Infections will probably never stop, everyone that got vaccinated thus far was with a spike protein from Alpha, and now their immune system is primed for that. It’s known as imprinting, or “original antigenic sin” and it is a real thing that happens, it’s why prior coronavirus shots like common colds, MERS, SARS, etc didn’t really pan out. Dengue and certain flu shots, and RSV shots too. Targeting a mutating virus is risky, there are people who get flu all the time if they avoid flu vaccines. This isn’t some pseudoscience shit, it’s because they either got flu vaccines before catching a flu, or the strain of flu they were initially exposed to which generated the largest immune response wasn’t a strain that gave them favorable imprinting for the future. If you’re in that camp, you’re basically always going to have to get flu shots.

So people got vaccinated for COVID-19 “Alpha”, but it didn’t mutate for peak infectivity until Omicron, and worse the vaccines only target the spike protein and none of the associated proteins are really accounted for. For some reason, COVID shots have much less long-lasting protection against infection, Israeli data when Delta was relatively recent suggested a few days at most.

If you happened to avoid vaccines and your first exposure was Omicron with no long term complications, you’re probably better equipped than anyone barring some huge mutation which seems unlikely. But it won’t likely ever get eradicated because of that imprinting of the Alpha spike protein in people, their immune responses are primed for that specific version of COVID which no longer exists. Even Omicron-specific boosters are unlikely to do anything particularly useful, at least the tests done in monkeys who’d been vaccinated and then given Moderna’s Omicron-specific booster had no increased protection versus the Alpha boosters.

Pharmaceutical industry shot their wad early, and regulators in various parts of the world were happy to fall all over themselves at a chance to wrap up the whole affair. It’s hard to say if the early emergency use authorizations, recommendations for shots to all adults rather than just those at risk of not surviving an Alpha/Delta infection like the elderly, and other measures that led us to this moment were the best course of action. I’m inclined to say no, but that’s just because I was already familiar with the antigenic imprinting process from influenza and other coronavirus vaccines. Unfortunately the only people outside of others in the clinical trial space I know who had any concerns were unhinged anti-vaxxers. I’m just not sure why regulators were so comfortable throwing caution to the wind with such minimally tested products knowing that these things could mutate in such a way that the primed immune responses from the vaccines might not even reduce symptoms in subsequent strains… I would say at least the Alpha shots are helpful for symptoms, but I haven’t seen data about that yet. I personally did not receive any COVID medical products, had an Alpha infection at an unknown point in 2020 with neoplasm antibodies detectable in July 2020, still detectable in May 2021, and definitely was closely exposed to Omicron in Dec 2021 (2 days at the tail end of the holidays) and Feb 2022 (for over a week taking care of my slightly symptomatic, vaccinated fiance, who I took 0 precautions around the entire time) but either didn’t catch it or had no symptoms whatsoever. Antibodies still detectable in blood as of July 2022 but Quest doesn’t differentiate neoplasm antibodies from different strains. Not 100,% positive that any off the shelf antibodies tests do that. So I only have anecdotal data, in which most of the people I know who got vaccinated and were likely never infected prior seem to continually get infected, with mild but definitely noticeable symptoms. If it was negligence on the part of regulators that said it was better to recommend sweeping vaccinations rather than targeted shots then I hope we see some heads roll, because this shouldn’t have been a a surprising outcome. If their models said waiting would’ve been worse then by all means, I just don’t see how by the time vaccines were ready for mass production there was any confusion about the lack of any chance of eradicating the disease. There were already so many anti-vaxxers expressing their unwillingness to comply, it was already known to be mutating… Waiting for data about what protection it actually offered against Delta and how much deficiency was likely due to the imprinting would have been smart, we now know, but should they have seen it coming?

:aus-delenda-est:

Plague colony.

The worst part is how well we handled it up till Delta only to have the NSW government say “ah fuck it. let er rip.” We were doing better than China.