"You'll either get the vaccine or you'll get COVID"

[Hyacinth]

I saw this assertion a couple of times yesterday in one of the COVID threads (not-a-number, maybe it was from you?).

So, the more people who are vaccinated, the fewer places COVID has to go. And a virus WANTS to live, so it will find a home. It will mutate and seek out the unvaccinated.

Forgive my rudimentary unscientific language, but is my thinking correct so far?

[Laura Corin]

1 hour ago, Hyacinth said:

I saw this assertion a couple of times yesterday in one of the COVID threads (not-a-number, maybe it was from you?).

So, the more people who are vaccinated, the fewer places COVID has to go. And a virus WANTS to live, so it will find a home. It will mutate and seek out the unvaccinated.

Forgive my rudimentary unscientific language, but is my thinking correct so far?

Also not a scientist.  However, the vaccine virus doesn't have a minute-by-minute choice as to direction: it doesn't have agency to seek people out.  Virus particles will travel towards everyone convenient.  Those who are distanced, masked or vaccinated are least likely to get ill.  The others will have just as much contact with virus particles (rather than being sought out) but will have no barriers.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Laura Corin

[bolt.]

1 hour ago, Hyacinth said:

I saw this assertion a couple of times yesterday in one of the COVID threads (not-a-number, maybe it was from you?).

So, the more people who are vaccinated, the fewer places COVID has to go. And a virus WANTS to live, so it will find a home. It will mutate and seek out the unvaccinated.

Forgive my rudimentary unscientific language, but is my thinking correct so far?

No, I don't think your thinking is quite correct.

Viruses mutate at a steady rate. They just change every so often. The more bodies they are in, the greater the number of mutations overall, and therefore the greater the chance of a mutation-that-matters occurring. We reduce the chances of mutation by reducing the size of the infected population. More vaccinated people reduces that population, therefore it reduces the total number of mutation events, therefore it reduces the chances of a mutation-that-matters occurring at all (or less frequently).

Viruses spread by physics and biology. Anyone who is near enough to a source of the virus to pick up enough of that virus (in sufficient quantity with respect to their own immune system) will get sick. You need both a virus source and a vulnerable recipient for the 'transaction' to take place.

This means that the transaction can be prevented two ways: (1) A vaccinated person (or someone with remaining immunity) is not as vulnerable of a recipient, so they avoid becoming sick even if there is a source nearby them. (2) A person may be vulnerable, but if there is no source nearby them, they won't become sick because there is nothing to make them sick. Viruses don't 'want a home' they are equally 'happy' in their cone of transmission to land on a vulnerable person, an immune person, or a sidewalk. They just spread as many copies of themselves as they can because quantity=success.

Vaccination both reduces the mutation rate and prevents transmission events. Even unvaccinated people are less likely to get covid if they spend their time around vaccinated people. Worldwide, the greater the vaccination rate, the lower the mutation rate. It won't fight back and become more aggressive in response to a shrinking level of vulnerable people. (If we get a more aggressive strain it will be because it had plenty of people to incubate itself while it 'tried' all kinds of random changes until it got 'lucky' enough to enhance itself.)

[Jean in Newcastle]

In those threads I understood people to be saying “to have some sort of immunity “ “you’ll either get the vaccine or you’ll get COVID. “.   It is possible to not have any immunity and to win the viral lottery of not coming in contact with the virus. It’s just not a gamble that I personally want to take. 

[Innisfree]

Another not-a-scientist here. 

The virus (any virus) hijacks human cells to produce more virus. Every time it reproduces, there's a chance of a random mutation, most of which don't have any particular effect which might harm humans. Once in a while, though, a mutation makes it more dangerous to us: more contagious, perhaps, or more virulent.

The more humans get infected, the more the virus is reproducing, and the more chances it has to mutate. Then those mutated viruses are available to infect more people. Like Laura said, the virus isn't sentient. It doesn't want anything, but it reproduces, and if it's in the air someone breathes in, it can infect them. It doesn't seek out anything; it just exists, and then if it enters our cells, it reproduces.

The more people breathing out viral particles in a space, the greater chance you'll be infected.

If very few people in a region are infected and breathing out viral particles, the chance of another random person in the store being infected are lower. This is what we call herd immunity. If 90% (just picking a round number) of people in your town have immunity, there are only 10% who can still be infected. Right? So, if you are not immune, you are much less likely to encounter the virus in a random space, because most of the people around you will not be carrying the virus. This is what we need to achieve to protect the few people who genuinely can't be vaccinated, and those for whom the vaccination won't be fully effective.

if you're in a space which isn't random, though, like a church with a high percentage of people who don't get vaccinated, your chance of being exposed goes up. Or if you're in a school, where most people (the students!) aren't able to be vaccinated, your (and their) chance of being exposed goes up. Since evidence on how effectively kids spread the virus is limited, I'm not getting into any wrinkles about greater or lesser infectious potential based on age.

