I’m confused. What happened to vaccine waning in ~2 months? That seems inconsistent with longer waiting = greater benefit….sort of. Is waning reduced after multiple jabs? I could understand if we weren’t in a surge. Please unpack this.
I’m confused. What happened to vaccine waning in ~2 months? That seems inconsistent with longer waiting = greater benefit….sort of. Is waning reduced after multiple jabs? I could understand if we weren’t in a surge. Please unpack this.
My hazy understanding is that protection from infection wanes due to a steep decrease in antibodies. But the deeper immune response is better if you wait a while between vaccinations (or vaccinations and infections).
My main concern (which I know is shared by a substantial segment of people on this substack) is avoiding infection — multiple people here, over the years, have asked why we can’t just keep boosting (3-4 X/year) to get more antibodies — or why we can’t use monoclonal antibodies.
That one guy in Germany had hundreds of vaccines and is fine and has never had Covid. Sure, that’s extreme…but it also begs the question:
****Like…is that dangerous? Expensive? Knowing the reasoning for the advice about waiting, from the specific lens of people who need to avoid infection but also really really need their normal lives back, would be very helpful. ****
Doctors seem really focused on propping up the deeper immune response, but doing so seems to require us to fly without a net (= no protection against infection) for months and months. Which, if you don’t have reason to be afraid of an infection, may be a totally reasonable risk, but if you do need to be careful, requires unacceptable alterations to one’s life.
I would really love it if YLE would explain what this balancing act is all about, because it’s confusing to non-scientists.
After getting the last booster when it came out, I then caught covid over Christmas break and was out of it for a week+. "You'll recover in 5 days!" What a joke - I could leave bed at 5 days. I was still recovering a month later.
I don't understand how preventing absences and sickness isn't a consideration. At my kid's elementary school, everybody remarks on how much sicker the kids are now. I can only assume this is a post-covid reaction of some sort. We went from no absences with masking to falling into the level of getting a truancy letter for number of days out sick! Surely someone can collate the changes in sick days out in a school district over the last five years.
It seems really clear that even people who aren’t high-risk are much better off avoiding infection. You’re not the only healthy person I know who’s taken a month to get better.
As a practical matter, kids need to learn, adults need to work. Our national and personal economic health can’t easily absorb people being under-productive for 4-8 weeks a year. The US labor market just doesn’t have that kind of wiggle room. Even if only 20% of people are hit that hard, that’s a lot of lost productivity. (It goes without saying that those who develop long Covid are losing so much more, and they’re being largely abandoned, which is a national disgrace.)
Really good comment, C.T.B. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that vaccination is supposed to keep one out of the hospital, but not necessarily from getting sick. But, that doesn't really seem to account for how different COVID is from, say, the flu. COVID seems to be the perfect storm; not that bad for most people, certainly not bad enough to have bodies lying in the streets (anymore, for current variants). But, it's much more debilitating and costly (short and long term) than endemic first -world infections have been for maybe more than a century. Unfortunately, misinformation and extreme polarization don't make already difficult risk and cost-benefit choices any easier...
I’m confused. What happened to vaccine waning in ~2 months? That seems inconsistent with longer waiting = greater benefit….sort of. Is waning reduced after multiple jabs? I could understand if we weren’t in a surge. Please unpack this.
My hazy understanding is that protection from infection wanes due to a steep decrease in antibodies. But the deeper immune response is better if you wait a while between vaccinations (or vaccinations and infections).
My main concern (which I know is shared by a substantial segment of people on this substack) is avoiding infection — multiple people here, over the years, have asked why we can’t just keep boosting (3-4 X/year) to get more antibodies — or why we can’t use monoclonal antibodies.
That one guy in Germany had hundreds of vaccines and is fine and has never had Covid. Sure, that’s extreme…but it also begs the question:
****Like…is that dangerous? Expensive? Knowing the reasoning for the advice about waiting, from the specific lens of people who need to avoid infection but also really really need their normal lives back, would be very helpful. ****
Doctors seem really focused on propping up the deeper immune response, but doing so seems to require us to fly without a net (= no protection against infection) for months and months. Which, if you don’t have reason to be afraid of an infection, may be a totally reasonable risk, but if you do need to be careful, requires unacceptable alterations to one’s life.
I would really love it if YLE would explain what this balancing act is all about, because it’s confusing to non-scientists.
After getting the last booster when it came out, I then caught covid over Christmas break and was out of it for a week+. "You'll recover in 5 days!" What a joke - I could leave bed at 5 days. I was still recovering a month later.
I don't understand how preventing absences and sickness isn't a consideration. At my kid's elementary school, everybody remarks on how much sicker the kids are now. I can only assume this is a post-covid reaction of some sort. We went from no absences with masking to falling into the level of getting a truancy letter for number of days out sick! Surely someone can collate the changes in sick days out in a school district over the last five years.
It seems really clear that even people who aren’t high-risk are much better off avoiding infection. You’re not the only healthy person I know who’s taken a month to get better.
As a practical matter, kids need to learn, adults need to work. Our national and personal economic health can’t easily absorb people being under-productive for 4-8 weeks a year. The US labor market just doesn’t have that kind of wiggle room. Even if only 20% of people are hit that hard, that’s a lot of lost productivity. (It goes without saying that those who develop long Covid are losing so much more, and they’re being largely abandoned, which is a national disgrace.)
Really good comment, C.T.B. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that vaccination is supposed to keep one out of the hospital, but not necessarily from getting sick. But, that doesn't really seem to account for how different COVID is from, say, the flu. COVID seems to be the perfect storm; not that bad for most people, certainly not bad enough to have bodies lying in the streets (anymore, for current variants). But, it's much more debilitating and costly (short and long term) than endemic first -world infections have been for maybe more than a century. Unfortunately, misinformation and extreme polarization don't make already difficult risk and cost-benefit choices any easier...