The concern I have with COVID vaccines (and I am vaccinated and boosted) is that they're typically just targeting the spike protein. Immunity to a natural infection can potentially include antibodies to all the proteins of the virus, not just the spike protein. So if the spike protein becomes highly mutated, I could see natural immunity possibly being less affected.
The nucleocapsid (the rest of the viral body) is mutating too. But targeting the spike attacks the point of entry for the cells and neutralizes them before they attack cells. So there’s benefits to argue both ways
I thought the argument was that the spike protein may be "better" to target than some other aspect of the virus the body might learn because of how closely it is linked to the infection method, I.e. a virus without a spike protein would (may) not be able to infect the way covid does and so mRNA vaccines should offer broader protection.
This is just what I read, I don't know it actually makes the vaccine better than a normal immune response, which I imagine is also robust.
Sure, it's a better target, but the other proteins may not be entirely useless as targets. Natural immunity at least has a chance to do something with them; a vaccine that includes/produces only the spike protein does not.
There was recently (but pre-COVID) a problem with a vaccine (I think TDAP?) that was reformulated to use specific proteins instead of whole killed bacteria, and produced less persistent immunity as a result.
Yeah, ever since they changed the pertussis component from whole inactivated bacteria to a protein subunit method, it does not do much (or anything? confidence intervals, etc) regarding infection and transmission. They really need to go back.
> This is just what I read, I don't know it actually makes the vaccine better than a normal immune response, which I imagine is also robust.
I'm sure the powers that be have their reasons for not going into detail, but I am interested as well. I'm sure I only understand a simplified version, but I thought that a vaccine worked pretty much by invoking an immune response. As a curious layman, I'd like it explained to me. Just to satisfy that curiosity. Web searches give me the "CDC says it's better" without going into the "why."
The point of a vaccine is to not get the actual virus, or at least to minimize its effects if infected.
When you are infected with anything, you do not always develop anti-bodies. If you do develop anti-bodies, they might not be effective at actually stopping you from being re-infected.
Everything about the virus can mutate, but the virus will always target the ACE2 binding site. The spike protein can mutate to bind to it differently, but it will always require a spike protein.
(Biology is Analog, not digital)
Thus targeting the spike protein is more efficient as it will be highly conserved.
There is a video series that does a nice job of breaking down how your immune response works:
https://youtu.be/lXfEK8G8CUI
The vaccine is more effective at developing anti-bodies for the spike protein as it is the only protein exposed during the process.
An analogy that has helped some of my family:
The virus is like a missile, and your immune system is a anti-missile system. Regardless of what the missile looks like, it has to have a warhead, and that warhead is what really defines what the entire thing does. So, if your defense systems targets the fuel of the missile, the enemy can change what fuel it runs on and evade your defense system. They can change the material it is made of, the shape of the overall device, change the propulsion and navigation systems…but the warhead can only have minor changes as it has because it it makes too many, it becomes ineffective and is no longer a threat.
Thus, if your defense system targets the warhead none of the other changes matter.
It's an easy target that neutralizes point of entry, but that also adds a great deal of selective pressure for mutations of the spike proteins, which we already know have an effective/successful mutation rate much higher than the rest of the virus. (Likely for the same reasons.)
But the ACE2 receptor is relatively lenient in what it will pair with compared to the immune system.
So a spike with multiple mutations is more likely to be able to continue infecting cells via ACE2, than the mrna-vaccine-induced-immuno-response (targeting only the spike region) is able to block it.
And because of this "fuzzy" matching, less than perfect mutations can perpetuate until other helpful mutations occur.
But each of these mutations is also a step closer to evading detection by the immune system, so they can be helpful over multiple iterations of mutations, even if there's no selective pressure/benefit provided per mutation. That it can continue to bind to ACE2 is enough, until it reaches a point where the immune system doesn't recognize and must re-learn that target.
Here are some problems with vaccines - people who have reactions to foreign organic matter can have organism going into a full shock and that can lead to a death. Apparently that is what is happening with Astrazeneca and Johnsons vaccines, as they are causing disturbances in immunity system(with less intensity than what covid is causing) and it can't calm down soon enough and causes the same reactions, that people are getting from covid infection, when immunity is mobilizing at max - essentially it is not covid, that is killing people, but reaction of immunity system. The most sensible action for this was to make immunity system to "forget" about covid(because it is freaking out immunity) and get attention of immunity to something else, that it knows - alcohol poisoning might be one of these.
