Thread by @thomasafine

It's beginning to look like the Delta variant somehow evades your body's first line of defense in fighting viral infections, phagocytes.

https://twitter.com/OliviaMesser/status/1418987660174036998

Viral immunity springs from training specific B-cells and T-cells to search out and destroy a specific virus.

They're your second immune response team.

Your first immune response is phagocytes, which get rid of most illnesses before your B-cells and T-cells even wake up.

In cases where you do need B-cell or T-cell response, the phagocytes should have at least kept the virus in check.

So the immense viral loads being seen, and the notion that much shorter exposures are danger, are both consistent with Delta COVID somehow interfering with or by passing the phagocyte response, allowing it to grow essentially unchecked until B-cells and T-cells can respond.

If this guess is correct (and it is not just me; I've heard medical professionals guessing about the delta variant and immune response) then the vaccine is even more important.

Training B-cells and T-cells is what the vaccine does.

This guess is also consistent with a greater chance of breathrough infections. As I've described in another thread (much to many people's chagrin), vaccines do NOT prevent infection. They provide a fast enough response to prevent any symptoms and (hopefully) shedding.

The greater number of breakthrough infections would happen because your B-cell/T-cell response is working without any help, and because if you haven't seen the infection in a while, your body my take a day to ramp up production again.

Get vaccinated if you're not. Keep on eye on booster news too. I trust Fauci. But I suspect we will eventually hit a point where boosters are widely recommended.

And for completeness, here's my thread that made people angry about vaccines not preventing infections:

https://twitter.com/thomasafine/status/1381303642746159111