This virus has been so pervasive in our society that wiping it out entirely is not going to happen. It'll keep replicating in our communities, at higher or lower rates depending on local immunity. Reaching herd immunity will require higher vaccination rates than we're currently seeing in most of the U.S. 

Like any given strain of respiratory infection, we're all likely to encounter it at some time down the road. If we have immunity, with luck we either won't get infected, or the infection will be mild.

But... remember those random mutations? They could imperil the immunity we've managed to gain. If a mutation that evades our vaccines gets established, we could be back to the beginning, with no resistance.

So, the more people who acquire immunity, the safer we all are. But it's far better to acquire that immunity through vaccination than through infection, because if you are infected, your body provides a comfortable  little laboratory for the virus to (randomly, without thought or intention) play around with mutations, any of which could be bad.

[MEmama]

These explanations are excellent, and clear enough that they truly ought to make sense to even the most stubborn anti masker/anti vaxxer / bad faith nitpicker. 
 

 

[KSera]

18 minutes ago, Innisfree said:

But it's far better to acquire that immunity through vaccination than through infection, because if you are infected, your body provides a comfortable  little laboratory for the virus to (randomly, without thought or intention) play around with mutations, any of which could be bad.

Just to expand on the random mutations. While the mutations happen randomly, those mutations that lead to more spread, whether by being more virulent or evading the vaccine or whatever it is, will be the mutations that are successful and multiply and spread more. So while the mutations arise randomly, it’s not random that the mutations that allow it to increase transmission will be the ones selected for. 

[Pen]

3 hours ago, Hyacinth said:

I saw this assertion a couple of times yesterday in one of the COVID threads (not-a-number, maybe it was from you?).

So, the more people who are vaccinated, the fewer places COVID has to go. And a virus WANTS to live, so it will find a home. It will mutate and seek out the unvaccinated.

Forgive my rudimentary unscientific language, but is my thinking correct so far?

being “vaccinated” does not stop being infected with SARS2.
Being “vaccinated” does not stop getting Covid.
At least not for the vaccines where I read the study trials protocols in detail

in the case of SARS2, “vaccination” does not = immunity  *

 

successful outcome was to have no more than one Covid symptom total  in at least one trial protocol  I read

it is possible that vaccines increase pressure on virus to mutate to more powerful forms that will bypass the vaccine (instead of becoming more weak and endemic as viruses tend normally to do)   Quite a few unvaccinated people I know are just as wary of vaccinated people as carriers of extra bad virus as vaccinated people I know are wary of unvaccinated people    Not because the virus will “seek out” the unvaccinated but because of concern that the vaccinated are driving (and unwittingly carriers of) mutations that are “worse” (more dangerous in some way / contagiousness, severity ... ) and can get around the vaccines - while having low symptoms and no longer being careful themselves, so that being around them is extra dangerous   I guess it is pretty successfully driving an angry hateful rift between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Both directions. Both Literal distancing and metaphoric vitriol.

 I expect this comment of mine will likely be met with vitriol as previous ones have been. 
 

 

(Almost any measure taken can have this effect- if people stay 6 feet apart, virus good at traveling more than 6 feet will be most successful; if people wear masks, virus capable of spreading despite masks will be most successful, etc) 

 

in any case in my understanding (go ahead and show me I am wrong) it is an incorrect either / or statement.  You can get the “vaccine” And get Covid.   Whereas the statement, “You’ll either get the vaccine, or you’ll get Covid” implies those who get vaccinated will not get Covid.  The other direction also is not certain. Those who do not get the “vaccine” may or may not all get Covid. It sounds like a threat as well as an incorrect statement though. So maybe in a deliberate infection type way it could be true that all who do not get vaccine do get Covid, but it would not have to be so.  It is not necessarily the case that all in a population get a communicable disease going around. 

certainly in my own family and community there are many instances of one or a few members of a family getting Covid and the rest not getting it 
 

* incorrect belief that “vaccination” for SARS2 does equal immunity (as vaccination for tetanus should actually give immunity from tetanus for example; or as a dog or veterinarian vaccinated against rabies probably really is immune from rabies) will probably, in my own view,  add to a health crisis as vaccinated people behave based on erroneous belief that they are now “immune” in ways they would not behave if they realized that they are not immune.  (Yippee, travel, cruises, international flights...) 

