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> An interesting result was that the infected then vaccinated individuals developed antibodies that targeted a very broad range of coronaviruses, including thei
by devin 5y ago
> An interesting result was that the infected then vaccinated individuals developed antibodies that targeted a very broad range of coronaviruses, including their engineered virus, delta, many other variants, and the original SARS.
Glad you brought this up, but from what I understand this isn't actually all that interesting (read: surprising). mRNA vaccines target the spike protein because it's functional and well-conserved. Natural infection means your immune system sees many more proteins.
- dougmwne 5y agoYes, but natural infection did not produce this broad immunity in their samples, only infected then vaccinated developed this special kind of broad immunity. That is supprising in a way, that we could coax the immune system into producing a special kind of immunity that wouldn't otherwise be likely to occur naturally. It opens an area of research into what mRNA sequence or dosing regimen could reproduce this immunity for a future super vaccine.
- angelzen 5y agoNatural infection was one event vs. natural infection + vaccine being two events separated by a time interval. It may be that we are stumbling upon a natural mechanism that makes recurring infections almost impossible past 2nd event.
- dougmwne 5y agoIt's possible, but I am not aware of any evidence for or against that theory at this point.
- carlmr 5y agoI mean it kind of makes sense if viewed like deep learning. If we train a system on one set of data, the virus itself, it will probably learn to recognize similar data. If we then highlight one specific part that's very special in this data, the spike protein, then the system will recognize the pattern much more easily. Dataset I or II alone would both let the system recognize the pattern, but not be as effective, since it's harder to tell what's important and what's not.