|
|
|
|
|
|
by angelzen
1688 days ago
|
|
|
I found a Feb 2021 piece from Derek Lowe a good 30k ft overview of how the immune system works. tl;dr it is stochastic, with a wide range of antibodies having different effects against an infection, some of them even negative (OAS). Usually the aggregate effect is positive, and the infection is cleared out. "It's important to realize, though, that all immune responses to a viral infection generate a mixture of neutralizing and non-neutralizing antibodies. That's one of the things about the immune system - it revs up production of a wide variety of antibodies, selected from the untold billions of them circulating around in your bloodstream. Some of them bind to one part of the pathogen, and some to another. And they bind in different conformations, sticking to different parts of the surface of the invading virus from different directions." It is conceivable that a targeted vaccine is more effective at shutting down an infection than natural immunity by focusing the immune system to produce a narrow band of very effective antibodies. The tradeoff is that a virus mutation can create a catastrophic situation where the same antibodies are less effective, possibly having negative efficiency enhancing the infection. The risk is amplified by vaccinating the entire population with the exact same protein sequence, creating hundreds of millions of living incubators for the virus to learn how to evade the narrow antibody response. We are creating a biological landscape prone to black swan events. Good luck convincing any total vaxer that this is a very real risk. They will laugh and sneer and maybe call you criminal because obviously the data shows the vaccines are safe and effective. "Hahaha, I've been told that we're all going to be dead by now, look at those peddling conspiracy theories." Just like the Wall Street crowd created the run-up to the 2008 crisis. Who could have possibly predicted that CDOs were prone to a black swan? https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/antibody-dependent... |
|
|
If you don't survive the problems of today, then there's no point in worrying about tomorrow's possibilities because you're dead.
The data does show that the COVID vaccines are generally safe and pretty effective. Not 100%, but the perfect is the enemy of the good, and so let's try to improve our lot now so we have a chance to fight for later.