all that surprising to me. I learned about this because I'm in a
| medical study, and other people in the study who take the same
| medication also don't produce any COVID antibodies in response to
| the vaccine.
|
| What's interesting is that I still get side effects from the
| vaccine, and they seem to be right in line with the side effects
| that other people generally report. I'm no immunologist, but I've
| taken an armchair interest in the subject since I've been
| managing an autoimmune disease (MS) for the past 25 years.
|
| The immune system is an amazingly complex thing with many
| branches. Different types of cells interact in ways that we have
| yet to fully understand. In spite of having no B cells (except
| what's in my bone marrow), my T cell count is solidly in the
| normal range. And the currently-accepted catalog of types of T
| cells is enough to make your head swim:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_cell#Types_of_T_cell
|
| Three types of CD4+ Helper T cells are implicated in MS: Th1,
| Th17, and Th9. And yet by killing the B cells in my bloodstream,
| for me that seems to stop these T cells from doing MS-like
| activity without substantially compromising my body's ability to
| still fight infections.
|
| What does all this mean for my own risk level from COVID, and in
| particular the Delta variant? Absolutely no clue. I've gotten my
| third (booster) shot and will be getting more blood drawn next
| week for the medical study, which I expect will again result in a
| zero COVID antibody count.
|
| People on my medication have been shown to have more severe cases
| of COVID when they contract it. I'm a realist about COVID and
| realize that some day I'll contract it. The best I can do is make
| sure I'm otherwise in good shape by eating, sleeping, and
| exercising right. Another option is to go off my medication, let
| my B cells recover, and then try another less effective
| medication for a while. For people in my circumstance, there
| really are no good answers right now.
|
| I know this is all at best tangential to the subject of this
| study, but I'm glad this research is getting done, and I hope it
| will lead to a better understanding of how to protect everyone.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| Is it possible that your side effects are a result of your
| immune system reacting against the delivery mechanism (PEG or
| adenovirus) of the vaccine? Here's one source suggesting this
| may occur: https://sanchakblog.wordpress.com/2020/12/06/mrna-
| vaccines-b...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "I'm a realist about COVID and realize that some day I'll
| contract it. The best I can do is make sure I'm otherwise in
| good shape by eating, sleeping, and exercising right...."
|
| My goodness, what a remarkably calm and informed attitude. It's
| a wonder you're allowed on the internet.
|
| By the way, it is theoretically possible that your immune
| system knows how to make the antibodies, but isn't right now
| because of the immunosuppressing medication. One strategy might
| be to only pause that if you get sick, hoping that your system
| knows how to make the antibodies, and will do so more quickly
| because you've been vaccinated. But that's just a hopeful
| guess, of course.
| dimgl wrote:
| > What's interesting is that I still get side effects from the
| vaccine
|
| What side effects? How can you know this is coming from the
| vaccine?
|
| > I've been managing an autoimmune disease (MS) for the past 25
| years.
|
| Wouldn't it be more likely that this [multiple sclerosis] is
| the cause of your symptoms?
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| I assume we're talking about the acute flu-like side effects
| commonly experienced in the days after getting the vaccine.
| Presumably this person can tell the difference between those
| and whatever they've had for the previous 25 years.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| Probably means the typically vaccine side-effects that are
| similar to getting a cold as your body "fights off" the
| vaccine and develops immunity.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Which medication are you using?
| superkuh wrote:
| Intramuscular vaccinations are the _most important first step_
| and will keep hospitalization down. But intramuscular vaccination
| for respiratory viruses does not provide long lasting immunity to
| the surface mucosa tissues of the upper respiratory tract. The
| IgG antibodies in body serum do seep into the lower lungs and
| provide robust protection from serious disease, but they do not
| prevent infections very long in the nose, sinuses, or throat.
| This is the disparity many studies are now highlighting but
| failing to acknowledge the cause of.
|
| The required next step is intranasal vaccination to recruit B and
| T cells to the upper respiratory mucosa and have the B cells
| produce local IgA antibodies. This would actually stop infections
| (infections defined from nasal swab testing).
|
| It is up to the NIH and other large organizations in the world to
| get this messaging out there. There are two types of
| "breakthrough". There's the fact that intramuscular vaccinations
| don't protect the upper respiratory mucosa, and then there's the
| very rare cases when sars-cov-2 actually manages to infect body
| organs and the lower lungs. They are entirely different things.
|
| The variants currently circulating don't play a huge role in this
| discrepancy. We'd be seeing the same amount of upper respiratory
| mucosa infections (not hospitalizations) even if there were no
| delta and it was just alpha/beta/gamma or even original wuhan
| sequence sars-cov-2.
|
| ref: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-
| evoluti... page 5, #8. "Whilst we feel that current vaccines are
| excellent for reducing the risk of hospital admission and
| disease, we propose that research be focused on vaccines that
| also induce high and durable levels of mucosal immunity in order
| to reduce infection of and transmission from vaccinated
| individuals. This could also reduce the possibility of variant
| selection in vaccinated individuals."
|
| ref: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6553/397 "the
| ideal vaccination strategy may use an intramuscular vaccine to
| elicit a long-lived systemic IgG response and a broad repertoire
| of central memory B and T cells, followed by an intranasal
| booster that recruits memory B and T cells to the nasal passages
| and further guides their differentiation toward mucosal
| protection, including IgA secretion and tissue-resident memory
| cells in the respiratory tract."
