5 ms·

Does this mean that the ideal path for maximum immunity is to get vaccinated and then get a breakthrough infection?

ianlevesque 5y ago
Yes, which is basically how this ends 5 years from now. We’re probably all going to get exposed, but get your vaccine first!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ardit33 5y ago
Yeah, Unless you are one of the unlucky ones... The fact it is that the virus will be around with us for a while, and everyone will probably get it at some point. Vaccination will help when dealing with it.
johnchristopher 5y ago
This should be compared to a third boost of a different vaccine.
hurlathroway 5y ago
It sounds like that might be our endgame now. If covid becomes endemic, which may be inevitable, then the only question is whether you want your body to be prepared for its first infection or not. I wonder if this could end up like the 'common cold' coronaviruses, where future generations build up immunity through exposure very early in life, resulting in mild infections in adulthood. That would beg an interesting question: how lethal would 'common colds' be if we hadn't all been exposed to them multiple times throughout our childhoods?
- dataflow 5y ago
  > 'common cold' coronaviruses I think you mean rhinoviruses?
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    There are four endemic coronaviruses that infect humans. One of them uses the same receptor ACE2 to infect cells. That one is getting a harder look. There is also SARS which is extinct. And MERS which is producing sporadic outbreaks.
  - makomk 5y ago
    The common cold is caused by a bunch of viruses, including both rhinoviruses and coronaviruses. There's four different human coronaviruses that we know about, one of which (HKU1) was only discovered surprisingly recently.
- nradov 5y ago
  Circumstantial evidence indicates that one of the common cold coronaviruses, HCoV-OC43, probably caused a worldwide pandemic in 1889 and killed a lot of people. Symptoms were very similar to COVID-19. Now most of us get infected as children and gain natural immunity which protects us later in life. So long term the same thing will probably happen with SARS-CoV-2, but in the short term we should still use vaccines to save as many lives as possible. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/
- lamontcg 5y ago
  The flip side is that delta is very likely optimally transmissible/virulent. Once immunity is built up to delta, then it'll be forced to evolve to achieve immune escape and that'll make it mutate much more than it has and pick immune escape mutations that will make it "worse" in the immune naive population. Immune escape will come at a cost. And the scientific evidence of "waning immunity" in the headlines these days is likely wrong and a gigantic lesson in confounding factors. The HCoV-229E common cold coronavirus evolves to escape immunity, and this one probably will as well: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009453 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j... So our immune systems will evolve and take the edge off of all future coronavirus infections, but the virus will also have to evolve and be forced to make tradeoffs and will become less virulent in the process. So if you caught one of the common cold coronaviruses right now and had zero inherited immunity to it, then it would probably still be somewhat mild since it would have been evolving for hundreds of years to be more stealthy than virulent. If you caught the original pandemic version though it would probably suck about as hard as SARS-CoV-2 right now.

Yes, which is basically how this ends 5 years from now. We’re probably all going to get exposed, but get your vaccine first!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ardit33 5y ago

Yeah, Unless you are one of the unlucky ones... The fact it is that the virus will be around with us for a while, and everyone will probably get it at some point. Vaccination will help when dealing with it.

johnchristopher 5y ago

This should be compared to a third boost of a different vaccine.

hurlathroway 5y ago

It sounds like that might be our endgame now. If covid becomes endemic, which may be inevitable, then the only question is whether you want your body to be prepared for its first infection or not. I wonder if this could end up like the 'common cold' coronaviruses, where future generations build up immunity through exposure very early in life, resulting in mild infections in adulthood. That would beg an interesting question: how lethal would 'common colds' be if we hadn't all been exposed to them multiple times throughout our childhoods?

dataflow 5y ago
> 'common cold' coronaviruses I think you mean rhinoviruses?
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  There are four endemic coronaviruses that infect humans. One of them uses the same receptor ACE2 to infect cells. That one is getting a harder look. There is also SARS which is extinct. And MERS which is producing sporadic outbreaks.
- makomk 5y ago
  The common cold is caused by a bunch of viruses, including both rhinoviruses and coronaviruses. There's four different human coronaviruses that we know about, one of which (HKU1) was only discovered surprisingly recently.
nradov 5y ago
Circumstantial evidence indicates that one of the common cold coronaviruses, HCoV-OC43, probably caused a worldwide pandemic in 1889 and killed a lot of people. Symptoms were very similar to COVID-19. Now most of us get infected as children and gain natural immunity which protects us later in life. So long term the same thing will probably happen with SARS-CoV-2, but in the short term we should still use vaccines to save as many lives as possible. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/
lamontcg 5y ago
The flip side is that delta is very likely optimally transmissible/virulent. Once immunity is built up to delta, then it'll be forced to evolve to achieve immune escape and that'll make it mutate much more than it has and pick immune escape mutations that will make it "worse" in the immune naive population. Immune escape will come at a cost. And the scientific evidence of "waning immunity" in the headlines these days is likely wrong and a gigantic lesson in confounding factors. The HCoV-229E common cold coronavirus evolves to escape immunity, and this one probably will as well: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1009453 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j... So our immune systems will evolve and take the edge off of all future coronavirus infections, but the virus will also have to evolve and be forced to make tradeoffs and will become less virulent in the process. So if you caught one of the common cold coronaviruses right now and had zero inherited immunity to it, then it would probably still be somewhat mild since it would have been evolving for hundreds of years to be more stealthy than virulent. If you caught the original pandemic version though it would probably suck about as hard as SARS-CoV-2 right now.