Since I had reactions to penicilin, it seems that these vaccines are terrible idea to me in worst case scenarios(and this is where I have a line and where my sense of self-protection kicks in). I had calmed down my immunity reaction with alcohol - not claiming that it was the reason, but lookining in retrospect, I needed to calm down my nerves about something that nobody else at that moment was not sure how to deal with and the major consensus about covid at that times was that WE ALL ARE GOING TO DIE!!!, while in reality covid is not dangerous to 90% of humans, even more if their immunity system is not weakened and they are not old and stressed. Then there are other factors:
1. apparently people who had previous coronavirus infections, had stronger immunity reaction against covid as well(this basically answers the question of main topic).
2. blood type O and then blood type AB seems to had better results with covid - most probably because they either lack antigens or antibodies and does not fight against covid as much as immunity systems in other blood types. We now know, that covid was targeting blood system - up to the bone marrow and lung infection were just side effect of that targetting and fight with immunity(who was apparently fighting to the death of what it had to protect).
The whole strategy towards covid has gone south from the very start. For various reasons, and science is not among them - there seems to have been NEED to govern something at the scale of pandemic and this is what we have got. IMO there are more people who have died, because of actions to contain covid, than people who have been saved - and they have been saved mostly because of doctors who have not been following instructions(and were getting mocked and punished because they did not agree that sun was green, sky is yellow and deer is a horse), but acted on their own knowledge. So, I'm looking on WHO, CDC and others(unvaccinated, young people blaming old people in my country!) with utter horror what bureaucracy can do and how easily it can find others to blame and there is absolutelly no responsibility, because SYSTEM is responsible and bureaucrats are only cogs in this - just the same, as Nazis were doing their systematic work, where they could not punish themselves, because they could not see what horrific things they were doing.
IMO, vaccines are not giving long-term defense against covid and can't, because they were only meant as short-term defense, because there were no other medicines to fight covid. Young children and young adults who had contracted covid and went through it, in future might have the same effect as those people who had gone through SARS or other covid infections and now have better defense against covid.
Initially - 1 year before it was developed, I wanted to have a vaccine. Now I see no reason to have it and absolutelly have no wish to have it and now my attitude has changed to that it is potentially causing more harm and that most of the claims about any healthy effects of vaccines are baseless.
I am living in UK, in region, where has been done 100% vaccination for people aged 60+ and they are dying at the same rate(mostly vaccinated) as people are dying in my origin country, where vaccination rate is 50%(apparently most of the deaths are among unvaccinated). So, my take is that vaccination does not prevent deaths, but other reasons - overall health and immunity is one of them, and prevention of covid spread is another.
Whatever it is, the only way to slow down spreading covid, was shutting down borders - just like Japan and Taiwan was doing and just like China was doing when it was assuring, that covid was not dangerous. So, the borders in US had to be shut down between states, in Europe - between countries and for EU and US this is political issue, that is incompatible with mind of EU and US liberal bureaucrats, as that is like identity crisis - they would rather try something else, before agree that only one sensible action was to:
1. shut down borders
2. stop migration - in and out
3. allow border openings only between those regions, that have a zero covid cases
4. this is mindboggling, but the end result is that people, who were poor and with poorer health were confined to their houses, that degraded their overall health and covid was rampant among those, while people with good income(and health) and bureaucrats were still travelling around the world and spreading various covid strains with them. Probably after 100-200 years in future(because modern people can't judge their own, because they are part of the same society) people will look in disbelief at how people allowed this, where overall global political crisis(Essentially crisis of existence of US, that initially was fighting evil of USSR and eventually without that fight have lost it, subsequent rise of China, globalization which should lead to government of Earth - ironmically USSR, unlike Nazis wanted to take over and rule over whole Earth - it got only 15 republics, but last republic in global USSR would be Argentina...) played such a great impact on spreading pandemic. So, in the end immunity, vacciantion and pandemic can go down south, if people are moronic and have to sort out their political issues first and in this environment pandemic is a political weapon, just as well as any others.
The insistent downplaying of natural immunity reminds me of an old soviet scifi novel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Air_Seller, if one can get past the on-the-nose soviet motives.
I wonder — what is the dose when exposed to covid? If you get a small dose, test positive — but have a weak immune response, is your future protection small? One detail about the vaccine would be that it is a known dose. Would be great to have a metric like: “how likely are you to spread covid following either getting the vaccine or having covid” (beyond whether you personally are protected from severe disease). In a world where the variants are popping up fast, for sure we are going to have a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated people — whether it’s unvaccinated against a new strain or whatever.
This narrative has nothing to do with reality, because vaccinated people spread covid, too.
The common sense so far has been, that infectious(of any infections - not only covid, which is the worst of the inffection type - as it is airborne infection) people should not walk around and stay at home until they get through their infection. With covid, the issue is that it is not causing any symptoms in most cases and it can stay in organism for months - also without any symptoms. So, esentially any covid infected - vaccinated or not should avoid other people for ~1year, to be really sure that covid is gone.
