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EC Nebraska | Yes, they made a pretty significant mistake with these new vaccines. For a variety of reasons, they thought they had a kind of new super vaccine that would work far better than the existing childhood vaccines. It actually turns out that they work about the same. Not better, not worse, about the same.
Almost all of the existing childhood vaccines require a series of 3-5 shots spaced out over a year, or multiple years, in order to induce a long-term, robust immune response. Even then, some of them require boosters every 10 years or so.
There was a lot of pressure, financial and otherwise, to get a COVID vaccine to market as soon as possible.
So they picked the smallest number of shots and the shortest interval that they thought would work. And that's what they tested. And in the first few months, that protocol worked fantastically well. So they went with it.
But just like the DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough) and polio vaccines, 2 shots 1 month apart isn't enough to induce a long-term robust immune response. For DTaP, the recommended series is 3 shots, each 2 months apart, followed by a fourth dose 6-12 months later. For polio, it's 3 shots spread across 18 months, with a 4th dose a few years later. And even then, you can get still an infection and shed polio virus for months. You wouldn't know it, because you're protected from symptoms. But you'd still be shedding live virus.
That's the way the "traditional" vaccines in use today work. Probably that's the way that the COVID vaccines will work. Almost certainly one month between shots is too short an interval. But we haven't yet had decades to work out the best sequence.
As far as the question about the flu shot, that's more iffy. Every other vaccine, including the COVID vaccines, induces both a strong antibody response and a robust cellular memory response. (the memory T and B cells that remember the antibody blueprints and allow for anti-body production to quickly restart in the event of a new infection)
The flu shot doesn't induce much of a cellular response. It's only antibodies, and those fade over time. | |
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A Covid question