|
| ref: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-021-00550-x
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Why isn't there more of a push for emergency use of intranasal
| vaccines? Apparently there are some in the testing phase, but I
| think if they were given as much resources as the mRNA vaccines
| were we might have already had an intranasal vaccine in use by
| now. The Israelis have one in testing but it still sounds like
| it's a long ways off from being deployed on a large scale. The
| other advantage of an intransal vaccine is that we might be
| able to convince a portion of the vaccine hesitant to get it.
| rolph wrote:
| nasal mucosal immunity[IgA] is short term relative to humoral
| immunity[IgG; IgM]; this however would be a good prophylactic
| approach, as the nasal vault is a major contributor to
| transmission mechanisms
| Animats wrote:
| Here's a good explanation of why.[1] There are several
| intranasal coronavirus vaccines in test. There's only one
| approved nasal vaccine now, for anything: FluMist. It's not
| recommended for people over 50. There have been previous
| failures. Intranasal vaccines are hard to make work.
|
| Think of the current mRNA vaccines as a minimum viable
| product. The basic formulation was computed days after the
| virus was sequenced and they made it to market fast. They do
| the basic job. Serious side effects are rare. They require
| two doses and later, boosters. They're a pain to store and
| ship because of cold requirements. They're hard to
| manufacture because putting fragile messenger RNA into a
| liquid carrier envelope requires exotic equipment. They have
| reduced effectiveness for virus variants.
|
| Expect later-generation products that solve some of those
| problems.
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/scientists-debate-
| potent...
| unanswered wrote:
| This raises an interesting question: is someone who is
| waiting for an effective intranasal vaccine to get
| something more like sterilizing immunity, and foregoing the
| less-effective vaccine meanwhile, anti-vax?
| contravariant wrote:
| That only seems like an interesting question if you view
| anti-vax as some kind of ethical group.
|
| If you choose to define it more literally as the people
| that are against taking any particular vaccine in common
| use then it's vacuously true.
| Jabbles wrote:
| Yes. Refusing to get a vaccine now is harmful to yourself
| and others. The current vaccines are effective. A more
| effective intranasal vaccine _may_ come, but you should
| protect yourself and others _now_.
| walterbell wrote:
| If they are healthy and have survived Covid with natural
| immunity, that overall beats all vaccines. Antibody and
| T-cell tests tests are available to find out if they have
| already recovered from an an infection. If they have not
| been isolating much for the past 18 months, e.g. first
| responder or other essential worker, they were likely
| infected and already recovered.
|
| If they are not yet infected, are healthy and take
| precautions to isolate at the first sign of illness, they
| are a lower transmission risk than a vaccinated person
| who gets infected but whose symptoms are suppressed by
| the vaccine, so they don't know they should isolate. CDC
| recommends that vaccinated people exposed to SARS-CoV-2
| should be tested after exposure, and then wear a mask if
| the test is positive,
| https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210729/cdc-reverses-
| guidan... &
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-
| vac...
|
| _> Even if they're not showing symptoms, fully
| vaccinated people should "get tested 3-5 days after
| exposure to someone with suspected or confirmed COVID-19
| and wear a mask in public indoor settings for 14 days
| after exposure or until they receive a negative test
| result," the agency's website says ... "Our updated
| guidance recommends vaccinated people get tested upon
| exposure regardless of symptoms," CDC Director Rochelle
| Walensky, MD, told The New York Times in an email.
| "Testing is widely available."_
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| The spike protein targeting antibodies produced by the vaccine do
| indeed target a wider range of spike mutations than the spike
| protein antibodies from previous infection. However, vaccines
| only target spike protein, while a previous infection will cause
| your body to produce antibodies for a much larger set of targets
| on the virus, which in practice leads to a more robust immunity.
| This is supported by data from Israel and some recent studies.
|
| https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762
|
| https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/310963
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
| tylerhou wrote:
| As other commentators have noted, it's quite a leap in logic to
| use reinfection data to make a mechanistic claim on how natural
| infection may or may not improve the immune response compared
| to vaccination.
|
| In addition, the naturally-infected and vaccine populations are
| not the same. For example, having a bad experience with a
| natural infection of Covid may cause people to not participate
| as much in virus-risky behavior. On the other hand, people who
| seek out vaccinations may have done so for business or personal
| reasons that make them more prone to expose themselves to the
| virus. It is also possible that (re)infection for the two
| groups are not monitored at the same rate. Without controlling
| for these factors (which your first link does not) you cannot
| make any judgement about which immunity is stronger from your
| cited data.
|
| Lastly, your second link and your last link directly contradict
| each other -- the second link claims "Recovered COVID patients
| don't benefit from vaccine" but your last link says
| "Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2
| and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional
| protection...." If you're going to cite sources, they should
| probably have a consistent message :).
