The vaccine keys your immune system on a mostly unchanging part of the virus. It’s such a key part of the virus that for the virus to mutate that part it would be a dramatically different and less deadly mutation.
In an infection your body randomly keys on any of a large number of characteristics of the virus. Those almost certainly will be less lasting than the vaccine.
The virus will mutate no matter what regardless of vaccine. It's not the vaccines that are driving mutations. The vaccine basically programs a set of immune system regex stream filters. Maybe some mutants get past it, well then the immune system will generates another response to it as it goes on to infect other cells in the body etc...
Some of the original variants are thought to have arisen out of immuno-compromised pre-vaccinated patients. Maybe they got IVIg, monoclonal antibodies, or convalescent plasma.
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.
As I understand the theory here is that humans develop antibodies against the parts that mutate making our immune system ineffective, while a vaccine could teach the immune system a better part to identify against.
It seems more like vaccination reduces the amount of time it takes your immune system to react once it sees the infection (presumably because it already knows how to make antibodies and doesn't need to evolve them, just start producing again). Therefore, some people's immune systems will kick in and squash it so fast that they never realize they are infected, whereas others will realize it, and a few will succumb to it.
Still better than NOT having had the vaccine, but from what Israel tells us not as good as having had (and survived unscathed) the actual virus in a previous variant. Which, really, does not seem all that surprising. The vaccine has only one target from the virus for the immune system to evolve antibodies against; the actual virus has many more.
Mutation is not the only factor determining how often a vaccine would be given. If antibodies only last a year from the vaccine dose, it should still be given yearly, even if the virus has not mutated.
each time you are exposed via vaccine or getting infected, it builds immunity.
Getting exposed turns out to be similar to having gotten one shot, though Im sure the immune response has a wider antigen coverage.
Keep in mind that getting infected has a substantially higher risk of bad outcomes than getting the vaccine. Getting the vaccine substantially reduces the risk of bad outcomes.
Getting infected then getting the vaccine is not as good as getting vaccinated then getting infected.
Also getting infected likely makes you completely immune to that variant. But getting vaccines/boosters likely gives you stronger partial immunity to mutated variants.
Vaccines reduce the chance of a new variant by reducing the number of copies of the virus made in society. Every copy is a chance to mutate. Vaccines don’t create more mutations, any more than a person with zero immune response will produce fewer. They will produce more, because the virus will replicate more.
A vaccine prepares the immune system for the virus. It does not completely prevent infection or exposure. The infection is just so inconsequential that it's unnoticeable.
That last part is complicated because it’s a function of not just the vaccines but also the virus: some mutate more readily than others both by how well they tolerate mutations and how rapidly they spread (more cases = more chances to get the next big mutation). Our influenza vaccines have a similar problem because that’s also a respiratory virus which mutates frequently. Something which only spread by skin contact might, for example, be an easier target simply because it has a much slower spread and thus mutation rate — nobody gets on a bus and licks all of the other passengers!
So here’s my logic but sounds a bit different than yours…
While vaccinated people can be infected, the rate of infection is significantly reduced and therefore fewer opportunities for the virus to mutate.
But if the primary originator of variants are immunocompromised people then this wouldn’t be such a benefit.
Fundamentally, very viral replication has a similar probability of a mutation happening and so therefore (it seems to me) that immunocompromised people are only more likely to generate new variants bc their infections last so much longer. Is this correct?
That isn't how the immune system works. It's not a binary gate that's either open or closed. It's more like a war between two armies, and it depends on which side musters the larger army and how creatively the armies fight. If the vaccine reduces chance of infection, it will also reduce severity, because both operate via the same mechanism: antibodies killing the virus.
Oh FFS. Vaccination greatly reduces the severity of illness, which is to say it greatly reduces how many cells get infected and how much the virus is replicated in the body. This necessarily reduces the opportunity for a mutation to occur.
So tired of idiotic vaccination disinformation. It is always so goddamned moronic.
Antibodies from the vaccine are a lot more numerous and longer lasting in one's body. Apparently having had it only gives you a shorter duration of immunity.
Mutations in spike proteins don’t completely change it’s shape so they render a percentage of antibodies infective vs that specific strain. A boosted immune response can therefore be less efficient but still useful.
To simplify, Vaccines provide long term protection because the immune system builds infrastructure to rapidly create antibodies after infection cutting days off of the immune response. That’s huge because the virus has less time to replicate in your body. Vaccines use multiple injections to increase how much infrastructure is built and the number of types of antibodies being produced. Also this infrastructure decays over time if you never see the strain again.
However, in the short term your body reacts like it’s infected actually flooding the body with the appropriate antibodies. This isn’t sustainable but can crush most infections before they go anywhere. Kind of a bonus turbo mode which can be really helpful if your say going to treat people infected with the disease.
2--exactly the same thing happens if you get the disease. Thus it's not a reason against the vaccine unless the probably of it mutating before you catch it is high.
Not really, because they can still mount a strong response from the infection. The immune system is a lot more than just antibodies.
Even a weak response to the vaccine can activate bound antibody responses during challenge, which means the immune system is activated much faster and even though there is still infection it is much shorter, leaving less of a chance for the virus to mutate.
In an infection your body randomly keys on any of a large number of characteristics of the virus. Those almost certainly will be less lasting than the vaccine.
That’s why to get the vaccine.
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