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Omicron Won't Ruin Your Booster
Sometimes, dips in immunization quality can be rescued with a little extra quantity.
Snip
But immunity isn’t a binary switch that some party-crashing variant can flip off. Even if a wily virus erodes some of the safeguards that our original-flavor vaccines have raised, it’s nearly impossible for a variant to wipe them away completely. “I don’t think we’re ever going to go back to square one of having no immunity against this virus,” Rishi Goel, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told me. Defenses, if they drop, should fall stepwise, not all at once: first against infection, then transmission and mild symptoms, and finally the severest disease. And vaccinated immune systems are extraordinarily stubborn about letting those last fortifications go.
Snip
Consider, first, what happens when a vaccine trains a body using a near-perfect pantomime of the pathogen that later appears. A COVID-19 shot pumps in a little lesson on coronavirus spike, modeled on the original virus; immune cells study its contents and panic, then scramble to sweep away the interloper. When the actual virus appears, the process repeats itself more swiftly and smoothly. T cells home in on infected cells and annihilate them; antibodies, churned out by B cells, anchor themselves stubbornly all over the spike, gumming on as tightly as “superglue,” as Christopher O. Barnes, a structural biologist and antibody expert at Stanford, puts it. This sticky strategy is particularly powerful: Antibodies can prevent SARS-CoV-2 from using its spike to dock onto vulnerable cells, or earmark the virus for violent destruction. The microbe can be cleared from the body before it even has time to cause symptoms or spread to someone else.
When a new version of the virus shows up, freckled with mutations, certain antibodies may start to lose their grip. (More than 30 of Omicron’s mutations are in its spike.) Some could stop tethering to the microbe entirely, while others might slip on and off the pathogen as if slicked with heavy palm sweat. That leaves the virus’s key protein uncovered more frequently, giving the microbe “more opportunity to interact with your cells,” Goel said, and wriggle its way inside.
That scenario is less than ideal but not necessarily a crisis. Spike’s a big protein, and some of the antibodies sparked by the original vaccines should still be stage-four clingers. Even antibodies with subpar stickiness “can still act in concert,” as long as they’re abundant enough, Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington, told me. Although each individual antibody might detach fairly frequently, if tons of others swoop in, even noncommittal molecules can keep the virus out of our cells. Antibody levels drop in the months after people get their shots—a natural and expected phenomenon—but boosters buoy them right back up, sometimes to new heights.
Snip
But immunity isn’t a binary switch that some party-crashing variant can flip off. Even if a wily virus erodes some of the safeguards that our original-flavor vaccines have raised, it’s nearly impossible for a variant to wipe them away completely. “I don’t think we’re ever going to go back to square one of having no immunity against this virus,” Rishi Goel, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told me. Defenses, if they drop, should fall stepwise, not all at once: first against infection, then transmission and mild symptoms, and finally the severest disease. And vaccinated immune systems are extraordinarily stubborn about letting those last fortifications go.
Snip
Consider, first, what happens when a vaccine trains a body using a near-perfect pantomime of the pathogen that later appears. A COVID-19 shot pumps in a little lesson on coronavirus spike, modeled on the original virus; immune cells study its contents and panic, then scramble to sweep away the interloper. When the actual virus appears, the process repeats itself more swiftly and smoothly. T cells home in on infected cells and annihilate them; antibodies, churned out by B cells, anchor themselves stubbornly all over the spike, gumming on as tightly as “superglue,” as Christopher O. Barnes, a structural biologist and antibody expert at Stanford, puts it. This sticky strategy is particularly powerful: Antibodies can prevent SARS-CoV-2 from using its spike to dock onto vulnerable cells, or earmark the virus for violent destruction. The microbe can be cleared from the body before it even has time to cause symptoms or spread to someone else.
When a new version of the virus shows up, freckled with mutations, certain antibodies may start to lose their grip. (More than 30 of Omicron’s mutations are in its spike.) Some could stop tethering to the microbe entirely, while others might slip on and off the pathogen as if slicked with heavy palm sweat. That leaves the virus’s key protein uncovered more frequently, giving the microbe “more opportunity to interact with your cells,” Goel said, and wriggle its way inside.
That scenario is less than ideal but not necessarily a crisis. Spike’s a big protein, and some of the antibodies sparked by the original vaccines should still be stage-four clingers. Even antibodies with subpar stickiness “can still act in concert,” as long as they’re abundant enough, Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington, told me. Although each individual antibody might detach fairly frequently, if tons of others swoop in, even noncommittal molecules can keep the virus out of our cells. Antibody levels drop in the months after people get their shots—a natural and expected phenomenon—but boosters buoy them right back up, sometimes to new heights.
Full article: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/12/covid-boosters-omicron-effective/620883/
There's some supposition in the scientific community omicron might have some levels of immune escape in those previously infected and even possibly in the the fully vaccinated. I'm posting this in hopes to explain how our immune response works in tiers a bit more. It's nuanced and complicated, but it's how our bodies work. We're pretty amazing creatures.
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