Edited May 18, 2021 by Pen

[KSera]

8 minutes ago, Pen said:

being vaccinated does not stop being infected with SARS2.
Being vaccinated does not stop getting Covid.
At least not for the vaccines where I read the study trials protocols in detail

Pen has me on ignore, so if someone else was going to reply to this part, it would still be good to do so, but for others reading along, this is untrue. We have many studies now showing that in most cases, the vaccines are actually preventing infection at all. That wasn’t shown in the initial trials, because that wasn’t the end point they were looking at. The vast majority of vaccinated people will not get Covid at all. The virus can’t mutate in any of those vaccinated people it won’t infect. Worrying about being close to vaccinated people for fear of the virus, but not about being near unvaccinated people makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever.  

[Hyacinth]

Thanks for your patience, everyone. I appreciate the responses. 

[Bootsie]

Can somebody explain at what point "infection" is said to have occurred?  If a virus attaches to a living cell and then enters it, is it the penetration of the cell that then classifies the person as being "infected"?  Or, is it not until the virus has copied its genome that the person is infected?  Or, is it the escape of the progeny virions that is then classified as "infected"?

[Pen]

3 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

Can somebody explain at what point "infection" is said to have occurred?  If a virus attaches to a living cell and then enters it, is it the penetration of the cell that then classifies the person as being "infected"?  Or, is it not until the virus has copied its genome that the person is infected?  Or, is it the escape of the progeny virions that is then classified as "infected"?

Afaik , others may give different answers, it is at the significant multiplying stage .   Especially if there are symptoms of illness. We don’t usually use word “infected” for our normal microbiome. 

[Pen]

9 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

Can somebody explain at what point "infection" is said to have occurred?  If a virus attaches to a living cell and then enters it, is it the penetration of the cell that then classifies the person as being "infected"?  Or, is it not until the virus has copied its genome that the person is infected?  Or, is it the escape of the progeny virions that is then classified as "infected"?

 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29398104/

The human virome is composed by the set of all viruses, eukaryotic and prokaryotic, present in the human body; as each body compartment constitutes a different microenvironment, the virome varies with the body part

 

 

We could consider all viruses even if not harmful (perhaps even beneficial) to be “infection” — but I expect you mean when they are harmful. Which may actually depend on other aspects of the microbiome in part what is and isn’t harmful 

[wathe]

23 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

Can somebody explain at what point "infection" is said to have occurred?  If a virus attaches to a living cell and then enters it, is it the penetration of the cell that then classifies the person as being "infected"?  Or, is it not until the virus has copied its genome that the person is infected?  Or, is it the escape of the progeny virions that is then classified as "infected"?

Generally, infection means the organism has invaded, and is multiplying.  You are right, though, that there is a spectrum of infectedness.  Which is why public health generally uses clinical case definitions rather than purely biological definitions.

[Bootsie]

1 minute ago, wathe said:

Generally, infection means the organism has invaded, and is multiplying.  You are right, though, that there is a spectrum of infectedness.  Which is why public health generally uses clinical case definitions rather than purely biological definitions.

Can you explain what clinical case definitions are?  

 

[Penelope]

3 hours ago, Hyacinth said:

I saw this assertion a couple of times yesterday in one of the COVID threads (not-a-number, maybe it was from you?).

So, the more people who are vaccinated, the fewer places COVID has to go. And a virus WANTS to live, so it will find a home. It will mutate and seek out the unvaccinated.

Forgive my rudimentary unscientific language, but is my thinking correct so far?

This virus also has a number of animal hosts, which is one reason it won’t be eradicated. 
 

As other said, it doesn’t “seek out” anyone, it’s an equal opportunity infector. When encountering a vaccinated person, a previously infected person, or (maybe) someone like a younger person with stronger innate immunity, the immune system kicks in and eliminates the virus before it can replicate on a larger scale. 
 

 

[Katy]

Technically it’s not accurate, but maybe the exceptions prove the rule. 

Some people are immune without the vaccine. Some people can transmit the virus without becoming infected themselves. We don’t have enough data to state exactly who, how many, why, or at what viral load they’ll get it.

Some people have contracted different strains of the virus and have gotten sick more than once.

