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A comment on Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new studies suggest. Parent comment

Re:Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new... by inglor_cz on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @01:24PM (#28382832)
Not the OP, but antibodies are just one part of a fairly complex immune system and it does not make too much sense to concentrate just on them. Antibodies are proteins and their level goes down over time naturally. What really interests you is the level of immune response on subsequent exposure to the pathogen, which may be pretty robust even if antibodies are low or undetectable at the moment of new exposure.

We obviously do not know yet whether we can get permanently robust immune response to SARS-CoV-2, either from vaccines or from natural infection; the virus is only two years old. We know that we can get permanently robust immune response to the viruses you mentioned in your post. But this cannot be easily generalized to any new virus that comes along.

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Re:Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new... by evilpotatoes on Thursday September 02, 2021 @02:24PM (#28395537)
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.19.21255739v... <- natural immunity is pretty long-lived https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... <-- 6x better than fresh vaccine after a year or so, 13x better in a 4-6 month period after
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Re:Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new... by tinus_hn on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @01:35PM (#28383023)
We actually do know that we can not get permanent robust immune response to COVID-19 from the vaccines that are in use because the statistics are already there, immunity starts wearing off after about 6 months.

That’s why the new push is for ‘booster shots’.

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Re:Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new... by inglor_cz on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @01:42PM (#28383122)
To which degree is this statistic confounded by the Delta mutation emerging?

The original strain upon which the current vaccines are based has basically died out and Delta carries a lot more viral load (400x or so?), which changes the game a bit.

In comparison, smallpox virus was pretty much the same across centuries, so it was comparably easy to target and eradicate. No animal hosts helped, too.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Israel’s Covid-19 boosters are preventing infections, new... by tinus_hn on Wednesday September 01, 2021 @02:12PM (#28383572)
Covid-19 is impossible to eradicate as it spreads through animals, forget that idea.

Pfizer themselves have performed studies that show immunity declining. I do know that they tell from the levels of antibodies seen in blood but I don’t know if the effect of variants has been measured (if it can be measured at all without unethical experiments).

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