Yes I agree, the message conveyed the wrong impression to such a large and diverse audience, the vast majority of whom would lack the scientific knowledge to appreciate any subtleties and nuances. The problem is that immunology is an incredibly complex subject and it takes years of study to even gain a knowledge of a fraction of that complexity. Fortunately for us the immune system generally works well without our understanding, evolution and natural selection are powerful forces.
The crucial thing is that our immune system has surveillance for multiple aspects of an infectious pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2. T-cells and B-cells also tend to see different aspects of viral protein structure. B-cells are more focussed on the 3-dimensional tertiary structure, whereas T-cells are more focussed on the peptide sequences, primary structure. You also have a polyclonal cellular (T and B-cell) response seeing multiple primary and tertiary “epitopes” of the virus protein. As the virus picks up mutations it tends to knock out the ability of some B-cell clones and some T-cell clones to see and respond to the virus. However the virus is also constrained in that any mutations it makes in its proteins might impact adversely on essential functions of those proteins. What this means is that even a partially matched vaccine will boost sufficient numbers of T-cell and B-cell clones that you will have a quicker response to a new infection compared to if you hadn’t been vaccinated at all. Obviously the better the match, the better the response, it’s a quantitative effect and not a qualitative binary yes or no effect.
Thanks, that's reassuring to hear from you that I've not got completely the wrong end of the stick! (And of course good news to hear that immune systems are great too)
As with a lot of posting, it seems he got more caught up in the status game than trying to give important context. It is at least more accurate than most of financial, economics and politics twitter posting.
Yes I agree, the message conveyed the wrong impression to such a large and diverse audience, the vast majority of whom would lack the scientific knowledge to appreciate any subtleties and nuances. The problem is that immunology is an incredibly complex subject and it takes years of study to even gain a knowledge of a fraction of that complexity. Fortunately for us the immune system generally works well without our understanding, evolution and natural selection are powerful forces.
The crucial thing is that our immune system has surveillance for multiple aspects of an infectious pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2. T-cells and B-cells also tend to see different aspects of viral protein structure. B-cells are more focussed on the 3-dimensional tertiary structure, whereas T-cells are more focussed on the peptide sequences, primary structure. You also have a polyclonal cellular (T and B-cell) response seeing multiple primary and tertiary “epitopes” of the virus protein. As the virus picks up mutations it tends to knock out the ability of some B-cell clones and some T-cell clones to see and respond to the virus. However the virus is also constrained in that any mutations it makes in its proteins might impact adversely on essential functions of those proteins. What this means is that even a partially matched vaccine will boost sufficient numbers of T-cell and B-cell clones that you will have a quicker response to a new infection compared to if you hadn’t been vaccinated at all. Obviously the better the match, the better the response, it’s a quantitative effect and not a qualitative binary yes or no effect.
Thanks, that's reassuring to hear from you that I've not got completely the wrong end of the stick! (And of course good news to hear that immune systems are great too)
As with a lot of posting, it seems he got more caught up in the status game than trying to give important context. It is at least more accurate than most of financial, economics and politics twitter posting.