Some people (about 5% in the USA), got the vaccine and got infected anyway.  So far very few people who are fully vaccinated ended up hospitalized or dead.  While there have been deaths after the vaccine from rare blood clots, or from people taking too much tylenol and inducing liver failure, there have been no deaths from anaphylaxis.  Not all the genetic work from breakthrough infections is in, but it’s suspected most of the breakthrough infections are newer mutations. 

[TCB]

4 hours ago, Hyacinth said:

I saw this assertion a couple of times yesterday in one of the COVID threads (not-a-number, maybe it was from you?).

So, the more people who are vaccinated, the fewer places COVID has to go. And a virus WANTS to live, so it will find a home. It will mutate and seek out the unvaccinated.

Forgive my rudimentary unscientific language, but is my thinking correct so far?

Not necessarily the only 2 options. If there is a combination of enough vaccinated and enough immune due to having Covid, the rate of infection for those not in those 2 categories will be lower because less susceptible hosts should decrease the incidence of the virus, and therefore the risk. Vaccination often protects the unvaccinated this way.

[Not_a_Number]

5 hours ago, Hyacinth said:

I saw this assertion a couple of times yesterday in one of the COVID threads (not-a-number, maybe it was from you?).

So, the more people who are vaccinated, the fewer places COVID has to go. And a virus WANTS to live, so it will find a home. It will mutate and seek out the unvaccinated.

Forgive my rudimentary unscientific language, but is my thinking correct so far?

I don't think I quite said that! I think if the virus stays at pandemic levels, then one's chance of getting COVID if unvaccinated is high. But if we vaccinate enough people, that certainly won't be true. 

[Hyacinth]

1 hour ago, Not_a_Number said:

I don't think I quite said that! I think if the virus stays at pandemic levels, then one's chance of getting COVID if unvaccinated is high. But if we vaccinate enough people, that certainly won't be true. 

I'm sorry if I misquoted/misinterpreted you! I don't think you were stating an absolute. Not that I can remember which thread, but I think your comment was more along the lines of "Think about it this way . . . I'm either going to get the vaccine or I'm going to get COVID. Which side effects are likely to be worse?"

At any rate, it got me thinking . . .

[Not_a_Number]

5 minutes ago, Hyacinth said:

I'm sorry if I misquoted/misinterpreted you! I don't think you were stating an absolute. Not that I can remember which thread, but I think your comment was more along the lines of "Think about it this way . . . I'm either going to get the vaccine or I'm going to get COVID. Which side effects are likely to be worse?"

At any rate, it got me thinking . . .

I’ve definitely done that kind of loose reasoning 🙂 . I do feel like the chance of eventually getting COVID if we still have a pandemic AND we go back to normal life (which sounds very appealing!) is very high. Hence the vaccine...

[wathe]

2 hours ago, Bootsie said:

Can you explain what clinical case definitions are?  

 

Sure.  A set of criteria that public health uses to define a "case", for public health surveillance purposes.  The covid numbers that you see reported in the news would be based on case definitions, and they would be used to set policy etc.  Example:  Ontario case definition

Basically a way to define the disease without going into the minutia of the pathophysiology (and especially useful when the pathophys isn't completely understood - ie emerging new diseases)

 

Edited May 18, 2021 by wathe

[wathe]

I feel like I'm not expressing myself well.  Case definitions use practical (rather than purely biological/physiological) criteria used to define a case.  They are obviously driven by biology/physiology, but don't necessarily use bio/phys only to define cases.  And case definitions tend to get revised as we learn more about emerging diseases.  On Ontario, the Covid case definition has been revised multiple times as our understanding evolves.

Edited May 18, 2021 by wathe

[wathe]

The CDC explains it better than I do!

[Bootsie]

1 minute ago, wathe said:

I feel like I'm not expressing myself well.  Case definitions use practical (rather than purely biological/physiological) criteria used to define a case.  They are obviously driven by biology/physiology, but don't necessarily use bio/phys only to define cases.  And case definitions tend to get revised as we learn more about emerging diseases.  On Ontario, the Covid case definition has been revised multiple times as our understanding evolves.

This is helpful.

When scientist say that the vaccine can prevent someone from being "infected" by COVID, does this mean that the vaccination helps prevent the virus from attaching the the cell, penetrating the cell, replicating once it is in the cell, or for the progeny to escape the cell?  

 

[KSera]

39 minutes ago, Bootsie said:

This is helpful.

When scientist say that the vaccine can prevent someone from being "infected" by COVID, does this mean that the vaccination helps prevent the virus from attaching the the cell, penetrating the cell, replicating once it is in the cell, or for the progeny to escape the cell?  

