9 ms·

Impact of circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants on mRNA vaccine-induced immunity

36 points by jtbayly 5y ago

user743 5y ago
PSA: The pharmaceutical companies are serial felons that have paid out billions in lost suits. Please question the integrity of the information coming through. I think it's pretty uniformly accepted that big tobacco used to have scientists shilling for them. What's different this time? There are trillions to be made. https://www.enjuris.com/blog/resources/largest-pharmaceutical-settlements-lawsuits/ https://www.enjuris.com/blog/resources/largest-pharmaceutica...
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  apart from the oxford/astrazeneca is being distributed at cost, so isn't making billions edit I realise that the above jab isn't mRNA. however I don't think thats entirely relevant to the point.
- cwp 5y ago
  What's different? I think that's obvious. Smoking kills people. Vaccines save them from disease and death.
CoastalCoder 5y ago
Maybe I missed it from the article, but for persons who were both infected and vaccinated, did they only study persons who were infected before vaccinated? Just curious if the order of those two events matters.
sovnade 5y ago
Am I reading the conclusion correctly that people who were infected with some strain of COVID and received two doses of the vaccine fared better against future variants than people who only received the vaccine?
- delecti 5y ago
  I think that's somewhat expected, and basically analogous to "defense in depth". The mRNA vaccines only code for the characteristic spike protein, but an actual infection can result in developing antibodies against multiple features on the surface of the virus. Both being better than either alone is reasonable result of that. The problem with natural immunity is that it can be so variable. Some people would develop better immunity from being infected than they would from just the vaccine, but some would develop much weaker immunity from the infection.
  - Filligree 5y ago
    > The problem with natural immunity is that it can be so variable. Some people would develop better immunity from being infected than they would from just the vaccine, but some would develop much weaker immunity from the infection. And some will develop autoimmune disorders. The mRNA vaccines being highly specific is an important safety feature.
    - acjohnson55 5y ago
      Here's an interesting article I just found, which discuesses the virus-autoimmunity connection: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01835-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01835-w
      - dtech 5y ago
        It's been theorized for a while. For Multiple Sclerosis - an autoimmune nerve disease - a curious phenomenon is that 100% of patients have been infected with EBV, the cause of mono, while the base rate in the population is about 90%.
  - evgen 5y ago
    It is probably also worth noting that while this sort of defense in depth provides the strongest protection, the risk involved with the first infection probably means that you are better off in trusting the vaccine. Infection prior to vaccination may provide a stronger immune response, but only if you survive the infection.
jojo2000 5y ago
there's nothing like natural immunity.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- darkcha0s 5y ago
  this paper is about natural immunity + getting the vaxx, so technically theres nothing like artificially boosted natural immunity
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  As others have pointed out, it also includes adding the vaccine, so that's better than simply natural exposure, and it's a catch-22 - in order to best prevent yourself from catching a life threatening virus you first need to catch the virus?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  Natural immunity has a lower survival rate than vaccine-assisted natural immunity. In covid's case, notably so.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    That's simply not true. At all.
    - KaiserPro 5y ago
      ok, if thats not true, and we know that its very rare to suffer from covid twice, why is the rate of death in the UK much lower post vaccination (and without lockdown) vs before (and with)?
      - jdsfighter 5y ago
walterbell 5y ago
An earlier paper, "Discrete Immune Response Signature to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination Versus Infection", Cell, May 2021, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3838993 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3838993 > .. our analysis revealed significant qualitative differences between the two types of immune challenges. In COVID-19 patients, immune responses were characterized by a highly augmented interferon response which was largely absent in vaccine recipients. Increased interferon signaling likely contributed to the observed dramatic upregulation of cytotoxic genes in the peripheral T cells and innate-like lymphocytes in patients but not in immunized subjects. Analysis of B and T cell receptor repertoires revealed that while the majority of clonal B and T cells in COVID-19 patients were effector cells, in vaccine recipients clonally expanded cells were primarily circulating memory cells. Importantly, the divergence in immune subsets engaged, the transcriptional differences in key immune populations, and the differences in maturation of adaptive immune cells revealed by our analysis have far-ranging implications for immunity to this novel pathogen.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
losvedir 5y ago
I've been thinking about this lately with regard to my very young child. There's been a lot of discussion lately about lowering the age at which the mRNA vaccinations can be given. But if it's true that natural immunity + vaccination) is stronger than vaccination alone, is it worth it to leave her unvaccinated against Covid, at least for now, in order to get some natural immunity? My friends and family are sort of aghast at that, but I can't get a good read on how dangerous Covid is for little children. As far as I can tell from the stats, hardly any 1-4 year olds have died from Covid (60 in about two years [0]), so it doesn't seem like a big risk. Of course, there's "long covid" and all the sort of long tail risks and concerns, but intuitively it feels like if the disease is not that deadly and dangerous when you're that young, there'd also be less risk of all these other side effects we're seeing, which tend to correlate, as far as I can tell, with how severe the disease was for the person in the first place. (I'm not seeing lots of folks with "long covid" who had it asymptomatic to begin with, for example.) There's the argument about getting vaccinated to help others but I don't think that really applies here. Asking babies to "take one for the team" (in the context of my question here where immediate vaccination inhibits long term protection) for grandma seems kind of backwards, if you ask me. [0] https://data.cdc.gov/widgets/9bhg-hcku https://data.cdc.gov/widgets/9bhg-hcku
- mynegation 5y ago
  If your child is vaccinated - there is a lower chance she gets COVID-19 - the disease. And if she does get it - it will be milder. But she may not get it at all with the vaccine just because the immune system is trained to eliminate it upon entry. In the assumption that vaccine does not have any side effects, the strategy to vaccinate is strictly dominating in game theoretic sense. Let alone the fact that she has much lesser chance of being the spreader.
  - nradov 5y ago
    I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, however it provides only limited and temporary protection against infection and transmission. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y
Factorium 5y ago
There's a lot of moral hazard here. The weaker the vaccine, and the greater the dismissal of natural immunity (which according to Israeli hospital data [1] is completely superior to vaccination), the greater the profit for big pharma. The dystopian outcome is that we basically outsource/financialise the human immune system - and that 6-monthly COVID booster shots will be forced (/mandated) on everyone, forever. The ideal outcome is that we immediately drop all COVID restrictions and just bundle these booster shots into influenza vaccinations for the immunocompromised and those aged 70+ https://youtu.be/9bamaEMftg4 https://youtu.be/9bamaEMftg4
- maxerickson 5y ago
  There is substantial evidence that the vaccines make a first infection less dangerous and not really much evidence that they inhibit later immunity, so you might want to take a step back and reexamine things.
pfisherman 5y ago
I just don’t understand the whole natural immunity vs vaccine debate. If you want natural immunity the safest way to achieve that is be to have a breakthrough infection after being vaccinated. My guess is that maybe people overestimate the risk of getting the vaccine? But that also seems to be crazy since COVID has killed over over half a million people in the US and over 1/3 of the US population has taken the vaccine and been fine - the most common bad reaction is being wiped out for a day.
- angelzen 5y ago
  The difficulty is that the immune system is not linear. I am far from being an expert, but terms like ADE and original antigenic sin are part of the literature. This is not to say which approach is better, it is only a caveat that thinking in additive terms is just an approximation.
  - pfisherman 5y ago
    People were worried about something like a dengue fever effect before we knew much about COVID. But now we have tons of data on breakthrough infections and and reinfections and it all says that immunity acquired via vaccine or prior exposure to the virus drastically reduces the risk of hospitalization or death in the case of a new infection.

