Thread by @DrEricDing

Oh boy. “some scientists are increasingly concerned that, because of a quirk of our own biology, future iterations of vaccines might not always be quite as effective as they are today”—due to **imprinting**. And maybe worse if you had natural infection. 🧵
statnews.com/2021/04/16/nex…

2) “The concerns stem from a phenomenon that is known as imprinting, sometimes called original antigenic sin, which is believed to affect how we respond to some pathogens.”

3) “In short, when your body is introduced to a particular threat for the first time — either through infection or a vaccine — that encounter sets your immune system’s definition of that virus and what immune weapons it needs to detect and protect against it in the future.”

4) “That imprint can be helpful. In the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, elderly adults were protected by immune responses they’d generated more than half a century earlier, in childhood, through encounters with a related virus. But...”

5) “But it can also interfere with your body’s ability to mount responses against strains that have evolved from the one you were first exposed to.

6) “In case of Covid, some scientists are concerned that the immune system’s reaction to the vaccines being deployed now could leave an indelible imprint, & that next-generation products, updated in response to emerging variants of the SARS-CoV-2, won’t confer as much protection

7) “Michael Worobey, who was been involved in groundbreaking research on imprinting with influenza, said he worries the responses to first-generation Covid-19 vaccines will prove to be “a high-water mark” for people’s immune responses to these inoculations.

8) ““I do think it’s something that we need to be thinking about,” Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology. “We might actually see lower efficacy five years from now, if people are still locked into recalling the response to the first [SARS-2] antigen that they saw.”

9) Versus other coronaviruses, “Covid infection actually boosted the immune system’s protection against a different virus, one that the immune system already knew.”

10) “Still, The very strong immune response generated by the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines should override any imprinting impacts as SARS-2 mutates, he said.”

11) but here is the worrisome kicker for variants for for people with natural infection... “Hensley worries, though, that people whose immunity to the virus comes from infection, not vaccination, might have more difficulty handling variant viruses because of imprinting effects.”

12) translation of above excerpt—don’t chase natural infection!!! Don’t do Scott Atlas. Don’t do Swedish natural herd!