 

I may be wrong, and someone please correct me if I am, but my understanding in the studies showing the vaccine preventing transmission has been that asymptomatic infection has been based on testing positive on a PCR test. The original vaccine studies were not doing testing on asymptomatic individuals, which is why they couldn’t initially make any claims about how will they did or didn’t do in preventing asymptomatic infection. Subsequent studies have been done with frequent testing to determine the degree of asymptomatic infection in vaccinated individuals, and that’s how they’ve been able to determine the vaccines are largely preventing transmission.

[prairiewindmomma]

I haven't said this, but this is kind of my thinking to.  It's like influenza---it's just going to be omnipresent.  You get a vaccine, and you hope that if you get influenza you're asymptomatic or have a mild disease course. If you don't get vaccinated, you just kind of assume that at some point, it may get you.  We all know those rare people who haven't been sick in 20 years, iykwim, but they tend to be the outliers.

Two key differences, which we've talked about ad nauseum---the covid vaccine (so far) is showing WAY more efficacy than the influenza one, AND mortality has historically been a degree of magnitude higher with covid than with influenza. For me, that kind of changes the dynamics on how much value I put behind a covid vaccine compared to an influenza one.

[Wheres Toto]

20 minutes ago, KSera said:

I may be wrong, and someone please correct me if I am, but my understanding in the studies showing the vaccine preventing transmission has been that asymptomatic infection has been based on testing positive on a PCR test. The original vaccine studies were not doing testing on asymptomatic individuals, which is why they couldn’t initially make any claims about how will they did or didn’t do in preventing asymptomatic infection. Subsequent studies have been done with frequent testing to determine the degree of asymptomatic infection in vaccinated individuals, and that’s how they’ve been able to determine the vaccines are largely preventing transmission.

Pretty much.   When the vaccine trials were started they were primarily concerned with illness and death, because people were dying.   Even a vaccine that did nothing but prevent death would have been a HUGE benefit all by itself so they made the endpoint basically the minimum result they wanted to see.

Subsequent to the trials, they've taken a deeper look at the data, tracked further endpoints and have determined it is effective to decrease transmission, as well as the original endpoints for preventing illness and death.

It's not that unusual for a study to adjust its endpoints based on early data.  We're just paying way more attention to this one than most people pay to any trial.  

[Moonhawk]

2 hours ago, Hyacinth said:

I'm sorry if I misquoted/misinterpreted you! I don't think you were stating an absolute. Not that I can remember which thread, but I think your comment was more along the lines of "Think about it this way . . . I'm either going to get the vaccine or I'm going to get COVID. Which side effects are likely to be worse?"

At any rate, it got me thinking . . .

I've said something similar to this. I was saying in a lot of anti-vaccine media they are looking solely at the vaccine's cons list in order to make a decision whether or not to take the vaccine. However, I was stating that a proper risk-benefit of the vaccine should include Covid's risks as well: you can't come to a good decision on the vaccine without looking at the risks of Covid. (I said it much better in the original post I think, lol). It was pointed out that it is not an either/or scenario [because you won't 100% get Covid if you don't get the vaccine], which is technically true, but I was discussing risk analysis, and in terms of risk/benefit the worst-case scenarios need to be taken into account, and the worst-case scenario of not getting the vaccine is getting Covid, and so Covid's likely worse case scenarios are valid to weigh in the decision. 

(It may not be my comment you were remembering, but in case it helps trigger for you where you did see it...I've spent days before looking for a random post and it drives me nuts, lol)

[Not_a_Number]

3 minutes ago, Moonhawk said:

I've said something similar to this. I was saying in a lot of anti-vaccine media they are looking solely at the vaccine's cons list in order to make a decision whether or not to take the vaccine. However, I was stating that a proper risk-benefit of the vaccine should include Covid's risks as well: you can't come to a good decision on the vaccine without looking at the risks of Covid. (I said it much better in the original post I think, lol). It was pointed out that it is not an either/or scenario [because you won't 100% get Covid if you don't get the vaccine], which is technically true, but I was discussing risk analysis, and in terms of risk/benefit the worst-case scenarios need to be taken into account, and the worst-case scenario of not getting the vaccine is getting Covid, and so Covid's likely worse case scenarios are valid to weigh in the decision. 

(It may not be my comment you were remembering, but in case it helps trigger for you where you did see it...I've spent days before looking for a random post and it drives me nuts, lol)

Although to be fair, I think it's better to weigh the probability of getting COVID and not the worst-case scenario. 

The worst-case scenario for getting in a car is that we get in a car crash and die, but that's not going to be how I think about driving a car, you know? 