36 points by jtbayly 5y ago

PSA: The pharmaceutical companies are serial felons that have paid out billions in lost suits. Please question the integrity of the information coming through. I think it's pretty uniformly accepted that big tobacco used to have scientists shilling for them. What's different this time? There are trillions to be made. https://www.enjuris.com/blog/resources/largest-pharmaceutical-settlements-lawsuits/ https://www.enjuris.com/blog/resources/largest-pharmaceutica...

KaiserPro 5y ago
apart from the oxford/astrazeneca is being distributed at cost, so isn't making billions edit I realise that the above jab isn't mRNA. however I don't think thats entirely relevant to the point.
cwp 5y ago
What's different? I think that's obvious. Smoking kills people. Vaccines save them from disease and death.

CoastalCoder 5y ago

Maybe I missed it from the article, but for persons who were both infected and vaccinated, did they only study persons who were infected before vaccinated? Just curious if the order of those two events matters.

sovnade 5y ago

Am I reading the conclusion correctly that people who were infected with some strain of COVID and received two doses of the vaccine fared better against future variants than people who only received the vaccine?

delecti 5y ago
I think that's somewhat expected, and basically analogous to "defense in depth". The mRNA vaccines only code for the characteristic spike protein, but an actual infection can result in developing antibodies against multiple features on the surface of the virus. Both being better than either alone is reasonable result of that. The problem with natural immunity is that it can be so variable. Some people would develop better immunity from being infected than they would from just the vaccine, but some would develop much weaker immunity from the infection.
- Filligree 5y ago
  > The problem with natural immunity is that it can be so variable. Some people would develop better immunity from being infected than they would from just the vaccine, but some would develop much weaker immunity from the infection. And some will develop autoimmune disorders. The mRNA vaccines being highly specific is an important safety feature.
  - acjohnson55 5y ago
    Here's an interesting article I just found, which discuesses the virus-autoimmunity connection: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01835-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01835-w
    - dtech 5y ago
      It's been theorized for a while. For Multiple Sclerosis - an autoimmune nerve disease - a curious phenomenon is that 100% of patients have been infected with EBV, the cause of mono, while the base rate in the population is about 90%.
- evgen 5y ago
  It is probably also worth noting that while this sort of defense in depth provides the strongest protection, the risk involved with the first infection probably means that you are better off in trusting the vaccine. Infection prior to vaccination may provide a stronger immune response, but only if you survive the infection.

