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Before these COVID jabs were released, vaccines used to mean that they could "provide immunity" to specific diseases. Now it's been changed to "provides protect

Before these COVID jabs were released, vaccines used to mean that they could "provide immunity" to specific diseases. Now it's been changed to "provides protection, but ooops that protection can wane over time and eventually disappear". That is fine, medical science is tough, but don't call it a vaccine instead of changing the definition of what outcomes vaccines historically (pre-2021) had provided.

aflag 5y ago
The idea that vaccines provide full immunity is a misconception. No vaccine provides that. They all have different rates of breakthrough infections and protection. There's nothing particularly special about the covid vaccines, except that they were developed and tested in record time. And in case of the mRNA vaccines, it's a new technology for producing vaccines, obviously.
sho_hn 5y ago
"immunity" in the medical sense always meant "some resistance to" (as opposed to none at all) and never "total protection". Some other colloquial uses of the word (e.g. in legal) have always made this a bit difficult to understand outside the medical community. Cf. the "immune system" being a very active thing and not binary in practice.
irq 5y ago
Literally zero vaccines exist that provide 100.00% permanent immunity, if that’s what you’re asking for
kelnos 5y ago
I think you've held a misconception as to what a vaccine is. A vaccine has never provided 100% immunity in everyone who's gotten it. Certainly some vaccines have come close, but that doesn't change anything. Hell, consider the annual flu vaccine: it's efficacy falls far, far short of 100% every year; I believe it's usually in the 40%-60% range.
mbrubeck 5y ago
No vaccine has ever been 100% effective, and waning immunity has always been a common phenomenon. Some flu vaccines are only about 50% effective. Polio, tetanus, hepatitis, and smallpox vaccines have all required booster doses due to waning immunity.
jonhohle 5y ago
I recently had a 10-year tetanus booster and learned that it’s not known if they are necessary, but they don’t hurt (except for the sore arm), so they’re given at ten year intervals. It’s really unclear what the goal is with this campaign. My wife and son recovered last year and has not received a Covid shot. When others in our family caught it 9 months later, they didn’t get sick, as expected, and had an appropriate and measurable antibody response.
legobmw99 5y ago
My whole life the pitch behind the flu vaccine has been “it might keep you from getting it, and even if it doesn’t you’ll be better prepared to fight it”
myko 5y ago
This is incorrect, actually. Where did you get this idea?
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
  It was in the news. Here's an example: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article254111268.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25411126...
  - myko 5y ago
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immunity https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immunity "especially : a condition of being able to resist a particular disease especially through preventing development of a pathogenic microorganism or by counteracting the effects of its products" Getting vaccinated has never, ever, guaranteed you cannot contract an illness.
nielsbot 5y ago
Old vaccines also have breakthrough cases. For example, my son got chickenpox despite being vaccinated against it. (He was exposed to shingles) Also old vaccines do not all provide lifelong immunity. You have to get tetanus boosters regularly.
yibg 5y ago
Is there a single vaccine that provides 100% immunity against anything?
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
This is absolutely false. No vaccine is 100% effective at providing absolute immunity. Not the MMR. Not Polio. Nobody has claimed otherwise. > Now it's been changed to "provides protection, but ooops that protection can wane over time and eventually disappear". Hmm...just like the annual flu "vaccine", right? And did you forget that other vaccines require boosters, too? Tetanus is an example. It just happens to last several years, rather than several months like a flu or COVID vaccine. Not all antibodies are the same. We now know that COVID-fighting antibodies last a few months. It doesn't mean the vaccines themselves are weak, it means the antibodies our bodies create don't survive long. So yeah, not only are you simply wrong, but you're arguing nothing more than semantics as if it's a valid criticism.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > No vaccine is 100% effective at providing absolute immunity. Not the MMR. Not Polio. Nobody has claimed otherwise. Sure, it's not 100% for those other vaccines, but it's close. Once you get the polio vaccine as a child, you live the rest of your life the exact same way you would if polio were eradicated, without ever having to take any special precautions against the spread of polio again.
- jonhohle 5y ago
  The flu vaccine is easily explained by targeting different mutations each year. They also have to choose which mutations they think will be most prevalent before the season starts. Unlike Covid, flu mutations are able to regularly bypass a normal human autoimmune response. I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest that’s true of Covid variants, and have first hand experience with several people infected with early variants who had immunity to later variants. Several years ago there was a flu mutation that was similar enough to a flu from the 1930s (iirc) that people who caught it back then were still immune. It’s not that we need new vaccines for the same virus each year, the virus has just mutated enough that our immune response isn’t trained to identify it. We don’t know how long natural antibodies for Covid last. In my family, members were still immune 9 months after infection and had higher antibody counts than those who were symptomatic. Why is there such a push to convince people that our immune system works differently for this particular virus?
canadaduane 5y ago
Perhaps what we're struggling at is finding words that communicate expectations properly. I just read this Wikipedia article on "Innoculation" and it seems we've been working at better definitions for about 200 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoculation#Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoculation#Terminology "Vaccine" when first introduced meant "of the cow", i.e. cowpox used as a weaker form of smallpox to provide immunological protection against the dangers of smallpox.
usrusr 5y ago
This is simply not true. The only thing that has changed is that "not all vaccines are 100%" has suddenly become part of common knowledge.
hindsightbias 5y ago
So my tetanus boosters over the last 40 years is not a real thing.