[Moonhawk]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

Although to be fair, I think it's better to weigh the probability of getting COVID and not the worst-case scenario. 

The worst-case scenario for getting in a car is that we get in a car crash and die, but that's not going to be how I think about driving a car, you know? 

Yeah, that's true. I put "worst case of not getting the vaccine" but only "worse case of Covid", not worst-case for this reason. For me, weighing the vaccine against 2 weeks sick with Covid -- certainly not an easy infection but far from the crazy stuff -- would probably be where I would set my thing. the 50% mark of worse-ness, as it were 🙂. I should have explained myself better though, thanks for pointing out.

[Not_a_Number]

5 minutes ago, Moonhawk said:

Yeah, that's true. I put "worst case of not getting the vaccine" but only "worse case of Covid", not worst-case for this reason. For me, weighing the vaccine against 2 weeks sick with Covid -- certainly not an easy infection but far from the crazy stuff -- would probably be where I would set my thing. the 50% mark of worse-ness, as it were 🙂. I should have explained myself better though, thanks for pointing out.

I think my personal estimate is something like probability of COVID times average case of COVID. And probability of COVID is currently going down, so I can imagine weighing that, if I felt like it was certain to STAY down... which I'm not at all certain about.  

But I'm definitely going to do way more things with the kids this summer than I would if the case numbers were high. So I'm obviously using the probability of COVID in the calculation! 

[Not_a_Number]

8 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I think my personal estimate is something like probability of COVID times average case of COVID. And probability of COVID is currently going down, so I can imagine weighing that, if I felt like it was certain to STAY down... which I'm not at all certain about.  

But I'm definitely going to do way more things with the kids this summer than I would if the case numbers were high. So I'm obviously using the probability of COVID in the calculation! 

Actually, I suppose the average case doesn't bother me that much. More like probability of COVID times the probability of a course of COVID I really don't want happening is what I worry about. The problem is that I'm having trouble estimating the latter for a kid 😕 . 

[wathe]

2 hours ago, Bootsie said:

This is helpful.

When scientist say that the vaccine can prevent someone from being "infected" by COVID, does this mean that the vaccination helps prevent the virus from attaching the the cell, penetrating the cell, replicating once it is in the cell, or for the progeny to escape the cell?  

 

That would be a textbook length answer.  Bottom line:  The vaccine itself doesn't fight the infection.  The vaccine primes your immune system to recognize the virus and fight the virus.  The immune response is complicated.  It will both mop up loose virus and kill infected cells.

Links to get you started down the rabbit hole:

CDC primer

British Society for Immunology

professional journal summary paper  Fundamentals of Vaccine Immunology

 

 

[Bootsie]

30 minutes ago, wathe said:

That would be a textbook length answer.  Bottom line:  The vaccine itself doesn't fight the infection.  The vaccine primes your immune system to recognize the virus and fight the virus.  The immune response is complicated.  It will both mop up loose virus and kill infected cells.

Links to get you started down the rabbit hole:

CDC primer

British Society for Immunology

professional journal summary paper  Fundamentals of Vaccine Immunology

 

 

Thanks.  I will begin my summer reading...

(My mom seemed to think that somehow the vaccine was equivalent to putting herself in a bullet-proof bubble where if there were virus particles in the air they just couldn't reach her 😞  I knew that conversation wasn't correct, but I will have to read up to unerstand more what does happen.)

 

[Pen]

7 hours ago, Bootsie said:

This is helpful.

When scientist say that the vaccine can prevent someone from being "infected" by COVID, does this mean that the vaccination helps prevent the virus from attaching the the cell, penetrating the cell, replicating once it is in the cell, or for the progeny to escape the cell?  

 

 Very oversimplified, the “vaccine” (I am assuming mRNA here) goes into cells and causes the cells it goes into to produce spike protein. The antigen for spike protein is presented on cell surfaces. Immune system “sees” the antigen on cell surfaces and starts producing antibodies to those antigens. The cells that made the spike and presented antigens will be attacked by immune system, killed, and cleaned up by body clean up systems.
Next time the same or recognizably similar antigen arrives the immune system can presumably mount a much faster acquired arm of immune system response (antibodies/ and even if antibodies have dissipated by then presumably Memory immune cells can pretty quickly make new antibodies) than if the immune system had never seen that antigen (or recognizably close) before.  
 