Also, let's look on this from different perspective - people that has to be protected from covid are minority - ~10% at max. Among them there are higher chance that they will die from complications just from vaccines, so you might think, that by getting vaccine you might be protecting others, but I assure you - the best help that you can do is by not contacting other people, especially vulnerable people. So far, the main narrative is that vaccination helps and they happily go around and infect others - even with new strains... so, the end result is equally stupid.
IT people are very specific in their terms and biology and medicine terms are not as specific. I feel, that this is the main issue when talking about medicine, that terms are different. Doctors are not gods, they can't save everyone - essentially you should avoid ANY situation, where you are dependant on doctor(besides, they make err themselves, too and can kill completelly healthy person with their decisions - stuff just happens...) and that is the job of your immunity. Your overall immunity is more complicated, than antibodies against covid and where covid vaccination was meant to be quick and dirty and deal with covid quickly(before it starts to mutate) - that did not happen.
Good immunity has main jobs:
1. repel and quickly eliminate invaders(which is general common understanding of what immunity means)
2. realize, when the battle is lost and SURRENDER AND/OR COEXIST with infection and hope, that infection is as "sensible" and does not kill host
Natural immunity in medicine does not mean, that organism can't be infected, but how it can deal with infection AND at the same time not to cause organism to die.
So, with great immunity YOU CAN STILL GET INFECTED AND SPREAD INFECTION!!! This is what vaccination pushers don't understand.
Besides, the natural IMMUNITY here IS NOT A CONCERN OF OTHERS and should not be, but only about host organism. In the small world of genes(as a part of immunity) and viruses there simply is no understanding of the outside world and other hosts.
We all are unique - your immunity will differ from immunity of other people in an unique way. There is no way to make them all the same. That is the main mechanism of survival, where working immunity is bare minimum to survive and those who does not have it are meant to die. When you get older, your immunity gets weaker. This is the way.
The solution to this is very simple. If you want someone to be held accountable, you have to sue this person. Good luck in suing someone who is vaccinated and to be fair, I can't see this go well against someone who is not vaccinated. Everything has to be according to the law and law so far restricts someone who knowingly (vaccinated or not!)with covid symptoms contacted others, but can not held accountable for someone who had covid and did not thought of those symptoms as covid related.
Even if it is not clear, from reading about covid cases I would think, that humans are not the only ones who could transfer covid to other humans, but also animals - including birds, might be able to do so as well. There is a conflicting idea, that covid HAS TO JUMP ACROSS SPECIES, which means that it should mutate... well, we do not know if current mutations are results of that, but certainly there is no need to mutate for a covid to infect animal and then the same strain infects human. So, if that is the case(and I am 90% sure, that it might be so), human vaccination(and I am refering here to some vaccine, that actually works in fighting covid, not boosting immunity to fight covid) against covid might not be enough. So, are you going to blame your pet, where you can't get a vaccine for him?
Looking at economics just evaluating your immunity (doctor, test, doctor) is probably far more expensive and inconvenient than just getting vaccinated using mass vaccination facilities.
In France a non specialist doctor visit is 25 EUR, analysis of simplest kind is about 100 EUR, then you need another visit then may be another action (medication, more analysis).
Mass vaccine is about 20 EUR a shot.
In 2021 so far testing for COVID costed more than vaccine in France (6.2 vs 5.8 billions EUR).
Well, health is more valuable than any money. But I would not think, that maintaining health and knowledge is cheap. it sure is cheaper than being stupid and ruining lives of other people.
Next gen medicine requires DNA sequencing to understand what you have to look out for and what you actually do not need to care about. Since governments are lagging behind in this(though to be fair, that is planned eventually in some uncertain future date), it is up to you to do DNA sequencing today. Get your DNA sequenced and look on results - maybe you need to worry about something else and not covid.
My thinking is that 90% of people in general DO NOT NEED TO WORRY ABOUT COVID. Actually, worrying about covid and feeling uncertain is making people more stressful and that damages immunity. So, essentially, people who are making other people fear about covid and are INSISTING that everyone should be vaccinated are responsible for some % of the deaths from covid and from other diseases, because their immunity has been damaged from too much stress. Just stap stressing yourself and others.
If that will hold you back to look after your health, then there are easier choices to make a suicide.
Unlike in your country, my country is not providing free medical help, so no matter where you are looking for it - with private doctor or goverment subsided(that you still have to pay for, unless you are a citizen of different EU country), you still have to pay money to receive medical services.
