12 ms·
Longitudinal analysis shows durable immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection
- wpasc 5y agoCan any of the findings from the properties of how natural immunity works be guided in to future COVID 19 vaccines? Given how the pharma companies are examining anti-body half life, exploring booster shots, and considering vaccinations against variants (like lambda), can any of the learnings go into a more durable, more broad vaccine?
- hprotagonist 5y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03738-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03738-2 did it already.
- briefcomment 5y agoI think GP is referring to the fact that boosters are being pushed, which implies vaccine immunity is not persistent. It has certainly been pushed since when that study was published.
- hprotagonist 5y agowe still need the primary antibody count up high, because we’re still in a pandemic, thus the desire for boosters. in both vaccine induced and survivor induced immune responses, long term immune systems come online to store a memory of the disease so that on future challenge, more of those antibodies will be produced by people fairly rapidly after future exposure, even when your blood stream isn’t full of covid antibodies anymore. When there are this many cases floating around, though, you can't afford to wait for the spin-up time. If i'm asking for the same image every 500ms from your webserver, do you want to go to disk every damn time, or are you gonna cache it? Same deal, kinda.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoAnitbodies fade after several months. The booster shots are being touted for every 12 months or so. Not sure your statement tracks.
- hprotagonist 5y agodon't conflate primary antibodies with b-cells. You and I aren't walking around with bloodstreams full of anti-measles antibodies, despite being vaccinated in infancy: but you can bet that you will be if you encounter a bunch of measles in the wild, in relatively short order. The question is: are the covid vaccines like tetanus vaccines or like measles vaccines? So far, the evidence points to the latter, but the desire for a booster anyway is driven by the fact that SARS-CoV-2 is a pandemic; neither tetanus nor measles are.
- ajross 5y agoVaccine immunity IS "natural" immunity. It works the same way, by exposing the body's immune system to virus components such that they product a response. The only difference is that with a vaccine those components don't add up to a viable organism. But yes: expect newer vaccines tailored to currently-circulating strains to appear; the existing mRNA vaccines produce copies of the spike protein sequenced more than a year ago. That's what we've done for influenza for decades, though not with the same kind of precision.
- chuinard 5y agoDamn you got downvoted real quick.
- kfprt 5y agoIt's not quite the same, delivery (mechanism/location/encapsulation) is different.
- JimBlackwood 5y agoSure, but there is a real difference in response between vaccine/virus. I think, given the difference in response, the term natural immunity makes sense. You have to choose something and I don’t think ‘natural immunity’ says anything about vaccine immunity being unnatural.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoHow is an mRNA strand that encode for a single very specific protein on a virus the same as the entire virus? The antibody memory made from a Natural Infection seems like it would be much richer and have much more variety than the mRNA vaccine. I would imagine the attenuated virus vaccine would be closer to Natural immunity.
- Buttons840 5y agoYour body might accidentally create an immunity to a portion of the virus that mutates. Perhaps the protein produced by vaccine mRNA forces your body to create an immunity against a portion of the virus that is less likely to mutate. I don't know if this is the case, but I offer this as an example of how our biological systems may be complicated beyond intuition.
- csours 5y agoJust a note to non-immunologists - Immunity means different things to health and science professionals vs the general public. Edit: I'm not going into detail in this comment because I am not an immunologist and I cannot express clearly and correctly what the difference is, but just be aware that "Immunity" may not mean 100% protection in the way that the general public thinks that word means.
- umanwizard 5y agoDon’t leave us hanging - what does it mean?
- not2b 5y agoIf I understand correctly, it means that the immune system launches an immediate response to the new infection, it doesn't mean that the immune system successfully defeats the new infection, just makes it more likely. And then there's the problem of variants.
- URSpider94 5y agoI’m still learning, but the concept of “sterilizing immunity” has started to come up recently. What I infer from cursory reading is that “immunity” means the body will mount an immune response immediately upon exposure to the virus, but it doesn’t mean that an infection won’t take hold. “Sterilizing immunity” means immunity strong enough to prevent the virus from growing at all. The issue at hand is that those who have been vaccinated and/or recovered from COVID seem to be able to contract the disease again, even to the point where they can be infectious to others, even if they don’t get terribly ill or even show symptoms.