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| That mechanism of action is just what I've seen put forth by
| immunologists commenting on the these kinds of results.
|
| While the author's opinions on the necessity of vaccines do
| differ, they do agree on my main point: that empirically,
| natural immunity is indeed robust and tentatively even better
| than vaccine acquired immunity.
|
| It looks like getting a vaccine helps boost immunity in all
| cases, whether you had a previous infection or if you had 2
| doses and I would bet even after the booster, each additional
| shot will continue to provide some marginal benefit. So keep
| getting jabs, I guess, or you're killing grandma.
|
| I think at this point throwing in "you should vaccinate
| (regardless of your individual circumstance)" into your
| conclusion, even if it's a complete non-sequitor, is a hedge
| against losing your job/funding/respect of your equally
| frightened peers. The COVID research equivalent of the
| "making the world a better place" SV trope.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| > However, vaccines only target spike protein, while a previous
| infection will cause your body to produce antibodies for a much
| larger set of targets on the virus, which in practice leads to
| a more robust immunity. This is supported by data from Israel
| and some recent studies
|
| No, it does not.
|
| The data from Israel only supports the claim that immunity from
| infection is longer lasting than from the vaccine, which should
| not have been a surprise to anyone.
|
| It does not support any specific mechanistic explanation.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| From the last link: "Conclusions: This study demonstrated
| that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger
| protection against infection, symptomatic disease and
| hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2,
| compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.
| Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2
| and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional
| protection against the Delta variant."
|
| Note the "longer lasting and stronger".
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| GP is not disputing that. They're pointing out that we know
| this, but not why.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Hmm. This smells of literal survivor bias. The group that
| survives the delta variant is a smaller set than all who
| got infected while all vaccinated persons survived, even
| ones that wouldn't have survived without the vaccine.
| dnautics wrote:
| While true, it's not by much; mortality for covid-19 is
| less than a percent of all hospitalizations, iirc.
| criticaltinker wrote:
| > It does not support any specific mechanistic explanation.
|
| You're right that the recent pre-print cited by GP -
| regarding the data out of Israel - does not prove or disprove
| any specific mechanistic explanation.
|
| However, interpreting GPs comment charitably, that study
| _does_ support the notion that immunity acquired through
| natural infection may be more robust to mutations and
| variants - the mechanisms of which have been articulated in a
| variety of other literature. See my sibling comment [1] for
| supporting citations and excerpts.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28320340
| lamontcg wrote:
| Honestly I have yet to see any convincing scientific evidence
| that is free from confounding factors which suggests that
| there is waning immunity.
|
| And there's reason to believe from HCoV-229E that immunity
| against coronaviruses is actually durable and that
| reinfection is due to mutation and immune escape.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j.
| ..
| baxtr wrote:
| Thank you. I don't understand why more people won't argue
| like you do. We have 4 endemic human CoVs. Why not learn
| from the experience we had there?
| buu700 wrote:
| _which should not have been a surprise to anyone_
|
| Why is that? I have no background in immunology so it's
| mildly surprising to me.
| lupire wrote:
| The vaccine is a basically partial copy of the virus, so it
| stands to reason that the virus would be more dangerous as
| well as trigger a broader immune response.
|
| But now we're back to speculation about mechanism, which GP
| was opposed to.
| nradov wrote:
| That really depends on which vaccine. There are several
| inactivated virus vaccines such as Sinovac used in other
| countries which we would expect to produce antibodies for more
| than just the spike protein. However it's unclear whether those
| vaccines are more or less effective in practice.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Are there such vaccines available in the US? It seems like
| those would make for effective boosters.
| nradov wrote:
| There are no inactivated virus vaccines authorized in the
| US. I'm not aware of any research on the effectiveness of
| using such vaccines as boosters after other types of
| vaccines.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Thanks
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I think on a personal basis all of them are better than
| nothing. It's like advice about taking the first bus out of
| town.
| pier25 wrote:
| Another consequence of this is that, theoretically, the virus
| could mutate and be unrecognizable by the antibodies produced
| by the vaccine.
| trhway wrote:
| and given that vaccines target only a segment and pretty much
| the same segment, such mutation based escape from all of the
| vaccines at the same time is of very high probability - https
| ://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... .
| And the fact that the current vaccines don't prevent delta
| infection seems to confirm it. Whereis natural immunity
| targets multitude of the segments (and not only of the spike
| protein) thus naturally providing much more robust immunity.
|
| We need a vaccine for delta. Unfortunately from MBA
| perspective it is much more profitable to push the current
| vaccines down the throat of the populace through forced
| mandates and hysteric propaganda instead of investing
| additional billions in the vaccine for the mutated virus.
|
| 2 shots don't work, thus the 3rd, "booster", then what? the
| 4th? It is pretty typical for the medical industrial complex
| to push to sell more and more product in response to low
| effect, like that opioid dosage increase.
| stillbourne wrote:
| The same could be said for convalescent immunity too.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| One reason the vaccines target the spike protein is that it's
| how the virus breaks into human cells.
|
| It it mutates to a different spike shape, it's very unlikely
| that it will keep that breakin power.
|
| Or at least that is the assumption :)
| FooBarWidget wrote:
| What about inactivated vaccines such as Sinovac? Does that
| immune response resemble natural infection?
|
| Does this mean inacticated vaccines work better against
| variants?
