> By aggregating VOC-associated and antibody-selected spike substitutions into a single polymutant spike protein, we show that 20 naturally occurring mutations
Aggregating ... into a polymutant spike. That means they put all 20 mutations together, each of them carefully selected from variants of concern or antibody attachment sites, into one single spike protein. Basically they created the most crazy supermutant resistent spike they could. The chance of which would be astronomically small in nature. And their conclusion is that even then a good dose of vaccine allows the body to eliminate it.
Natural immunity targets far more locations than just the spike. Whereas the Pfizer vaccine only targets that spike.
So it presents a scenario with crippled natural immunity vs the full capabilities of the mRNA vaccine.
Which means in this "super mutant" scenario, the mRNA will always need natural immunity be effective, but natural immunity will only need vaccination if both the spike is mutated as described, and if non-spike targets are also mutated to be resistant.
Which is far more unlikely than the already unlikely "super mutant" spike.
> And their conclusion is that even then a good dose of vaccine allows the body to eliminate it.
That's not the same thing I got from the conclusion, it sounded like you needed to have a previous infection + the vaccine to clear it. What am I missing?
If the cell is infected by multiple viruses, sometimes there's crossover where the instructions for one get mixed with the instructions for another. So, yes, multiple mutations can end up being combined of they infect a single individual.
It actually doesn't even have to be the same virus. This is how many zoonotic diseases develop -- take a piece of a virus that can attack humans and combine it with a different virus that doesn't attack humans.
Mutant ABC is the target. First Mutant A becomes the predominant strain. There might be some Mutant AB or AC in the population, but the controlling factor is currently Mutant A.
Eventually, Mutant A therapies/vaccines are introduced and Mutant A starts to lose its hold. Mutant AB isn't treated by the new treatments (or they're less effective, or Mutant AB goes undetected longer, etc.). Mutant AB becomes king of the hill. Repeat with Mutant ABC.
All this would assume that there's no Mutant B or Mutant BC or Mutant AC that increases in prevalence. All the mutations would have to build up over time or occur simultaneously by coincidence (or you could get a combination).
It's just basic evolution - organism follows the niche. We have a hard time recognizing it because generation turnover is so rapid. Instead of taking ~30 years for 2.5 offspring, it's a few days for millions of offspring.
I don't think mode of reproduction matters much when we're talking at this scale. While the virus creates stable clones across generations, I would think they're more susceptible to mutations and any viable mutation is quickly amplified exponentially. Just like the old high school bio experiment to demonstrate antibiotic resistance, only your respiratory mucus membranes are the medium. Those bacteria reproduced asexually.
The 20 mutations they mention was a set of 20 mutations to a single spike protein that they then attached to a carrier virus to test plasma neutralization. It's not the full space of possible mutations that could cause immunity escape, but it is one that they found with a plausibly low number of mutations that it could occur in the wild that would result is almost total escape for vaccinated or previously infected.
An interesting result was that the infected then vaccinated individuals developed antibodies that targeted a very broad range of coronaviruses, including their engineered virus, delta, many other variants, and the original SARS.
It's suggested that future vaccines could be engineered to produce this broad immunity.
The immune system is almost terrifyingly complex.
Glad you brought this up, but from what I understand this isn't actually all that interesting (read: surprising). mRNA vaccines target the spike protein because it's functional and well-conserved. Natural infection means your immune system sees many more proteins.
Why would someone get vaccinated post infection?
Antibody levels drop rapidly after an infection, if they persist at all.
Getting a vaccination after infection re-triggers the immune system and makes antibodies more likely to persist for longer.
Reading up on this many months ago it seemed likely that natural infection plus a single vaccination would be equivalent to two vaccine shots.
There was research about only needing to give one shot of vaccines like AstraZeneca to people with previous infection. It was considered too complex to manage, and the research as to efficacy wasn’t finalised, so they stuck with two.
Having had Covid, plus two shots of something like AstraZeneca is presumably somewhere in the region of a standard two-shot-plus-booster campaign.
