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7 reasons why think immunity to COVID from vaccination or infection will be long-lived (and why I continue to marvel that CEOs of companies who stand to make profit from boosters get to message that boosters needed; instead, please donate vax to India).
1. Memory B cells:
1. Memory B cells:
We discussed this at more length before; remember this amazing memory B cell paper that showed us that 32 people ages 91-101 who survived 1918 flu pandemic STILL had memory B cells that could produce neutralizing antibodies to that strain 9 decades later https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07231">https://www.nature.com/articles/...
Memory B cells last long time & hang out in germinal centers (like lymph node) until they are needed again and then come out to produce neutralizing antibodies against the pathogen. Do we know COVID-19 vaccines produce memory B cells? Yes from this paper https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-310773/v1">https://www.researchsquare.com/article/r...
where biopsies of lymph nodes showed memory B cells strongly forming after vaccination. Remember, antibodies produced not just against spike protein (you see a lot of reports on this Ab) but against nucleocapsid proteins (buried deeper in virus basically) https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-06031-9">https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/...
2. T cell immunity generated by these vaccines; we know that for a fact because the phase I/II trials MEASURED T cell immunity generated these vaccines (see column 4 below). Moreover, we know strong T cell immunity generated by natural infection by multiple papers
These papers are below, in the following tweet thread ( https://twitter.com/MonicaGandhi9/status/1373510909868470272)">https://twitter.com/MonicaGan... and I will spend minute giving you details of my favorite two papers since they give the longest follow-up duration after natural infection showing that T cell responses have long-half lives
This paper by Dan et al. in Science looked at antibodies (from B cells), memory B cells, and memory T cells (both CD4+ and CD8+ cells) from 188 (80 male; 108 female) patients recovered from COVID (93% mild; 7% hospitalized) over 8 months. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6529/eabf4063">https://science.sciencemag.org/content/3...
Happily, memory B cells (relevant to reason #1) seen in almost all & half-life of T cells were LONG (~125-225 days for CD8+ and ~94-153 days for CD4+), comparable to the 123 days half-life observed for memory CD8+ cells after yellow fever vax (typically given once in a LIFETIME)
3. Memory T cells: Reason #3-related to 2- but MEMORY T cells form (last long time) as evidenced by this paper from @UCSF showing us CD8 T cells continuously differentiate for ~6 months after infection, into cells with features of long-lived memory T cells https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.28.441880v1">https://www.biorxiv.org/content/1...
4. T cells from vaccination last long time: Reason #4- We know T cells from vaccines last long time; paper on those who got measles vaccine as children with strong T cell immunity 34 years later. Antibodies can be stimulated by memory B cells-reason 1. https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/190/8/1387/878306">https://academic.oup.com/jid/artic...
5. T cells from natural infection with a related coronavirus that caused severe disease last long time. Reason #5. SARS-CoV is a coronavirus that- like SARS-CoV-2 (which causes COVID-19) -causes severe disease. Reminder of its course below. However, a Nature 2020 shows us
5 (continued) that T cell immunity from those who recovered from SARS in 2002-03 still strong 17 years later showing us that T cell immunity to coronaviruses last long time (again, antibodies may fade but can be produced again by memory B cells: reason #1) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z">https://www.nature.com/articles/...
6. 6th reason is that T cell immunity works against variants: hope you are convinced of this - thread here but remember that T cell immunity is very robust, in-breadth, forms across multiple parts of virus (including multiple pieces of spike protein) https://twitter.com/monicagandhi9/status/1379294379391676417?lang=en">https://twitter.com/monicagan...
7. 7th and final reason is that coronaviruses don& #39;t actually mutate that quickly -has strong proofreading mechanism where -if the virus mutates -it goes back and corrects it. Mutations can arise with high rates of replication when transmission is high https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1003760">https://journals.plos.org/plospatho...
but the virus should not mutate like this when cases are at low levels after mass vaccination. HIV and influenza mutate much more quickly than coronaviruses. So, hope with these 7 reasons, hope I& #39;ve managed to convince you to wait on booster discussion & vaccinate world
To date, no evidence that an adaptation of Pfizer/BioNTech’s current COVID-19 vaccine against key identified emerging variants is necessary. If we ramp up production of current vaccine for rest of world, we will all be safer. https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-details/biontech-announces-first-quarter-2021-financial-results-and">https://investors.biontech.de/news-rele...