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I was confused about that as well. The article suggests that
| targeting "other portions of the spike protein" (as immune
| systems previously infected with COVID do) results in the
| immune system being _less_ robust against variants of the virus
| than targeting "places on the RBD" (as immune systems exposed
| to Moderna's mRNA vaccine do):
|
| > Specifically, antibodies elicited by the mRNA vaccine were
| more focused to the RBD compared to antibodies elicited by an
| infection, which more often targeted other portions of the
| spike protein. Importantly, the vaccine-elicited antibodies
| targeted a broader range of places on the RBD than those
| elicited by natural infection.
|
| > These findings suggest that natural immunity and vaccine-
| generated immunity to SARS-CoV-2 will differ in how they
| recognize new viral variants. What's more, antibodies acquired
| with the help of a vaccine may be more likely to target new
| SARS-CoV-2 variants potently, even when the variants carry new
| mutations in the RBD.
|
| Anyone with more experience in immunology care to weigh in on
| why the second paragraph there follows from the first? Naively,
| one might expect targeting a wider variety of places on on the
| COVID spike protein to result in better immunity against
| variants, not worse. Why is the article saying the opposite?
| rolph wrote:
| when you target many epitopes, you are shooting at the 10
| inch ring; target one epitope of critical function [put one
| in center of mass] you are shooting the 2 inch ring.
|
| immune systems dont look at everything at once, they find
| something that sticks and and over trials sharpen the
| response until highest efficacy of antibody epitope
| combination is found.
|
| the vaccine is like a laser guided munition, natural immunity
| is like carpet cluster bombing; both highly effective but in
| different modalities.
| criticaltinker wrote:
| > Why is the article saying the opposite?
|
| The cited study in OP may have a slightly pro-vaccine bias,
| potentially because two authors have "the potential to
| receive a share of IP revenue" on a relevant patent, and
| because one author consults for Moderna. Regardless, the
| study presents scientifically accurate findings, but in a few
| places it tries to stretch those into questionable
| conclusions. For example, the authors write:
|
| _> At first glance, the RBD targeting of the vaccine sera
| neutralization might seem likely to increase susceptibility
| to viral mutations, but the rest of our results suggest that
| this MAY not be the case. _ [4]
|
| So keep that tilt in mind when reading it.
|
| > one might expect targeting a wider variety of places on on
| the COVID spike protein to result in better immunity against
| variants
|
| Yes this is good intuition, here are excerpts from other
| literature illustrating why targeting a wide variety of SARS-
| COV-2 proteins can provide better immunity. In fact, this
| reasoning is why ongoing vaccine research is investigating
| formulations beyond the current solely spike protein focused
| vaccines. Notably, one shortcoming of the current mRNA
| vaccine formulations is that they do not induce nucleocapsid
| (N) protein antibodies - whereas natural infection does.
|
| _> The nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2 has been suggested
| to be an important target for T cell responses. _ [1]
|
| _> Firstly, this protein contains conserved cross-reactive T
| cell epitopes that are present among different coronaviruses,
| suggesting that it could be an ideal target for universal
| coronavirus vaccines. _ [1]
|
| _> Secondly, the nucleocapsid protein is among the most
| abundant structural proteins in the coronavirus lifecycle,
| which may facilitate early antigen presentation and
| recognition by T cells. _ [1]
|
| _> Previous knowledge on other related coronaviruses and the
| prompt sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 genome early in the
| pandemic allowed to identify the spike (S) and the
| nucleocapsid (N) structural proteins as major targets of
| antibodies. _ [2]
|
| _> The surface glycoprotein S, which contains the receptor-
| binding domain (RBD), has a better known function in immunity
| and is the leading antigen candidate for vaccine development.
| N is smaller than S, lacks a glycosylation site, and is
| extensively used in leading serodiagnostics kits due to its
| abundant expression during infection and early antibody
| response but its immunological relevance is less
| established._ [2]
|
| _> N forms ribonucleoprotein complexes during the virion
| assembly process by binding to the viral RNA genome and
| packing it into long helical structures. Its main function is
| to regulate viral RNA transcription during replication,
| promoting the synthesis of its own proteins while interfering
| with the metabolism, protein translation, and proliferation
| of the infected host cell. During the process of infection, N
| dissociates itself from the genome and is exposed to the host
| immune system, and its high immunogenicity has also prompted
| its exploration as vaccine target._ [2]
|
| _> Interestingly, significant protein similarity between
| SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2, and other HCoV has been reported for
| N, including a highly conserved motif in the N-terminal (NT)
| half of the protein (FYYLGTGP) and relevant immunodominant
| epitope regions._ [2]
|
| _> Evidence from multiple experimental studies showing that
| single RBD point mutations can lead to resistance to
| neutralizing convalescent plasma from multiple donors
| suggests that specific single mutants may be able to evade
| spike-targeting vaccinal immunity in many individuals and
| rapidly lead to spread of vaccine-resistant SARS-CoV-2. _ [3]
|
| [1] Combining spike- and nucleocapsid-based vaccines improves
| distal control of SARS-CoV-2 https://www.cell.com/cell-
| reports/pdf/S2211-1247(21)01108-6....
|
| [2] Immunogenicity and crossreactivity of antibodies to the
| nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2: utility and limitations
| in seroprevalence and immunity studies
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7879156/
|
| [3] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical
| interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
|
| [4] Antibodies elicited by mRNA-1273 vaccination bind more
| broadly to the receptor binding domain than do those from
| SARS-CoV-2 infection
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/
| walterbell wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed review. We need AI bots and media
| metadata to enable automated "supply chain analysis" of
| media and journal articles, including social network
| analytics of finance and other influence networks.
