Please stay away from social media for real information. Read the science
Hello; I got most of my take on the disease from a biology degree and over 30 years teaching science including Biology. Some things have not made sense when looked at from a long term experience point of view. I wind up having to use the internet as the rules of the discussion have gotten to to point of needing some authority to back things up.
Natural immunity is plenty good enough for most. I limit my take to those who recover on their own, as someone in hospital who needs a lot of support may not have a sound immune system. As time has been unfolding there is increasing evidence natural immunity is more than just good enough for covid as it has been for other virus. There in lie some of the disagreement, that some refuse to consider any source which does not already support the notion that shots are superior to natural immunity.
I was and still am genuinely curious as to the why some think natural immunity to be inferior to vaccine immunity. I did find one possible explaination and did post a link with the information. Seems for some in authority there is a very heavy favoritism for antibodies as the metric for judging immunity. It seems the way the mRNA shots were designed was to modify the protein spike production inside a cell so that the cell will make lots more protein spike copies than would be normally possible. After all the way the shots work is to insert protein making instructions into our cells.
So if your are the experts behind making and promoting the vaccines it does make sense to favor the thing the programed mRNA shots do well, which is make partial copies of virus protein spikes. The very large number of those spike copies causes the persons own natural immune reaction to generate a large number of antibodies.
Another group of vaccine and disease specialist favor the bodies normal way to deal with a pathogen. That is to have a many fold immune response. Not only antibodies but the normal memory cells that can stay in play long after the antibodies fade. There may be fewer actual total numbers of antibodies in a natural infection ( I do not know this for sure but from what I find this may be the case), but plenty enough antibodies in place to deal with the pathogen and allow the infected to recover naturally. The body can keep making more antibodies as needed. So what I find is those authorities who are favoring shots even for the naturally recovered may be basing their stance largely on antibody numbers.
Anyway there are specific covid studies now coming out which support that natural immunity is at least as effective to shot immunity and may be better. So my stance is still those who recovered naturally can skip the shots. A stance which started from decades of understanding and not from recent social media reports.
Hello; A secondary question for me is does the immunity from the shots generate a full immune response and not just antibodies. I think the answer is yes they do. So even the extra number of antibodies generated by the shots will fade over time and the vaccinated will have the memory cells that can jump start the body to make more as needed. In this way the shots and natural immunity seem to work the same.
The irony, to me , is that the shots actually use the bodies immune system to do the real work of making the antibodies and yet that same immune system is somehow supposed to not be good enough in a person who recovers naturally. Go figure.
It's odd how the two graphics both from the CDC indicate such different information
Hello; So true and this alone is enough for me to take information from the "official" sources with a grain of salt or few. I do not know why this happens. Is it simply the way numbers can be tweaked or it is it some other thing going on. Had I used some other source than the CDC for the graphs I post, the cry would have been a put down of the source.