It tends to be especially helpful at least in theory and if all works as planned in people with poor innate immunity .  Innate immunity is first line of defense immunity and does not utilize specific acquired antibodies for a particular antigen (though innate immune system also “learns” and has its own sort of memory or training

 

Acquired immunity (whether from experience with the wild virus infection or whether from an effective vaccine) tends, of your choices, to prevent significant replication and escape because many cells will be targeted when they present antigen and killed before they can make/put out lots of new virus.  
 

It is the innate immune system though which can act earlier in various ways before a virus could even attach to a cell.
 

The acquired immune reaction is after virus will have penetrated cell and antigen gets presented on cell surface. 
 

(I spent ~4 years studying immunology but many years ago, so that may be out of date and certainly way oversimplified, but I think remains basic current understanding (modifications for how I understand mRNA to work compared to traditional vaccines). ) 

——

A whole other potential problem is ADE

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32908214/

Data from the study of SARS-CoV and other respiratory viruses suggest that anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies could exacerbate COVID-19 through antibody-dependentenhancement (ADE). Previous respiratory syncytial virus and dengue virus vaccine studies revealed human clinical safety risks related to ADE, resulting in failed vaccine trials.

 

Which, afaik, we just do not know yet because it is too soon. That would be something if it is an issue that I would expect to see maybe next winter or even the one after

 

in failed trials for other vaccines where ADE has been an issue afaik, at first there seemed to be extremely robust antibody formation and very promising looking results... only quite a bit later there were a very high number of ADE deaths in subsequent illness seasons.  I have heard some suggestions that Covid19 was itself already an ADE problem (such as tending to attack people previously immunized for something else, like flu vaccine) but have never seen convincing data either to establish or repudiate that theory. 

Edited May 19, 2021 by Pen

[KSera]

10 minutes ago, Pen said:

whole other potential problem is ADE

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32908214/

Data from the study of SARS-CoV and other respiratory viruses suggest that anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies could exacerbate COVID-19 through antibody-dependentenhancement (ADE).

This has been looked at extensively, and the vaccines were developed specifically to avoid this, and have been very successful at doing so. There are lots of articles about this. https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/91648

An excerpt:

Scientists designed animal studies to look for ADE. They looked for it in human trials, and they've been looking for it in the real-world data for COVID-19 vaccines with emergency use authorization. So far, they haven't seen signs of it. In fact, the opposite is happening, Lowe noted.

"[W]hat seems to be beyond doubt is that the vaccinated subjects, over and over, show up with no severe coronavirus cases and no hospitalizations. That is the opposite of what you would expect if ADE were happening," he wrote.

Furthermore, ADE is an acute problem, and it can be very dramatic. If it was an issue with these vaccines, we would have spotted it by now, said Brian Lichty, PhD, an associate professor in pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster University in Toronto.

"It'll kill you quickly. In all the places I'm aware of ADE happening, it is an acute, mostly cytokine-driven event,"

____________
apparently there’s a whole cell Chinese vaccine that has the potential to be an exception, though it hasn’t been seen so far.

* as mentioned above, Pen has told me that she has me on ignore, so she won’t see this

[Pen]

@Bootsie another problem is that there’s an assumption that the spike protein alone is not dangerous, but that may well be a false assumption https://www.salk.edu/news-release/the-novel-coronavirus-spike-protein-plays-additional-key-role-in-illness/

This is not actually brand new information. I saw it in a Chinese study some months back , and it has been raised by a whole group of European doctors and scientists raising the issue of vascular damage in a letter to the EMA . 
 

Edited May 19, 2021 by Pen

[KSera]

2 minutes ago, Pen said:

@Bootsie another problem is that there’s an assumption that the spike protein alone is not dangerous, but that may well be a false assumption https://www.salk.edu/news-release/the-novel-coronavirus-spike-protein-plays-additional-key-role-in-illness/

 

Which is super interesting and important to study, but as the first paragraph of that article says:

Now, a major new study shows that the virus spike proteins (which behave very differently than those safely encoded by vaccines) also play a key role in the disease itself.

 

[Pen]

9 minutes ago, Pen said:

@Bootsie another problem is that there’s an assumption that the spike protein alone is not dangerous, but that may well be a false assumption https://www.salk.edu/news-release/the-novel-coronavirus-spike-protein-plays-additional-key-role-in-illness/

This is not actually brand new information. I saw it in a Chinese study some months back , and it has been raised by a whole group of European doctors and scientists raising the issue of vascular damage in a letter to the EMA . 
 