|
| Such analytics are now beginning for software supply
| chains, thanks to a Presidential Executive Order. As
| warfare spreads from kinetic to cyber to psychological, we
| will need more tooling to keep pace with the analytical
| descendants of Cambridge Analytica. Social discourse can be
| mined in real time to identify high-leverage, transient
| gaps in narratives, to influence far-reaching real world
| policy.
|
| Individual humans, parsing text for meaning, have an uphill
| journey.
|
| TODO: create Streisand bot to extract downvoted comments
| from HN, differentiate between legitimate vs targeted
| downvotes, then republish to an audience for critical
| response on any valid points, i.e. use the infrastructure
| and human resources of would-be censors, to generate new
| signals.
| rcxdude wrote:
| I think it's because the other parts of the virus are more
| likely to change over time, because there's lots of neutral
| mutations available: changes which don't affect fitness but
| do affect antibody response. The RBD by contrast is much more
| constrained: most mutations there result in a virus which can
| no longer infect cells, so it's much less likely to change
| (though of course any mutations which increase its
| effectiveness will be heavily selected for). This I think was
| one of the main reasons the spike protein was targeted by the
| mRNA viruses.
| bena wrote:
| The way I read it is that vaccine immunity is engineered
| towards COVID in general. It'll catch variants because
| they're still COVID.
|
| Natural immunity knows only of COVID-19 Alpha. But it knows
| it well. All those nooks and crannies the other variants may
| not have, the natural antibodies can latch on to.
| randcraw wrote:
| Inoculation with an mRNA vaccine provides recognition of few
| antigena (e.g. RBD). The size of the vaccine dosage and the
| delay of a month between doses is designed to create a strong
| recognition of the chosen antigens.
|
| Infection's response to key antigens like RBD is inherently
| more limited because: 1) immunity creates antibodies and T
| cells that target a wider range of antigens, and 2) exposure
| to COVID antigens usually fades after 7-10 days, limiting the
| immune system's time to build further defenses.
| bsder wrote:
| > while a previous infection will cause your body to produce
| antibodies for a much larger set of targets on the virus, which
| in practice leads to a more robust immunity.
|
| That is simply not a statement you can make without supporting
| evidence.
|
| Your immune systems binds to irrelevant targets _all the time_.
| People normally got measles once, but lots of people got it
| multiple times.
|
| It is entirely possible that your immune system will bind to
| something that mutates rapidly and have worse response than the
| vaccine.
|
| As someone who got the Covid19 in Original Flavor(tm), I
| _still_ went and got the vaccine. I _don 't_ want to be one of
| the unlucky ones whose immune system didn't flag the spike
| protein for destruction.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> ... measles ... lots of people got it multiple times_
|
| Is there a good reference for the percentage of people who
| did?
| huibf wrote:
| Quick, flag this!!!!
| Zigurd wrote:
| If you are wondering whether you are sufficiently protected by
| having recovered from COVID, this article provides up to date
| answers. Get vaccinated. Get a booster if recommended.
| vkou wrote:
| You are being unfairly downvoted, because what you are saying
| runs contrary to people's gut feelings.
|
| At this point, we have enough statistics on people getting
| COVID a second time with or without vaccination, to know that
| vaccination reduces your odds of re-infection by ~2.3. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| This is true. But given the already high baseline immunity
| for previously infected people, the messaging for them should
| be somewhere closer to "you can get the vaccine if you want"
| rather than "you must get the vaccine otherwise you are
| causing the pandemic".
| munk-a wrote:
| I don't know - I consider getting vaccinated to be a matter
| of common courtesy to those you're going to be interacting
| with now. I don't feel like thanking folks for only kicking
| - and not murdering - the adorable puppy at this point.
| Those who have been advised not to get vaccinated due to
| immune issues or other medical reasons I completely get -
| but everyone else is basically saying "I think preserving
| my pride by sticking to my misinformed opinion is more
| important than preventing harm to all of you." The vaccines
| work, get it.
|
| My dad has survived three bouts with different forms of
| cancer - he's healthy and could be around for a long time.
| Please don't let your pride put his life in danger.
| incrudible wrote:
| The first principle for vaccines to be administered
| ethically is that the benefit must be outweigh the risk.
| As trials have not completed and more information on
| vaccine side-effects is yet to be accumulated, this
| risk/benefit can be assessed only speculatively.
|
| For instance, this[1] study suggests that the risk of
| Myocarditis from COVID in young men is six times higher
| from an infection than from a vaccination. If we assume a
| gratuitous infection risk of 100%, this may sound like a
| reasonable benefit. If we however consider that actual
| COVID infections may be undercounted by a factor of
| 10[2], the benefit turns negative.
|
| [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21
| 260998v...
|
| [2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/
| journal...
| strenholme wrote:
| What the linked study [1] is saying is that _unvaccinated
| people who get COVID-19 are even more likely to get
| Myocarditis than vaccinated people_ ; it counters the
| allegation that people should not get vaccinated because
| of the risk of Myocarditis.
|
| Even if the vaccine increased the risk (it doesn't), the
| risk of COVID-19 is orders of magnitude higher than the
| risk of the Myocarditis heart condition.
