Thread by @sailorrooscout

With all due respect, you as an epidemiologist should be quite ashamed for pushing such fear-mongering tweets and circulating this highly misleading study. You are relying on the fact that most people will not understand this information since it’s not in layman’s terms. Let me.

https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1351686170044989442

Firstly, the conclusions being drawn from this study is that the 502.V2 variant would render these vaccines ineffective. This is highly unlikely. It will take a large amount of genetic diversity to completely render the current vaccines useless. Why? Vaccines are polyclonal.

This study didn’t even look at the vaccines. They studied OLD blood sera from NATURAL infection. Therefore they already contained low antibody levels. Why is this an issue? Because everyone knows antibodies from natural infection with COVID are weak and wane in 2-3 months.

Please take note of where the study says that over half of the samples did neutralize due to the fact they had a more robust immune response. Hello? This is what vaccines do? Antibody counts would be sent high? Not to mention the study TOTALLY disregarded B-cells and T-cells.

How are you going to disregard our actual immune systems and their ability to make antibodies for later? Which may I remind you are DRIVEN by vaccines. They teach our bodies to make antibodies for later, not just during active infection (memory T-cells anyone). That’s immunity!

T-cells stimulate B-cells to make antibodies. Antibodies are just your first line of defense which is what is initiated when you get this vaccine. It’s our T-cells that are responsible for long-term immunity. When antibodies diminish after your initial inoculation, your T-cells-

will tell your B-cells it’s time to produce more antibodies. As long as your T-cells still recognize this virus and inform your B-cells they need to produce antibodies, the vaccine is still doing its job. Antibodies being built up over and over again is nothing new or unique-

to this vaccine, this is how vaccines have always worked. This study does not account for this information concerning T-cell immunity AT ALL. So do me a favor, if you don’t have the ability to gain traction on your tweets without being completely transparent then don’t tweet it.

I only wrote this up because I’m tired of seeing it circulate. It’s misleading. Know your facts. This study ignores the general basic science and understanding of the immune system and how these vaccines work and their effectiveness against these variants. Thank you.

And this my friends is how you know you successfully just debunked a tweet. Thank you for proving my science and reasoning to be correct.

To avoid the possibility of anyone claiming I am “mindlessly dunking,” this gentleman has a very bad track record of putting out fear inducing, inaccurate tweets surrounding COVID and science in general. I wouldn’t be a good scientist if I didn’t speak up. fastcompany.com/90581545/eric-…

Bringing this up again this morning because this misleading study is circulating like wildfire thanks to this individual who doesn’t possess proper credentials to begin with on the subject matter. Please be aware and know your facts!