I don’t really understand much of this paper, but given other comments it seems to be a reasonable idea.
(To catch it once is unfortunate...)
No, your friend didn't have COVID a second time after being vaccinated after their first infection. Especially lacking any clarification that they were in fact tested positive both times, you are merely contributing to noise on the internet.
1) "a friend of yours" is not a data point on which others should base their worldview (unless their testicles got huge and their fiance called it off, why even share?)
2) reinfection is rare
3) it is likely the first time they think they had covid, they weren't tested, and actually had the flu.
Here is the CDC information on reinfection: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/reinfe...
As of August 6, 2021, the CDC has nothing conclusive to say on the matter: "Cases of reinfection with COVID-19 have been reported, but remain rare . "
Anecdotes are noise, and I would encourage you to do no further research.
PCR tested positive both times, double jabbed in-between. You might not like the fact that it's possible, but that doesn't make it impossible.
1) You seem to be the one projecting a world view based off an anecdote. Chill.
2) Law of large numbers. A small percentage of a very large number is still a large number.
3) Here you go again with made up "facts" that aren't even anecdata.
> Cases of reinfection with COVID-19 have been reported
Seems pretty conclusive. They're referred to as "breakthrough cases", and not as rare as you seem to believe. What's more important is that the risk of hospitalization and death in breakthrough cases is considerably reduced.
> I would encourage you to do no further research
I would encourage you to do more. Making up "facts" to make a point does nothing to strengthen your position (whatever that may be – seems more like you just wanted to rant).
It does mean that your body is prepared to sweep the virus out faster and prevent it from spreading as far in your body.
In computer terms, a vaccine reduces the latency between when your body gets a virus and when it reaches critical immune response to get the virus under control.
So, for example, while you may get Covid in your nose, being vaccinated means that it doesn't get down into your lungs and heart and cause damage down there (the issues that cause most people to be hospitalized).
While lots of people got diseases like smallpox and measles only once, others would get them several times. The difference is what part of the virus your antibodies selected to attack.
The spike protein seems to be both extremely important to SARS-CoV-2 and relatively unchanging.
If your body creates antibodies to it, you will have immunity on par with the vaccines.
If your body doesn't create antibodies to it, you have a mixed bag of immunity. Getting a vaccine buffs that up.
Immune systems are very buggy learning systems. This is good from a species survival perspective, but not always for a specific individual.
Or they stand a very high risk of creating and releasing the doomsday variant they are worried about in the first place...
(For the record, if spike proteins were themselves in any way harmful to life on their own, Moderna and Pfizer wouldn't be the primary vaccine vendors for the US right now.)
I think it's fairly well accepted that they can cause myocarditis [1], which has killed some [2]. Better than getting the virus, but they appear to be capable of harm. I've naively wondered if the young men are getting jabbed in veins, rather than muscle tissue.
1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my...
Approval doesn't mean absolute safety, since that's absolutely impossible to achieve. This is considered acceptable (as shown by the CDC page listing it as a risk), since an actual infection is worse, for most.
> By aggregating VOC-associated and antibody-selected spike substitutions into a single polymutant spike protein, we show that 20 naturally occurring mutations in SARS-CoV-2 spike are sufficient to generate pseudotypes with near-complete resistance to the polyclonal neutralizing antibodies generated by convalescents or mRNA vaccine recipients
So there are 20 known potential mutations which, when all put together, creates a virus that would be nearly completely resistant to existing vaccinations.
> however, plasma from individuals who had been infected and subsequently received mRNA vaccination, neutralized pseudotypes bearing this highly resistant SARS-CoV-2 polymutant spike, or diverse sarbecovirus spike proteins.
So, perhaps unsurprisingly, if you've had the virus and then received a vaccine, it appears that you have a very high level of immunity, including to future potential variants.
I cannot pull the paper itself, did they test people who were breakthrough cases following vaccination (instead of infection then vaccination)?