|
| There have been, from the total of 12,910,312 18-24 year-
| old people vaccinated, [2] about 229 cases of this rare
| heart disease (and, in almost all cases, the person was
| discharged from the hospital the same day with a clean
| bill of health) That means the vaccine has under a 0.002%
| chance of causing a very rare but not fatal heart
| condition. [3]
|
| COVID-19, on the other hand, has an overall 1.66% chance
| of killing someone (38,043,754 cases, 629,644 deaths).
| [4]
|
| I would rather take a 0.002% non-fatal risk than a 1.66%
| fatal risk.
|
| Sources:
|
| [1] i.e. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.
| 23.21260998v... "Young males infected with the virus are
| up 6 times more likely to develop myocarditis as those
| who have received the vaccine."
|
| [2] https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-
| tracker-st...
|
| [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/evidence-
| grows-st...
|
| [4] https://samiam.org/COVID-19/ derived from
| https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data/
| [deleted]
| Clubber wrote:
| >"I think preserving my pride by sticking to my
| misinformed opinion is more important than preventing
| harm to all of you."
|
| People who don't get vaccinated generally say it's
| because they don't trust the government. Probably because
| the government has proven time again to be untrustworthy.
| It's not just right wingers like the news is insinuating
| (another untrustworthy group), but all sides of the
| political spectrum and all demographics have people who
| are afraid to get vaccinated. No amount of scolding from
| you will change their mind, and COVID is probably here to
| stay, so you should adapt to that truth.
|
| As to my motivations, I'm fully vaccinated.
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| > so you should adapt to that truth.
|
| And they should adapt to the truth that as long as there
| are COVID outbreaks, there are going to be epidemic
| adaptations. And that as long as they are the cause of
| those adaptations, public sentiment will increasingly
| shift towards making those adaptations _targeted_ against
| anti-vaxxers.
|
| One of those adaptations should be getting COVID patients
| out of hospitals, where they are infecting other people,
| disrupting ER services and scheduled surgeries, and into
| field hospitals. Every bed that is currently going to
| deal with a trivially preventable disease is multiple
| life-saving surgeries that aren't getting done. It would
| be nice if we could end this year with a working medical
| system.
|
| If people want to free-load, that's fine, but we
| shouldn't be throwing scheduled passengers off the plane
| to make room for them.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| A significant confounding issue is a lot of people _think_
| they 're "previously infected" but aren't, as the symptoms
| of COVID and the symptoms of flus and colds overlap,
| especially in milder cases. "I got it but didn't seek
| treatment" is impossible to verify, too.
|
| My son had a nasty case of pneumonia early in 2020; we
| thought afterwards it might've been a COVID case. Later
| antibody testing demonstrated that it wasn't.
|
| That's why advice is still "go get the vaccine".
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| ' "I got it but didn't seek treatment" is impossible to
| verify'
|
| 'Later antibody testing demonstrated that it wasn't.'
|
| I'm confused, can't we antibody test people who think
| they had it?
| peterbell_nyc wrote:
| Yes, we can. But from a public health perspective, many
| people will just short circuit to "I had the sniffles
| some time in the last year so I got covid. So I don't
| need to find a site, fill out a form, wait in line and
| potentially lose a couple of days of work due to
| symptoms. Plus, you know, those microchips - it could be
| true :)" One of the biggest challenges we have is picking
| public health messaging for a broad audience that does
| the most good and the least harm.
|
| I'm still frustrated that the decision was made early on
| in the pandemic to say that masks don't work. And the
| convoluted reasoning that if you didn't have a perfect
| fit or if you touched the outside of the mask that was
| somehow more dangerous than being unmasked in a location
| with a sufficiently high viral load for the other stuff
| to matter. I also understand that the concern was that if
| we told the truth (masks do matter, and respirators are
| even better, but please don't buy them to protect
| yourself and your family because we didn't stockpile
| enough, so we need them for the doctors and nurses) we'd
| have had even more supply challenges.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I'm confused, can't we antibody test people who think
| they had it?
|
| Can we? Sure.
|
| Is it a massive waste of resources versus "just get the
| fucking vaccine"? Also sure.
| bryan0 wrote:
| Amazing this is getting downvoted when this is absolutely the
| conclusion of these studies in such a straightforward way.
| Whether or not you were naturally infected, the vaccines
| provide another layer of protection which can save lives.
| corona-research wrote:
| why?
| munk-a wrote:
| This really is the TL;DR of all the research comparing natural
| and vaccinated resistance. The vaccine provides significant
| benefits to both folks who dodged the pandemic and those who
| were infected. There isn't a rational reason to avoid getting
| vaccinated.
| argvargc wrote:
| 2021:
|
| Q1: "It's perfectly safe!"
|
| Q2: "It's pretty darn safe, just a small number of people get
| blood clots!"
|
| Q3: "It's safe, just a small number of people get blood clots
| and a few others have heart problems most of which fully
| recover but some don't."
|
| Q4: ???
|
| 2022
|
| Q1: ???
|
| Q2: ???
|
| Q3: ???
|
| Q4: ???
|
| 2023
|
| Q1: ???
|
| Q2: ???
|
| Q3: ???
|
| Q4: ???
