Prior Omicron infection protects against BA.4 and BA.5 variants

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01950-2

by bookofjoe • 4 years ago

81 47 4 years ago

nature.com

oneepic• 4 years ago

Interesting point:

The work, which was posted on the medRxiv preprint server on 12 July and has not yet been peer reviewed

It would be best to wait for this review to be done first, right?

doktorhladnjak• 4 years ago

It would but the variant situation is so quickly changing that it can still be useful. A Danish study that shows similar results also released a preprint last week https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4165630

peteradio3• 4 years ago

If you thought otherwise you may have been misled by serology studies.

saiya-jin• 4 years ago

Well, we had it all - initial original covid variant, first omicron variant, and last week either of these sub-variants. All came from small kids, so it really didn't matter at all what precautions and social distancing we adults did. Kids still went to kindergarten with 15 other, plus all teachers.

First one was by far the worst - fever, tiredness, sleeplessness, a lot of mucus in the throat, loss of smell and taste (was smelling 52% alcohol and it was like mountain air). Even few months after ie my cologne smelled foul. Smell turned OK in cca 6 months.

Second was only (a lot of) mucus in the throat, and resulting dry cough.

Third now was barely noticeable, again only mucus in the throat. The only reason we did tests were because we got clearly infected from sister-in-law's kids visiting who upon coming home had 40 degrees celzius fever.

I don't mind this level of covid for myself, much more preferable than proper flu or even intense sore throat. But others around me fared less well - some kids having very high fever where you start having concerns about spasms and Kawasaki syndrome. My wife had headaches, developed some sore points in her mouth, from which she got ear aches etc.

Everybody seems to push whole covid saga away from their minds (me including), but its not going anywhere, probably ever. Thanx to Ukraine invasion by russia focus of concerns shifted, it seems its too much to worry about 2 dreadful things in parallel.

celdon25• 4 years ago

2 dreadful things in parallel.

You sure it's just two? :)

colechristensen7• 4 years ago

Covid isn’t dreadful any more, just another of many diseases.

It is evolving the way it was expected to by everyone but the doomsayers.

terminatornet• 4 years ago

The 7 day average of hospitalizations in the US is 10,000 higher than it was last year at the start of the delta surge. Seems pretty dreadful to me!

notafraudster2• 4 years ago

Based on present death rates, COVID will be number three for all cause mortality in the United States this year after all combined cancers and all combined heart disease -- possibly number two!; above all other infectious disease by an order of magnitude; above diabetes, COPD, organ damage, etc. This is despite a low overall mortality rate from COVID per infection.

It is possible that as it continues to be endemic the rates will tick down and so this will not necessarily be true in 2023, 2024, 2025, etc. I am not proposing any policy change or any lockout or anything. but your position is a little bit like saying "a rocket launcher is a weapon, just like a bread knife".

Put another way: a 9/11 every week, still. It would at least behoove us to be sombre about the bloodbath around us.

Marazan• 4 years ago

The early major variants Alpha and Delta were both more infectious and at least as deadly if not more so.

We fluked it with Omicron.

colechristensen7• 4 years ago

recent research shows that previous infection with an older variant (such as Alpha, Beta or Delta) offers some protection against reinfection with BA.4 or BA.5, and that a prior Omicron infection is substantially more effective

It would be news if this weren’t true. Of course infection from an ancestor virus provides some immunity and a more recent ancestor provides more than an older one.

uberduper2• 4 years ago

Why "of course?"

Why does it only provide _some_ protection and not full protection? How do we quantify _some_ protection? Why do I know people that have been sick with Covid 4+ times?

When does "of course" come into this?

colechristensen7• 4 years ago

Because this is how immunity and evolution works?

