UKH

How come people are losing their antibodies so fast that they're needing boosters after 6 months, yet we don't need boosters for all the other things we're routinely vaccinated against?  I can understand viral mutations causing a loss of efficacy for the antibodies produced, but for antibody levels to simply drop so far so fast? Is that normal?  What would we expect antibody levels for Tetanus or MMR jabs to look like after 6 months?

If this bird flu continues to spread will we need to get rooster vaccinations too?

What about flu?

There is a difference between vaccination and immunisation!

The immune system is complicated, with multiple levels of response. Antibodies are one level, and are produced to attack an infection, but decline naturally once the infection has been dealt with. It would be inefficient to keep the blood full of all antibodies that have ever been needed. So the immune system has memory cells, that can trigger antibody production again if the infection is encountered again. 

That's a very basic description of something that is very complicated, and still far from fully understood, especially with regard to the sort of spike protein based covid vaccines (rather than whole, live or passivated vaccines used in the past).

I am not an immunologist, so the above may be garbled... You need to wait for more learned explanation from the likes of Dave Garnett.

When your cock needs a jab you know you're stuffed

Paxo-nations?

Come on, that was worth a like.  Came up with that in like three seconds. 

Pretty much spot on! As long as you are not reexposed to the antigen (by booster injection or infection) antibody levels are expected to drop over time. The main issue here is that nobody has experience with how good mRNA vaccines are at generating memory B cells (which will generate antibody producing cells if reactivated) and T cells.

Also, coronaviruses in general have evolved a strategy by which young hosts with a  powerful immune system and older people with a well trained immune system (due to multiple infections over the years) can suppress acute infection. However, the virus faffs around with the efficient formation of memory cells. In combination, this preserves a reservoir of hosts the virus can reuse every cold season.

CB

Look at the schedule for tetanus jabs; five doses from almost birth up to 14 years old.

Repeat stimulation of the immune system over longer time scales reinforces what it learns.

This I think is part of why expert opinion was not worried by the move to a 12-week gap for the first doses in the UK, and why this third dose is proving so potent with far more immunity than 2 doses on a 12-week spacing for many.  Except for the most elderly and immune compromised it’s really a 3rd dose for stronger protection rather than a “top up” is my lay take.

That's why you're overweight 😄

That was the gist of my skim reading of the first google hits. Covid does seem to be advancing understanding of the immune system...

Get stuffed

Stop being so fowl. 

Maybe  (who knows?) it's because the vaccines are based on only 1 protein (spike) out of the 20 something (so far identified) our immune systems can use to identify the virus. One feature of this is that vaccines like Pfizer, AZ etc are based on just the spike being engineered onto something else (Chimp adenovirus) or mRNA code to produce replicas of that sequence rather than inactivated vaccines for say Measles (which is all of it), so our immune systems are only being shown a small fraction of what to watch out for.

Still... the advances in last 2 years are absolutely spectacular!

Seriously, I was Pfizer boosted last week & started the most godawful cold/cough the day afterwards.  My immune system has run rampant but I haven’t been too bad at all, altho’ the cough can do one. Pretty sure it’s not Covid but have PCR’d just in case.

I’ve already had flu & pneumonia jabs, shame they can’t do a jab for the common cold…

Nooooooooo.......  

I'm going to be vaccinating for ever. And there was me thinking I'd retired!