pje16 wrote:I never said anything about isolation
my point was that it is NOT better to catch it than to say NO to another vaccine
just remember, it's not likely, BUT it can kiil you
My point is your mate HAD the vaccine yet STILL got covid.
The talk about 'boosters' isn't to give even better protection - the current vaccine protection is already considered incredibly good compared to most existing vaccines - the talk is to replace waning vaccine protection back up to original levels of protection.
Using your mate as an example is nonsensical, because he had the vaccine and still got infected, and since it's only around 8 months since the very first people started being given the vaccines, it's unlikely that he'd be due for a booster yet anyway, even if it was decided that boosters were needed! The flu jabs are annual, and that's typically to protect against new strains, not to 'boost' the same vaccine as the year before.
My comment about isolation was stemming from your suggestion that his covid experience was horrible... my point was that he got covid INSPITE of having had the vaccine.
If you still don't want covid even after you have had the vaccine, then you need to make sure you don't come into contact with the virus.... that means isolation, distancing, etc, which would to some extent be making the vaccine a waste of time in the first place.
You typically use vaccines so that you CAN then put yourself in the path of the virus.
I'm really struggling to understand the rationale of your using your fully vaccinated mate who then caught covid as an example.... what exactly are you trying to say?
Chances are your mate was vaccinated with a vaccine designed to target the original 'alpha' strain, and his recent infection was probably the 'delta' strain, showing how 'narrow' the vaccines are, and how it doesn't take much of a mutation to significantly lower the vaccine protection against new strains.
But from the article...
"Whether you've had Moderna or Pfizer or Oxford-AstraZeneca, your body is learning to spot just one thing - the spike protein.
This is the critical part of the virus to make antibodies to, and the results - by keeping most out of hospital - have been spectacular.
But having the other 28 proteins to target too, would give T-cells far more to go at.
"That means if you had a real humdinger of an infection, you may have better immunity to any new variants that pop up as you have immunity to more than just spike," said Prof Riley."
In other words, your mate is probably now far better protected against a much wider range of potential variants than anyone who has only had the vaccines but not caught the infection itself.
You never know, if enough people get the broader protection from vaccine + infection, that might actually allow us to reach herd immunity, which doesn't look like it's going to be possible from vaccination alone.