Even though it shows natural immunity is strongest as one would expect one can not risk getting covid being unvaccinated as we can see from the same stats.
In Switzerland at least you are given a certificate if you have recovered from covid just as you would get one for vaccination.
You can also get 3 month long certificate based on positive antibody test that is an improvement upon EU side where you can only get 6 month long certificate based on previous positive PCR test result.
Since this data does not speak for itself, here is additional data:
Czech republic has ~60% vaccination rate.
I assume, that how it is with others 99% of deaths are 60+, 90% 65-80+ in both vaccinated and unvaccinated categories.
The vaccination status ends 3-6 months after shot, unless you get a booster shot. Obviously, that booster shot also has term, when it is considered to be vaccinated, so potentially you have to get unlimited boooster shots, unless covid ends or you die.
Also, covid among vaccinated in % provides less people needed to be treated, so overall, where people that had vaccine boosts, had greater % share, that had to be put on ICU. Btw, there is NO DIFFERENCE ON SURVIVAL RATE of people who are put on ICU - the chance of survival for both vaccinated and unvaccinated in my home country was ~60%.
IMO, all of the data in regards to covid should also show how well was their immunity and that is lacking in ALL charts. My gut feeling, is that mostly people who have no wish getting vaccines have some other health issues already - for ecample I have no wish to get vaccination and go through regular complications(with probability that it might cause shock reactions), because I have some other medical issues that I have to deal with. So, if the stupid idea is that miracle cure of vaccine is going to solve all health issues, well - in UK that is not working at all. People who are vaccinated are still dying.
Here is the MAIN ISSUE that I have with such data, that has been posted from all the sources everywhere:
NONE OF THESE EXPLAIN DEATHS OF FULLY VACCINATED PEOPLE(to be fair, even partly vaccinated people should be under miracle cure of vaccine...) So far NONE of vaccination pushers can explain deaths among people who had vaccines. Btw, in regions, where vaccination has been 100%, right now there has been no SLOWING DOWN of deaths from covid and covid cases, but they are going up. It's some kind of a religion, where zombifioed people are pushing for full vaccination and you sure can't shatter that faith in vaccines, even if VACCINATED PEOPLE ARE DYING!
So far there ONLY seems to be a greater coleration in regards to seasons in year, than vaccination statuss. There has been publications in regards that, but I would like to see ONE ackkkktual proof(without using lingo with - maybe, perhaps, possibly) that vaccination is improving immunity aginst covid for those people, that have strong immunity AND DO NOT NEED VACCINATION and for those people, who have weak immunity, and where vaccination is giving antibody development with much much lower levels(below average) - starting from 10% up to 0% and they fall very flat in very quick time after vaccination shot.
> NONE of vaccination pushers can explain deaths among people who had vaccines.
Vaccines are imperfect. They are particularly imperfect when given to patients with impaired immune systems. This is neither unexpected nor reason to think vaccines are not a good idea. Please do not resort to the Nirvana Fallacy! https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
Looking on your improper usage of word perfect, that reminds me, that my English is not as native and precise. But I actually meant, that:
NONE of vaccination pushers can(because they have no idea how to do that) explain deaths among people who had vaccines. And this was written in relation to garbage data that @op posted.
>>>This is neither unexpected nor reason to think vaccines are not a good idea.
No, I have exactly the opposite look on this and my opinion is that mass vaccination (of covid) is a terrible idea - not as much idea per se, but the way how it is executed. Because it is never a good idea, when people are fooled and promised a cure of covid, if that is not what is going to happen. We are seeing globally in different countries rise of covid cases, regardless if they have full or partial vactination statuss. So far there is better situation only where there has been no vaccination, as it might sound too cynical, but old and vulnerable have died(and they are dying when vaccinated anyway) and healthy and survivors have acquired long lasting covid immunity, that at this point is better than what vaccinated people have.
As for mentioning Nirvana fallacy, this really explains what vaccination pushers are doing, because nothing of what has been done with covid situation is realistic. Dude, when my fellow countrymen were under lockdown, and were fined, because they went out of their house and were outside having a smoke alone in their own property(!), some of the bureaucrats(or as some call them - guest workers, because they are working for EU and not for their country) were flying to Switzerland to buy watch(and they were not fined for nonessential flight!!!) and this is the way, how spread of covid was happening, getting across the borders new mutations of covid. Vaccination against this type of behavior is impossible. Be real - existing vaccines are already less efficient against covid delta and new variants, than those who has gained natural immunity, that has been acquired by recovering from covid.
Unless that is corrected for the age of the patients it won't tell us much. In particular, older patients are more susceptible to COVID, and also more likely to have been vaccinated, and similarly for patients with compromised immune systems.
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