jojo2000 5y ago

there's nothing like natural immunity.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
darkcha0s 5y ago
this paper is about natural immunity + getting the vaxx, so technically theres nothing like artificially boosted natural immunity
SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
As others have pointed out, it also includes adding the vaccine, so that's better than simply natural exposure, and it's a catch-22 - in order to best prevent yourself from catching a life threatening virus you first need to catch the virus?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
floatingatoll 5y ago
Natural immunity has a lower survival rate than vaccine-assisted natural immunity. In covid's case, notably so.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  That's simply not true. At all.
  - KaiserPro 5y ago
    ok, if thats not true, and we know that its very rare to suffer from covid twice, why is the rate of death in the UK much lower post vaccination (and without lockdown) vs before (and with)?
    - jdsfighter 5y ago

walterbell 5y ago

An earlier paper, "Discrete Immune Response Signature to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination Versus Infection", Cell, May 2021, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3838993 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3838993 > .. our analysis revealed significant qualitative differences between the two types of immune challenges. In COVID-19 patients, immune responses were characterized by a highly augmented interferon response which was largely absent in vaccine recipients. Increased interferon signaling likely contributed to the observed dramatic upregulation of cytotoxic genes in the peripheral T cells and innate-like lymphocytes in patients but not in immunized subjects. Analysis of B and T cell receptor repertoires revealed that while the majority of clonal B and T cells in COVID-19 patients were effector cells, in vaccine recipients clonally expanded cells were primarily circulating memory cells. Importantly, the divergence in immune subsets engaged, the transcriptional differences in key immune populations, and the differences in maturation of adaptive immune cells revealed by our analysis have far-ranging implications for immunity to this novel pathogen.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

losvedir 5y ago

I've been thinking about this lately with regard to my very young child. There's been a lot of discussion lately about lowering the age at which the mRNA vaccinations can be given. But if it's true that natural immunity + vaccination) is stronger than vaccination alone, is it worth it to leave her unvaccinated against Covid, at least for now, in order to get some natural immunity? My friends and family are sort of aghast at that, but I can't get a good read on how dangerous Covid is for little children. As far as I can tell from the stats, hardly any 1-4 year olds have died from Covid (60 in about two years [0]), so it doesn't seem like a big risk. Of course, there's "long covid" and all the sort of long tail risks and concerns, but intuitively it feels like if the disease is not that deadly and dangerous when you're that young, there'd also be less risk of all these other side effects we're seeing, which tend to correlate, as far as I can tell, with how severe the disease was for the person in the first place. (I'm not seeing lots of folks with "long covid" who had it asymptomatic to begin with, for example.) There's the argument about getting vaccinated to help others but I don't think that really applies here. Asking babies to "take one for the team" (in the context of my question here where immediate vaccination inhibits long term protection) for grandma seems kind of backwards, if you ask me. [0] https://data.cdc.gov/widgets/9bhg-hcku https://data.cdc.gov/widgets/9bhg-hcku

mynegation 5y ago
If your child is vaccinated - there is a lower chance she gets COVID-19 - the disease. And if she does get it - it will be milder. But she may not get it at all with the vaccine just because the immune system is trained to eliminate it upon entry. In the assumption that vaccine does not have any side effects, the strategy to vaccinate is strictly dominating in game theoretic sense. Let alone the fact that she has much lesser chance of being the spreader.
- nradov 5y ago
  I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, however it provides only limited and temporary protection against infection and transmission. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y

Factorium 5y ago

There's a lot of moral hazard here. The weaker the vaccine, and the greater the dismissal of natural immunity (which according to Israeli hospital data [1] is completely superior to vaccination), the greater the profit for big pharma. The dystopian outcome is that we basically outsource/financialise the human immune system - and that 6-monthly COVID booster shots will be forced (/mandated) on everyone, forever. The ideal outcome is that we immediately drop all COVID restrictions and just bundle these booster shots into influenza vaccinations for the immunocompromised and those aged 70+ https://youtu.be/9bamaEMftg4 https://youtu.be/9bamaEMftg4

maxerickson 5y ago
There is substantial evidence that the vaccines make a first infection less dangerous and not really much evidence that they inhibit later immunity, so you might want to take a step back and reexamine things.

pfisherman 5y ago

I just don’t understand the whole natural immunity vs vaccine debate. If you want natural immunity the safest way to achieve that is be to have a breakthrough infection after being vaccinated. My guess is that maybe people overestimate the risk of getting the vaccine? But that also seems to be crazy since COVID has killed over over half a million people in the US and over 1/3 of the US population has taken the vaccine and been fine - the most common bad reaction is being wiped out for a day.

angelzen 5y ago
The difficulty is that the immune system is not linear. I am far from being an expert, but terms like ADE and original antigenic sin are part of the literature. This is not to say which approach is better, it is only a caveat that thinking in additive terms is just an approximation.
- pfisherman 5y ago
  People were worried about something like a dengue fever effect before we knew much about COVID. But now we have tons of data on breakthrough infections and and reinfections and it all says that immunity acquired via vaccine or prior exposure to the virus drastically reduces the risk of hospitalization or death in the case of a new infection.