After the new crown vaccine, the immunity will continue to decline. What should I do?

Six months ago, Professor Miles Davenport of the University of New South Wales in Australia and his colleagues made a bold prediction: every 108 days, antibodies against the new crown virus will halve
.

At this rate, those vaccines that have achieved more than 90% protection in clinical trials will only have 70% of their effectiveness after 6-7 months

Unfortunately, this speculation is becoming a reality
.

With the release of more and more long-term data, it has been discovered that volunteers who have been vaccinated are at increasing risk of contracting the new crown

A very real problem has surfaced: if the new crown vaccine is finished, the immunity will continue to decline, then what should we do?

Recession is a misunderstanding

Recession is a misunderstanding

We first need to recognize the fact that the immune response brought by vaccines will become weaker, which is a normal phenomenon
.

Vaccines are designed like this.

After vaccination, the human body will quickly produce a large number of neutralizing antibodies, which can intercept the virus before it invades the cell
.

But these antibodies come and go fast, and the subtlety of the immune system is here: Imagine how many pathogens or vaccines have we been exposed to since birth? If the neutralizing antibodies produced by the body never decline, how much energy does our body consume to fill the blood with antibodies against different diseases that may never be used?

So the human body has evolved a smarter way: immunity at the cellular level
.

We don't need to prepare a large number of antibodies at any time, but as long as we have the ability to produce these antibodies at any time when we encounter real pathogens

Moreover, there are immune T cells in the body that can attack virus-infected cells
.

They can also work with antibodies to form a three-dimensional attack on the virus

Therefore, in the absence of actual infection, we detected that the level of antibodies in the volunteers was declining, which did not make much sense
.

The significance of the vaccine does not lie in how many neutralizing antibodies can be brought in the weeks to months after vaccination, but in the protection of the human body when it is exposed to the real new coronavirus

If one considers immunity at the cellular level, the claim that immunity is declining is not accurate enough
.

The number of immune B cells that produce antibodies has been increasing for at least half a year after vaccination, and the quality has also been improving, which can achieve better results with fewer antibodies; and the number of T cells has not dropped significantly

Vaccines can still bring protection

Vaccines can still bring protection

But scientists worry that even the memory of the immune system may not be so durable
.

Some data released by Israel in August of this year found that those who have been vaccinated for a long time are also more likely to contract the new crown, which seems to imply that the vaccine has lost its effect
.

▲The proportion of people who were vaccinated earlier (red) has a positive nucleic acid test (picture source: reference [4])

But these data are not as scary as they seem
.
Over time, it seems that more and more people have been vaccinated but infected with the new crown, but overall, this is still a small probability event
.
It is true that the data on vaccine prevention of infections seems to have deteriorated.
This spring, the infection prevention rate can reach up to 90%, while the recent prevention rate is only 60%-70%, but this does not mean that the vaccine has failed
.

When people see the 60%-70% set of data, they may think that 30%-40% of vaccinators will be infected with the new coronavirus.
This interpretation is wrong
.
The correct way to understand this data is that if one person is vaccinated and the other person is not vaccinated, then when they are all exposed to the new coronavirus, the risk of infection for the former is 60%-70% lower than the latter! As you can see, this is still good data
.

What's more, many reports did not distinguish the severity of the infection
.
For example, in the Israeli report, only nucleic acid tests were used to determine whether they were infected, but the severity of these infections was not disclosed
.
We don't even know whether the genetic material of these new crowns is still active, or whether it can be transmitted
.

Other data clearly point out that the vaccine can greatly relieve symptoms
.
For example, some early clinical data indicate that vaccines can reduce the risk of symptomatic diseases by 90%-95%
.
Even considering the Delta variant, this number has not dropped much now, about 80%
.

This is why many vaccinators who are infected with the new coronavirus have milder symptoms, shorter duration, and less likely to be transmitted to other people
.

The future is not terrible

The future is not terrible

Optimists believe that the epidemic will always disappear, even if it is not tomorrow, it will be in the near future
.
As the vaccination rate rises, the space for the spread of the new coronavirus will be further compressed
.

Even if the immunity from vaccines will continue to decline, this is not the end of the world
.
If a person is vaccinated and infected with the new coronavirus, his disease will be easier to control
.
Once recovered, it will be more difficult for the virus to infect the same person again
.

The role of the vaccine is to gradually control the virus so that the epidemic will no longer become a global health crisis
.

Moreover, we still have the option of getting more shots of the new crown vaccine-the first shot allows the body to initially recognize the appearance of the pathogen, the second shot allows the body to respond more strongly to it, and the third shot pushes the immune response up.
New peak
.
In life, it is also very common to require multiple shots of vaccines, such as HPV vaccine or hepatitis B vaccine
.

At present, many experts believe that it is not necessary to vaccinate healthy adults with perfect immune systems
.
This does not mean that there will be no need to vaccinate more needles of the new crown vaccine in the future, but at least the data obtained now is not enough to promote the vaccination of enhanced needles
.
This is good news
.
From a certain perspective, we can effectively control the epidemic without additional vaccines
.

Overall, the neutralizing antibodies produced by the vaccine may decrease rapidly in a short period of time, but it does not mean that the vaccine will lose its effect
.
For the decline of vaccine immunity, scientists have not expressed too much concern
.
At least when necessary, we still have ready-made means to enhance immunity
.
In contrast, many reports have expressed greater concerns about the global vaccination rate
.
After all, only a wider group of people can be vaccinated to reflect the group protection effect of vaccines
.
From this point, we still have a lot of way to go
.

Note: The original text has been deleted

Reference materials:

[1] COVID vaccine immunity is waning — how much does that matter? Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https:// What We Actually Know About Waning Immunity, Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https:// What does waning COVID-19 vaccine immunity mean? Experts say term is misleading, Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://globalnews.
ca/news/8202534/covid-vaccine-waning-immunity-explained/

[4] Israel et al.
, (2021).
Elapsed time since BNT162b2 vaccine and risk of SARS CoV-2 infection in a large cohort.
medRxiv, https://doi.
org/10.
1101/2021.
08.
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