- csours 5y agoSorry this is incomplete, but "Natural Immunity" means a person's immune system will mount an effective response to an infectious agent. However, that person may still be infected, and may be contagious to some degree while the body is fighting off the contagion. I'm not a doctor or biologist, but I've been learning over the past year. For instance, people generally think of things like "infected", "sick", and "contagious" as being the same thing (or nearly the same thing). If you're talking about one person in everyday context, that's fine. If you're talking in a clinical or epidemiological context, you have to be more careful.
- hprotagonist 5y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03738-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03738-2 vaccines also produce durable and persistent immune responses. Primary antibody titers wane, but the system itself remembers and can regenerate them when challenged. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107714 for contra "but muh boosters", which i suspect is what's helping me collect downvotes.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoNatural immunity may work better considering the vaccine requires booster shots every 12 months according to the Pfizer CEO. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/pfizer-ceo-says-third-covid-vaccine-dose-likely-needed-within-12-months.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/pfizer-ceo-says-third-covid-...
- Valgrim 5y agoThe requirement for booster shots may be for increasing immunity to variants, not the original virus. If you survived the original virus and got an immunity out of it you are just as vulnerable to variants as anyone who got the vaccine. Basically, subsequent shots are security updates.
- keneda7 5y agoPlease stop spreading misinformation. IMO 15 weeks is not long enough to determine if its durable and persistent. There would be no talk of booster shots if what your saying is true.
- hprotagonist 5y agonot so, see my other thread in this story here, and cool it on the personal attacks, thanks! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107714
- keneda7 5y ago
- 015a 5y agoIts important to keep studies like this in mind when talking with people who refuse to take the vaccine because they "already had COVID". In a very real sense, if natural antibodies are durable, persistent, and effective; the vaccine is an unnecessary medical procedure. Doctors would not cut off your legs for no reason; that would be unethical. The vaccine is a medical procedure like any other; if the benefit is questionable, it would be unethical for doctors to administer it. Yet, we have an increasing number of venues, workplaces, and events which are requiring proof of vaccination to participate. This is forcing both people who already have antibodies, and even people who can't make antibodies (e.g. immunocompromised, solid organ transplant, etc), to undergo a medical procedure for little to no benefit. Primum non nocere
- mxxc 5y agoit is a scandal, especially considering the amount of non-immunised people at risk in the rest of the world. i fall in that category (recovered) and i would even pay to give my vaccines away.
- Hashemm 5y agoDidn't realize anti-vaxxers would be on this site...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rantwasp 5y agothey are everywhere. they have facebook phds in vaccines and public health along with a masters in selection bias.
- kiba 5y agoIt is not being used by people who should get said vaccine here in the states, and it is questionable if we even have the logistics to enable it. I supposed even if the logistics is questionable, we should try to distribute it to people who are actually going to use it.
- Woodrow503 5y agoQuestion: I’ve got the vaccine. I get a breakthrough case. Is this a “best case” scenario for durable immunity?
- jron 5y agoThis seems like the most important unasked question. Common sense would suggest the best case would be vaccination followed by repeated exposure to the virus yet hardly anyone is talking about it.
- jjtheblunt 5y agoi wonder if that's what normally happens in nature across many viruses. like a primed immune system exposed to a new variant runs a minor "software update" now and then.
- unanswered 5y agoReal facts that people won't like to hear: anyone who thought differently probably needs to retake a high school biology class.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ebiester 5y agoThe problem is that you think a high school biology class is sufficient to understand the broader implications. What is the limitation of this study? For example, in the context of the paper, "immunity" means that your immune system mounts an immediate response. Do the antibodies created attack variants equally effectively relative to vaccines? Are they better? Worse? This paper is one data point. Your high school biology class won't teach you how to understand the limitations of the paper. That's why we have people who study this for decades. Don't mistake your "high school biology class" with expertise.
- BrianOnHN 5y agoThis is a great example of the Dunning–Kruger effect[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y agoI suspect nobody commenting here is equipped to analyze critically the science being done either on the virus or the vaccine, yet everybody speaks with authority on what's relevant and what's bullhockey. A high-school biology class will give you good general priors and instincts about how things generally work and is as good as you're gonna get trying to understand what's going on currently without a relevant degree or a few years of hindsight for the politicization to die down. Infections generally leave antibodies behind therefore I'm going to assume people who have been infected have some immunity to this variant. Masks reduce the spread of spit therefore I'm going to assume they are generally useful to combat the spread. I'm sure this will strike some as being anti-science but having seen how the sausage gets made wrt science and medicine I don't trust myself or the journalists to interpret or qualify the new results we get every week.
