Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

Re:Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta by graderjs on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:24PM (#28205426)

I don't know if we have this, but it would be good if we had a technology that enhanced your body's immune system to identify and kill viruses, rather than prime it to respond to a particular viral signal, that then may need to be updated as the virus changes (that's how I understand how vaccines work, but that could be false). You might think it's a subtle difference, but I think the former technology would be leaning into the body's existing ability to form a variety of antigens for viruses it encounters, and boosting its defense/offense against those, rather than 'handing out a series of police composite sketches', and saying 'Be On the Look Out for this specific guy, he might be coming through here.' The former could be more alike to enhancing predictive policing and profiling abilities, and beefing up response and enforcement capabilities.

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Re:Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta by lamontcg on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @02:26AM (#28206785)

The immune system already does that and its the responsibility of CD4+ helper T-cells.

The 2009 pandemic was significantly blunted because people born before 1957 had partial immunity from cross-reactive T-cells to H1N1 which was endemic in humans from 1918-1957. So after mutating in probably billions of pigs for 50 years the H1N1 virus that hopped back to humans was still sufficiently recognized by the immune system of older people to take any edge off of that pandemic.

I'm also fairly skeptical of the data coming out of Israel about waning immunity. Everyone is taking that data at face value while entirely ignoring the disclaimer: "(Potential confounders include the fact that the very oldest Israelis, with the weakest immune systems, were vaccinated first.)".

We really need a lot better data on much better matched cohorts to determine actual immune waning in the presence of the same viral variant.

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Re:Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta by graderjs on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @02:38AM (#28206853)

Oh yeah definitely of course the immune system that already does that, the idea is just enhance its ability so that everyone has sort of Best in class defence against these viruses.

it can be kind of slow on an individual level, but on a population level you will have some people who have evolved better defenses, or more resilient immune systems. If we can share that around that's the idea.

It's very interesting though about that immunity thing you say. People born then.

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Re:Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta by grepfru_it on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @07:53AM (#28208890)

I think that was the idea that spurred monoclonal antibodies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody

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Re:Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta by graderjs on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @09:01AM (#28209362)

Interesting, thanks. :)

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Re:Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta by thatguy0900 on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:28PM (#28205460)

Beefing up the immune system without garunteeing it something to do seems like a recipe for autoimmune disorders, no?

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Re:Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta by graderjs on Monday August 16, 2021 @10:47PM (#28205610)

Yeah, agree. It would be tricky. I'm hoping that by 'enhancing' the immune system you lean into its natural self-regulation equilibrium system and avoid that mostly--but then again autoimmune disorders seemingly emerge from those stasis systems going haywire, maybe without external poking...so it would be tricky for sure.

I guess the intuition is that the human immune system is an incredibly sophisticated, evolving capability that over time, and over the mass population, can respond to become resilient against a wide array of pathogens.

So if you could somehow capture the best of that (like, for illustration, take the immune system of the healthiest, most resilient person, 30 generations from now in the future) and convey that benefit to many other people, that would be truly awesome.

Sort of like an idea of training an AI, more iterations are better, the immune system of any one person at any one point in time, might not be so great, but the best immune system of the population after encountering many pathogens, is going to be really great.

How can we short circuit that "natural training" process and enhance the immune system? But I agree that attempts to do so might run the risk of creating or exacerbating autoimmune diseases...But I still think it's worth it.

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