aflag 5y ago

The idea that vaccines provide full immunity is a misconception. No vaccine provides that. They all have different rates of breakthrough infections and protection. There's nothing particularly special about the covid vaccines, except that they were developed and tested in record time. And in case of the mRNA vaccines, it's a new technology for producing vaccines, obviously.

sho_hn 5y ago

"immunity" in the medical sense always meant "some resistance to" (as opposed to none at all) and never "total protection". Some other colloquial uses of the word (e.g. in legal) have always made this a bit difficult to understand outside the medical community. Cf. the "immune system" being a very active thing and not binary in practice.

irq 5y ago

Literally zero vaccines exist that provide 100.00% permanent immunity, if that’s what you’re asking for

kelnos 5y ago

I think you've held a misconception as to what a vaccine is. A vaccine has never provided 100% immunity in everyone who's gotten it. Certainly some vaccines have come close, but that doesn't change anything. Hell, consider the annual flu vaccine: it's efficacy falls far, far short of 100% every year; I believe it's usually in the 40%-60% range.

mbrubeck 5y ago

No vaccine has ever been 100% effective, and waning immunity has always been a common phenomenon. Some flu vaccines are only about 50% effective. Polio, tetanus, hepatitis, and smallpox vaccines have all required booster doses due to waning immunity.

jonhohle 5y ago

I recently had a 10-year tetanus booster and learned that it’s not known if they are necessary, but they don’t hurt (except for the sore arm), so they’re given at ten year intervals. It’s really unclear what the goal is with this campaign. My wife and son recovered last year and has not received a Covid shot. When others in our family caught it 9 months later, they didn’t get sick, as expected, and had an appropriate and measurable antibody response.

legobmw99 5y ago

My whole life the pitch behind the flu vaccine has been “it might keep you from getting it, and even if it doesn’t you’ll be better prepared to fight it”

myko 5y ago

This is incorrect, actually. Where did you get this idea?

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
It was in the news. Here's an example: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article254111268.html https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25411126...
- myko 5y ago
  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immunity https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immunity "especially : a condition of being able to resist a particular disease especially through preventing development of a pathogenic microorganism or by counteracting the effects of its products" Getting vaccinated has never, ever, guaranteed you cannot contract an illness.

nielsbot 5y ago

Old vaccines also have breakthrough cases. For example, my son got chickenpox despite being vaccinated against it. (He was exposed to shingles) Also old vaccines do not all provide lifelong immunity. You have to get tetanus boosters regularly.

yibg 5y ago

Is there a single vaccine that provides 100% immunity against anything?

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago

This is absolutely false. No vaccine is 100% effective at providing absolute immunity. Not the MMR. Not Polio. Nobody has claimed otherwise. > Now it's been changed to "provides protection, but ooops that protection can wane over time and eventually disappear". Hmm...just like the annual flu "vaccine", right? And did you forget that other vaccines require boosters, too? Tetanus is an example. It just happens to last several years, rather than several months like a flu or COVID vaccine. Not all antibodies are the same. We now know that COVID-fighting antibodies last a few months. It doesn't mean the vaccines themselves are weak, it means the antibodies our bodies create don't survive long. So yeah, not only are you simply wrong, but you're arguing nothing more than semantics as if it's a valid criticism.

josephcsible 5y ago
> No vaccine is 100% effective at providing absolute immunity. Not the MMR. Not Polio. Nobody has claimed otherwise. Sure, it's not 100% for those other vaccines, but it's close. Once you get the polio vaccine as a child, you live the rest of your life the exact same way you would if polio were eradicated, without ever having to take any special precautions against the spread of polio again.
jonhohle 5y ago
The flu vaccine is easily explained by targeting different mutations each year. They also have to choose which mutations they think will be most prevalent before the season starts. Unlike Covid, flu mutations are able to regularly bypass a normal human autoimmune response. I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest that’s true of Covid variants, and have first hand experience with several people infected with early variants who had immunity to later variants. Several years ago there was a flu mutation that was similar enough to a flu from the 1930s (iirc) that people who caught it back then were still immune. It’s not that we need new vaccines for the same virus each year, the virus has just mutated enough that our immune response isn’t trained to identify it. We don’t know how long natural antibodies for Covid last. In my family, members were still immune 9 months after infection and had higher antibody counts than those who were symptomatic. Why is there such a push to convince people that our immune system works differently for this particular virus?

canadaduane 5y ago

Perhaps what we're struggling at is finding words that communicate expectations properly. I just read this Wikipedia article on "Innoculation" and it seems we've been working at better definitions for about 200 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoculation#Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoculation#Terminology "Vaccine" when first introduced meant "of the cow", i.e. cowpox used as a weaker form of smallpox to provide immunological protection against the dangers of smallpox.

usrusr 5y ago

This is simply not true. The only thing that has changed is that "not all vaccines are 100%" has suddenly become part of common knowledge.

hindsightbias 5y ago

So my tetanus boosters over the last 40 years is not a real thing.