Re:Losing Covid-19 antibody immunity after six months after ...
by lamontcg on Thursday September 16, 2021 @01:25PM
(#28554555)
There's no evidence that boosters actually need to be tweaked for delta.
Boosters produce much broader neutralizing activity, including neutralizing antibodies that are effective (in vitro) against SARS-1 and MERS.
The immune system is designed to be a fuzzy matcher, and the boosters seem to kick broad production of antibodies into gear.
If possible explanations involving the evolutionary psychology of the immune system appeal to you (yes i'm a bit sarcastic there) then it appears that broad immunity is expensive to the immune system, and if you only encounter a virus once then you get a narrower immune response under the assumption that it may be a one-time-thing. But if you get hit with two bad infections in the same year (with sufficient separation between them) your immune system gets the message that you're going to be seeing a lot more of this virus in the future so it goes all "okay, fuck you and your entire family" on the virus.
Boosters produce much broader neutralizing activity, including neutralizing antibodies that are effective (in vitro) against SARS-1 and MERS.
The immune system is designed to be a fuzzy matcher, and the boosters seem to kick broad production of antibodies into gear.
If possible explanations involving the evolutionary psychology of the immune system appeal to you (yes i'm a bit sarcastic there) then it appears that broad immunity is expensive to the immune system, and if you only encounter a virus once then you get a narrower immune response under the assumption that it may be a one-time-thing. But if you get hit with two bad infections in the same year (with sufficient separation between them) your immune system gets the message that you're going to be seeing a lot more of this virus in the future so it goes all "okay, fuck you and your entire family" on the virus.