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| nah, I'm good
| mlindner wrote:
| There's no reason to get a booster. The only people pushing
| that are government officials who are running counter to
| scientific advice.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Can you provide sources?
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| WHO Says No Conclusive Evidence On Need For Booster Shots
|
| https://www.axios.com/who-data-covid-booster-shots-
| inconclus...
| corona-research wrote:
| PLANDEMIC
| fouric wrote:
| > The new evidence shows that protective antibodies generated in
| response to an mRNA vaccine will target a broader range of SARS-
| CoV-2 variants carrying "single letter" changes in a key portion
| of their spike protein compared to antibodies acquired from an
| infection.
|
| This seems like a remarkably specific criteria. Using my naive,
| computer-science brain, I would think that it's unlikely that a
| mutation would consist of _exactly_ one change to the RBD amino
| acid sequence (compared to all of the other possible mutations).
| What am I missing?
| rolph wrote:
| single letter change is refered to as a point mutation meaning
| one residue. it is common
|
| there are a number of mutation types and numerous mechanisms.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation
|
| in the case of point mutations, cosmic ray ablation, and wobbly
| fit of the replication mechanism lead to data corruption,
| conflated by error prone replication or error prone proof
| reading
| cblconfederate wrote:
| A variant has multiple mutations which they call "single letter
| changes". It's not meant to say that there will be only one
| mutation per variant
| hybrid_cluster wrote:
| It will be interesting to see how the immune response develops
| for previously covid-naive vaccinated people after their first
| covid infection. Specifically, does their immune system still
| adapt to new variants?
|
| One of the main arguments of controversial anti-covid vaccine
| people like Geert vanden Bossche is that the immune response
| generated by the vaccine may thwart the immune system in
| generating an effective response to future variants after
| infection[0].
|
| I don't have enough insight into the immune system's intricacies
| to evaluate whether such claims might be legit, but once variants
| start to emerge that really evade most of the current vaccine-
| induced immune response, this question will become increasingly
| important.
|
| [0] https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/not-
| covid-19-vaccine...
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| The media and government overreaction to this virus is the
| biggest scam ever perpetrated on the human race.
| mactitan wrote:
| Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of
| COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645850/
|
| It seems that the new data invalidates that conclusion?
| mabbo wrote:
| > antibodies elicited by the mRNA vaccine were more focused to
| the RBD compared to antibodies elicited by an infection, which
| more often targeted other portions of the spike protein.
|
| I wonder how this might impact the design of future mRNA
| vaccines. For example, could vaccines target multiple proteins
| that both are associated with the virus?
| lax4ever wrote:
| Looks like they are trying to do something exactly like that:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28319391
| rolph wrote:
| this is referred to as a polyvalent vaccine, and it is a good
| thing to do once we understand enough about the antigens in
| question to incorporate both in one shot. There is nothing of
| course precluding two different vaccines of differenct valence,
| and we have been doing this for a short time now, when we
| combine single jab mRna vaccines, with adenoviral vectored
| vaccines, there is very slight sequence variation between adV
| and mRNA vaccines however by strictest interpretation this is a
| multivalant[bivalant] scenario.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| it also generates immunity to the adenoviral vector proteins
| rolph wrote:
| yes and this has been the big setback for many years this
| is why we dont have a lot of these vector vaccines.
|
| if someone is immune to adenovirus they typically destroy
| the vaccine before antigen can be presented. this reduces
| prophylactic opportunities regarding serial innoculation
| with adenovirus vector, regardless of the cassette load
|
| i am one of those people, having worked with adenovirus, as
| well as coronavirus, thus i am obligated to non adenoviral
| vaccine, and made out quite well during my infection with
| SARS-1, and with SARS-2
| cblconfederate wrote:
| you got infected with SARS1?
| rolph wrote:
| yes i did, when it was brand new, it was very concerning,
| i was very congested, labouring to breath and walking was
| starting to feel like running a marathon in 90 degree
| weather. when SARS-2 came around it was a case of the
| sniffles, with very high antibody titre, searching on a
| whim i discovered that i am not alone, and apparently
| SARS-1 convalesence related to outcome of SAR-2 infection
| dogma1138 wrote:
| I don't see why not since they already do that, both Pfizer and
| Moderna already have targeted multiple regions on the spike
| protein, presumably they also modeled them to optimize for
| antibody interaction and stability by taking regions that are
| less likely to mutate without loss of function.
|
| If you reach out the limit of what you can encode in a single
| mRNA payload you can add additional payloads to a single dose
| or spread them across multiple doses.
|
| Engineered viral vectors also can do similar things and also
| have a base pair limit so the solution would be similar.
| dabbledash wrote:
| I wonder low likely it is that over the course of a lifetime the
| vaccinated will end up with both forms of immunity. I assume
| we'll be exposed to the virus regularly. Would the natural
| immunity be weaker if it comes from a second, very mild,
| infection?
| fpgaminer wrote:
| A layman's take:
|
| Maybe the antibodies are different because the immune system is
| being presented with _only_ the spike protein, rather than the
| whole virus?
|
| From my understanding, the immune system breaks the viral
| proteins up into pieces and then starts rapidly "evolving"
| antibodies to target those pieces. The goal being to ultimately
| produce antibodies that target those pieces, and don't target the
| learned whitelist of proteins (from your own body). Once it's got
| that it begins deploying antibody producing cells, and remembers
| the antibodies for later infections.