- dzink 5y agoImmunity persists for a while but doesn’t seem to stop the new variants. Another study shows that re-infection with Covid is a lot more likely in unvaccinated people than in vaccinated.
- lazyjones 5y agoData from Israel shows that vaccinated people have a 6.72 times higher chance to get infected than previously infected people: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762
- mikem170 5y agoThat's interesting! > More than 7,700 new cases of the virus have been detected during the most recent wave starting in May, but just 72 of the confirmed cases were reported in people who were known to have been infected previously – that is, less than 1% of the new cases. > Roughly 40% of new cases – or more than 3,000 patients – involved people who had been infected despite being vaccinated. Optimistically both vaccine and natural immunity are good, but the numbers above seem to indicate that natural immunity is significantly better.
- jetpks 5y agoDo you have a moderately credible source on this? The linked is pushing a radical right-wing hard-line anti-vaccine agenda too hard to be considered remotely credible or trustworthy. It also does not link to primary sources.
- lazyjones 5y agoPerhaps this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/dr-makary-says-natural-immunity-is-more-effective-then-vaccine-immunity/ar-AAMX3sM https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/dr-makary-says-natu... or https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/are-recovered-covid-patients-more-protected-than-the-vaccinated/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/are-recovered-c... but I can't find the original study or channel 13 report because I don't speak Hebrew.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y agoNot to disagree with the effectiveness of immunity gained by getting Covid-19, but also: "The evidence shows that protective antibodies generated in response to an mRNA vaccine will target a broader range of SARS-CoV-2 variants ... compared to antibodies acquired from an infection." https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-generated-from-covid-19-vaccines-differs-from-an-infection/ https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-genera... "Vaccination offers longer, stronger immunity" https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/why-covid-19-vaccines-offer-better-protection-than-infection.html https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/why-covid-19-vaccine... "Why a vaccine can provide better immunity than an actual infection" https://theconversation.com/why-a-vaccine-can-provide-better-immunity-than-an-actual-infection-145476 https://theconversation.com/why-a-vaccine-can-provide-better... "Why You Need to Get Vaccinated Even If You’ve Already Had COVID-19" https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-you-need-to-get-vaccinated-even-if-youve-already-had-covid-19 https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-you-need-to-get-v... And also, vaccination is a much, much safer way to get antibodies, than via getting sick with Covid-19.
- eightysixfour 5y agoTo add to the list: "Kentucky residents who were not vaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated (odds ratio [OR] = 2.34; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.58–3.47). These findings suggest that among persons with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, full vaccination provides additional protection against reinfection." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm7032e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
- mbgerring 5y ago“Acquiring” natural immunity also has the following side effects at a much higher rate than the vaccine: - Death - Hospitalization - Chronic illness, which can include long-term neurological impairment I feel like it’s important to keep that in mind if you’re either advocating “natural immunity” as a public health strategy, or considering it a personal strategy.
- slumpt_ 5y agoVaccination also has more durable immunity than natural immunity in this case. Without those risks you outline.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago* Citation needed.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoI expected this for the mRNA vaccine, but source?
- tchalla 5y ago> Now, a new NIH-supported study shows that the answer to this question will vary based on how an individual’s antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were generated: over the course of a naturally acquired infection or from a COVID-19 vaccine. 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. https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-generated-from-covid-19-vaccines-differs-from-an-infection/ https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-genera...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
- rossdavidh 5y ago...more or less like most infections, as has been known for centuries. And yet, due to the current "anything which doesn't make people more fearful must be suppressed" attitude, this kind of thing is news. Or would be, if the U.S. newsmedia were willing to report it, which I suspect they will not.
- BrianOnHN 5y agoIs this offering anything more substantive than you own bias and suspicions? Is there any response that could get you to consider that the comment "anything which doesn't make people more fearful must be suppressed" is as harmful or even more harmful than the media itself? Asking because I'd like to better understand how to address people with your beliefs in the future.
