So, do we know that an additional booster increases T-cell response? (aren’t B cells involved in some manner too?). Asking specifically for the Pfizer…is there a correlation between T-cell response and antibody level? would love a link giving that info. Open to changing my mind…
But it seems that the measure of vaccine success has been antibodies (hence ‘the antibodies are waning’ cry).
B cells make the antibodies. T cells are helper cells and killer cells but don’t make antibodies.
If you want to stimulate more T-cells (versus B-cells / antibodies), you may want to boost with a J&J vaccine if you have not already had it.
Looks like you have a pretty good combination of Jx1 + Mx2, making use of what vaccine diversity exists in the US.
I look at it as $75 and an extra blood test along with the travel to get to the testing site vs just getting the booster a couple of miles away. I haven’t had issues with any of the shots so far, so have no reason to expect issues in the future. It’s far easier to have my body deal with another vax than see if it needs to via just antibodies.
If any of us had had major side effects from the vaxxes, then it’d probably be worth seeing what my antibody levels were at to weigh if more side effects were worth the jab, but that just doesn’t apply to our family.
I have been thinking about this. It’s disappointing that there are apparently no study results (yet?) on what happens when one has an mRNA primary series + booster and then gets J&J for the 4th shot.
If we just had more information! I notice that none of the doctors on the Sunday news shows (including Dr. Fauci) ever mention long covid. (Or if they have done so, I have missed it.) It’s all about vaccinations preventing hospitalization/death.
The CDC’s priority is clearly to make sure there isn’t strain on the medical system. And as long as there isn’t, masking/distancing/capacity limits are unnecessary. No mention at all of the potential looming public health crisis when the full extent of long covid becomes known in the coming years.
H and I got our boosters together last night at our County’s walk-in megasite. They were robocalling to let people know it was available, pretty much the second the announcement was made.
My biggest issue at this point is long covid. Just don’t know about what will pop up later, and would rather avoid that.
Also boosters do cut down on infection, even with Omicron. And I have unvaxxed small folk in the family.
I have zero concern about the number of vaccines. Bring’em on.
You are right that there are a lot of things that we do not know about Long Covid. We could definitely have a looming public health crisis, but I personally have faith in the scientific and medical communities to find solutions for our Long Covid problems long-term. In the short-term, we will have to assess our own individual risks and precede accordingly. I tend to be a naturally cautious person, but I don’t have any issues with anyone with a “higher risk profile” when it comes to social interactions in the Covid era, because I believe that we have enough information on how to protect ourselves regardless of the choices of others.
I don’t understand your reasoning. It’s always better to PREVENT a long-term problem if you can, instead of hoping that the medical professionals can TREAT it later. If we’re trusting them to come up with treatments, why don’t we trust them when they tell us what to do to prevent problems?
From what I’ve read there is not a consensus among medical professionals that this booster is needed by all that are eligible. We haven’t decided what we are going to do yet. We are still reading differing advice.
I linked to an article by an epidemiologist I trust. She goes through all the available information and recommends people get it unless they are fully vaccinated and certain that they got the omicron variant. That’s good enough for me.
(And it IS only people over 50 - I wouldn’t tell my kids to get it)
Update from the epidemiologist that I just got: “BA.2’s footprint in the U.S. is starting to show. National indicators are pretty steady right now, but this can change quickly. Will it be a wave? We don’t know. But it doesn’t really matter if you prepare: get boosted, have a plan to get post-infection treatment, like Paxovid, order free antigen tests, and start wearing masks if county cases are increasing.”
I believe that it is already too late to truly prevent a problem with Long Covid when it is projected that over 143 million people in the US have already had Covid based on blood sample projections (as of late January). I have not had Covid as far as I know and continue to take some precautions (I have been a social distance person for the last 30 years), but since we have hundreds of millions of confirmed Covid survivors world wide (and more likely in the billions) along with understanding that Covid in some form is probably here to stay, Long Covid treatments and prevention therapeutics will matter. Each person will have to make there own determination of their risks. The CDC has loosened their overall guidance so your comment on the “why don’t we trust them when they tell us what to do to prevent problems” confuses me.
I completely agree with you. I think one reason is that physicians have decided to pick their battles. If someone posted on this thread about the seriousness of long covid, I’m sure there will be a few eye-roll emojis pop up. You see probably the majority of citizens who say they are “over” covid or are willing to live with it as an everyday virus. Add in that there are no true experts in the area, since there is so much we don’t know about it, the number of anti-vaxxers or covid deniers, the lack of a clear definition of what long covid is and what it means, and the absence of the “shock value” of the numbers of people in body bags, full morgues, and images of people tethered to ventilation machines results in the absence of serious discussion of long covid.
With that said, I think many of us know what is coming: the burden of chronic disease in the future attributed directly or indirectly to covid. Next year someone may develop Graves disease of the thyroid. Two years from now, someone gets MS. Five years from now, someone gets Parkinson’s, etc, etc. Covid-related? Some people will never accept the association.
But there is plenty of research going on. This is a nice thread of what is happening in the brain. Lots of medical jargon, but you can see the volume of research (done by scientists who are not interested in selling a book, promoting themselves on TV, or wanting a government position). Each power point is a summary of what they think is happening, the pathophysiology, pathologic findings, etc. You can skip the ones that look too confusing, but see the association with future disease (Parkinsons, MS, dementia, loss of brain function, mental health/psychoses) developing following infection. Too soon to say if it will be reversible or not, but in all likelihood it will be irreversible. Which is why you want to avoid infection in the first place.
My husband works at a med school in NYC. They removed the mask mandate a few weeks ago, and sent out an email yesterday that while they weren’t requiring masks yet, they highly recommended them. DH is mostly alone in his lab or office, but says maybe half the people in the building were wearing masks. There’s no question our numbers are going up.
I continue to be pretty cautious because I really don’t want to get long Covid.
I wish he would speak about long covid on the network news shows.
That’s one powerful slideshow. Thanks for linking to it.
This is the problem I am having (not that I’m eye rolling, of course). In the studies and articles I’ve seen, there’s a lot of variation in what “long” means and none of the definitions mean what I think when I think “long”. Specifically, the studies and articles will use something in the range of 3 months or 6 months, whereas when I hear “long” I think, well, “forever”. So it’s hard for me to gauge the risk.
Similarly, of the different symptoms of long COVID, there are some that scare me to pieces and some that I don’t feel concerned about. It would be sad to lose my sense of smell for two months, but awful to lose mental acuity for a year. So how do I think about the risk? I’m pretty sure it’s not as extreme as my wildest imagination. But not nothing, either.
The other issue is that the long COVID information we have so far is from studies either on unvaccinated populations, or on populations for which vaccine status is not disclosed. What I wish we had was: risk of symptoms organized by some sort of quality of life measure – classed by vaccination status – one or more years after infection. But this kind of information has been literally impossible to gather until this year. Maybe someone is gathering it now.
And maybe more immediately, the increase of vascular problems that has been documented post-COVID… though, maybe those are reversible.
Have you posted this on the medical thread? Obviously I haven’t checked yet and won’t have time right now… but if not, I think you should. I’m not sure everyone who is on that thread cares about reading this one and that link is definitely medical news worthy IMO.
Hadn’t thought about it - will do
Thanks