Vaccines
This thread gives a more general discussion of this preprint and says that while antibody levels in the blood, yeah, do go down for six months, the memory B cells totally rock at ramping up antibodies when needed.
This thread gives a more general discussion of this preprint about waning vaccine effectiveness in Israel. This thread cautions, however, that that preprint did not adjust for socioeconomic status and this thread notes that the symptoms database is noted by the paper authors to be unreliable.
I want to remind everybody that the vaccine effectiveness might wane, but the effectiveness against severe cases continues to be excellent. This is not surprising: it takes about five days to make new antibodies, but once they get made, they get made in huge, overwhelming numbers.
This thread is a nice summary of what we know about waning immunity. (Though she’s wrong that vaccines are designed to prevent infection: the criteria for Warp Speed was a certain effectiveness against hospitalization and death.)
This preprint also says that immunity against infection wanes after a few months but that immunity against hospitalization remains very strong.
This preprint says that the Sputnik-V vaccines works okay, with 81% effectiveness against hospitalization (during Delta) compared to other symptomatic patients.
Disease
This preprint adds to the evidence that interferons are really important in fighting COVID-19, and that a significant number patients with severe cases have traitorous antibodies which attack the interferon system.
Long COVID
I really want to know how bad Long COVID is in vaccinated people. I keep waiting for more information, and I keep not seeing it, not even in anecdotal reports. Aside from the self-reported Survivor Corps survey and seven Israeli health-care workers who still had symptoms after six weeks (one of whom had not returned to work), there’s NOTHING out there.
While absence of reporting on a problem is not the same as an absence of a problem, I still think it’s encouraging that I’m not hearing much.
This preprint from June about Long COVID and ME/CFS: it says that filtering the blood has helped a very small number of patients. It says that both Long COVID and ME/CFS might be due to a specific auto-immunity.
Recommended Reading
This article talks about what worked and what didn’t when the University of Illinois tried to do in-person classes last year.