For those that like to try and get some scientific insight into some of this stuff from appropriate experts in the field there is a YouTube channel that I follow that just posted a video entitled "COVID Variants vs. Coronavirus Vaccines (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson) + Immunity" that might be of interest to some on this thread. It's 54:24 long and if I'm honest maybe a bit repetitive in places, I suspect it could have been edited down to not much more than half the length, but on the other hand it's nice that the guy being interviewed is allowed to talk and doesn't keep getting cut off by a change of subject as happens on so many TV news interviews. The timeline has annotated chapter markers so it is possible to skip to sections that have chapter titles that look the most personally interesting.
The bits I found most interesting were...
20:28 - I think many of us probably heard that the antibody response produced by the first dose of a vaccine is stronger in people who have already been vaccinated but I didn't quite realise just how much stronger. Apparently there are now 5 studies on this and the concensus this guy is reporting is that the level of antibodies produced after the first vaccination if you have already had Covid is about 50 (yes, fifty!) times that if you haven't. Throughout he mostly prefaces vaccine comments as being mRNA vaccines since he is in the USA so that is of most interest but the AZ, J&J and Novavax vaccines are mentioned a few times at various points in the interview.
25:00 - This is possibly where the discussion of variants and vaccines gets going.
38:43 - This is a discussion of infection stages that I found interesting and explains some of the underlying science theories right now about why protection from pretty much all the vaccines tends to be partial (still being determined) against transmission, good against mild/moderate symptomatic disease and spectacular against hospitalisation and death. One theory is that you need a much stronger immune response to fight off the very first stage of the infection when you might be asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms so you need very high antibody levels to fight the virus in that early stage. Once Covid-19 gets into your lungs though and starts potentially getting nasty that stage of the disease progression takes longer so your immune system has more time to fight the virus hence a lower level of immune response (antibodies, T-cells, memory B-cells) can still clear out the virus at that stage.
45:37 - A discussion of SARS-CoV-2 vs flu and an encouraging personal opinion about how the "boss fight"(*) might end.
Anyway, the full video is here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aOMs1l ... nedCLEARLYAnother one from this channel that I found useful was a deep dive into how the mRNA vaccines work...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK0C5tF ... nedCLEARLYStill long but at 34:28 not as long as the first one.
- Julian
(*) As servodude put it in another post put it which made me smile.