I cannot find a link to the older China study right now, but here is one to the letter to EMA. 
 

https://viruswaarheid.nl/belangrijk/letter-to-ema-28-february-2021/

Letter to EMA by Professsor Sucharit Bhakdi and colleagues- 28 February 2021. Emer Cooke Executive Director European Medicines Agency Amsterdam The Netherlands. 28 February 2021. Dear Sirs/Mesdames, FOR THE URGENT PERSONAL ATTENTION OF: EMER COOKE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE EUROPEAN MEDICINES AGENCY.

 

[Pen]

20 hours ago, Hyacinth said:

I'm sorry if I misquoted/misinterpreted you! I don't think you were stating an absolute. Not that I can remember which thread, but I think your comment was more along the lines of "Think about it this way . . . I'm either going to get the vaccine or I'm going to get COVID. Which side effects are likely to be worse?"

At any rate, it got me thinking . . .

Probably hyperbole that everyone would get SARS2 - even on cruise ships not everyone did - even some people sharing a stateroom had one get it the other not. 

 

for example, extremely exaggerated sounding from POV my area where it arrived with a visitor from city and then moved through in a very patchy way where one or a few in some families got it (none I know of personally had everyone get it) and the rest not, while most other families were missed entirely .   this is a substantial organic farming and backyard gardening area, with some permaculture people, and so forth, and while good nutrition and more time in nature and organics etc etc are considered woo and sneered at by many or unavailable due to circumstances for others — they do all IME probably add considerably to natural immunity along with the greater spacing ... because it isn’t just spacing as we know some families with 9-11 people in relatively small houses for family size and several  together in shared bedrooms where just 1 or 2 got it and it didn’t even spread to all bedroom sharers  And cases were truly mild 

but can depend on circumstances —

in some areas / circumstances probably  it’s less hyperbolic and arguably more likely than not to happen

for example in nursing homes where once introduced it would infect almost everyone and with often devastating results

or less devastatingly in some close living situations such as Northeast Orthodox Jewish Communities where nearly everyone got it early — and most as I understand it, recovered well and then got on with living with natural acquired immunity

 

[Laura Corin]

29 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

or less devastatingly in some close living situations such as Northeast Orthodox Jewish Communities where nearly everyone got it early — and most as I understand it, recovered well and then got on with living with natural acquired immunity

 

That doesn't seem to agree with the reports I have seen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/nyregion/coronavirus-jews-hasidic-ny.html

 

[Pen]

10 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

That doesn't seem to agree with the reports I have seen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/nyregion/coronavirus-jews-hasidic-ny.html

 

I only have a dozen or so close friends from such community and all really are tied to one close friend of over 30 years. And I’ve had talks with (or written communications or classes with) a few rabbis from some of those backgrounds over the years including one who Yael Aldrich gave me a contact for with regard to a personal matter. But mostly any info came via friend route, not newspaper. And as such represents a small segment. 

I got invited to my close friend’s home for a Shabbat which is one of the special Memorable and moving experiences of my lifetime, and I got to know some other people too at that time. (Plus my friend is married with children and grandchildren now. So maybe that makes more than a dozen.)   (Eta all the same community group though I think with contacts to others)

 Anyway early it did look / sound extremely scary.  ETA: I found early reports from various friends in various parts of NYC and surrounding areas and various ethnicities and social groups deeply concerning.  I think I was more worried and concerned early when relatively few on WTM were because of these (I do not mean just those in Orthodox community, but from around 15 years living in NYC and surrounding areas, and some relatives still in those areas) personal contacts. Later that reversed. The impression I got later - and also after Zev Zelenko - was more commensurate with what was said in videos done by Peter Santello. I like the videos anyway. As he visits different groups  in America (Amish, Hasidic, etc) 

Example I think: https://youtu.be/jUDFpt6lcew

 

I think Yael who is a member here probably is a better source for personally knowing lots of people in the Orthodox communities more widely. I am giving my personal understanding,  but it’s long distance and limited. 

 

Generally most of the people I know from when I lived in NYC and surrounding areas who got hit by cv early were hit hard, but most recovered well. (A sort of foster brother of mine with lots of risk factors had a very long bout but is also now recovered.)

More recently since being up more optimally on Vitamin D etc, no one I know has been hit hard by it.   eta the Etc includes things most of you here probably do not believe in, so that there may be indeed probably is a divergence between “people I know’s experience” and “people you know’s experience” for that reason and perhaps other reasons as well - but I think if you go back in the long thread you would see how genuinely worried I was a year ago, and then following forward see that I am in a different place now because my knowledge base and personal experience and experience of people I know changed over that time. 

. 
 

Edited May 20, 2021 by Pen