Hacker News Reader

Comment by rblatz | Hacker News Reader

I was vaccinated and boosted, ended up catching covid 3x so far.

Now, hop in your time machine and do the A/B test.

Intramuscular vaccinations do not significantly prevent infection of the upper respiratory immune compartment (mucosal IgA antibodies, not humoral covered by IgG). The efficiency against infection by sars-cov-2 is about 20%. That means 80% get infected.

Now, the intramuscular injection vaccines do provide tissue resident B (+IgG antibodies) and T cells in the body serum (humoral, not mucosal) immune compartment and this has been proven to prevent serious (hospitalization) by covid-19 with decent (>50%) efficiency. These IgG antibodies do not seep into the upper respiratory (mucosal compartment) and provide protection there though; only the lower lungs.

But infection? The only good mitigation, lacking a proper intranasal vaccine like India has, is wearing a well fit and sealed mask like an N95 with good practices.

Infection isn't the only concern.

Severity of disease course is a consideration.

Read my second paragraph.

Serious question: How many boosters, and how many more do you plan to take until you give up?

I'm not OP, but in my case the answer is the same as flu - it's likely to be a routine annual thing. Eventually it'll probably be part of the flu shot.

Why “give up”? It’s just like a flu shot, might as well take it every year. (Until Republicans decide to ban it outright, that is: https://amp.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/stat...)

Because the poster said that he had covid 3 times despite the shot.

It's not a prophylactic, but it can significantly reduce severity of symptoms as well as the chances of getting long COVID.

> but it can significantly reduce severity

Only for people at risk. For randos in good health it does not change anything.

Does less severe symptoms from being vaccinated make people spread fewer virus around? If so it's like people haven't heard of probability. With vaccines people have less severe symptoms so they spew fewer virus to people with higher resistance. A combination of these things can drive the R0 value below 1 making the pandemic fizzle out. Is my amateur non expert mental model correct?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com