8 ms·

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

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/309762 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/310963 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/310963 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

nradov 5y ago
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.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  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.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  Are there such vaccines available in the US? It seems like those would make for effective boosters.
  - nradov 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      Thanks
  - deodorel 5y ago
    Valneva has an inactivated virus vaccine and they will soon apply for authorisation (phase 3 i think right now)
Ajedi32 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
- bena 5y ago
  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.
- rcxdude 5y ago
  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.
FooBarWidget 5y ago
What about inactivated vaccines such as Sinovac? Does that immune response resemble natural infection? Does this mean inacticated vaccines work better against variants?
pier25 5y ago
Another consequence of this is that, theoretically, the virus could mutate and be unrecognizable by the antibodies produced by the vaccine.
- stillbourne 5y ago
  The same could be said for convalescent immunity too.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  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 :)
- trhway 5y ago
  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.pone.0250780 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.
oldgradstudent 5y ago
> 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.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  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/journal.ppat.1009453 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
  - baxtr 5y ago
    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?
    - ManBlanket 5y ago
      I get the impression anything we could learn which doesn't support a foregone hyperbolic conclusion gets vastly ignored by the media and misconstrued as fringe in the court of popular opinion. All of this started with panic-buying toilet paper and baker's yeast from the grocery stores. I'm not surprised despite a considerable majority of US citizens being vaccinated, all reporting is underscored by pandemic levels of fear and sensation. The general public will still hatefully rebuke any claim that among a significantly vaccinated population Covid-19 statistics are largely comparable to many other endemic diseases. We were told this whole time that it wasn't just another flu, but to a vaccinated person it is just another illness. You don't want to get the flu, you don't want to spread it around, but you don't let fear of it consume your everyday life. But here we are, front page circa 2021, a bunch of vaccinated adults obsessing over reinfection.
tylerhou 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - jyounker 5y ago
    To acquire immunity naturally you have to get sick. In oder to acquire that immunity you have a 1% chance of dying, 2% chance of ending up in the hospital on a ventilator for a month, and a 20% chance of long haul covid. To acquire immunity from a vaccine you have a 0.001% chance of an allergic reaction. Which risk do you choose?
bsder 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  > People normally got measles once, but lots of people got it multiple times Is there a good reference for the percentage of people who did?
mindfulplay 5y ago
The vaccines also lack a specific abnormal side effect that the infection may carry: risk of death and hospitalization. Now with death, one could argue that it does provide much longer lasting immunity.... Seriously though, for most people the severity of infection-derived immunity is preconditioned upon them surviving the disease so this looks like the classic "planes with bullet holes" image?
- fspeech 5y ago
  Not with inactivated virus. There are vaccines based on that.
  - robbiep 5y ago
    … did you just respond to a statement about the reduction in morbidity and mortality from vaccines compared to infection with the virus… with a statement that says ‘use a vaccine?’
    - fspeech 5y ago
      Opening argument was about robustness of immune response from exposure to the whole virus. GP implied infection was the only way to be exposed to the whole virus. I pointed out such exposure can also be achieved through inactivated virus.
- __blockcipher__ 5y ago
  > The vaccines also lack a specific abnormal side effect that the infection may carry: risk of death and hospitalization. This is well-intentioned but false. The vaccines can send you to the hospital (side-effects). It's rare but happens. Similarly, you can be vaccinated, get infected with SARS-2, and end up in the hospital, so it's not even true that they avoid hospitalization from SARS-2 itself completely. (They help a lot with hosp/death from the virus, to be clear)
  - mindfulplay 5y ago
    The risk associated with the vaccine (and the magnitude) are orders of magnitude lower than that of natural infection-based immunity. The vaccine can almost certainly send a few people to the hospital in the same manner that an airbag could almost certainly cause injuries during an accident. It's very different from a natural infectionimo.

nradov 5y ago

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.

Gibbon1 5y ago
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.
staticassertion 5y ago
Are there such vaccines available in the US? It seems like those would make for effective boosters.
- nradov 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Thanks
- deodorel 5y ago
  Valneva has an inactivated virus vaccine and they will soon apply for authorisation (phase 3 i think right now)

Ajedi32 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
bena 5y ago
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.
rcxdude 5y ago
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.

FooBarWidget 5y ago

What about inactivated vaccines such as Sinovac? Does that immune response resemble natural infection? Does this mean inacticated vaccines work better against variants?

pier25 5y ago

Another consequence of this is that, theoretically, the virus could mutate and be unrecognizable by the antibodies produced by the vaccine.

stillbourne 5y ago
The same could be said for convalescent immunity too.
BurningFrog 5y ago
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 :)
trhway 5y ago
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.pone.0250780 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.

oldgradstudent 5y ago

> 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.

lamontcg 5y ago
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/journal.ppat.1009453 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...
- baxtr 5y ago
  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?
  - ManBlanket 5y ago
    I get the impression anything we could learn which doesn't support a foregone hyperbolic conclusion gets vastly ignored by the media and misconstrued as fringe in the court of popular opinion. All of this started with panic-buying toilet paper and baker's yeast from the grocery stores. I'm not surprised despite a considerable majority of US citizens being vaccinated, all reporting is underscored by pandemic levels of fear and sensation. The general public will still hatefully rebuke any claim that among a significantly vaccinated population Covid-19 statistics are largely comparable to many other endemic diseases. We were told this whole time that it wasn't just another flu, but to a vaccinated person it is just another illness. You don't want to get the flu, you don't want to spread it around, but you don't let fear of it consume your everyday life. But here we are, front page circa 2021, a bunch of vaccinated adults obsessing over reinfection.

tylerhou 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
- jyounker 5y ago
  To acquire immunity naturally you have to get sick. In oder to acquire that immunity you have a 1% chance of dying, 2% chance of ending up in the hospital on a ventilator for a month, and a 20% chance of long haul covid. To acquire immunity from a vaccine you have a 0.001% chance of an allergic reaction. Which risk do you choose?

bsder 5y ago

> 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 5y ago
> People normally got measles once, but lots of people got it multiple times Is there a good reference for the percentage of people who did?

mindfulplay 5y ago

The vaccines also lack a specific abnormal side effect that the infection may carry: risk of death and hospitalization. Now with death, one could argue that it does provide much longer lasting immunity.... Seriously though, for most people the severity of infection-derived immunity is preconditioned upon them surviving the disease so this looks like the classic "planes with bullet holes" image?

fspeech 5y ago
Not with inactivated virus. There are vaccines based on that.
- robbiep 5y ago
  … did you just respond to a statement about the reduction in morbidity and mortality from vaccines compared to infection with the virus… with a statement that says ‘use a vaccine?’
  - fspeech 5y ago
    Opening argument was about robustness of immune response from exposure to the whole virus. GP implied infection was the only way to be exposed to the whole virus. I pointed out such exposure can also be achieved through inactivated virus.
__blockcipher__ 5y ago
> The vaccines also lack a specific abnormal side effect that the infection may carry: risk of death and hospitalization. This is well-intentioned but false. The vaccines can send you to the hospital (side-effects). It's rare but happens. Similarly, you can be vaccinated, get infected with SARS-2, and end up in the hospital, so it's not even true that they avoid hospitalization from SARS-2 itself completely. (They help a lot with hosp/death from the virus, to be clear)
- mindfulplay 5y ago
  The risk associated with the vaccine (and the magnitude) are orders of magnitude lower than that of natural infection-based immunity. The vaccine can almost certainly send a few people to the hospital in the same manner that an airbag could almost certainly cause injuries during an accident. It's very different from a natural infectionimo.