- mikem170 5y agoNot the poster you are replying to, but I'll bite, out of curiosity about your thinking... > Is this offering anything more substantive than you own bias and suspicions? My take-away from the article is that they found all the bits of the immune system primed for long term protection after covid infections. Which is not entirely unexpected, this is what happens with sars, also. > Is there any response that could get you to consider that the comment "anything which doesn't make people more fearful must be suppressed" is as harmful or even more harmful than the media itself? I got pretty fed up the news other day when the front page of the BBC led with the an article about leaked CNN memo and three unnamed employees who were fired for not getting vaccinated, and another about Jennifer Aniston apparently cutting off contact with unvaccinated friends. I felt manipulated. I consider stuff like this to be propaganda, not news. It reminded me that I need better sources for covid information, like statnews.com, to get away from such things. I'd rather see more facts and less adjectives in the news. I'd rather that politicians justify their actions based on numbers, not vague statements. It doesn't seem like the general public is trusted with the facts, but are rather fed a lot of alarmist information. I imagine the parent poster's assumption is that it would be front page if this study said that natural immunity expires quickly, but we won't see this good news about long lasting immunity on the front page.
- dang 5y agoAll: I know it's an activating topic, but this thread has tons of comments breaking the site guidelines. That's not ok. If you're going to comment, make sure you know the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That means making substantive points thoughtfully. If you want to put down or yell at people on the other side of this $hot-topic, or any topic, please do that somewhere else. We're trying for a little better than internet default here.
- DantesKite 5y agoI could see a case to vaccinate people even if they have natural, durable, and long-lasting immunity to Covid-19 after infection if it makes their immunity even stronger.
- criticaltinker 5y agoThis paper further supports the fact that naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is 1) robust and 2) durable. 1) Robust means the immune response recognizes many different parts of the virus. 2) Durable means the immune response remains detectable - and likely effective at protecting the individual - for a long period of time. A robust immune response is important because it provides a certain degree of protection against variants of the virus. This robustness is why some people hypothesize that natural immunity provides better protection than vaccination - however this hypothesis has not been conclusively proven in the literature yet. If you're aware of primary sources that say otherwise please share them. For now, all available evidence strongly suggests that individuals with naturally acquired immunity are at least equally well protected as individuals who have been vaccinated. Here are a couple more supporting references [1][2]. As a final point - in the literature there is some evidence & concern that the current mRNA vaccines induce an immune response which is highly targeted toward the spike protein [3]. When combined with mass vaccination campaigns, this creates tremendous selective pressure that can further enhance the fitness of the virus, and lead to increasingly infectious or virulent variants [3][4][5][6]. It's clear that vaccination poses little additional risk - but also little benefit - to previously infected individuals, and consequently our vaccination campaigns should be highly targeted toward vulnerable demographics to reap the most benefits and minimize the risks to public health. [1] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf [2] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v3.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v... [3] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/ [4] SARS-CoV-2 immune evasion by the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant of concern https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/06/30/science.abi7994 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/06/30/scie... [5] mRNA vaccine-elicited antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and circulating variants https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03324-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03324-6 [6] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1002198 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...
- andy_ppp 5y agoI wonder if having had different less deadly coronaviruses also gives some immunity?
- randymercury 5y agoThat was a theory around why certain countries have fared relatively well, places like Cambodia and Vietnam. Their populations could have been exposed to similar viruses and would have had some built in immunity.
- rpmisms 5y agoI saw someone citing this a few days ago: having had the common cold recently can lessen your covid symptoms. He didn't source it, but on its face, it seems to make sense.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoIf having COVID imparts as much future protection as the J&J vaccine, there is an ethical argument that one could make: help vaccinate the poor who want it instead of adding to the asymptotic protection of the rich. Else, people might argue we should all have n- booster shots to get even better protection, when we still don’t have enough for the entire world. Vaccines are currently zero sum.
- YPCrumble 5y agoIf twenty percent of the population has had covid, and fifty percent has been vaccinated, say we assume half of the twenty percent isn’t an overlap. Wouldn’t that put us much closer to the herd immunity number of seventy percent than we’ve been thinking? And that if infections continue at a high pace, shouldn’t we reach that level very soon?
- raphlinus 5y agoThe idea of being at or near herd immunity has been pushed so many times since the start of this pandemic, and each time those hopes have been dashed. The threshold needed for herd immunity has been revised upward since the 70% figure was widely discussed. First, the R0 for the delta variant is almost certainly higher than for earlier variants. I am personally skeptical of claims in the 8 range, but they are widespread, especially by public health professionals, in contrast to, say, virologists, who tend to point to antigenic drift as a mechanism that could explain the rise in delta prevalence. Also, vaccine effectiveness is a factor in the herd immunity threshold, and that is also reduced a bit off earlier high estimates, partly because of variants and partly because of antibody waning. So my best guess is that herd immunity is now permanently out of reach. I'd love to be proved wrong on that, though.
- nradov 5y agoThe CDC estimates that 36% of Americans have been infected. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...