[dynisor]

It sounds like a good thing!

Vaccines are made to target a specific or a specific set of pathogens.

The background states that when you gain immunity to the target pathogens, that’s called “antigen-specific adaptive immunity.” When you gain immunity to pathogens similar to, but not, the target, that’s called “cross-protective immunity.” Sometimes, vaccines provide “beneficial off-target (heterologous) effects that alter immune responses to, and protect against, unrelated infections.” It has never been tested if mRNA vaccines also show a similar benefit.

So the study has concluded that children who received the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine showed increased immune response to pathogens unrelated to COVID-19. Meaning that when children take this vaccine, they are less likely to die from other pathogens too! Which sounds pretty awesome.

[cempaka]

You've misread (or not read) the study. "BNT162b2 vaccination is associated with a decrease in bacterial and viral stimulant-induced cytokine responses one month after vaccination." It is showing reduced immune response to other pathogens.

[dent9876543]

I also think that's the intended interpretation (that it is showing reduced immune response to other pathogens).

I think the linkage with the showing of /increased/ immune response to pathogens unrelated to COVID-19 traces to a finding that, post-vaccine, there is an immediate and general reduction in mortality. (I may have summarised that imprecisely.) The presumption in anti-covid-vaccine-mandate circles is that it is a confounding factor, and the result of biases in how populations are segmented.

But the paper does highlight similar findings in the background ("In high-mortality settings, live-attenuated vaccines are associated with reductions in all-cause infant mortality greater than can be attributed to vaccine-specific protection alone (5–7)."), but it doesn't seem to revisit the topic. Which is a bummer. It would seem to be an important topic to address.

[cempaka]

Ah I see what you mean, but live-attenuated might be quite different from the mRNA vaccines. I wonder if the study authors at the outset expected the impact to be similar.

What I find dismaying is that this tiny study is the first and only examination of the impact on broader immune response from the mRNA vaccines (at least, that I have been able to find) after millions of doses were already administered.

[tempera]

Yeah, but they open themselves up to myocarditis so the risk far outweighs the benefit.