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Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

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Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#41

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 Isra…

What about inactivated vaccines such as Sinovac? Does that immune response resemble natural infection?

Does this mean inacticated vaccines work better against variants?

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#42
post #16

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 Isra…

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.

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.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#43
post #4

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.

There's no reason to get a booster. The only people pushing that are government officials who are running counter to scientific advice.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#44
post #4

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.

There's no reason to get a booster. The only people pushing that are government officials who are running counter to scientific advice.

Can you provide sources?

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#45
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.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

‘ "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?

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.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

‘ "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?

> 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.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#48
> 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?

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#49
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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?

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#50
post #48

> 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 o…

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
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