Want to get back to normal? Get vaccinated when you can. The purpose of vaccination is to bring the severity level of this virus down to the level of a benign one. It’s about controlling and reducing community spread while we work on proving these vaccines prevent transmission.
In the meantime, yes, you will have to continue to wear your mask until others catch up. You can do that. We all can. The more people vaccinated, the more restrictions will be lifted. The more people vaccinated, the less we will see hospital systems overwhelmed. The more people
vaccinated the faster we reach some normalcy. This is not about individual risk anymore. This is about community spread. It always has been. I’m going to tell you what the majority of media is not because if they did, you would have no more reason to tune in.
We will get out of this. It’s going to take some time. These lockdowns are not forever. Let’s work on bringing this down to a manageable level and THEN we can work on eradicating this virus while life resumes. It is easier to handle a common cold cat than a COVID beast.
And on the topic of variants. These happen. It’s a virus. It will do that. Guess what stops a virus from being able to do this? Preventing community spread. A virus needs you, a host, to mutate. And it needs time, and this has had plenty. Don’t let these headlines make you panic.
Also, yeah, I am here to tell you we are going to find our vaccines reduce transmission. It was never really a matter of whether they did or not, because we are seeing evidence they can. It’s just a matter of by how much and having that percentage. Don’t you lose hope just yet.

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More from @sailorrooscout

11 Feb
The importance of T-cell immunity!
A recent study has found that after one dose of Pfizer’s vaccine, patients had a strong T-cell response, and a boosted antibody response after their second dose. This is good news for many reasons so let’s read up. 🧵
researchsquare.com/article/rs-226…
This study found that people’s antibodies were moderately effective against the original strain after their first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine, less effective against the B.1.1.7 variant, and were unable to neutralize the B.1.351 variant. Read what I said, that’s only after ONE dose.
However, they had strong T-cell responses against ALL known variants after the first dose. So why is this important? To recap, T-cells stimulate B-cells to make antibodies. Antibodies are just your first line of defense which is what is initiated when you get a vaccine.
Read 17 tweets
10 Feb
A very encouraging study done on our mRNA vaccines! Pfizer and Moderna vaccines provided strong immune responses against variant B.1.351 first identified in South Africa in those who recovered from previous SARS-CoV-2 infections with a SINGLE dose.
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 displayed weak neutralizing activity not only against the original strain but variant B.1.351 as well (4-8 months post infection; remember antibodies from natural infection eventually wane over time). However, immunization
with a single dose of either mRNA vaccine elicited a robust antibody response that boosted neutralizing titers against the original strain by approximately 1000-FOLD. More importantly, vaccination elicited a robust neutralizing antibody response against B.1.351, although
Read 8 tweets
8 Feb
Let’s talk about immunity and why it’s important to take certain factors into consideration when we look at these studies and maybe why the most recent one on AstraZeneca’s effectiveness on the B.1.351 is a tad bit bothersome. For starters this beauty wasn’t tweeted initially.
See that last bullet point? The one of T-cell immunity. Yeah, that’s vital. Why? The study failed to discuss this aspect. You cannot disregard T-cells in the same breath you are discussing B-cells, vaccines and their respective induced antibody responses. It’s a package deal.
T-cells help protect against severe disease. Their analysis shows 76 out of 87 TCB sites (87%) are NOT impacted by the mutations seen in B.1.351. What does this mean? It means the T-cell response generated by AstraZeneca’s vaccine should be highly effective against this variant.
Read 14 tweets
8 Feb
Something we have been waiting for. Concerning Pfizer’s vaccine, results show key mutations N501Y, 69/70-deletion, D614G, and E484K from variant B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 have little effect on neutralization by sera elicited by two doses of the vaccine.
nature.com/articles/s4159…
The neutralization GMT of the serum panel against the virus with three mutations from B.1.351 (E484K + N501Y + D614G) was slightly lower than the neutralization GMTs against the N501Y virus or the virus with three mutations from the UK variant (Δ69/70 + N501Y + D614G). However,
differences in neutralization GMTs against any of the mutant viruses in this study was small (0.81- to 1.41-fold) as compared to the greater than four-fold differences that have been used to signal potential need for a strain change in influenza vaccines.
Read 7 tweets
7 Feb
Per Fauci, “When we get into March, April, and May, there will be a substantial number of people vaccinated. So, when we get into the summer, we likely will be doing things that we maybe were not able to do at a time when there was the 300,000 and 400,000 new infections a day."
You know what this means right? When the time comes please get vaccinated. More vaccines are getting approved which allows for improved vaccine allocation efforts. With the B.1.1.7 becoming the dominant strain in a several areas around the globe, this is good news for us as we
know all these vaccines sufficiently protect against this variant even with the E484K mutation. This gives us time to update against the B.1.351 variant as it attempts to increase its fitness. We could easily be looking towards some normalcy by late this year. Let’s keep going.
Read 4 tweets
7 Feb
It is important to point out that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is effective against the B.1.1.7 variant and reduces virus shedding and transmission. With this most likely being the dominate strain, this means their current vaccines are still effective as they update boosters.
From what we have seen, it is evident that B.1.1.7 (UK) is inherently more transmissible when compared to the original strain ( by ~50%), and it may be right to assume when populations are exposed to this variant, it’ll likely become the dominant strain relatively quickly.
We are seeing this happen in many areas. Hear me out. In a sense, this actually works to our advantage as we witness this selective pressure occur. B.1.1.7 may be essentially allowing us time to administer booster vaccinations against this variant and it’s newly added E484K.
Read 14 tweets

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