|
| What I'm curious about is the stopping criteria the body uses
| during the evolution stage. It sounds like it's producing an
| array of antibodies, not just one kind. So the stopping criteria
| isn't finding one working antibody. Perhaps it's more like,
| "Produce at least N different antibodies."
|
| If the latter, then the difference between natural and mRNA
| immunity makes sense to me. If your immune system is working to
| produce N different antibodies for the whole viral proteome, less
| of those antibodies will target the spike protein. And thus it
| will have less resilience to changes in the spike protein. But of
| course more tolerance to changes in the virus as a whole. Whereas
| with mRNA the immune system only sees the spike proteins, and
| since it's still going to make N different antibodies it'll have
| more tolerance for changes to the spike protein.
|
| What's most interesting to me, assuming any of the above is close
| to reality, is that mRNA vaccines allow us to give our immune
| system an inductive bias of some kind. Presumably our immune
| systems aren't "smart" enough to know what parts of a virus are
| most conserved, and thus best to target. It just targets all of
| it blindly. mRNA vaccines used the spike protein because we
| believe that to be the most conserved proteins. If those change
| too much the virus either won't work, or will effectively be a
| different species. So our mRNA vaccines are a way of telling our
| immune systems to focus their work on the "important" proteins,
| and thus, we would assume, give us better immunity.
|
| Whether our guess about the spike proteins is correct remains to
| be seen I suppose.
| criticaltinker wrote:
| Solid layman reasoning, just wanted to clear up one slight
| misconception:
|
| > mRNA vaccines used the spike protein because we believe that
| to be the most conserved proteins
|
| The spike protein was chosen mostly because it was well known
| to serve a primary role in the process of infection and
| subsequent immune response. Ongoing vaccine research is
| exploring the use of additional proteins, because they have
| been demonstrated to be a major factor in viral replication and
| protective immunity. For example, nucleocapsid (N) protein
| antibodies are induced by natural infection, but not by
| vaccination using the current solely spike protein focused mRNA
| vaccine formulations. N protein antibodies likely have a
| synergistic effect with S protein antibodies, and thus vaccine
| formulations incorporating both elements may result in more
| robust protection, especially against variants.
|
| See my other comment on this thread for supporting excerpts and
| citations from the literature.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28320340
| IX-103 wrote:
| It's not "make N antibodies". It's a bunch of cells in parallel
| creating cells specialized to each create a single random
| antibody. Cells that create antibodies that don't work don't
| reproduce (linear decay). Cells that create antibodies that
| worked reproduce (exponential growth). This process stops when
| the infection is gone.
|
| For the mRNA vaccines, the antibodies only target the some
| protein, but on the other hand they _all_ target the spike
| protein. Natural immunity products antibodies that could match
| want part oft the virus.
|
| The amount of protection you get against a new variant is
| related to how well your existing antibodies match the new
| virus. With natural immunity it is likely that only some of the
| antibodies match (and since each antibody exists in random
| amounts, the matching antibodies may be the ones that you have
| much less of). With vaccine immunity, _all_ of the antibodies
| produced will work against the new variant if the spike protein
| is the same, offering nearly the same immunity to the variant
| as the original virus (assuming the spike protein doesn 't
| change significantly). We know that the spike protein is
| significantly less likely to change than other parts of the
| virus so that's a reasonable assumption.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Antigen targets aside, there is also a difference in the
| production of antibodies in the mucosal system.
|
| Current vaccines are intra muscular and lacks a robust mucosal
| response while natural infection will provide mucosal immunity as
| well.
|
| As one can imagine, mucosal immunity is very important in an
| upper respiratory track disease w.r.t. symptomatic infection and
| transmission.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yeah, why aren't we putting more effort into getting an
| intranasal vaccine approved for emergency use? An intranasal
| vaccine would confer mucosal immunity and might also be more
| acceptable to the vaccine hesitant. They're talking about 3rd
| shot boosters, but I'd really like to be able to get an
| intranasal vaccine as the third booster.
| jart wrote:
| I don't think anyone's concerned about IM vs. IN as they are
| mRNA vs. DNA. The boosters deliver double stranded helix
| straight to the nucleus like a Windows update. You'd have to
| pull an Apocalypse Now to roll that back. GM people nobody
| panics but GM organic food and everyone loses their minds.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| I thought the boosters just have mRNA strands like the
| original mRNA vaccines do? I haven't heard anything about
| them using CRISPR or otherwise editing the human genome.
| Would be neat but it seems like pharma companies charge a
| million dollars for that kind of treatment.
| nradov wrote:
| Nasal vaccine trials are underway. We should have preliminary
| results in a few months.
|
| https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-
| reports/exclusives/9252...
| pettusftw wrote:
| IIRC there is an intranasal expected to be approved mid next
| year. I can't find the source I read that in, so take the
| timing with a grain of salt. Another source I can't find at
| the moment mentioned questions about the duration of
| protection from that method of vaccination as well.
|
| I would guess the push for intramuscular was driven for
| multiple reasons, the first being ease of development and the
| second to keep hospitalizations and death at a minimum.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-26 23:00 UTC)