Hoping for a virologist/immunologist to help me sort through new published data about T-cell response post-Omicron AND vaccination
We already know the mRNA Covid vaccines don’t stop Covid infections. (Neat trick, for $100 billion.)
Now it’s time to start asking if they will actually hinder long-term immunity in people after they are infected and recover.
The vaccines could cause long-term damage to immunity in a couple of ways. They could slow the overall growth of B- and T-cells – the parts of the immune system that are primed to recognize and attack Sars-Cov-2 virions upon reinfection. They might also cause those cells to be lousy at attacking new variants of the coronavirus’s spike protein.
We have little published research on this question – far less than we should, given that more than 1 billion people have now received these vaccines. (A thousand million human souls. After clinical trials that lasted a few months, for a technology never used in any approved medicine before. The biggest, most dangerous medical experiment in history. But I digress.)
However, we already know natural immunity beats vaccine immunity – and that giving vaccines to people after they have recovered from Sars-Cov-2 does not seem to boost their immune systems further.
On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control again confirmed this fact. The CDC published a paper comparing infections in vaccinated people and those with natural immunity. The CDC massaged the data to help vaccines by excluding cases in “partially vaccinated” people (partially vaccinated IS vaccinated- we don’t exclude negative outcomes early in treatment for other drugs).
Continue reading “Will vaccines hinder the development of natural immunity post-infection?”
