3/13/2021
If I was a gambling man… I would say the Covid-19 pandemic is winding down.
At this point, in the US, hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19 are dropping. More importantly, it appears that our natural immunity and vaccine induced immunity can protect reasonably well against the new variants.
If you haven’t been vaccinated, then please vaccinate as soon as you are eligible. From a community perspective, when more people have immunity against the virus, there are less chances for the virus to mutate and evolve resistance against our immune system.
From an individual perspective, is far better to receive immunity from the vaccine as compared to receiving immunity from the actual virus.
I have recently made a video to explain my current thinking on this subject.
To learn more about the current situation with Covid-19, please explore the links below.
Dr. Monica Gandhi discuss the current situation with Covid-19. I think she strikes the right tone in terms of caution and optimism.
COVID-19 Vaccine Results, Messaging on a Patient Level, & Schools with Dr. Monica Gandhi
Recent data from J&J demonstrate 85% efficacy. This group of trial participants include all the main variants.
Here is the press release.
Evidence from Israel suggests the Pfizer vaccine performs well against the UK variant.
This Israel study in a nationwide mass vaccination setting suggests that the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine is effective for a wide range of Covid-19–related outcomes, a finding consistent with that of the randomized trial.
Link: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2101765
Our immune system is resilient. We have redundant pathways working to protect us. In the video, I discuss our B and T cells. It is possible that our B cells and their related antibodies may perform slightly worse against some variants (South Africa variant…) however, if our T cells remain robust against the variants then this immunity will likely be sufficient to prevent significant hospitalizations/deaths.
A recent paper from the University of California, San Diego found that vaccines protect against infection from variants by generating strong T-cell immunity in addition to the antibodies produced by B cells.
Link: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.27.433180v1
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