Re:When Vaccine Apathy, Not Hesitancy, Drives Vaccine Disint...
by mikem170 on Sunday July 18, 2021 @12:36PM
(#27874278)
The original paper [0] the article you quoted is based on doesn't say that the vaccine is better than natural immunity, just that it is different:
> Therefore, antibody immunity acquired by natural infection or different modes of vaccination may have a differing susceptibility to erosion by SARS-CoV-2 evolution.
They seem to be saying their tests showed that the vaccine antibodies better handled the receptor mutations they created (how much better? 100%? or 1%?), but that antibodies from a natural infection target other parts of the virus besides just the receptor (possibly offering broader protection).
> The neutralizing activity of vaccine-elicited antibodies was more targeted to the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein compared to antibodies elicited by natural infection. However, within the RBD, binding of vaccine-elicited antibodies was more broadly distributed across epitopes compared to infection-elicited antibodies.
> Therefore, antibody immunity acquired by natural infection or different modes of vaccination may have a differing susceptibility to erosion by SARS-CoV-2 evolution.
They seem to be saying their tests showed that the vaccine antibodies better handled the receptor mutations they created (how much better? 100%? or 1%?), but that antibodies from a natural infection target other parts of the virus besides just the receptor (possibly offering broader protection).
> The neutralizing activity of vaccine-elicited antibodies was more targeted to the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein compared to antibodies elicited by natural infection. However, within the RBD, binding of vaccine-elicited antibodies was more broadly distributed across epitopes compared to infection-elicited antibodies.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/