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"Significantly less effective" is still a lot higher than most new vaccines and higher than the prophylactics you propose. The loss in effectiveness isn't even

"Significantly less effective" is still a lot higher than most new vaccines and higher than the prophylactics you propose. The loss in effectiveness isn't even that big of a deal. It only really matters for those most at risk. And it's hard to say how much longer the third dose will last, but knowing how the immune system works, I'd guess it will be more than 6 months, provided there is no escape mutation. Delta isn't an escape variant, btw, it's just a really fast worker. It gets up and running inside the body so fast, that even the remembered response takes a while to catch up. That's why the third shot, which reestablishes active, circulating antibody levels, is so effective: Now the virus is knocked out before getting started, and the usual infection dose, before replication, isn't enough to cause trouble.

pieter_mj 5y ago
True. >Delta isn't an escape variant, btw, it's just a really fast worker. It's faster, more transmissable, infectious, shorter incubation period and a 1000fold increase in generated virus particles compared to other variants. But is also has mutations in its spike and nucleocapsid that warrant developing new vaccines, certainly when it's at the moment the dominant strain by far and even more virulent variations are to be expected.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  As far as I know new vaccines may be in the pipeline, but the current vaccines work so well against the delta variant that it's not worth switching. It will take a lot of time to gather enough data to confirm any new vaccine as actually being better and safer than Comirnaty against Delta... Just saying "This vaccines was especially designed for this" isn't enough.
  - pieter_mj 5y ago
    >but the current vaccines work so well against the delta variant that it's not worth switching. I disagree. The number of deaths has only been decreased fivefold when comparing first wave and 4th wave in Belgium. And yes, there are fully vaccinated people who are dying.

pieter_mj 5y ago

True. >Delta isn't an escape variant, btw, it's just a really fast worker. It's faster, more transmissable, infectious, shorter incubation period and a 1000fold increase in generated virus particles compared to other variants. But is also has mutations in its spike and nucleocapsid that warrant developing new vaccines, certainly when it's at the moment the dominant strain by far and even more virulent variations are to be expected.

bayesian_horse 5y ago
As far as I know new vaccines may be in the pipeline, but the current vaccines work so well against the delta variant that it's not worth switching. It will take a lot of time to gather enough data to confirm any new vaccine as actually being better and safer than Comirnaty against Delta... Just saying "This vaccines was especially designed for this" isn't enough.
- pieter_mj 5y ago
  >but the current vaccines work so well against the delta variant that it's not worth switching. I disagree. The number of deaths has only been decreased fivefold when comparing first wave and 4th wave in Belgium. And yes, there are fully vaccinated people who are dying.