Like basic microbiology here is being denied or treated like it is surprising when it would otherwise just be basic facts from your first course in infectious diseases.

hadlock• 4 years ago

Immunity also depends on viral load. If you are hot-boxing in a tiny subcompact car for 48 hours cross country road trip with someone who is highly contagious, is different than sitting in a large, indoor restaurant across the table for an hour from someone who has covid, but is mostly recovered (I still wouldn't sit with this person, but seems to happen a lot) the viral load you will receive, is a lot less than the subcompact car scenario. Your friend could be immunocompromised, or they could be "living their best life" and spending a lot of time indoors with strangers, or both. It's hard to say.

There are a lot of people I know who only eat on outdoor patios, minimize time indoors with others, but end up finally getting covid for the first time when a family member comes over for sunday night dinner and infects the entire household.

lamontcg• 4 years ago

The bigger effect may be that a more recent infection provides more immunity than an older infection because neutralizing antibodies wane.

And we DESPERATELY need to come up with better terms to talk about immunity than just having one word for it.

It really is likely that conserved t-cell epitopes confer life-long immunity against severe disease and death no matter which variant you are infected with or vaccinated against. While there is clear statistical evidence of the virus attempting to evade Nabs there's no evidence that mutations are concentrated around t-cell epitopes (probably one effect and reason why we have multiple tiers of immunity rather than just pumping out NAbs every time?).

ianai2• 4 years ago

“Prior infection with Omicron granted stronger protection: it was 79.7% effective at preventing BA.4 and BA.5 reinfection and 76.1% effective at preventing symptomatic reinfection.”

I feel like the time to be more nuanced may be upon us. People are generally aware that infection grants some levels of immunity. But it’s not a simple probability distribution or something like a score card or political poll. You can see how many antibodies people produce to BA.4/5 with whatever they had previously. And of course time is a factor. Numbers I saw some time ago were every new lineage seems to halve the number of antibodies produced (per a John Campbell video) as a trendline.

Though I am grateful the medical professionals are still keeping an eye on this despite whatever cultural trends may seem. Wonder if we’ll ever see some retrospectives and changes made so a future pandemic doesn’t hit the globe and nations/regions so unprepared. At least take peoples temperature more often and the sick to stay home. It’d help if it weren’t a personal resource expense to simply not bring a cold/flu to work. Ie don’t have that use personal leave time.

autoexec• 4 years ago

At least take peoples temperature more often and the sick to stay home.

For things like this by the time someone has a fever they've already been spreading their virus for days if not weeks. Temperature check wouldn't be nearly as useful as just letting workers take time off when they're feeling sick without risking losing their jobs or their ability to pay rent.

ianai2• 4 years ago

Totally agree. Temp checks are more for things like travel and other group settings. Hospitals.

tim333• 4 years ago

it was 79.7% effective at preventing BA.4 and BA.5 reinfection and 76.1% effective at preventing symptomatic reinfection

Shouldn't the numbers for preventing symptomatic infection be better that those for preventing any infection? I wonder if they've got those the wrong way round.

babyshake• 4 years ago

Something I've been wondering, and I'm not sure if there is data on this. If you were to get vaccinated once a month, would that be expected to produce notable protection against the new variants? I'm aware that vaccines for prior variants seem to be considered ineffective against BA.5, but I'm unsure of what impact the recency of the vaccine has.

ipaddr2• 4 years ago

The first 2/3 weeks your immunity to drops. So taking one every month would make things worse. Plus you have that recent study that says the more vaccines you take the lower your immune system after 8 months. I would follow what health official suggest or get off the vaccine train.

f6v• 4 years ago

If you were to get vaccinated once a month, would that be expected to produce notable protection against the new variants?

Neutralizing antibody levels are highest after antigen encounter and diminish over time. So, you get the most protection after vaccination or recovery. After some time, T cells play a more prominent role in fighting the disease.

I’d be very careful about frequent vaccinations. We know that chronic antigen encounters could produce exhausted cells incapable of differentiation.

Prior Omicron infection protects against BA.4 and BA.5 variants

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