Why Natural Immunity Kicks the Butt of Mediocre Vaccines
Amid the pugilistic back and forth between autocratic vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, it’s easy to miss a more important point. Natural immunity — what a person is rewarded with after surviving a COVID infection — is arguably far superior to what the current vaccines offer. Why? In two words, immunological memory. Are these new-tech mRNA vaccines good exemplars of what vaccines should be designed to do, what levels of protection they can offer? Or are they mediocre exemplars, offering only thinner slices of that protection level conferred by natural immunity?
Although I’ve addressed this twice before in the past year, I’m going to post one more time, in this case, in the context of immunological memory. Simply put, the available global data and my personal experience of doubly vaccinated friends who have contracted COVID suggest that the vaccines are mediocre at best because they appear not to induce a full-fledged durable version of immunological memory, which characterizes all truly protective vaccines like polio and measles.
This probably explains several observations. First, the waning of immunity with time leading to an undesirable infection rate (“breakthrough cases”) in fully vaccinated individuals. (For example, see the recent study at https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-doctors-find-severe-covid-19-breakthrough-cases-mostly-older-sicker-2021-08-20/). Second, why trying to require vaccination for individuals recovered from an actual infection by the COVID virus (SARS CoV-2) is a highly questionable and wasteful idea. Third: Why vaccine manufacturers never released the full immunological data from their vaccine trials.
Advantages of Durable Immunological Memory
In simplest terms, immunological memory means that once you’ve made a full-component response to a pathogen, your second and subsequent responses to the same pathogen will occur more rapidly and produce the full range of immune defenses against that pathogen (the target). Such defenses even include diversification of the repertoire of antibodies to defend against related pathogens. In other words, arrows that both hit the target and take aim at others which your immune system may not have yet encountered.
Backup Response, Mucosal Antibodies, T Cells
Without plunging very deeply into the molecular biology, let’s focus on the COVID consequences of having this sort of memory contrasted with having a weaker, more transient form of immunity (as more likely induced by these experimental vaccines). In the mediocre vaccine case, you get antibodies that fade away over time — that turn over as do all biomolecules — but no backup response as that antibody protection fades. The range of defenses is also narrower in the sense that they fight off only the specific viral type identified in the vaccine. And beyond blood antibodies (so called ”G” class) there may be a lack of other classes; like the “A” class that protects your mucous membranes — nose, throat, airways, digestive system (GI tract). This A class is typically present in natural immunity. It can both protect you against further infection by the virus right after you breathe it in and protect you from being a spreader of the virus when you breathe out. You can think of class-A antibodies as a specific adhesive that glues virus particles to your nasal membranes, preventing them from descending into your lungs, and also, from being expelled back into the air around you. Logically, this mucous membrane level protection is a key element in attenuating spread and reining-in the pandemic.
In addition, do the vaccines elicit weaker participation by Immune System T cells, key players in both establishing durable immunological memory and killing cells that would become virus-production factories? Certain of these T cells are important is establishing durable memory, while others can recognize and kill cells within which the virus is reproducing. While this process can contribute to your symptoms, it’s also an important mechanism for resolving the infection.
Rapid and Diversified Protection
A durable memory response occurs more rapidly —for example, over seven to ten days rather than two to three weeks for an initial encounter with a pathogen. The A class of antibodies are made in your mucous membranes together with the G class in your blood (as well as the E class whose functions are beyond this discussion). As importantly, the antibodies are more diverse in that they target not only the target pathogen presented by the vaccine, but other related, sometimes even unrelated pathogens as well. With molecular-process names like affinity maturation and somatic hypermutation, this means that you get a broader shield of protection.
It’s as though a pair of sunglasses designed to shield your eyes from UV rays undergoes a change in its molecular structure to also become resistant to the penetration of x-rays. Although this is a crude analogy, immune system antibody-producing cells, during these memory processes do indeed undergo molecular (DNA) rearrangements eventuating a more diversified and durable shield against a broader range of pathogen invasion. Natural recombinant DNA in animals originated millions of years before biotech accomplished it.
Overall Superior Resistance of Natural Immunity
If I’m right and the current vaccines don’t induce T-cell-dependent memory and robust A-class antibodies, then recovery from infection, natural immunity, would clearly confer superior resistance. Crucially, natural immunity can produce durable memory. You are now better protected, able to produce those mucosal (A type) antibodies that also make you less likely to transmit, and if you’re exposed again, your immune response will be faster, produce a broader spectrum of antibodies, possibly protecting against viral variants (mutants like delta) and beyond. Nature’s biotechnology, developed over millions of years, is far superior to new biotech developed over 18 months. Anyone who grasps the immense complexity and potential of natural processes should be neither surprised nor dismayed by this observation.
Better Vaccines Coming?
Let’s hope so. I’m cautiously hopeful about a nasally administered vaccine that claims to activate T cells and provide good mucosal immunity. But it’s early in the process, so it’s wait-and-see. I think I’m going to N-95/ handwash it until something like that’s available.
Why No Data?
I could speculate about what might be going on in a vaccinated person contracting COVID, but it’s probably best to await more evidence. Since Pharma never waved self-congratulatory flags about their data concerning A-class antibodies, T cells, or memory immune cells, my suspicions about the type of immunity elicited by the vaccines are not very upbeat. To say the least.
I myself will currently refuse any more jabs and their attendant ka-ching in Pharma’s purse. Stay home as much as possible and be cautious otherwise. Await the release of better vaccines like the nasally administered ones, which in early trials, promise better mucosal immunity and T cell participation. For confirmation of the superior power of nasally administered vaccines in blocking transmission (the most important action to stifle a pandemic), see this post in Oct 14, JAMA online: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2785303?guestAccessKey=02990c50-059f-45f5-a8dd-ecdaa014d912&utm_source=silverchair&utm_campaign=jama_network&utm_content=covid_weekly_highlights&utm_medium=email
Each of us must make his or her own decision. And while social impact should be considered together with personal impact in those decisions, autocratic booster mandates will mostly just feed and strengthen the power that corporations like Pfizer exert over our lives, as they further perfect a version of racketeering that would make organized crime jealous.
